It is true that knowledge is power. But it's not how much power one has that makes them dangerous. It is the way one thinks that determines if they could be potentially dangerous. ust because someone owns a gun doesn't make them dangerous. If they are careless, don't know how to use it properly or have harmful intentions, then they become dangerous. Give the same gun to a trained police officer, and he doesn't become dangerous. Give a 13 year old kid a script that attacks and spreads through networks and he becomes dangerous. Most real hackers aren't the problem. It's the wanna-be's out there that end up causing most of the damage... They brag and boast about how they did this and that and post scripts and source code about how to replicate his actions. Then a whole mess of kids come along, with a bit of computer knowledge and no real morals yet, and begin attacking all over the place, not really knowing what they are doing. "Hackers" or "reverse engineers" really do pla a positive role in the world and are nessicary in certain circumstances. Lets say you run a buisness, and have a computer network, with around 100 computers + servers. Now you have a tech who has been payed to setup and manage the network. But, it turns out that after about a year, it's not working out with him. So you decide to let him go, but he leaves the building, he locks out the network, and as he's the one who has set it all up , he knows how to do it quite quickly. He now wants a severence pay of $100,000 for the password to the network. Everyday that your network is down, your financial loss is around $35,000 and the information on the server cannot be replaced. What do you do? Who would you call? Sure, you could phone the local authorities, but your ex-techie knows that it will take alot longer than a few days for them to arrest him and attempt to get the password from him. It could be a week, or a month, or if he decides, never. So, basically the only ones you could really turn to at that point is some freelance hacker. Sure, he'll charge you $10,000 to get into your server, but he'll get it done in a day, saving you quite alot of money and data.

It's not what you know that makes you dangerous, its how you use it.