No! You're thinking of "crackers." There's a very serious difference. The word "hacker" being co-opted by writers who don't understand it is like the literally-as-figuratively phenomenon. Literally doesn't mean figuratively, they're just using the word incorrectly.
If popular usage of a word drifts and the new usage is widely and unambiguously understood by most speakers in a target linguistic community, it is the folks writing articles in objection who do not understand its meaning.
As far as I can tell, the word "cracker" has close to zero uptake outside of the food industry (and, perhaps, people who produce cracks for software). You're far better off letting the context distinguish between the type of hacker, or mentioning it explicitly if the context does not make it clear, since more people will understand what you're talking about.
https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-security/hacker-vs-crac...
http://www.stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/cracker.html