You don’t have to be smarter than your opponent to beat them in chess. You need to be better at chess, that’s it. Sure you need some degree of intelligence to be good at chess but being better at chess is not an indicator that you are smarter than your opponent. Same goes for computer security or any other intellectual field.
For instance, I’m pretty sure I’m better at computer security than Terence Tao but no way would I say I’m smarter than him.
Semantics. If you have a computer, the hacker has a computer, and you get hacked, the hacker is smarter. For whatever values of better/creative/resourceful you want to attribute to “smarter”.
For instance, I’m pretty sure I’m better at computer security than Terence Tao but no way would I say I’m smarter than him.