Samurai

A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and First Amendment cases, and other parties with 'legitimate' reasons to need an electronic locksmith. Some have modelled themselves on the 'net cowboys' of William Gibson's cyberpunk SF novels. Some Samurai claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their employers and to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by criminal crackers as beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic. Some quote Miyamoto Musashi's 'Book of Five Rings', a classic of historical Samurai doctrine, in support of these principles.