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{{trope}}
[[File:war games.jpg|link=
{{quote|'''Arthur Cabot:''' Now what does this say about the state of our country, hmm? I mean have you got any insight as to why a bright boy like this would jeopardize the lives of millions?
'''Nigan:''' No sir. [[Twisting the Words|He says he does this sort of thing for fun]].
|''[[WarGames]]''}}
As opposed to the malicious [[The Cracker|Cracker]] who uses his computer skills for profit and mayhem, the '''Playful Hacker''' normally wants nothing more than to explore new territory on the Net and learn new things. Sometimes he plays harmless pranks which can cause clueless authority figures to confuse him with his dark counterpart. Even when his actions are not strictly legal, though, his intentions and presence are almost always benign—even heroic. [http://catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html This is what "hacker" used to mean, before mass media mutated it].
When a
The
See also: [[Everything Is Online]], [[It's a Small Net After All]], [[Magical Database]].
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Ed from ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]''.
* Michael from ''[[Witch Hunter Robin]]''.
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* Aramusha from ''Mythic Quest''.
* Helba from [[.hack]]. She is considered a criminal due to the fact that hacking is a captial crime after Pluto's kiss, but does it entirely for fun and to protect the online game "The World".
* [[Axis Powers Hetalia|Russia]] is mentioned in the 2010 Bloodbath and Fantasia 2 as "tinkering" with his computer.{{context}}<!-- Does thins mean hacking, or case-modding, or something else? -->
* Ran Musen the genius programmer from ''[[R-15]]''.
* Lynn Lambretta in ''[[Bodacious Space Pirates]]''. She was arrested for it when she was in middle school. In high school, she uses her leet skills to foil a pirate attack.
* Kazari Uiharu in ''[[
== Comic Books ==
* Marvel UK introduced Adam Reynolds for one of their ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' annuals. He was attempting to find out how much money was in a friend's bank account to win a bet, but managed to accidentally hack into the Decepticons' data files. Which is the equivalent of walking to the bank and ending up in the secret military lab in the middle of the ocean.
* An issue of ''[[Spider-Man]] Family'' had a couple of kids looking for the next big game stumble into one of Stark Industries' files. What they thought was an awesome game turned out to be a program devised by Howard Stark dating back to World War II to protect America from the Nazis. Both Spidey and [[Iron Man]] had to destroy the robots that were activated and Tony (as Iron Man) made sure the boys knew they were in trouble.
== Fan Works ==
* The ''[[Babylon 5]]'' fanfic ''[[The Dilgar War]]'' has Francis O'Leary: in his first scene he boasts about his ability to penetrate protected websites, and tries to impress a girl by penetrating the site of Earthforce and showing her the
== Films ==
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* Riley from ''[[National Treasure]]''.
* The entire cast of ''[[Sneakers]]'', except [[Mary McDonnell]].
* David Lightman, Matthew Broderick's character in the movie ''[[
* The entire plot of the movie ''[[Hackers]]''—while the protagonists are not wholly benign, they are put in contrast with an extremely evil villain who makes them seem positively helpful in comparison.
* Two of the three heroes of ''[[Live Free or Die Hard]]''.
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* [[Cory Doctorow]]'s book ''[[Little Brother]]'' centers around a group of Playful Hacker characters as they are caught and detained under suspicion of a terrorist attack. Interestingly, [[The Cracker]] isn't even represented in the book—it's the Playful Hacker versus the evil Homeland Security.
* The three guys who make up "The Smoking Gnu" in ''[[Discworld|Going Postal]]''. This being the Discworld, they hack the semaphore-driven "clacks" network, which is a telecommunications system, but without the electricity.
** The Smoking Gnu are more Playful Hackers turned [[The Cracker|Crackers]], as they use tricks they originally discovered while playing around with the mechanisms to {{spoiler|work out how to physically destroy the entire network of clacks with a message. It should be noted that they
** As of ''The Science of Discworld II'', Hex has also joined the Playful Hacker ranks, as it's hooked up to the semaphore network, has cracked their operations codes, and can slip messages onto the network for free, passing them off as internal signalling. So far as we know, it's only done this to save the UU faculty the expense of sending c-mail messages.
* Cadel Darkkon functions as this in Catherine Jinks' ''[[Evil Genius Trilogy]].'' Slightly subverted, as in the first book Cadel was closer to a [[The Cracker|cracker]], given his initially amoral nature- until he met one of the victims of his destructive schemes.
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* Ender in ''[[Ender's Game]]'', who cracks into the desk system in the Battle School and figures out how to send messages under other student's names, while preventing other students from using his name. This is only used for pranks, of course, as Ender is only six years old at the time.
** And it's implied that the computer system is deliberately set up to allow and encourage this sort of competition/play/hacking.
* In one book of a mid-1980s adventure series titled ''Viking Cipher'', hero Eric Ivorsen was advised to contact a hacker called Barbarian, who might be able to help with the Viking Cipher project ... but could he be '''trusted'''? Less than ten minutes after Ivorsen got in touch, Barbarian claimed to have traced the online connection and learned his name and address. Eric didn't believe even the government could trace the line and break through his security '''that''' fast (1980s, remember), and Barbarian was supposedly a murderer in prison — not likely to have the best and fastest equipment — so he challenged: "What is my name?" The response was, "You doubt Barbarian's power? Heresy! I will give you one more chance, Eric Ivorsen. What does Viking Cipher want from me?" Cue [[Oh Crap]] by Ivorsen, at least once he got over pure astonishment. Luckily, Barbarian '''was''' a Playful Hacker, not [[The Cracker]] ... and he wasn't even really a convict; he just used that persona to keep people from trying to coerce him.
* Directly inspired by ''[[
▲== Live Action TV ==
* Adam from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' was a [[Deconstruction]] of this character type. His playfulness and extreme intelligence made Rose find him charming and appealing, but as time went on it became apparent his lack of a distinction between a harmless prank and something dangerous and threatening; his worrying ambition; his cowardice; and his dangerous impulsions all rather obscured his better traits. [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|He ends up back home with a hole drilled into his forehead which opens whenever anyone snaps their fingers]], denied the chance to explore the universe
▲* Directly inspired by ''[[War Games]]'', Richie Adler from the short-lived series ''[[Whiz Kids]]''. Richie even ''acknowledges'' some similarities but says that he, as opposed to Lightman, is a genius. But then, his computer RALF is also a [[Magical Computer]].
▲* Adam from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' was a [[Deconstruction]] of this character type. His playfulness and extreme intelligence made Rose find him charming and appealing, but as time went on it became apparent his lack of a distinction between a harmless prank and something dangerous and threatening; his worrying ambition; his cowardice; and his dangerous impulsions all rather obscured his better traits. [[Cool and Unusual Punishment|He ends up back home with a hole drilled into his forehead which opens whenever anyone snaps their fingers]], denied the chance to explore the universe H The Doctor.
* Mac on ''[[Veronica Mars]]'': a Playful Hacker with the tendency toward being a bit of a [[The Cracker|Cracker]]. She's helpful to Veronica in solving cases, but as Veronica herself operates outside the law for profit, Mac does the same.
* Penelope Garcia from ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' would appear to have been this for a few years before being recruited by the FBI. (Recruited, very possibly, as in "volunteer, or else.")
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* Freddie tries to be this in the "iRue the Day" episode of ''[[iCarly]]'' to counter [[Cracker]] Nevel without success.
* Kermit in ''[[Kung Fu]]: The Legend Continues''.
* Riley on [[MacGyver]] hacked the government with no intent other then to see if she could do it and tried to back out once she succeeded. This in fact landed her in prison because organized crime tried to exploit her skill and blackmailed her with the life of her family. However as of the show her spymaster pulled strings for her freedom to let [[They Fight Crime| Her Fight Crime.]]
== Video Games ==
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== Western Animation ==
* Occasionally in ''[[Code Lyoko]]'', when Jérémie is testing a new program. However, he normally uses the Supercomputer to escape from sticky situations. For example, when the school staff tries to find out about William's disappearance and Jérémie uses his voice synthesizer.
* Mouse from ''[[
** By the bytes, it all makes sense! Enzo is some edutainment software, whilst Fong is the kernel.
*** Given Mouse and Bob's past "association", she's more likely a tweaking app.
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* Robin in ''[[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]]''.
** "I hacked the motion sensors."
* [[Inspector Gadget]]'s child-prodigy niece Penny was something of a pioneer of this Trope, using her portable book-shaped [[Magical Computer]] to obtain and analyze the information that she used to keep her uncle one step ahead of the bad guys.
== Real Life ==
* Many computer geeks feel themselves to be exactly this. This flavor of hacker refer to themselves as "White Hats" (at least, those who just look for exploitations and inform the authors of the software). Word of
** The trick is to vandalize some other government's page than your own. (Just kidding, never do anything like
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20130827121341/http://cosman246.com/jargon.html#The%20Meaning%20of%20Hack The meaning of "Hack"].
* A popular April Fool's day joke on websites is to alter the front page to make it look like the site has fallen victim to internet vandals. Fark.com is (apparently) particularly vulnerable to guinea pigs, or as they call themselves, TEH PIGZ.
** You Tube [[rickroll]]ed everyone on April Fools.
* Though it did not involve computers, the [[wikipedia:Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion incident|Max Headroom broadcast hijacker]] still applies. The incident occurred in 1987 when a guy dressed like [[Max Headroom]] was able to get into the signals of WGN and PBS and broadcast his [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM7Q1WiepoQ&feature=related surreal] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs video].
* A hacker called NeoN [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|exposed a Russian company's propogation of the fake antivirus progam]] [[wikipedia:Malware Defender|MS Antivirus]] and posted their earnings from the fraudulent program. The company's name? [[Baka]]software.
* Lulz Security/Antisec members
* The NSA has their own department of white hat hackers that constantly test their own systems.
** As do many other governments and large private companies. The industry term for what they do is "[[w:Penetration test|penetration testing]]".
* M.I.T. has a long tradition of "hacks" dating back long before computers were available, with their own [http://hacks.mit.edu/ website] dedicated to tracking them, as well as at least five books—one of which is published by the university's museum press.
* [[YouTube]] personality [[The Spiffing Brit]] essentially takes this role for video games and YouTube itself. He usually doesn't alter code itself, but rather uncovers and employs unexpected behaviors or implications in the user interface. And as befits a Playful Hacker, he reveals the exploits he finds in websites like YouTube for the express purpose of motivating them to ''fix'' them.
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:The Trickster]]
[[Category:Magical Computer]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Technology Tropes]]
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