Members of the gifted segment of the Computer Underground seen by their cyber colleagues to have special hacking talent. Recently, the label “elite” has been altered to include not only the ethical tester of virtual boundaries but also the detector of cyber sabotage. Unlike crackers, elite hackers avoid deliberately destroying information or otherwise damaging the computer systems they have exploited.

See Also: Crackers; Computer Underground (CU); Neil Barrett; White Hats or Ethical Hackers or Samurai Hackers.