Computer hobbyists or professionals, generally with advanced programming skills. Today, the term “hacker” has taken on a sinister connotation and includes those hobbyists who are bent on illegally accessing the computers of others or who attempt to demonstrate their technological prowess through computerized acts of vandalism.

People who enjoy playing with computers, a small minority of whom commit computer crime for the intellectual challenge of breaking into a computer.

Computer users who understand the "ins and outs" of computers, networks, and the Internet in general. Hackers are generally benign. See also crackers.

Hackers is a 1995 film that follows the misfortunes of the young hackers Dade Murphy ("Crash Override"/"Zero Cool", played by Jonny Lee Miller), Kate Libby ("Acid Burn", played by Angelina Jolie) and their friends. It was written by Rafael Moreu and directed by Iain Softley.

Hackers (ISBN 0-441-00375-3) is an anthology of short stories edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. It contains stories by noted science fiction and cyberpunk writers of the late 1980s and early 1990s about hackers.