Transmission by Hari Kunzru,T "...he was deep in the netherworld of malicious code, one of the good guys, the white hats, dedicated to keeping you safe in your digital bed" (51).

A white hat is a computer security expert who often discovers exploitable flaws in a system but chooses to report and educate about the technique rather than exploiting it for his own purposes. He is often described as an "ethical hacker", his counter part being the black hat hacker who has little regard for the laws and regulations that attempt to control the internet. The term stems from old Westerns, where the bad guys would often wear black hats while the sheriffs and heroes would wear white hats.

White-Hat Hackers