Even the hackers who were part of my study, of which there were several hundred some of whom I have since met, are now concerned about the image of hackers as a result of the now destructive attacks on computer systems. But for the most part it was not done with the intent of causing damage. Today it's done with the intent of causing damage. The realisation that you can bring down a system remotely from another part of the world has led to a sense of power in the new hacker. But this is a negative power, and nowadays we get hackers using the systems for a sense of achievement in a destructive way.
Computer hackers do have a code of ethics of sorts.
In fact it has been publicised in the past on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's page. However because of this new element of destructive hackers there is now this rift within the hacker kingdom so that the good hackers are certainly following their own ethics, their own code of ethics, whereas the bad ones, it seems to be anything goes. The beliefs are things like all information is open and should be freely available, that they will not knowingly go into a computer system to damage it. Of course this is one specific ethic which is being ignored by the current group of developing hackers. The ability to share and improve programs and systems with not only their colleagues, but also the different companies who produce IT products and show them where weaknesses are.