Inside the secret world of geeks with the power to trigger anarchy

Jerome Taylor chats to a hacker about his underworld motivation

They move within a shadowy underworld using skills most of us could never acquire. Some see themselves as crime fighters, battling injustice, corruption and oppression. Others are pranksters. Plenty more do it simply to steal and get rich.

Hacking is as old as computers, but the current wave of high-profile assaults across the world has led to unprecedented interest in who hackers are and why they do what they do. i tracked down a prolific British hacker who is engaged in a personal cyber war against LulzSec, the collective behind attacks on websites such as the CIA's homepage, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Fox TV and, most recently, the Arizona Police Department.

With secrecy a vital component of his work, the hacker – who goes by the name TriCk – refused to meet in person. But through online chats he shone a light on a world of competing egos, where people living a double life brush off the threat of capture, fuelled by the adrenaline rush that comes from hacking.

Currently studying at college, TriCk is in his late teens and lives with his parents, who have little idea of what he gets up to at night. "I started hacking when I was 11," he says. "I got hacked on an online game I was playing and wanted to gain all my items back. The whole idea of knowing I shouldn't be doing something, or knowing I shouldn't be in someone's account, attracted me."

TriCk now works with two other hackers as part of a group called TeaMp0isoN who are well known in the underground hacking scene. Last December, they broke into the servers of the English Defence League and published its membership list.

Members have known each other online for five years, but have never met. "We live two lives," says TriCk. "Online and offline. That sounds lame but that's how it is in the hacking scene."

The image of the hacker glued to his computer and rarely seeing sunlight is common. But TriCk plays down the suggestion that hackers struggle to function in the real world. "The majority of hackers live a perfectly normal life, but the one thing I've seen in the hacker community is the use of drugs and alcohol."

As a practising Muslim, he stays clear of substance abuse, but has no qualms about breaking the law, and laughs at the idea he will be caught. "It don't bother me," he writes. "I don't fear Mi5, the FBI or the CIA. I class them as thugs and criminals... I fear no-one except for God."

He says he's never used his hacking skills to profit financially. "Money is not our motive," he says. "We're in it for knowledge, love of the art and to push our message out. But I know people who hack for money. Most of them come from Third World countries or are living in occupied/oppressed countries."

That's not an argument most law enforcement agencies would accept. This week, the FBI said it had disrupted a hacking network which raked in more than $74m (£46m) by spreading malware that infected computers and skimmed bank details. Most arrests were made in Latvia and the Ukraine.

TriCk classes himself as a "blackhat hactivist", a hacker who has no ethical issue with destroying networks or breaking into servers, but does so to spread a political message.

He has little time for rival hactivist groups like LulzSec and Anonymous, which he dismisses as "script kiddies", people who use other hacker's tools to commit break-ins. TeaMp0isoN and other hacking groups have turned their skills on LulzSec, breaking into web pages they say are run by the group's leaders and exposing their personal details. LulzSec says the hacks have got the wrong people.

He says the media obsession with headline-grabbers like LulzSec is a handy diversion from hackers who can really do damage. "If the world knew what underground hackers had access to, within 24 hours there would be a meeting of world leaders," he says.