No shot was fired. No soldiers were mobilized. Instead, a solitary figure booted up and jacked into the network from a small café in New Angeles. She wanted to test her newly modded icebreaker, and she thought the best way would be to poke around Haas-Bioroid’s R&D servers. What she found would make her one of the most-wanted criminals in the solar system. What she found was a chink in the armor of one of the largest and most powerful of the world’s massive megacorps. What she found was a reason to look for more…'[1]
Runner is the term for a hacker who uses the Net to access corporate servers illegally. An attempt to infiltrate a server is known as a "run".
Runners use consoles loaded with Icebreaker programs to penetrate the Ice software protecting corporate servers. They also employ a variety of other programs to suit their needs, including viruses.
Many Runners interface with the Net directly with their brains, either through a cybernetic implant or a brain-net.
Factions[]
Most Runners fall into one of three loose factions: