Perhaps closer to "cracker", but I agree that this is the sort of knowledge that the corporates don't want us to know --- so they can attempt to squeeze more $$$ out of us without resistance.
I mean cracker in the current sense of the world. And he did the equivalent of inspect element. It was clever, but no real harms were done to any parties.
I disagree. Cracking is, historically speaking, the act of circumventing copy protection mechanisms. So to me, cracking is one of the disciplines of hacking.
A lot of people I've met that reverse malware for a living started out cracking copy protections. It's basically the same skill set. The old SnD forums had an entire section dedicated to it. They even had decompiled Stuxnet samples before anyone really knew what a Stuxnet was.
That entire scene is people just wanting to break protections for the challenge. Not necessarily just copy protections. The InfoSec, and RCE worlds in general, would not be where it is today if it wasn't for them cracking those old games and whatnot.