I have no experience with rom hacking but I do have alot of experience in making custom programs in Visual Basic, and working with hex files (i just did both in my last project which was a diablo 2 character editor). I dont know if I can be any help but if there is anything you need that I can...
It's not the movies or games downloads that I would worry about, like breaking into networks, downloading encrypted things, spying on network traffic. I have seen so many "Top Secret" seals on files when I was a kid
I was obsessed with finding UFOs, a surprising amount of US files where stashed on computers in other countries, China back in the early 90s omg sooo much