The Current, Emerging, and Future State of Hacktivism

Zone-H recently reported yet another major hacktivism case in what's stated to be the biggest hacking incident in the web-hosting history-- single hack, multiple targets exposed and their audiences' attention "acquired". The very same type of tension happened several weeks ago due to the Muhammad cartoons. It may seem questionable whether Hacktivism would survive in today's for-profit online crime world, but discussion and execution opens up new boundaries the way the author of this research did.



I feel I went through what's perhaps the most recent and extensive research done on Hacktivism, "Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation" by Alexandra Samuel -- a perfect moment to mention the daily updated security resources, that I go through instantly, hudreds more will soon be shared as well!



The disertation "looks at the phenomenon of hacktivism: the marriage of political activism and computer hacking. It defines hacktivism as the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends. Those tools include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft, web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, virtual sabotage, and software development. The dissertation uses data from fifty-one interviews in conjunction with additional primary and secondary source material. This data is used to construct a taxonomy of hacktivism, and apply the taxonomy to three core issues in political participation."



The big picture, the details, and everything in between, how fast can you print, bind and read this masterpiece?

Hacktivism tensions

It was about time the freedom of the press and the democratic nature of joking with politicians takes its hit. But why with spiritual leaders? The contradictive Muhammad cartoons sparkled a lot of anger, and with the recent tentions in France all we needed was a hacktivism activity from angry muslims. Remember how the China vs U.S cyberwar was sparkled due to the death of a Chinese pilot crashing into an AWACS that was sort of "keeping it quiet"?

Zone-H is reporting on massive defacements of Danish sites, and if you take the time to go through the reported reasons you'll find out that :

"political reasons"

"just for fun"

"I just want to be the best defacer"

"revenge against that web site"

"patriotism"

tend to dominate. As far as defacements as concerned, in one of my previous posts "FBI's 2005 Computer Crime Survey - what's to consider?" you can see that according to the report, organizations lost approximately $10,395M due to web site defacements. Moreover, in some of my previous research on Cyberterrorism I've indicated the use of script kiddies for PSYOPS and how such defacements have a favorable psychologic effect on future initiatives.

And while they have the motivation to deface, I wonder would someone strike back and under what justification?

Technorati tags:

security, information security, defacement, Zone-H, hacktivism, cyberterrorism, Muhammad cartoons, hacking, Denmark