Internet activism Internet activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular inf ...

, hacktivism, or hactivism (a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordshack'' and '' activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in

hacker culture The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy—often in collective effort—the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of software systems or electronic hardware (mostly digital electronics), to a ...

and

hacker ethics The hacker ethic is a philosophy and set of moral values within hacker culture. Practitioners believe that sharing information and data with others is an ethical imperative. The hacker ethic is related to the concept of freedom of information, ...

, its ends are often related to

free speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recog ...

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

, or

freedom of information Freedom of information is freedom of a person or people to publish and consume information. Access to information is the ability for an individual to seek, receive and impart information effectively. This sometimes includes "scientific, Indigeno ...

movements. Hacktivist activities span many political ideals and issues.

Freenet Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web ...

, a

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

platform for

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

-resistant communication, is a prime example of translating political thought and freedom of speech into code. Hacking as a form of activism can be carried out through a network of activists, such as Anonymous and

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

, or through a singular activist, working in collaboration toward common goals without an overarching authority figure. Anarchist Village

"Hacktivism" is a controversial term with several meanings. The word was coined to characterize electronic direct action as working toward

social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or socio ...

by combining programming skills with critical thinking. But just as ''hack'' can sometimes mean cyber crime, ''hacktivism'' can be used to mean activism that is malicious, destructive, and undermining the

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

as a technical,

economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...

, and political platform. According to the United States 2020-2022 Counterintelligence Strategy, in addition to state adversaries and transnational criminal organizations, "ideologically motivated entities such as hacktivists, leaktivists, and public disclosure organizations, also pose significant threats".

Origins and definitions

Writer Jason Sack first used the term hacktivism in a 1995 article in conceptualizing

New Media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...

artist

Shu Lea Cheang Shu Lea Cheang () (born April 13, 1954) is a Taiwanese-American artist and filmmaker who lived and worked in New York City in the 1980s and 90s, until relocating to the EuroZone in 2000. Cheang received a BA in history from the National Taiwan Un ...

's film ''

Fresh Kill ''Fresh Kill'' is a 1994 British-American experimental film directed by Shu Lea Cheang and written by Jessica Hagedorn. It stars Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry as Shareen Lightfoot and Claire Mayakovsky, two lesbian parents who are drawn int ...

''. However, the term is frequently attributed to the

Cult of the Dead Cow Cult of the Dead Cow, also known as cDc or cDc Communications, is a computer hacker and DIY media organization founded in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas. The group maintains a weblog on its site, also titled "Cult of the Dead Cow". New media are rele ...

(cDc) member "Omega," who used it in a 1996 e-mail to the group. Due to the variety of meanings of its root words, the definition of hacktivism is nebulous and there exists significant disagreement over the kinds of activities and purposes it encompasses. Some definitions include acts of

cyberterrorism Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, la ...

while others simply reaffirm the use of technological hacking to effect social change.

Forms and methods

Self-proclaimed "hacktivists" often work anonymously, sometimes operating in groups while other times operating as a lone wolf with several cyber-personas all corresponding to one activist within the

cyberactivism Internet activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular infor ...

umbrella that has been gaining public interest and power in pop-culture. Hacktivists generally operate under apolitical ideals and express uninhibited ideas or abuse without being scrutinized by society while representing or defending themselves publicly under an anonymous identity giving them a sense of power in the

community. In order to carry out their operations, hacktivists might create new tools; or integrate or use a variety of software tools readily available on the Internet. One class of hacktivist activities includes increasing the accessibility of others to take politically motivated action online.

Repertoire of contention Repertoire of contention refers, in social movement theory, to the set of various protest-related tools and actions available to a movement or related organization in a given time frame. The historian Charles Tilly, who brought the concept into ...

of hacktivism includes among others: # Code: Software and websites can achieve political goals. For example, the encryption software PGP can be used to secure communications; PGP's author,

Phil Zimmermann Philip R. Zimmermann (born 1954) is an American computer scientist and cryptographer. He is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the most widely used email encryption software in the world. He is also known for his work in VoIP encryption ...

said he distributed it first to the peace movement. Jim Warren suggests PGP's wide dissemination was in response to Senate Bill 266, authored by Senators Biden and DeConcini, which demanded that "...communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications...".

is an example of a politically motivated website: it seeks to "keep governments open". # Mirroring: Website mirroring is used as a circumvention tool in order to bypass various censorship blocks on websites. This technique copies the contents of a censored website and disseminates it on other domains and sub-domains that are not censored. Document mirroring, similar to website mirroring, is a technique that focuses on backing up various documents and other works. RECAP is software that was written with the purpose to 'liberate US case law' and make it openly available online. The software project takes the form of distributed document collection and archival. Major mirroring projects include initiatives such as the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

and

Wikisource Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project (each instance usually re ...

. # Anonymity: A method of speaking out to a wide audience about human rights issues, government oppression, etc. that utilizes various web tools such as free and/or disposable email accounts, IP masking, and blogging software to preserve a high level of anonymity. #

Doxing Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this in ...

: The practice in which private and/or confidential documents and records are hacked into and made public. Hacktivists see this as a form of assured transparency, experts claim it is harassment. #

Denial-of-service attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conn ...

s: These attacks, commonly referred to as DoS attacks, use large arrays of personal and public computers that hackers take control of via malware executable files usually transmitted through email attachments or website links. After taking control, these computers act like a herd of zombies, redirecting their

network traffic Network traffic or data traffic is the amount of data moving across a network at a given point of time. Network data in computer networks is mostly encapsulated in network packets, which provide the load in the network. Network traffic is the main c ...

to one website, with the intention of overloading servers and taking a website offline. # Virtual sit-ins: Similar to DoS attacks but executed by individuals rather than software, a large number of protesters visit a targeted website and rapidly load pages to overwhelm the site with

to slow the site or take it offline. # Website defacements: Hackers infiltrate a web server to replace a specific web page with one of their own, usually to convey a specific message. # Website redirects: This method involves changing the address of a website within the server so would-be visitors of the site are redirected to a site created by the perpetrator, typically to denounce the original site. # Geo-bombing: A technique in which netizens add a geo-tag while editing

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

videos so that the location of the video can be seen in Google Earth. # Protestware: The use of malware to promote a social cause or

protest A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooper ...

. Protestware is self-inflicted by a project's maintainer in order to spread a message; most commonly in a disruptive manner. The term was popularized during the

Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War; uk, російсько-українська війна, rosiisko-ukrainska viina. has been ongoing between Russia (alongside Russian separatists in Ukraine) and Ukraine since February 2014. Following Ukraine's Rev ...

after the peacenotwar supply chain attack on the npm ecosystem.

Controversy

Depending on who is using the term, hacktivism can be a politically motivated technology hack, a constructive form of

anarchic Anarchy is a society without a government. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy. ''Anarchy'' was first used in English in 1539, meaning "an absence of government". Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted ...

civil disobedience, or an undefined anti-systemic gesture. It can signal anticapitalist or political protest; it can denote anti- spam activists, security experts, or open source advocates. Some people describing themselves as hacktivists have taken to defacing websites for political reasons, such as attacking and defacing websites of governments and those who oppose their ideology. Others, such as

Oxblood Ruffin Oxblood Ruffin is a Canadian hacker. He is a member of the hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), for which he serves as "Foreign Minister." He is also the founder and executive director of Hacktivismo, an offshoot of cDc. Ruffin is active ...

(the " foreign affairs minister" of Cult of the Dead Cow and Hacktivismo), have argued forcefully against definitions of hacktivism that include web defacements or

denial-of-service attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conn ...

s. Hacktivism is often seen as shadowy due to its anonymity, commonly attributed to the work of fringe groups and outlying members of society. The lack of responsible parties to be held accountable for the social-media attacks performed by hactivists has created implications in corporate and federal security measures both on and offline. While some self-described hacktivists have engaged in DoS attacks, critics suggest that DoS attacks are an attack on free speech and that they have

unintended consequences In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by Ameri ...

. DoS attacks waste resources and they can lead to a "DoS war" that nobody will win. In 2006, Blue Security attempted to automate a DoS attack against spammers; this led to a massive DoS attack against Blue Security which knocked them, their old ISP and their DNS provider off the Internet, destroying their business. Following

denial-of-service In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conne ...

attacks by Anonymous on multiple sites, in reprisal for the apparent suppression of

John Perry Barlow John Perry Barlow (October 3, 1947February 7, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for th ...

, a founding member of the EFF, said "I support freedom of expression, no matter whose, so I oppose DDoS attacks regardless of their target... they're the poison gas of cyberspace...". On the other hand, Jay Leiderman, an attorney for many hacktivists, argues that DDoS can be a legitimate form of protest speech in situations that are reasonably limited in time, place and manner.

Notable hacktivist events

*In late 1990s, the Hong Kong Blondes helped Chinese citizens get access to blocked websites by targeting the Chinese computer networks. The group identified holes in the Chinese internet system, particularly in the area of satellite communications. The leader of the group, Blondie Wong, also described plans to attack American businesses that were partnering with China. *In 1996, the title of the United States Department of Justice's homepage was changed to "Department of Injustice". Pornographic images were also added to the homepage to protest the Communications Decency Act. *In 1998, members of the Electronic Disturbance Theater created FloodNet, a web tool that allowed users to participate in DDoS attacks (or what they called

electronic civil disobedience Electronic civil disobedience (ECD; also known as cyber civil disobedience or cyber disobedience) can refer to any type of civil disobedience in which the participants use information technology to carry out their actions. Electronic civil disob ...

) in support of Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. *In December 1998, a hacktivist group from the US called Legions of the Underground emerged. They declared a cyberwar against Iraq and China and planned on disabling internet access in retaliation for the countries' human rights abuses. Opposing hackers criticized this move by Legions of the Underground, saying that by shutting down internet systems, the hacktivist group would have no impact on providing free access to information. *In July 2001,

Hacktivismo Hacktivismo is an offshoot of Cult of the Dead Cow, CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc), whose beliefs include access to information as a basic human right. It was founded in 1999. The group's beliefs are described fully in The Hacktivismo Declaration, whi ...

, a sect of the

, issued the "Hacktivismo Declaration". This served as a code of conduct for those participating in hacktivism, and declared the hacker community's goals of stopping "state-sponsored censorship of the Internet" as well as affirming the rights of those therein to "freedom of opinion and expression". * During the 2009 Iranian election protests, Anonymous played a role in disseminating information to and from Iran by setting up the website Anonymous Iran; they also released a video manifesto to the Iranian government. * Google worked with engineers from SayNow and Twitter to provide communications for the Egyptian people in response to the government sanctioned Internet blackout during the 2011 protests. The result, Speak To Tweet, was a service in which voicemail left by phone was then tweeted via Twitter with a link to the voice message on Google's SayNow. *On Saturday 29 May 2010 a hacker calling himself ‘Kaka Argentine’ hacked into the Ugandan State House website and posted a conspicuous picture of Adolf Hitler with the swastika, a Nazi Party symbol. * During the Egyptian Internet black out, January 28 – February 2, 2011,

Telecomix Telecomix is a decentralized cluster of net activists, committed to the freedom of expression and is a name used by both WeRebuild and Telecomix. WeRebuild is a collaborative project used to propose and discuss laws as well as to collect informa ...

provided dial up services, and technical support for the Egyptian people. Telecomix released a video stating their support of the Egyptian people, describing their efforts to provide dial-up connections, and offering methods to avoid internet filters and government surveillance. The hacktivist group also announced that they were closely tracking radio frequencies in the event that someone was sending out important messages. * Project Chanology, also known as "Operation Chanology", was a hacktivist protest against the Church of Scientology to punish the church for participating in

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as Wikipedia.org) but exceptionally may extend to all Int ...

relating to the removal of material from a 2008 interview with Church of Scientology member

Tom Cruise Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962), known professionally as Tom Cruise, is an American actor and producer. One of the world's highest-paid actors, he has received various accolades, including an Honorary Palme d'Or and three Go ...

. Hacker group Anonymous attempted to "expel the church from the Internet" via DDoS attacks. In February 2008 the movement shifted toward legal methods of nonviolent protesting. Several protests were held as part of Project Chanology, beginning in 2008 and ending in 2009. *On June 3, 2011, LulzSec took down a website of the FBI. This was the first time they had targeted a website that was not part of the private sector. That week, the FBI was able to track the leader of LulzSec, Hector Xavier Monsegur. *On June 20, 2011 LulzSec targeted the Serious Organised Crime Agency of the United Kingdom, causing UK authorities to take down the website. *In August 2011 a member of Anonymous working under the name "Oliver Tucket" took control of the Syrian Defense Ministry website and added an Israeli government web portal in addition to changing the mail server for the website to one belonging to the Chinese navy. * Anonymous and New World Hackers claimed responsibility for the 2016 Dyn cyberattack in retaliation for

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ' ...

's rescinding Internet access to

founder Julian Assange at their embassy in London. WikiLeaks alluded to the attack. Subsequently, FlashPoint stated that the attack was most likely done by

script kiddie A script kiddie, skiddie, kiddie, or skid is an unskilled individual who uses scripts or programs developed by others, primarily for malicious purposes. Characteristics In a Carnegie Mellon report prepared for the U.K. Department of Defense in 2 ...

s. * In 2013, as an online component to the Million Mask March, Anonymous in the Philippines crashed 30 government websites and posted a YouTube video to congregate people in front of the parliament house on November 5 to demonstrate their disdain toward the Filipino government. * In 2014, Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked by a group by the name of Guardians Of Peace (GOP) who obtained over 100 Terabytes of data including unreleased films, employee salary, social security data, passwords, and account information. GOP hacked various social media accounts and hijacked them by changing their passwords to diespe123 (die pictures entertainment) and posting threats on the pages. * In 2016, Turkish programmer Azer Koçulu removed his software package, left-pad from npm, causing a cascading failure of other software packages that contained left-pad as a dependency. This was done after Kik, a messaging application, threatened legal action against Koçulu after he refused to rename his kik package. npm ultimately sided with Kik, prompting Koçulu to unpublish all of his packages from npm in protest, including left-pad. * British hacker Kane Gamble, who was sentenced to 2 years in youth detention, posed as John Brennan, the then director of the CIA, and Mark F. Giuliano, a former deputy director of the FBI, to access highly sensitive information. The judge said Gamble engaged in "politically motivated cyber-terrorism." * In 2021, Anonymous hacked and leaked the databases of American web hosting company Epik. * As a response against

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. ...

, Anonymous performed multiple cyberattacks against Russian computer systems.

Notable hacktivist people/groups

WikiLeaks

was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange as a "multi-national media organization and associated library." WikiLeaks operated under the principle of "principled leaking," in order to fight societal corruption. The not-for-profit functions as a whistleblowing organization that serves as an archive of classified documents. Originally, WikiLeaks was operated with the principles of a

wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

site, meaning that users could post documents, edit others' documents, and help decide which materials were posted. The first notable release of documents by WikiLeaks was the release of Afghanistan War logs. In July 2010, WikiLeaks published over 90,000 documents regarding the war in Afghanistan. Prior to the leak, WikiLeaks gave access to the documents to three newspapers. Though WikiLeaks did not identify a source for the documents, it was speculated that the leak came from

Chelsea Manning Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning; December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage A ...

, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst arrested in May 2010 and accused of leaking classified information. The war logs revealed 144 incidents of formerly unreported civilian casualties by the U.S. military. The leak of the Afghanistan war logs was the greatest military leak in United States history. WikiLeaks is also notable for its leak of over 20,000 confidential emails and 8,000 file attachments from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), on July 22, 2016. The emails are specifically from the inboxes of seven prominent staffers of the DNC, and they were leaked as a searchable database. The emails leaked showed instances of key DNC staffers working to undermine Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign prior to primary elections, which was directly against the DNC's stated neutrality in primary elections. Examples of targeting Senator Bernie Sanders included targeting his religion, hoping for his dropping out of the race, constructing negative narratives about his campaign and more. Other emails revealed criticism of

President Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

for not helping more in fundraising. Following the leak, DNC chairwoman

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Deborah Wasserman Schultz (née Wasserman; born September 27, 1966) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative from , first elected to Congress in 2004. A member of the Democratic Party, she is a former chair of the Democrat ...

announced she would be stepping down from her position in the DNC. On July 25, 2016, the Democratic National Convention opened without Wasserman Schultz. The DNC issued an apology to Sanders the same day the Democratic National Convention opened.

Anonymous

Perhaps the most prolific and well known hacktivist group, Anonymous has been prominent and prevalent in many major online hacks over the past decade. Anonymous originated on the forums of

4chan 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...

during 2003, but didn't rise to prominence until 2008 when they directly attacked the Church of Scientology in a massive

DoS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

attack. Since then, Anonymous has participated in a great number of online projects such as Operation: Payback and Operation: Safe Winter. However, while a great number of their projects have been for a charitable cause, they have still gained notoriety from the media due to the nature of their work mostly consisting of illegal hacking. Following the Paris terror attacks in 2015, Anonymous posted a video declaring war on

ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...

, the terror group that claimed responsibility for the attacks. Since declaring war on ISIS, Anonymous since identified several Twitter accounts associated with the movement in order to stop the distribution of ISIS propaganda. However, Anonymous fell under heavy criticism when Twitter issued a statement calling the lists Anonymous had compiled "wildly inaccurate," as it contained accounts of journalists and academics rather than members of ISIS. Anonymous has also been involved with the

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police br ...

movement. Early in July 2015, there was a rumor circulating that Anonymous was calling for a Day of Rage protests in retaliation for the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, which would entail violent protests and riots. This rumor was based on a video that was not posted with the official Anonymous YouTube account. None of the Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous had tweeted anything in relation to a Day of Rage, and the rumors were identical to past rumors that had circulated in 2014 following the death of Mike Brown. Instead, on July 15, a Twitter account associated with Anonymous posted a series of tweets calling for a day of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. The Twitter account used the hashtag "#FridayofSolidarity" to coordinate protests across the nation, and emphasized the fact that the Friday of Solidarity was intended for peaceful protests. The account also stated that the group was unaware of any Day of Rage plans. In February 2017 the group took down more than 10,000 sites on the Dark web related to child porn.

DkD[, ,

DkD[, , , a French cyberhacktivist, was known, amongst others, to be the "defacer" of navy.mil (US Navy website) and defensivethinking.com (the Company of the famous hacker Kevin Mitnick) among other 2000 websites. He had been arrested by the OCLCTIC (office central de lutte contre la criminalité liée aux technologies de l’information et de la communication), in March 2003. DkD[, , defaced more than 2000 pages, many were governments and US military sites. Eric Voulleminot of the Regional Service of Judicial Police in Lille classified the young hacker as "''the most wanted hacktivist in france''" DkD[, , was a very known defacer in the underground for his political view, doing his defacements for various political reasons. In response to his arrest, The Ghost Boys defaced many sites using the “Free DkD[, , !!” slogan.

LulzSec

In May 2011, five members of Anonymous formed the hacktivist group LulzSec, Lulz Security, otherwise known as LulzSec. LulzSec's name originated from the conjunction of the internet slang term "lulz", meaning laughs, and "sec", meaning security. The group members used specific handles to identify themselves on Internet Relay Channels, the most notable being: "Sabu," "Kayla," "T-Flow," "Topiary," "AVUnit," and "Pwnsauce." Though the members of LulzSec would spend up to 20 hours a day in communication, they did not know one another personally, nor did they share personal information. For example, once the members' identities were revealed, "T-Flow" was revealed to be 15 years old. Other members, on the basis of his advanced coding ability, thought he was around 30 years old. One of the first notable targets that LulzSec pursued was HBGary, which was performed in response to a claim made by the technology security company that it had identified members of Anonymous. Following this, the members of LulzSec targeted an array of companies and entities, including but not limited to:

Fox Television The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an American commercial broadcast television network owned by Fox Corporation and headquartered in New York City, with master control operations and ...

Tribune Company Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Through Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Media was one of the largest television broadcasting companies, owning 39 ...

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

, and the

Senate.gov The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...

website. The targeting of these entities typically involved gaining access to and downloading confidential user information, or defacing the website at hand. LulzSec while not as strongly political as those typical of WikiLeaks or Anonymous, they shared similar sentiments for the freedom of information. One of their distinctly politically driven attacks involved targeting the Arizona State Police in response to new immigration laws. The group's first attack that garnered significant government attention was in 2011, when they collectively took down a website of the FBI. Following the incident, the leader of LulzSec, "Sabu," was identified as

Hector Xavier Monsegur Hector Xavier Monsegur (born 1983), known also by the online pseudonym Sabu (pronounced Sə'buː, Sæ'buː), is an American computer hacker and co-founder of the hacking group LulzSec. Monsegur became an informant for the FBI, working with the a ...

by the FBI, and he was the first of the group to be arrested. Immediately following his arrest, Monsegur admitted to criminal activity. He then began his cooperation with the US government, helping FBI authorities to arrest 8 of his co-conspirators, prevent 300 potential cyber attacks, and helped to identify vulnerabilities in existing computer systems. In August 2011, Monsegur pleaded guilty to "computer hacking conspiracy, computer hacking, computer hacking in furtherance of fraud, conspiracy to commit access device fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft pursuant to a cooperation agreement with the government." He served a total of one year and seven months and was charged a $1,200 fine.

Related practices

Culture jamming

Hacking has been sometime described as a form of

culture jamming Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication) is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It atte ...

. This term refers to the practice of subverting and criticizing political messages as well as media culture with the aim of challenging the status quo. It is often targeted toward subliminal thought processes taking place in the viewers with the goal of raising awareness as well as causing a paradigm shift. Culture jamming takes many forms including

billboard hacking Billboard hacking or billboard hijacking is the illegal practice of altering a billboard without the consent of the owner. It may involve physically pasting new media over the existing image, or hacking into the system used to control electronic ...

, broadcast signal intrusion, ad hoc art performances, simulated legal transgressions, memes, and

artivism Artivism is a portmanteau word combining ''art'' and ''activism'', and is sometimes also referred to as ''Social Artivism''. The term artivism in US English takes roots, or branches, off of a 1997 gathering between Chicano artists from East Los An ...

. The term "culture jamming" was first coined in 1984 by American musician Donald Joyce of the band

Negativland Negativland is an American experimental music band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! track, while their record label (Seeland Records) is named after another Neu! track. The co ...

. However, some speculation remains as to when the practice of culture jamming first began. Social researcher

Vince Carducci Vince Carducci is a cultural critic and dean emeritus at College for Creative Studies. His essays, feature articles and reviews on the arts, culture and other topics have appeared in numerous publications since the mid-1980s, including Art and A ...

believes culture jamming can be traced back to the 1950s with European social activist group Situationist International. Author and cultural critic

Mark Dery Mark Dery (born December 24, 1959)''Contemporary Authors Online'', s.v. "Mark Dery" (accessed February 12, 2008). is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. An early observer and critic of online culture, he helped to popularize the ter ...

believes medieval carnival is the earliest form of culture jamming as a way to subvert the social hierarchy at the time. Culture jamming is sometimes confused with acts of vandalism. However, unlike culture jamming, the main goal of vandalism is to cause destruction with any political themes being of lesser importance. Artivism usually has the most questionable nature as a form of culture jamming because defacement of property is usually involved.

Media hacking

''Media hacking'' refers to the usage of various

electronic media Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical means for the audience to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which today are most often created digitally, but do not require el ...

in an innovative or otherwise abnormal fashion for the purpose of conveying a message to as large a number of people as possible, primarily achieved via the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

. A popular and effective means of media hacking is posting on a

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

, as one is usually controlled by one or more independent individuals, uninfluenced by outside parties. The concept of

social bookmarking Social bookmarking is an online service which allows users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents. Many online bookmark management services have launched since 1996; Delicious, founded in 2003, popularized the terms "social ...

, as well as Web-based

Internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

s, may cause such a message to be seen by users of other sites as well, increasing its total reach. Media hacking is commonly employed for political purposes, by both political parties and

political dissidents Political dissent is a dissatisfaction with or opposition to the policies of a governing body. Expressions of dissent may take forms from vocal disagreement to civil disobedience to the use of violence.Democratic and

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

parties used a wide variety of different media in order to convey relevant messages to an increasingly Internet-oriented audience. At the same time, political dissidents used

s and other social media like

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

in order to reply on an individual basis to the presidential candidates. In particular, sites like Twitter are proving important means in gauging popular support for the candidates, though the site is often used for dissident purposes rather than a show of positive support. Mobile technology has also become subject to media hacking for political purposes.

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

has been widely used by political dissidents as a means of quickly and effectively organising

smart mobs ''Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution'' is a book by Howard Rheingold dealing with the social, economic and political changes implicated by developing technology. The book covers subjects from text-messaging culture to wireless Internet ...

for political action. This has been most effective in the Philippines, where SMS media hacking has twice had a significant impact on whether or not the country's Presidents are elected or removed from office.

Reality hacking

''Reality hacking'' is any phenomenon that emerges from the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of politically, socially, or culturally subversive ends. These tools include

website defacement Website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of a website or a web page. These are typically the work of defacers, who break into a web server and replace the hosted website with one of their own. Defacement ...

URL redirection URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened ...

s, information theft, web-site parodies,

virtual sit-in A virtual sit-in is a form of electronic civil disobedience deriving its name from the sit-ins popular during the American Civil Rights Movement, civil rights movement of the 1960s. The virtual sit-in attempts to recreate that same action digitally ...

s, and virtual

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...

. Art movements such as

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

and

Happening A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...

s in the 1970s created a climate of receptibility in regard to loose-knit organizations and group activities where spontaneity, a return to primitivist behavior, and an ethics where activities and socially engaged art practices became tantamount to

aesthetic Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed th ...

concerns. The conflation of these two histories in the mid-to-late 1990s resulted in cross-overs between virtual sit-ins,

, denial-of-service attacks, as well as mass protests in relation to groups like the

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...

and the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...

. The rise of collectives,

net.art net.art refers to a group of artists who have worked in the medium of Internet art since 1994. Some of the early adopters and main members of this movement include Vuk Ćosić, Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Heath Bunting, Daniel Gar ...

groups, and those concerned with the fluid interchange of technology and

real life Real life is a phrase used originally in literature to distinguish between the real world and fictional, virtual or idealized worlds, and in acting to distinguish between actors and the characters they portray. It has become a popular term on th ...

(often from an environmental concern) gave birth to the practice of "reality hacking". Reality hacking relies on

tweaking Tweaking refers to fine-tuning or adjusting a complex system, usually an electronic device. Tweaks are any small modifications intended to improve a system. In electronics, it is a synonym for "trimming." Analog circuit boards often have small po ...

the everyday communications most easily available to individuals with the purpose of awakening the political and community conscience of the larger population. The term first came into use among New York and San Francisco artists, but has since been adopted by a

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...

of political activists centered around

In fiction

The 1999 science fiction-action film ''

The Matrix ''The Matrix'' is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in ''The Matrix'' film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantolia ...

'', among others, popularized the simulation hypothesis — the suggestion that

reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, r ...

is in fact a

simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of Conceptual model, models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or proc ...

of which those affected by the simulants are generally unaware. In this context, "reality hacking" is reading and understanding the code which represents the activity of the simulated reality environment (such as

Matrix digital rain Matrix digital rain, Matrix code, is the computer code featured in the ''Matrix'' series. The falling green code is a way of representing the activity of the simulated reality environment of the Matrix on screen by kinetic typography. All four ...

) and also modifying it in order to bend the

laws of physics Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) ...

or otherwise modify the simulated reality. Reality hacking as a mystical practice is explored in the

Gothic-Punk Goth is a music-based subculture that began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s. It was developed by fans of Gothic rock, an offshoot of the post-punk music genre. The name ''Goth'' was derived directly from the genre. Notable post- ...

aesthetics-inspired

White Wolf A white wolf or Arctic wolf is a mammal of the ''Canidae'' family and a subspecies of the gray wolf. It may also refer to: Organizations * White Wolf (band), a Canadian heavy metal band * White Wolf (band), white power oi band from the USA * Whi ...

urban fantasy Urban fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy which places imaginary and unreal elements in an approximation of a contemporary urban setting. The combination provides the writer with quixotic plot-drivers, unusual character traits, and a platform for c ...

role-playing game ''

Mage: The Ascension ''Mage: The Ascension'' is a role-playing game based in the World of Darkness, and was published by White Wolf Game Studio in 1993. The characters portrayed in the game are referred to as mages, and are capable of feats of magic. Magic in ''Ma ...

''. In this game, the Reality Coders (also known as Reality Hackers or Reality Crackers) are a faction within the

Virtual Adepts ''Mage: The Ascension'' is a role-playing game based in the World of Darkness, and was published by White Wolf Game Studio in 1993. The characters portrayed in the game are referred to as mages, and are capable of feats of magic. Magic in ''Mag ...

, a secret society of mages whose magick revolves around digital technology. They are dedicated to bringing the benefits of cyberspace to real space. To do this, they had to identify, for lack of a better term, the "

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

" that allows our

Universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. Acc ...

to function. And that is what they have been doing ever since. Coders infiltrated a number of levels of society in order to gather the greatest compilation of knowledge ever seen. One of the Coders' more overt agendas is to acclimate the masses to the world that is to come. They spread Virtual Adept ideas through

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s and a whole spate of "

reality show Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 19 ...

s" that mimic

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

far more than "real" reality. The Reality Coders consider themselves the future of the Virtual Adepts, creating a world in the image of visionaries like

Grant Morrison Grant Morrison, MBE (born 31 January 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. Their work is known for its nonlinear narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, w ...

Terence McKenna Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including ...

. In a

location-based game A location-based game (or location-enabled game, or geolocation-based game) is a type of game in which the gameplay evolves and progresses via a player's location. Location-based games must provide some mechanism to allow the player to report thei ...

(also known as a pervasive game), reality hacking refers to tapping into phenomena that exist in the real world, and tying them into the game story universe.

Academic interpretations

There have been various academic approaches to deal with hacktivism and urban hacking. In 2010, Günther Friesinger,

Johannes Grenzfurthner Johannes Grenzfurthner (; born 1975 in Vienna) is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of ''monochrom'', an international art ...

and Thomas Ballhausen published an entire reader dedicated to the subject. They state: "Urban spaces became battlefields, signifiers have been invaded, new structures have been established: Netculture replaced counterculture in most parts and also focused on the everchanging environments of the modern city. Important questions have been brought up to date and reasked, taking current positions and discourses into account. The major question still remains, namely how to create culturally based resistance under the influence of capitalistic pressure and conservative politics."

References

External links

Hacktivism and Politically Motivated Computer Crime
History, types of activity and cases studies {{Media manipulation Activism by type Hacking (computer security) * Politics and technology Internet terminology 2000s neologisms Culture jamming techniques Hacker culture Articles containing video clips