Hacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks to promote political ends, chiefly
free speech, human rights, and information ethics.
It is carried out under the premise that proper use of technology can produce results similar
to those of conventional acts of protest, activism, and civil disobedience.
The term was coined in 1996 by a Cult of the Dead Cow member known as "Omega".
However, similar to its root word hack, hacktivism is an ambiguous term.
The terms hacktivism and hacktivist are the subject of lexical warfare to define them.
Some definitions of these terms include acts of cyberterrorism while others stop with the
use of technology hacking to effect social change.
Overview Hacktivist activities span many political
ideals and issues.
Freenet is a prime example of translating political thought into code.
Hacktivism is a controversial term with several meanings.
The word was coined to characterize electronic direct action as working toward social change
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 of the Internet as a technical,
economic, and political platform.
Controversy Depending on who is using the term, hacktivism
can be a politically motivated technology hack, a constructive form of anarchic 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 government websites as well as web sites of groups who
oppose their ideology.
Others, such as Oxblood Ruffin, have argued forcefully against definitions of hacktivism
that include web defacements or denial-of-service attacks.
Within the hacking community, those who carry out automated attacks are generally known
as script kiddies.
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.
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 attacks by Anonymous on multiple sites, in reprisal for the apparent
suppression of Wikileaks, John Perry Barlow, 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.
Forms of hacktivism 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.
Code: Software and websites can achieve political purposes.
For example, the encryption software PGP can be used to secure communications; PGP's author,
Phil Zimmermann 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...".
WikiLeaks is an example of a politically motivated website: it seeks to "keep governments open".
Website Mirroring: is used as a circumvention tool to bypass censorship blocks on websites.
It is a technique that copies the content of a censored website and posts it to other
domains and subdomains that are not censored.
Geo-bombing: a technique in which netizens add a geo-tag while editing YouTube videos
so that the location of the video can be displayed in Google Earth.
Anonymous blogging: a method of speaking out to a wide audience about human rights issues,
government oppression, etc. that utilizes various web tools such as free email accounts,
IP masking, and blogging software to preserve a high level of anonymity.
RECAP is software that was written to 'liberate US case law' and make it freely available
online.
The software project takes the form of distributed document collection and archival.
Notable hacktivist events The earliest known instance of hacktivism
as documented by Julian Assange is as follows: Hacktivism is at least as old as October 1989
when DOE, HEPNET and SPAN connected VMS machines world wide were penetrated by the anti-nuclear
WANK worm.
[...] WANK penetrated machines had their login screens altered to:
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.
August 24, 2009, New Hacktivism: From Electronic Civil Disobedience to Mixed Reality Performance
workshop at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics led by Micha Cárdenas in Bogotá,
Colombia.
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.
During the Egyptian internet black out, January 28 – February 2, 2011, Telecomix provided
dial up services, and technical support for the Egyptian people.
Project Chanology Project Megaupload
project Ferguson Related notions
Civic hacking Media hacking
Media hacking refers to the usage of various electronic media 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.
A popular and effective means of media hacking is posting on a blog, as one is usually controlled
by one or more independent individuals, uninfluenced by outside parties.
The concept of social bookmarking, as well as Web-based Internet forums, 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.
A good example of this is the 2008 US Election, in which both the Democratic and Republican
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 blogs and other social media like Twitter
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 has been widely used by political dissidents as a means of quickly and effectively organising
smart mobs 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 defacements, URL redirections, denial-of-service attacks, information
theft, web-site parodies, virtual sit-ins, and virtual sabotage.
Art movements such as Fluxus and Happenings 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 concerns.
The conflation of these two histories in the mid-to-late 1990s resulted in cross-overs
between virtual sit-ins, electronic civil disobedience, denial-of-service attacks, as
well as mass protests in relation to groups like the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank.
The rise of collectivies, net.art groups, and those concerned with the fluid interchange
of technology and real life gave birth to the practice of "reality hacking".
Reality hacking relies on tweaking the every-day 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 of political activists centered around culture jamming.
In fiction The 1999 science fiction-action film The Matrix,
among others, popularized the simulation hypothesis — the suggestion that reality is in fact
a simulation 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 and also modifying it in order to bend the
laws of physics or otherwise modify the simulated reality.
Reality hacking as a mystical practice is explored in the Gothic-Punk aesthetics-inspired
White Wolf urban fantasy role-playing game Mage: The Ascension.
In this game, the Reality Coders are a faction within the Virtual Adepts, 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" that allows
our Universe 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 games and a whole spate of "reality shows"
that mimic virtual reality 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 or Terence McKenna.
In a location-based game, reality hacking refers to tapping into phenomena that exist
in the real world, and tying them into the game story universe.
See also
Other Cypherpunk
Project Chanology Script kiddie
References
Further reading Menn, Joseph.
"They’re watching.
And they can bring you down".
The Financial Times.
Retrieved 2012-09-01.
External links Hacktivismo's Projects Page
Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation Political science dissertation on the history
and political significance of hacktivism Hackbloc Home of the hacktivist zine "HackThisZine"
What is Hacktivism?
Hacktivism and Politically Motivated Computer Crime History, types of activity and cases
studies Wikileaks defended by Anonymous hacktivists
BBC News, 7 December 2010.
Hacktivist attacks grow as governments get in on the action 19.July.2012 USA Today
Hacktivists as Gadflies