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Hacktivism

Hacktivism, also known as Cyber Activism or Internet Activism, is a form a political or social protest which is practiced in digital spaces. While the most commonly referenced form of hacktivism involves infiltrating the computer, system, or website of another party, cyberactivism is not limited to the act of hacking. Hacktivism also includes another form of digital civil disobedience such as denial-of-service attacks (DoS), website parodies, redirects, information theft and/or authorized release, virtual sabotage, and virtual sit-ins. [1]

Like traditional forms of civil disobedience, Hacktivism is intended to be a non-violent means of challenging perceived transgressions against human rights and regulatory injustices. The criminal nature of hacktivism is a subject of heavy debate, with many hacktivists arguing that since hacktivism is a form of protest it is protected as part of freedom of speech.

History

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The word hacktivism is a portmanteau of the words "hack" and "activism"; first used in 1996 by a member of the hacker collective Cult of the Dead Cow called Omega. However, hacktivism itself emerged in the late 1980s. The first hacktivist attack took the form of a computer worm, originally released by an organization called WANK (Worms Against Nuclear Killers), to attack computers at NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy, altering the computer login screens to read “WORMS AGAINST NUCLEAR KILLERS … Your System Has Been Officially WANKed.” [2]

By the 1990s the activity and capacity of cyber activists had expanded significantly; an expansion linked to the corresponding boom of the Internet during the same period. In addition to malware, hacktivists were also website take-downs and DoS attacks as a means of protest. In one of the first politically motivated attacks related to website takeover, a cyber activist hacked the United States Department of Justice website and altered the homepage to read “Department of Injustice” and display pornographic images in protest of the Communications Decency Act. [3].

In 1994 a group called the Critical Art Ensemble coined the phrase "Electronic Civil Disobedience" to explain the move of political and civil protest from the streets to the web. In 1997 a cyber activist collective of critical theorists called Electronic Disturbance Theater was founded. The organization was connected with the Digital Zapatismo's and FloodNet and used the web and technology to execute non-violent digital protests and the spread of information with the aim of political and social subversion.

The term "hacktivism" gained popularity in the final years of the 1990s during the "Kosovo conflict when activists from around the world launched DoS attacks and defaced or hijacked web sites to protest the war and the countries engaged in it. The American-based group Team Spl0it wrote “stop the war” on a US Federal Aviation Authority site; the Russian Hackers Union wrote “stop terrorist aggression against Jugoslavia on a US Navy site;” and the Serb Black Hand Group (Crna Ruka) conducted DoS attacks against computers owned by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other entities. Even Chinese hacktivists got involved, defacing US websites and launching DoS attacks following the accidental bombing of their embassy in Belgrade." [4].

By the early 2000s, several other hacktivist groups and collectives had emerged. Most popular among them was the hacker collective Anonymous, which formed in 2004, and WikiLeaks, which launched in 2006; both propelling hacktivism into popular awareness.

Types of Hackers

White-Hat Hackers

White-Hat Hackers in the malware community are the good ones. Many of them typically have an IT degree with a hacking qualification. They aim to help create better information defense frameworks by hacking businesses with an immense amount of hacking expertise. White-Hat Hackers are hackers with ethics who do not aim to build pandemonium. They instead break into computer networks with authorization to detect vulnerabilities and then report them secretly to the parent corporation. The parent corporation deals with the issue internally, the White Hat Hacker has been reimbursed and all is back to work. Such a hacker does not intend to steal sensitive information from a business or entity and instead tries to enhance the security mechanisms. Often White Hat Hackers are used to ensuring that information and protection cannot easily be compromised by governments or major companies. These hackers are necessary for the development of stable technical infrastructure and eventually help to discourage malicious hackers.

Black-Hat Hackers

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Black-Hat Hackers are the evil guys in the hacking world. Having an abundance of computer hacking knowledge, they seek to destroy and corrupt security systems all for personal gain. "Black Hats", without permission, break into encrypted computer security systems to steal peoples' personal information, such as credit card or social security numbers. With this stolen information, they usually tend to sell it to other malicious people in the return for money or notoriety. These computer criminals are always on the news and are primarily responsible for the mass hysteria involving stolen online information.

Gray-Hat Hackers

Since Gray-Hat Hacker is not a White-Hat Hacker or a Black-Hat Hacker, it can anywhere in between be used as a hacker. Gray-Hat Hackers hack to security networks that don't harm or help anyone. These hackers, though often cross the line and commit crimes accidentally. A person who would hack into a computer security system without authorization but had a justification to let the parent company know the issue with his security system would be a common example of "Gray Hat." Although they committed a felony by illegal hacking into an encrypted database without permission, they did not do that like a Black-Hat hacker would hurt people or their own benefit.[5] There have been known cases when the companies that got hacked or other companies having heard of these exploits end up hiring these type of hackers for work. One very notable case was the man who created the jailbreak on the ios software from apple, going to "intern" for apple.[6].

Hacktivists

Hacktivists hack to spread a particular type of message or to concentrate on certain subjects quite differently from other types of hackers. If to promote a particular cause or to raise awareness of certain problems, hacktivists hack to deliver a post. They don't want to hurt or make a personal profit; but they want their views openly shared, which is why they hack. Hacktivists typically use a forum or information medium to alert people of such conditions to take action. They strive to bring in a revolution of people to spark a transition from politics to religious values. They take part in criminal acts, though, and sometimes collide with the law.[7].

Script Kiddies

Even less serious than colored-hat hackers, the hacking world is not hypocritical to script kiddies. You don't seriously take hacking and use it just to get others irritated. They don't make money for their own good and they don't do it too much to support people. They use an applied virus script to deprive millions of people of service. DoSing(Denial of Service) and DDoSing(Distributed Denial of Service) are the most common forms of techniques that Script Kiddies use. Using these techniques, Script Kiddies will overwrite and briefly malfunction a certain IP address. You will see a clear definition of DDoSings whether anyone has ever played an Xbox Live or Playstation Network console game. Occupying the Script Kiddies stuffing IP addresses with lots of details occasionally prevents Microsoft or Sony's online servers. Servers are unable to handle the overflow of information and temporarily shut down, putting many Xbox and Playstation gamers in a bad mood for a couple of hours.[8].

Nation/State Sponsored Hackers

These are hackers who are employed by a country to attack the cybersphere of another nation or international agency as a result of warfare or to retrieve/steal information. [9]. Common countries involved in sponsoring hackers are nations such as China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, and even the United States. They utilize this method as digital warfare. Nation-state hackers are hiding their behaviors behind other hacker activity and layers of hijacked connections that obfuscate signals and end-points. One example is the 2018 Pyongyang Olympics, where hackers took down the wireless network for more than 12-hours at the start of the games. At first, the hacker signature looked like North Korea, but “much later, researchers realized it was of Russian origin.”[10].

Hacktivist Groups

Anonymous

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Anonymous is a loosely formed collective of cyber activists. Anonymous originated in 2004 on 4chan, an internet imageboard, after an administrator activated a protocol that signed all posts as "anonymous". Members wear a Guy Fawkes mask when appearing in public and their slogan is "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

The collective is semi-anarchic. A 2010 "press release" disseminated by members of the group described Anonymous as "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives" [11]. It has no clear leader or organizational boundaries and membership is said to be gained simply by involving yourself in online activity while hiding your identity. Simply put, if you engage in cyberactivism and say you are part of Anonymous, then you are part of Anonymous. Operations and attacks by Anonymous are generally coordinated by an individual or group of individuals within the collective, rather than consistently executed by the group as a whole.

Anonymous is known for pursuing against government agencies, corporations, institutions, and individuals in retaliation for civil injustices, human rights violations, or perceived transgressions against freedom of information. The collective's typical methods include DoS attacks and information leaks.

The collective is best known for its attacks against The Westboro Baptist Church and involvement in the Steubenville Rapists case.

Wikileaks

Wikileaks is a non-profit organization that has leaked millions of restricted documents to the general public through its website. It was formed in 2006 by Julian Assange, an Australian cyber activist, who launched the Wikileaks site as a vehicle for the anonymous leaking of information. WikiLeaks' website states that "although no organization can hope to have a perfect record forever, thus far WikiLeaks has [been] perfect in document authentication and resistance to all censorship attempts."

Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he sought asylum after allegations of sexual assault and other charges threatened his freedom [12]. Assange entered the embassy after he was released from English authorities on bail. Assange has been living in the embassy and has not left the building ever since he entered in 2010.

The Yes Men

Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, aka The Yes Men, are an activist duo who perform culture jamming stunts as a form of tactical media protest. While much of their activity involves pretending to be spokesmen for major corporations like Exxon or McDonald’s and making outrageous claims, they also engage in digital activism by creating dummy sites for big conglomerates.

Critical Art Ensemble

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Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. CAE's mission has included a dedication to exploring the intersection between art, theory, and protest.

The collective was formed in 1987 by Steve Kurtz, who was detained in 2004 by the FBI on charges of bioterrorism, though the accusations were later proven to be without basis. The CAE has hosted exhibitions and performed all across the world, in venues ranging from the street to museums, in addition to on the internet. They also published several books on the subject of activism and critical theory, including "Electronic Civil Disobedience" (1984), which coined it's titular term as one of the cornerstones of cyberactivism.

Electronic Disturbance Theater

Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) is a collective of digital activists and artists formed in 1997 by performance artist Ricardo Dominquez. The collective employs tactile media and electronic civil disobedience strategies in order to protest civil injustices. In 1998 EDT launched cyberattacks against the Pentagon, The White House, the School of the Americas, the office of Mexico’s President, and the Mexican Stock Exchange websites in support of the Zapatista guerilla movement in Mexico.

They are best known for their use of FloodNet, a program which auto-reloads a website every three seconds. If a large number of users run the program on a site, it overloads the server and causes the site to crash. This tactic, as a means of activism, has been referred to as a "virtual sit-in".

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Phineas Fisher

Hacktivist

Phineas Fisher is a popular vigilante hacker who recently announced a new kind of bug bounty program “Hacktivist Bug Hunting Program” to reward hackers who do public interest hacks and data leaks. In his new manifesto, the hacker stated that he will offer a US$ 100,000 bounty in Bitcoin as a reward for hacktivists who attack Banks and Oil Companies. Phineas Fisher said the main intention of the program is to encourage other hackers who carry out politically motivated hacks against companies that could lead to the disclosure of documents in the public interest. Most companies and software developers often launch Bug Bounty Programs, rewarding ethical hackers for discovering potential vulnerabilities in their systems. This helps the companies to bolster their Cybersecurity capabilities to sustain cyber-attacks. [13]


How to Prevent your Devices from Hackers

Recently there has been a wave of ransomware and cyber attacks online that has left many businesses and individuals compromised. Not only these cyber-attacks gain unauthorized access to your computer and destroy your data, but more importantly, you can become a victim of identity theft. So what is the best course of action we can pursue to prevent our devices from getting hacked?

The first thing to do is get all your devices up to date, always make sure you have the newest version of the operating system on your devices. Make sure that your antivirus is up to date, required a password to be entered before you access any of your devices. Besides, create strong passwords[14]. Along the same lines, encrypt data on your computer, the encryption will prevent a third party to access your devices. Try to back up data in secure storage, which is very important to avoid hacker taking your data and requesting a ransom to get it back, other ways it will be destroyed and compromised.

Also, try to lock down your social media accounts, do not make personal information public, such as a home address, date of bird, etc. because when it comes to identity theft hackers can easily access that information, so be careful about the amount of information you share online. For bank accounts and credit cards, you need to keep checking the account transactions weekly, to make sure that there are no suspicious activities, if there is any, then you must immediately report it. Try to avoid using public networks; those networks are more compromised from hackers' perspectives. Hackers can create fake public networks; they are known as open networks, a network that does not require a password. Once the victim uses that network, he or she allows them to access their devices, a smartphone, or a computer. Finally, be aware of "phishing" a fraudulent activity that involve sending emails and make it appears like it was sent from a reputable company, in order to gain personal information. Also, whatever you do, don't give up your personal information via email or phone call unless you are the person who initiated that contact.

References