Hacktivism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hacktivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism) is often understood as the writing of code, or otherwise manipulating bits, to promote political ideology - promoting expressive politics, free speech, human rights, or information ethics. The term was coined by author/culture critic Jason Sack in an article about media artist Shu Lea Cheang. The article was published in InfoNation in 1995. Acts of hacktivism are carried out in the belief that proper use of code will have leveraged effects similar to regular activism or civil disobedience. Fewer people can write code, but code affects more people.

Hacktivist activities span many political ideals and issues. Freenet is a prime example of translating political thought (anyone should be able to speak) into code. Hacktivist.net is an example of hacktivism in action. Hacktivismo is an offshoot of CULT OF THE DEAD COW; its beliefs include access to information as a basic human right. The loose network of programmers, artists and radical militants Network Liberty Alliance [1] is more concerned with issues of free speech surveillance and privacy in an era of increased technological surveilance and widescale use of propaganda and mind control by governments and corporations (where it is called advertising).

Hacktivism is a controversial term. Some argue it was coined to describe how electronic direct action might work toward social change by combining programming skills with critical thinking. Others use it as practically synonymous with malicious, destructive acts that undermine the security of the Internet as a technical, economic, and political platform.

Essentially, the controversy reflects two divergent philosophical strands within the hacktivist movement. One strand thinks that malicious cyber-attacks are an acceptable form of direct action. The other strand thinks that all protest should be peaceful and non-violent.

1 Controversy
2 Notable hacktivist events
3 Quotes
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Controversy

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 (the "foreign affairs minister" of Hacktivismo), have argued forcefully against definitions of hacktivism that include web defacements or denial-of-service attacks ([2]).

Critics suggest that DoS attacks are an attack on free speech; that they have unintended consequences; that they waste resources; and that they could lead to a "DoS war" which nobody will win. In 2006, Blue Security attempted to automate a DoS attack against spammers; this lead to a massive DoS attack against Blue Security which knocked them, their old ISP and their DNS provider off the internet, destroying their business. [3]

Depending on who is using the term, hacktivism can be a politically constructive form of civil disobedience or an anarchic gesture; it can signal anticapitalist or political protest; it can denote anti-spam activists, security experts, or open source advocates. Critics of hacktivism fear that the lack of a clear agenda make it a politically immature gesture, while those given to conspiracy theory hope to see in hacktivism an attempt to precipitate a crisis situation online.

[edit] Notable hacktivist events

The earliest known instance of hacktivism is documented by Julian Assange as follows:

"Hacktivism is at least as old as October 1989 when DOE, HEPNET and SPAN (NASA) connected VMS machines world wide were penetrated by the anti-nuclear WANK worm, which changed the system announcement banner to be:

       W O R M S    A G A I N S T    N U C L E A R    K I L L E R S
     _______________________________________________________________
     \__  ____________  _____    ________    ____  ____   __  _____/
      \ \ \    /\    / /    / /\ \       | \ \  | |    | | / /    /
       \ \ \  /  \  / /    / /__\ \      | |\ \ | |    | |/ /    /
        \ \ \/ /\ \/ /    / ______ \     | | \ \| |    | |\ \   /
         \_\  /__\  /____/ /______\ \____| |__\ | |____| |_\ \_/
          \___________________________________________________/
           \                                                 /
            \    Your System Has Been Officially WANKed     /
             \_____________________________________________/

      You talk of times of peace for all, and then prepare for war.

In our book [Underground, [4], Suelette Dreyfus and I track the source of the worm to Melbourne, Australia."

One of the earliest documented hacktivist events was the "Strano Network sit-in," a strike action directed against French government computers in 1995.
In 1998 the Electronic Disturbance Theater conducted "virtual sit-ins" on the Web sites of the Pentagon and the Mexican government to bring the world's attention to the plight of Indian rights in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
One of the more notorious examples of hacktivism was the modification of Indonesian web sites with appeals to "Free East Timor" in 1998 by Portuguese hackers.
On December 29, 1998, the Legions of the Underground (LoU) declared cyberwar on Iraq and China with the intention of disrupting and disabling internet infrastructure. On January 7, 1999, an international coalition of hackers (including Cult of the Dead Cow, 2600 's staff, Phrack's staff, L0pht, and the Chaos Computer Club) issued a joint statement ([5]) condemning the LoU's declaration of war. The LoU responded by withdrawing its declaration.
Hacktivists attempted to disrupt ECHELON (an international electronic communications surveillance network filtering any and all satellite, microwave, cellular, and fiber-optic traffic) by holding "Jam Echelon Day" (JED) on October 21, 1999. On the day, hacktivists attached large keyword lists to many messages, leveraging listservers and newsgroups to spread their keywords further. The idea was to give the Echelon computers so many "hits" they overloaded. It is not known whether JED was successful in actually jamming Echelon, although NSA computers were reported to have crashed "inexplicably" in early March, 2000. A second Jam Echelon Day (JEDII) was held in October 2000, however the idea never regained its initial popularity. JED was partly denial-of-service attack, and partly agit-prop.
The Electronic Disturbance Theater and others staged a week of disruption during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, conducting sit-ins against Republican web sites and flooding web sites and communication systems identified with conservative causes. This received mixed reviews from the hacktivist community.
Hacktivists managed to break into computer systems at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in India to protest against nuclear weapons tests.
Hacktivists set up web sites such as McSpotlight.org and Bhopal.net to criticize multinational corporations.
Bronc Buster, later a member of Hacktivismo, disabled firewalls to allow Chinese Internet users uncensored access.
Hacktivists worked to slow, block, or reroute traffic for web servers associated with the World Trade Organization, the World Economic Forum, and the World Bank.

[edit] Quotes

"...on the Internet, the code is the law." —Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School professor

"Expressive politics is the struggle to free what can be free from both versions of the commodity form—its totalising market form, and its bureaucratic state form."—McKenzie Wark

Hacktivism is "the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends. These tools include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft, web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, virtual sabotage, and software development." - Alexandra Samuel