Hacktivismo

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Hacktivismo

Origin	Las Vegas, Nevada
Country	United States
Years active	1999–present
Category	hacktivism
Founder(s)	Oxblood Ruffin
Product(s)	Camera/Shy The Six/Four System HESSLA
Affiliated Group(s)	CULT OF THE DEAD COW Ninja Strike Force
Website(s)	Main Site

Hacktivismo logo

Hacktivismo is an offshoot of CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc), whose beliefs include access to information as a basic human right. It was founded in 1999. Oxblood Ruffin, the director of Hacktivismo, has argued forcefully against definitions of hacktivism that include web defacements or denial-of-service attacks.

The group's beliefs are described fully in The Hacktivismo Declaration, which seeks to apply the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to the Internet.

Hacktivismo has also authored its own software license agreement, the Hacktivismo Enhanced-Source Software License Agreement (HESSLA), which is source available (but not open source).

1 Projects
2 References
3 Further reading
4 External links

[edit] Projects

[edit] Camera/Shy

Camera/Shy was the first Hacktivismo project released. It debuted in 2002 at the H.O.P.E. 2k2 convention in New York City. Written by The Pull, Camera/Shy is a steganographic tool that scans for and delivers decrypted content directly from the world wide web. It is a stand-alone, Internet Explorer-based web browser. It interprets and displays hidden information stored in the junk bits in .gif files.^[1]

[edit] The Six/Four System

The Six/Four System is one of Hacktivismo's products. It was written by Mixter. The software is a censorship resistant network proxy. It works by using "trusted peers" to relay network connections over SSL encrypted links.^[2] As an example, the distribution includes a program which will act as a web proxy, but where all of the connections will be hidden until they reach the far end trusted peer.^[3]

Hacktivismo and the cDc further gained notoriety in 2003 when the Six/Four System became the first product of a hacker group to receive approval from the United States Department of Commerce for export of strong encryption.^[4]

[edit] ScatterChat

ScatterChat is an encrypted instant messaging client based on Gaim. It was written by J. Salvatore Testa II and released at the H.O.P.E. Number Six conference in New York City on July 22, 2006. The code is open source, licensed under the HESSLA. It provides encryption as well as integrated onion routing with Tor, and secure file transfers. Scatterchat's security features include immunity from replay attacks and limited resistance to traffic analysis.^[5]^[6]^[7]

[edit] Torpark

Main article: Torpark

Torpark is a variant of the Portable Firefox web browser with Tor built into it. Torpark is intended for use on portable media such as a USB flash drive but it can also be used on any hard disk drive. cDc/Hacktivismo co-released v.1.5.0.7 along with Steve Topletz on September 19, 2006.^[8]^[9]^[10]