Hacktivism

A new phenomenon in the spectrum of cyber conflict has emerged and can be described as electronic disobedience or hacktivism. Computerized activism operates in the tradition of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience and borrows the tactics of trespass and blockade from earlier social movements and applies them to the Internet.

A typical civil disobedience tactic is a ”sit-in‘ in which groups of people physically blockade, with their bodies, the entranceways of an opponent's office or physically occupy an opponent's office. Electronic Civil Disobedience, as a form of mass decentered electronic direct action, utilizes virtual blockades and virtual sit-ins. Unlike the participant in a traditional civil disobedience action, an ECD actor can participate in virtual blockades and sit-ins from home, from work, from the university, or from other points of access to the Net.

The origins of computerized activism extend back in pre-Web history to the mid-1980s. However, Hacktivism remained marginal to political and social movements until the explosion of the Internet in the mid-1990s. Now, in the post-Web Internet phase, there is widespread use by a large number of grassroots groups and other political actors in countries all over the world. There have been reports of hacktivity in Britain, Australia, India, China, and on almost every continent.

In the spring of 1998, a young British hacker known as "JF" accessed about 300 web sites. He replaced the sites‘ homepages with an image of a mushroom cloud and an 800word
declaration that began —This mass takeover goes out to all the people out there who want to see peace in this world“. Some affected sites were Web servers at India‘s atomic research center and the Saudi Royal Family.15 At that point, it was the biggest political hack of its kind. Since then, there have been numerous reports of web sites being accessed and altered with political content.

The desired goal of Hacktivism is to draw attention to particular issues by engaging in actions that are unusual and will attract some degree of media coverage. While it may be too early to make accurate predictions, the threat of Hacktivism has yet to be fully recognized or tested. It is important to include this new threat against DOD systems and understand the possible long term consequences posed for governments and states if groups of individual protestors can engage in forms of cyber space resistance across traditional geo-political borders.

Hacktivism is distinct from hacking in the purely criminal sense because it represents a political motivation with intent to not only do harm to a system, but to influence the public and government that it is protesting with its electronic civil disobedience. In some cases, if a large enough group of protesters from around the globe can launch an electronic attack, it has the potential to cause major damage and may be difficult to differentiate from an initial information warfare attack. Although, Hacktivism is also a criminal act, it is distinct because of the perpetrator‘s political intentions and may require a different if not unique response from the DOD or US government.