Hacktivists

(OBJ 2.1)

Individuals or groups that use their technical skills to promote a cause or drive social change instead of for personal gain
Hacktivists tend to demonstrate a fairly high level of sophistication

Activities in which the use of hacking and other cyber techniques is used to promote or advance a political or social cause

To accomplish their objectives, hacktivists use a wide range of techniques to achieve their goals
Website Defacement
- Form of electronic graffiti and is usually treated as an act of vandalism
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
- Attempting to overwhelm the victim's systems or networks so that they cannot be accessed by the organization's legitimate users
Doxing
- Involves the public release of private information about an individual or organization
Leaking of Sensitive Data
- Stealing and then releasing of sensitive data to the public at large over the internet

Hacktivists are primarily motivated by their ideological beliefs rather than trying to achieve financial gains

Most well-known hacktivist groups is known as “Anonymous”
Anonymous
- Loosely affiliated collective that has been involved in numerous high-profile attacks over the years for targeting organizations that they perceive as acting unethically or against the public interest at large
- 2010 - Operation payback campaign - Various DDoS attacks to different private and governmental companies
LulzSec
- Launched a series of attacks, known as "50 Days of Lulz" that targeted various organizations (e.g. Sony, CIA, FBI, ...)
- Expressed political motivations - opposition to censorship and surveillance as part of the reason for their attacks