In this lesson, we are going to discuss
everything you need to know about hacktivists.
Now, hacktivists are individuals or groups
that use their technical skills to promote a cause
or drive social change instead of personal gain.
Hacktivists perform hacktivism,
which is a term that comes from combining
hacking and activism to create the term hacktivism.
Hacktivism simply refers to the activities
in which the use of hacking and other cyber techniques
is used to promote or advance a political or social cause.
When it comes to hacktivists and hacktivism,
you should remember that they use cyber attacks
to achieve their ideological or political beliefs.
To accomplish their objectives,
hacktivists use a wide range of techniques
to achieve their goals, including website defacement,
distributed denial of service attacks,
doxxing, and leaking of sensitive data.
Website defacements are essentially
just another form of electronic graffiti,
and is usually treated as an act of vandalism.
Next up, denial of service attacks.
When a hacktivist attempts to launch
a distributed denial of service attack,
they are attempting to overwhelm
the victim's systems or networks
so that they cannot be accessed
by the organization's legitimate users.
Third, doxxing.
Doxxing is another hacktivist technique,
but doxxing involves the public release
of private information about an individual or organization
such as their name, home address, phone number, or email
in hopes that someone will take
the real-world actions against the victim.
Another technique used by hacktivists
is attacking an organization, stealing its sensitive data,
and then releasing that sensitive data
to the public at large over the internet.
While the technical capabilities of hacktivists
can vary widely, hacktivists tend to demonstrate
a fairly high level of sophistication.
Some hacktivist group include individuals
with advanced technical skills who can create custom exploit
to attack vulnerabilities,
well-defended systems, and networks.
Unlike most cyber threat actors,
hacktivists are primarily motivated
by their ideological beliefs
rather than trying to achieve financial gain.
Hacktivists really want to draw attention to their cause
in order to drive social or political change,
or they may be using their hacktivism
to protest against some kind of perceived injustice
or unethical practices used by the targeted organization.
These hacktivists target organizations or individuals
that they perceive are acting out against their cause,
which can include governments, corporations,
or other entities that they believe
are involved in censorship, human rights abuses,
environmental damage, or other controversial activities.
Probably the most well-known hacktivist group
is known as Anonymous.
Anonymous is a loosely affiliated collective
that has been involved
in numerous high profile attacks over the years
for targeting organizations
that they perceive are acting unethically
or against the public interest at large.
For example, back at 2010,
Anonymous launched their Operation Payback campaign
by launching a DDoS attack against various organizations
involved in digital anti-piracy efforts,
including the Motion Picture Association of America
and the Recording Industry Association of America.
LulzSec is another famous hacktivist group.
Back in 2011, LulzSec launched a series of attacks
known as 50 Days of Lulz
that targeted various organizations, including Sony,
the Central Intelligence Agency,
and the Federal Bureau of Investigations, or the FBI.
While their actions were partly motivated
by a desire for chaos,
as their name, a combination of lulz and security suggests,
the group also expressed political motivations,
like an opposition to censorship and surveillance
as part of the reason for their attacks.
So remember, hacktivism is the act of hacking
or breaking into computer systems
for a politically or socially-motivated purpose,
often to promote, repeat, or protest
against specific issues or actions.
A hacktivist on the other hand
is an individual who engages in hacktivism
using cyber tools and techniques
to promote a social or political cause.
It's important to remember
that a hacktivist conducts hacktivism
to advance their own ideological agendas.
This helps determine which organizations
they will target with their attacks.