Hacktivists: a New Breed of Cybercriminals

摘要

Hacktivism is the fusion of hacking and activism; politics and technology. More specifically, hacktivism is described as hacking for a political cause. It was recently coined due to the ramifications of the recent Wik-iLeaks-related, large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on businesses. In 2010, the controversial organization Wik-iLeaks released thousands of previously confidential and classified documents to the public. The documents dealt with sensitive political issues, including the involvement of the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq, and diplomatic cables from US embassies.