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Hacktivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism) is often understood as the writing of code, or otherwise manipulating bit, to promote political ideology - promoting expressive politics, free speech, human rights, or information ethics. Acts of hacktivism are carried out in the belief that proper use of code will have leveraged effects similar to regular activism or civil disobedience. Fewer people can write code, but code affects more people.

Hacktivist activities span many political ideals and issues. Freenet is a prime example of translating political thought (anyone should be able to speak) into code. Hacktivist.net is an example of hacktivism in action. Hacktivismo is an offshoot of CULT OF THE DEAD COW; its beliefs include access to information as a basic human right. The loose network of programmers, artists and radical militants 1984 network liberty alliance is more concerned with issues of free speech surveillance and privacy in an era of increased technological surveillance.

Hacktivism is a controversial term. Some argue it was coined to describe how electronic direct action might work toward social change by combining programming skills with critical thinking. Others use it as practically synonymous with malicious, destructive acts that undermine the security of the Internet as a technical, economic, and political platform.

Essentially, the controversy reflects two divergent philosophical strands within the hacktivist movement. One strand thinks that malicious cyber-attacks are an acceptable form of direct action. The other strand thinks that all protest should be peaceful and non-violent.

Some people describing themselves as hacktivists have taken to defacing websites for political reasons, such as attacking and defacing government websites as well as web sites of groups who oppose their [[

• The earliest known instance of hacktivism is documented by Julian Assange as follows:

"Hacktivism is at least as old as October 1989 when DOE, HEPNET and SPAN (NASA) connected VMS machines world wide were penetrated by the anti-nuclear WANK worm, which changed the system announcement banner to be:

      W O R M S    A G A I N S T    N U C L E A R    K I L L E R S
    _______________________________________________________________
    \__  ____________  _____    ________    ____  ____   __  _____/
     \ \ \    /\    / /    / /\ \       | \ \  | |    | | / /    /
      \ \ \  /  \  / /    / /__\ \      | |\ \ | |    | |/ /    /
       \ \ \/ /\ \/ /    / ______ \     | | \ \| |    | |\ \   /
        \_\  /__\  /____/ /______\ \____| |__\ | |____| |_\ \_/
         \___________________________________________________/
          \                                                 /
           \    Your System Has Been Officially WANKed    /
            \_____________________________________________/

     You talk of times of peace for all, and then prepare for war.

• One of the earliest documented hacktivist events was the "Strano Network sit-in," a strike action directed against French government computers in 1995.
• In 1998 the Electronic Disturbance Theater conducted "virtual sit-ins" on the Web sites of the Pentagon and the Mexican government to bring the world's attention to the plight of Indian rights in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
• One of the more notorious examples of hacktivism was the modification of Indonesian web sites with appeals to "Free East Timor" in 1998 by Portuguese hackers.
• On December 29, 1998, the Legions of the Underground (LoU) declared cyberwar on Iraq and China with the intention of disrupting and disabling internet infrastructure. On January 7, 1999, an international coalition of hackers (including Cult of the Dead Cow, 2600 's staff, Phrack's staff, L0pht, and the Chaos Computer Club) issued a joint statement ([1]) condemning the LoU's declaration of war. The LoU responded by withdrawing its declaration.
• Hacktivists attempted to disrupt ECHELON (an international electronic communications surveillance network filtering any and all satellite, microwave, cellular, and fiber-optic traffic) by holding "Jam Echelon Day" (JED) on October 21, 1999. On the day, hacktivists attached large keyword lists to many messages, leveraging listservers and newsgroups to spread their keywords further. The idea was to give the Echelon computers so many "hits" they overloaded. It is not known whether JED was successful in actually jamming Echelon, although NSA computers were reported to have crashed "inexplicably" in early March, 2000. A second Jam Echelon Day (JEDII) was held in October 2000, however the idea never regained its initial popularity. JED was partly denial-of-service attack, and partly agit-prop.
• The Electronic Disturbance Theater and others staged a week of disruption during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, conducting sit-ins against Republican web sites and flooding web sites and communication systems identified with conservative causes. This received mixed reviews from the hacktivist community.
• Hacktivists managed to break into computer systems at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in India to protest against nuclear weapons tests.
• Hacktivists set up web sites such as McSpotlight.org and Bhopal.net to criticize multinational corporations.
• Bronc Buster, later a member of Hacktivismo, disabled firewalls to allow Chinese Internet users uncensored access.
• Hacktivists worked to slow, block, or reroute traffic for web servers associated with the World Trade Organization, the World Economic Forum, and the World Bank.
• In 1997 German Artist Cornelia Sollfrank hacked the first international Net art competition by entering 200 faux female artists in the contest only to have 3 male adversaries win. She called this project Female Extension.

"As William Mitchell puts it, this code is cyberspace's 'law.' Code is law."^[1] —Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School professor

Hacktivism is "the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends. These tools include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft, web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, virtual sabotage, and software development." - Alexandra Samuel

1. ^ Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Chapter 1, Part2

• Chaos Computer Club
• Citizen Lab
• Crypto-anarchism
• Culture jamming
• E-democracy
• Electronic civil disobedience
• Hacker culture
• Hacker ethic
• HackThisSite
• Internet activism
• Open source government
• Tactical media
• 1984 network liberty alliance

• Politically Motivated Computer Crime and Hacktivism News and information
• Hacktivism in the Culture Jammers Encyclopedia
• Hacktivismo's Projects Page
• Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation Political science dissertation on the history and political significance of hacktivism
• Hack This Site! Hacktivist training ground
• Hackbloc Home of the hacktivist zine "HackThisZine"
• What is Hacktivism?
• White Hat, Black Hat, Grey Hat links
• Surveillance, Free Speech and Privacy in the Electronic Age
• Hacktivist.net Popular site of hacktivist opinions and information
• Hacktivism in the context of body modification
• Hacktivism and Politically Motivated Computer Crime History, types of activity and cases studies

• hacktivism.info (generic site) Hacktivism information and discussions