This week we discussing about hacktivism and an example of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. What is hacktivism? According to denning, 1999 [page2] it is “the marriage of hacking and activism, it covers operations that use hacking techniques against a target’s Internet site with intent of disrupting normal operations but not causing serious damage”
One good example of hacking activism is the “Operation Payback” on the financial services such as; MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal. It was started when all of the financial services announced that they will not process the donations the people gives Wikileaks as they claimed that it is an illegal activity. This event was operating by a group of 3000+ hacker and this makes all 3 main financial services around the world have to stop their service for a long period. From my opinion I think hacktivism is not as bad as everyone think because we have hacking activism that makes all the servicing company keep improving their security system. But… I don’t know, there are many more aspects for me to learn more about hacktivism.
References:
Mackey, R. (2016). ‘Operation Payback’ Attacks Target MasterCard and PayPal Sites to Avenge WikiLeaks. [online] The Lede. Available at: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/operation-payback-targets-mastercard-and-paypal-sites-to-avenge-wikileaks/ [Accessed 2 Oct. 2016].
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