This is the start of another new and blatantly irregular feature here on sallys: An interview series with people who have something interesting to say about the themes in Stieg Larsson’s brilliant books, but as they apply to the real world! We start of with Danish researcher, author and debator Lars Konzack, whom I have the pleasure of knowing personally through our mutual interest in politics, roleplaying games, nerd-culture and everything in between.
Lars has a Ph.D in multimedia and game designs. He has also authored books and articles about how society changes in the wake of the ever-increasing digitalisation of everything. He has a special interest in how the Internet has given people with niche interests, socalled ‘geeks’ and ‘nerds’ easier access to communicate with each other and build communities, and what this means for society at large. His is also active as a commentator in the Danish media, on all things related to nerd culture, internet and society and has recently been interviewed for one of our major newspapers for a feature article on the phenomenon of hacktivism.
And of course, I know someone from Stieg’s books who fit the (admittedly stereotypical) view of a geeky-computer-wiz-hacker quite well …
So I asked Lars if he would share with us his insights on hacktivism and hacking and where the two differ. Which is what he is going to be doing in the coming days, one question at a time. You’re welcome to drop a comment or an additional question below.
But for now … let’s begin!
Chris: “Lars, thank you for helping me and the fans here get to know a little more about hacktivism. I’m sure there’s a lot of Salander-fans who will be interested in this particular topic. First of all … what is hacktivism and is it something relatively new? What distinguishes it from ‘ordinary hacking’ which we hear about in the crime news?”
Lars: “Hacktivism is political activism using computers and computer networks to pursue political ends. The first known hactivism event stems back to 1989. However most hactivist events have been taking place in the 21st. Century. It seems to be a growing phenomenon. Ordinary hacking is either vandalism or criminal behaviour. Unlike these kinds of malicious practices, hacktivism works as an intentional action to to bring about political change. Like any political activism the ethics of the activities may be questioned. Consequently, opposition forces to hactivism events often regard hacktivism as some kind of cyberterrorism.”
Chris: “Very interesting. But what was the 1989-event about – did it have something do with the ‘spring in Eastern Europe’ by any chance? And can you give a recent example of hacktivism and how it was received by the media and the public?”
Lars: “The 1989 hacktivist attack penetrated American networks and changed the login interface to the following message: “WORMS AGAINST NUCLEAR KILLERS / WANK / Your system has officially been WANKed / You talk of times of peace for all, and then prepare for war.” This ambiguous message suddenly popped up in october 1989 while Eastern Europe freed themselves from Communism. A recent example of hacktivism is Operation Titstorm a distribruted denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on Australian government websites in February 2010. A group named Anonymous warned about the action beforehand and took the responsibility. The hacktivist event was a response to the Australian govenrment’s plan to filter the internet thereby not only causing Anonymous related websites to be blocked in Australia but in general censor Australian access to the internet. Operation Titstorm was criticised by the Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy insisting that it wasn’t a legitimate political protest. Furthermore, anti-censorship groups criticised Operation Titstorm, saying that Anonymous was in fact hurting their just cause.”
Chris: “Just goes to show I guess …one man’s rebel, another’s terrorist 
Anyway, I know that you are mostly into the cultural and societal aspects of hacktivism, but do you think it has also become easier to become an activist in this sense, because more people have become computer-savvy now as opposed to 20 years ago? Not everybody would be able to hack Big Government’s databases like Lisbeth Salander but presumably most relatively experienced computer users would be able to find some kind of freeware or prescriptions on the net on how to bother goverment or business organisations’ servers? Or is this just something I dreamt up?”
Lars: “The DDoS attack in Operation Titstorm was orchestrated by hundreds of Anon hacktivists working together using Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC), which is an application developed by Praetox. LOIC was first used by Anonymous in January 2008 when they DDoS attacked websites belonging to Scientology. More importantly though, Anonymous has a culture that match such a behaviour. hacktivism is a natural development from their trolling activities on the internet.”
[Continued on the following pages!]
A well known recent example is the report that Chinese hackers attacked the Dalai Llama’s email system, which is reported here (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-746.html).
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Stieg Larsson definitely would not have loved that! But good example, thanks. I wonder, though, supposing that these hackers were acting in the interests of the Chinese state – either directly controlled or by their own volition – would they qualify as ‘hacktivists’? In a broader sense, yes, it is hacking and it is for political purposes. I’m quite sure, though, that a lot of the more or less organised hacktivists affiliated with the political left and/or liberal democracies in general wouldn’t see it that way
But knitpicking definitions is probably best left to researchers like Lars, so I’ll spare you all for more.
Anyone else have good examples?
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Anonymous’s internet harassing of scientologists (the so-called Project CHANology) probably counts too.
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Hacktivism, or the use of downloaded programs (etc) to hack, isn’t felt to be real hacking by the community. The examples mentioned aren’t “real hacking”, as DDos attacks are akin to a massive brute force attack, which requires little intelligence (and a botnet) to use. People who do this sort of stuff are mostly black hats who are in it for the money, or script kiddies.
Wwebsites such as milw0rm.com, where absolutely anyone can download these programs and use them, are resources for what hackers call script kiddies (people who use scripts / programs to hack for them). Script kiddies are generally characterized as juvenile, incompetent, too stupid to write their own code and in it to impress friends / gain credit with the community, without a real understanding of how the systems they’re breaking into works. (More details here: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=script+kiddie)
Black hat hackers are real hackers who are intent on breaking into security systems, using more sophisticated methods (which they normally develop themselves). Metaphorically, this is like using a set of fine tools to gain entry rather than the script kiddie’s sledgehammer. They’re regarded as a lower form of hacker by the white hats, who use their own skills to try to try protect security systems. The names white hat and black hat come from old spaghetti westerns.
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@name: Interesting. Can you give examples of Black Hats who’ve used their skills to do something fitting the definition of hacktivism? (Or will they have to kill you if you tell?)
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