The Origins of Hacktivism and Digital Security

By Shayla Seokyung Hwang ‘27 ARTLESS STUDENT WRITER

Hacktivism is a lexicon made in 1996. It is to represent the act of hacking and activism based on political or socially motivated purposes. Conflicts are occurring more fiercely than ever in the corners of our world. Starting from the frantic war between Ukraine and Russia, and leading to multiple economic meltdowns till the most recent earthquake in Turkey; it’s everywhere. However, ferocious attacks are also happening online.

On November 23, lawmakers across Europe labelled Russia a “state sponsor” of terrorism. The response was tense - the European parliament’s website was completely annihilated by a DDoS attack. DDoS attacks are abbreviation for “distributed denial of service attacks”. This attack overwhelms the data by simultaneous request to view the page which leads the server to crash. Accordingly, it dismisses the legitimate users of the server. Hundreds or even thousands of systems distributed all across the world assails concurrently. These DDoS attacks DDoS attacks are also used as a smokescreen for the core activity of hackers. For example, the cyber attack in August 2022 towards TalkTalk (UK company that acts as a provider of a telephone and broadband service) used this tactic. A DDoS attack was used to cover the piracy of data. The catastrophic hack resulted in an unbelievable financial loss - £77 million (€90.7 million) and the stolen data of over 150,000 customers.

Hacktivism has become viral especially starting from 2022. In the flood of struggles, it is inevitable that society has become more vulnerable towards these attacks. As street protests grow, the number of online protests are also increasing. Unfortunately, it is predicted for rates of cyber attacks in 2023 to rise and be more complicated to track down due to the developed technology.

Then how can we prevent these attacks that could destroy us? Here’s how : reduce data transfers, download only verified sources, update passwords, regularly install the latest updates of software, and monitor data leaks. For DDoS attacks on a large-scale, usually on businesses and countries, is having multiple-level protection regards to the protection of the program. For example, antivirus software, VPN, firewalls, security layers, and load balancing. These features include intrusion prevention and threat management technology.

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