By Arun Pradhan
Several weeks ago, surfers visiting Australian political parties' web sites might have been surprised to see the Liberals' site defaced and full of links to pornography sites. As well as severely embarrassing the Labor Party staffers who had encouraged such acts, the security breach reflected the growth of what has been dubbed "hactivism".
In this case, it did not take much effort. The Liberals left their site wide open so that a range of party members could make changes to it. This proved too big a temptation for many other people.
But accessing web sites is often more complicated, and the hacking aims and abilities of groups and individuals around the world are becoming more sophisticated.
Mainstream culture might still present the images portrayed in the movies War Games or Hackers of alienated, computer-literate types bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war, or at least affecting international events at the touch of a keyboard. In the real world, however, what is becoming much more popular is a type of "web graffiti", where hackers enter and alter existing web sites.
By far the majority of hackings are politically motivated, often helping to publicise real campaigns (or "off-line" campaigns, as some hactivists call them). One such act was when India announced its nuclear tests a couple of months ago, the Indian government's official web site was soon replaced by the picture of a mushroom cloud ending on the question "don't you people ever learn?".
The three teenagers, from the now defunct group Milworm, who carried out the attack were later interviewed on Internet Relay Chat (on which they could remain anonymous). They explained how they also attacked the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre site in Bombay. They down loaded e-mail and research information before erasing several of the institution's servers.
One of the teenagers, nicknamed VeNoMouS, stated the group's opposition to "nuclear shit" and its intention to target Pakistani web sites.
More recently, the right-wing Moderate party in Sweden found its site defaced and links added to left-wing and pornographic sites on the eve of Sweden's national elections.
The Mexican government has possibly been the target of more on-line sabotage than any other. From its earliest days, the Zapatistas have made good use of e-mail networks and the World Wide Web to publicise their campaigns. Interestingly, their work amongst Mexico's indigenous people has won the sympathy of a layer of hackers internationally, who continue to publicise the Zapatistas' cause and the Mexican government's repression of the people.
The growth of hactivism is a concern to many. In a recent article about hactivists in Wired Magazine, John Vranesevich, founder of a web security company, pointed out, "the rise in political cracking in the past couple of years is because we now have the first generation of kids that have grown up on the net ... (they) grew up hacking and are now between 25 and 35; often the most politically active years in peoples' lives".
Hactivists' ability to help build real campaigns is still largely untested, with most attacks being more like one-off stunts aimed at getting media coverage rather than directly involving people in action. Nevertheless, it is clear that as internet use increases around the world, hackers activity must increase, at the very least making web surfing much more interesting.
For more information, Wired Magazine covers the activities of hactivists, as well as broader news and issues. Visit it at <http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15129.html>. The cult of the dead cow is a computer group which will soon launch a resource site for hactivists, complete with on-line workshops and software tools. Visit it at <http://www.cultdeadcow.com/>. The Hacker News Network can be found at <http://www.hackernews.com/>.