http://www.wired.com/news/print_version/politics/story/15129.html The Golden Age of Hacktivism by Niall McKay 4:00 a.m. 22.Sep.98.PDT On the eve of Sweden's general election, Internet saboteurs targeted the Web site of that country's right-wing Moderates political party, defacing pages and establishing links to the homepages of the left-wing party and a pornography site. But the Scandanavian crack Saturday was not the work of bored juveniles armed with a Unix account, a slice of easily compiled code, and a few hours to kill. It advanced a specific political agenda. "The future of activism is on the Internet," said Stanton McCandlish, program director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "More and more, what is considered an offline issue, such as protesting the treatment of the Zapatistas in Mexico, is being protested on the Net." In the computer-security community, it's called "hacktivism," a kind of electronic civil disobedience in which activists take direct action by breaking into or protesting with government or corporate computer systems. It's a kind of low-level information warfare, and it's on the rise. Last week, for example, a group of hackers called X-pilot rewrote the home page of a Mexican government site to protest what they said were instances of government corruption and censorship. The group, which did not reply to several emails, made the claims to the Hacker News Network. The hacktivists were bringing an offline issue into the online world, McClandish said. The phenomenon is becoming common enough that next month, the longtime computer-security group, the Cult of the Dead Cow will launch the resource site hacktivism.org. The site will host online workshops, demonstrations, and software tools for digital activists. "We want to provide resources to empower people who want to take part in activism on the Internet," said Oxblood Ruffian, a former United Nations consultant who belongs to the Cult of the Dead Cow. Oxblood Ruffian's group is no newcomer to hacktivism. They have been working with the Hong Kong Blondes, a near-mythical group of Chinese dissidents that have been infiltrating police and security networks in China in an effort to forewarn political targets of imminent arrests. In a recent Wired News article, a member of the group said it would target the networks and Web sites of US companies doing business with China. Other recent hacktivist actions include a wave of attacks in August that drew attention to alleged human rights abuses in Indonesia. In June, attacks on computer systems in India's atomic energy research lab protested that country's nuclear bomb tests. More recently, on Mexican Independence Day, a US-based group called Electronic Disturbance Theater targeted the Web site of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. The action was intended to protest Zedillo's alleged mistreatment of the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. Nearly 8,000 people participated in the digital sit-in, which attempted to overwhelm the Mexican president's Web servers. "What we are trying to do is to find a place where the public can register their dissatisfaction in cyberspace, so that your everyday [mouse] clicker can participate in a public protest," said EDT co-founder Ricardo. The apparent increase in hacktivism may be due in part to the growing importance of the Internet as a means of communication. As more people go online, Web sites become high-profile targets. It also demonstrates that many government sites are fairly easy to crack, said one former member of Milw0rm, the now defunct group that defaced the Indian research lab's Web site. In an interview in Internet Relay Chat, the cracker rattled off a list of vulnerable US government Web sites -- including one hosting an electron particle accelerator and another of a US politician -- and their susceptibility to bugs. "They don't pay enough for computer people," said the cracker, who goes by the name t3k-9. "You get $50,000 for a $150,000 job." Some security experts also believe that there is a new generation of crackers emerging. "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 with the Net," John Vranesevich, founder of the computer security Web site AntiOnline. "The first generation of the kids that grew up hacking are now between 25 and 35 -– often the most politically active years in peoples' lives." "When the Cult of the Dead Cow was started in 1984, the average age [of our members] was 14, and they spent their time hacking soda machines," said Oxblood Ruffian. "But the last couple of years has marked a turning point for us. Our members are older, politicized, and extremely technically proficient." While hacktivists are lining up along one border, police and law enforcement officials are lining up along another. This year the FBI will establish a cyber warfare center called the National Infrastructure Protection Center. The US$64 million organization will replace the Computer Investigations and Infrastructure Threat Assessment Center and involve the intelligence community and the military. Allan Paller, director of research for the SANS Institute, said the FBI is staffing the new facility with the government's top security experts. "They are stealing people from good places, including a woman from the Department of Energy who was particularly good," he said in a recent interview. "They are taking brilliant people." Paller also said that a grassroots effort is under way in Washington to establish a National Intrusion Center, modeled after the Centers for Disease Control. "There is definitely an increased threat of cyber terrorism," said Stephen Berry, spokesman for the FBI press office in Washington. As offline protests -- which are protected in the United States by the constitution -- enter the next digital age, the question remains: How will the FBI draw the distinction between relatively benign online political protests and cyber terrorism? -o- Subscribe: mail majordomot_private with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]
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