Hacktivism comes in many forms, each with its own way to support a hacktivist’s intentions. That might be promoting free speech and information, crashing websites, or exposing incriminating information. Here are 10 known types of hacktivism:

1. Anonymous blogging
2. RECAP
3. Website defacement
4. Website redirects
5. Website mirroring
6. Denial of Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS)
7. Virtual sit-ins
8. Leaks
9. Doxing
10. Geo-bombing

 

Despite any altruistic intentions, hacktivism attacks are hacking attacks, which means they’re illegal. But they’re also difficult to prosecute because they’re mostly conducted anonymously.

Unlike traditional hacking attacks, though, hacktivism attacks rarely have true malicious intent. In some cases, you might think of them as a form of antagonism, such as the way we might see graffiti on billboards.

Still, just as this is vandalism in real life, website defacing is considered cyber vandalism. This is just one example of the types of hacktivism that exist today.

Hackers and hacktivists generally use the same tools and techniques to achieve their goals. Unlike hacktivists, hackers are not defined solely by social causes.

Hacktivists generally believe they’re acting altruistically for the public good. Similar to activism in our physical world, online activists seek to bring public attention to a cause that’s important to them in hopes they’ll invoke change. This often means exposing and correcting perceived injustices.

The nature of the perceived injustices might be political, social, or religious:

• Politically motivated hacktivism seeks to promote or upheave a political agenda, sometimes to the extent of anarchy.
• Socially motivated hacktivism sets out to expose social injustices, ranging from government censorship to human rights.
• Religiously motivated hacktivism acts in the name of a religious ideology and may seek to discredit or encourage the belief.

Carrying out hacking attacks as a form of activism. So, you might think of hacktivism as online activism, digital activism, or cyberactivism,

People who carried out hacktivism attacks are hacktivists. They generally claim to operate with altruistic intentions, meaning not to cause malicious harm but rather to draw attention to a cause that’s important to the hacktivist group.

Hacktivists target entities that they believe violate their values or stand in the way of their agenda. Common targets may include Nation-states, Government agencies, Corporations, Religious institutions, Terrorist organizations.