A History of Hacktivism [INFOGRAPHIC]
by Alissa Skelton 3
Hacktivism has hit its tipping point. The year 2011 had the most hacktivism-related crimes in history.
Hacktivists use
digital tools to breach security systems to protest or take a stand on
political issues. The New Age hacker is motivated by the pursuit of justice,
and is often hard to stop.
On Tuesday, Shawn
Henry, an FBI agent who will soon leave his post, told the Wall Street
Journal that cyber
criminals are too powerful for the government to stop. He also said the U.S.’s current
methods for preventing hacks are “unsustainable.”
Hacktivism
accounted for the majority of cybercrimes committed in the U.S. last year,
according to the 2012 Verzion Data
Breach Investigation [PDF]. The report said hacktivism represented 100 million
of the 174 million cybercrimes in 2011.
SEE ALSO: The Evolution of Anonymous
Web criminals
target Wall Street firms, too. Cybercrime accounted for 38% of all
economic crime [PDF] at financial companies in 2011, reported
London-based firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 2009, financial firms did not
report a single case of cybercrime. The crimes were likely happening, but the
cybercrime wasn’t a well-known issue at the time.
The first uptick in
cybercrime came in the early 2000s. The Internet Crime
Complaint Center
logged 16,000 complaints in 2000. By 2008, the number of complaints had jumped
to 275,000. Today, the majority — 66% — of hackivists live in the U.S.
The way hacktivists
define themselves is important — they don’t want to be associated with cyber
criminals who hack websites for financial gain. Hacktivists set out to make
political statements by attacking targeted websites and breaching databases.
Three types of
hacktivism exist: the white hat hacker, grey hat hacker and the black hat
hacker. White hat hackers use non-malicious methods to break security systems. Grey
hat hackers hold ambiguous codes of ethics, and are willing to break hacking
laws. Black hat hackers are the show-offs; they will breach security mainly
because they know how.
Check
out the following infographic, created by Frugal Dad, to learn how
hacktivism became a powerful virtual weapon. 
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