Attrition is an information security-related website, created in October, 1998, [1] which used to be updated at least weekly by an all-volunteer staff. Until 21 May 2001, [2] Attrition maintained the largest mirror of defaced (or cracked) websites available on the World Wide Web. The defacement mirror has since ceased updating. [3] The site contains a variety of information, including movie and music reviews, poetry, and security tips covering topics like forensics, data theft, and security advisories. [4]
In 2001, attrition.org was given a cease and desist order by lawyers of MasterCard for posting parodies of its "Priceless" advertising campaign, which they claim violated copyright law. [5] An argument between attrition.org and MasterCard ensued, resulting in their communications and one final "Priceless" parody being posted online. [6]
In 2006, Republican communications aide Todd Shriber attempted to hire Attrition to crack his former university's website. [7] Shriber was then sacked from his job for attempting to solicit a hacker to inflate his GPA. [8]
Attrition formerly hosted several electronic mailing lists relating to information security, such as InfoSec News. It also maintained the Data Loss Database, which recorded company experienced data breaches. [9]
Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism, is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hacker culture and hacker ethics, its ends are often related to free speech, human rights, or freedom of information movements.
Francesco Vianello, better known by his nickname Fravia, was a software reverse engineer, who maintained a web archive of reverse engineering techniques and papers. He also worked on steganography. He taught on subjects such as data mining, anonymity and stalking.
The Level Seven Crew, also known as Level Seven, Level 7 or L7 was a hacking group that was in operation during the mid to late 1990s. It is rumored to have dispersed in early 2010 when the founder 'vent' was raided by the FBI on February 25, 2013.
Website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of a website or a web page. These are typically the work of defacers, who break into a web server and replace the hosted website with malware or a website of their own. Defacement is generally meant as a kind of electronic graffiti and, like other forms of vandalism, is used to spread messages by politically motivated "cyber protesters" or hacktivists. Website defacement can involve adding questionable content or removing or changing the content to make it questionable, or including nonsensical or whimsical references to websites or publicly editable repositories to harm its reputation. Methods such as a web shell may be used to aid in website defacement.
Brian Krebs is an American journalist and investigative reporter. He is best known for his coverage of profit-seeking cybercriminals. Krebs is the author of a daily blog, KrebsOnSecurity.com, covering computer security and cybercrime. From 1995 to 2009, Krebs was a reporter for The Washington Post and covered tech policy, privacy and computer security as well as authoring the Security Fix blog.
HackThisSite.org, commonly referred to as HTS, is an online hacking and security website founded by Jeremy Hammond. The site is maintained by members of the community after he left the organization. It aims to provide users with a way to learn and practice basic and advanced "hacking" skills through a series of challenges in a safe and legal environment. The organization has a user base of over a million, though the number of active members is believed to be much lower. The most users online at the same time was 19,950 on February 5, 2018 at 2:46 a.m. CT.
Ankit Fadia is an Indian self-proclaimed white-hat computer hacker, author, and television host. He is considered to be a security charlatan. His work mostly involves OS and networking tips and tricks and proxy websites.
The Internet has a long history of turbulent relations, major maliciously designed disruptions, and other conflicts. This is a list of known and documented Internet, Usenet, virtual community and World Wide Web related conflicts, and of conflicts that touch on both offline and online worlds with possibly wider reaching implications.
Dennis Michael Moran, also known by his alias Coolio, was an American computer hacker from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, who was accused in February 2000 of a series of denial-of-service attacks that shut down some of the most popular websites on the Internet. He was 17 years old when he committed the attacks. He was later arrested and pleaded guilty to defacing the websites of Drug Abuse Resistance Education and RSA Security, as well as unauthorized access of the U.S. Army and Air Force computer systems at four military bases. Moran died of a drug overdose in 2013.
EC-Council is a cybersecurity certification, education, training, and services company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Zone-H is an archive of defaced websites. It was established in Estonia on March 2, 2002. A whois request on the domain shows that it was created on February 14, 2002.
Teamp0ison was a computer security research group consisting of 3 to 5 core members. The group gained notoriety in 2011/2012 for its blackhat hacking activities, which included attacks on the United Nations, NASA, NATO, Facebook, Minecraft Pocket Edition Forums, and several other large corporations and government entities. TeaMp0isoN disbanded in 2012 following the arrests of some of its core members, "TriCk", and "MLT".
Anonymous is a decentralized virtual community. They are commonly referred to as an internet-based collective of hacktivists whose goals, like its organization, are decentralized. Anonymous seeks mass awareness and revolution against what the organization perceives as corrupt entities, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Anonymous has had a hacktivist impact. This is a timeline of activities reported to be carried out by the group.
UGNazi is a hacker group. The group conducted a series of cyberattacks, including social engineering, data breach, and denial-of-service attacks, on the websites of various organizations in 2012. Two members of UGNazi were arrested in June 2012; one was incarcerated. In December 2018, two members of UGNazi were arrested in connection with a murder in Manila.
The Syrian Electronic Army is a group of computer hackers which first surfaced online in 2011 to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Using spamming, website defacement, malware, phishing, and denial-of-service attacks, it has targeted terrorist organizations, political opposition groups, western news outlets, human rights groups and websites that are seemingly neutral to the Syrian conflict. It has also hacked government websites in the Middle East and Europe, as well as US defense contractors. As of 2011, the SEA has been "the first Arab country to have a public Internet Army hosted on its national networks to openly launch cyber attacks on its enemies".
NullCrew was a hacktivist group founded in 2012 that took responsibility for multiple high-profile computer attacks against corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies.
HTTPS Everywhere is a discontinued free and open-source browser extension for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox for Android, which was developed collaboratively by The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). It automatically makes websites use a more secure HTTPS connection instead of HTTP, if they support it. The option "Encrypt All Sites Eligible" makes it possible to block and unblock all non-HTTPS browser connections with one click. Due to the widespread adoption of HTTPS on the World Wide Web, and the integration of HTTPS-only mode on major browsers, the extension was retired in January 2023.
On March 27, 2016, hackers under the banner "Anonymous Philippines" hacked into the website of the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and defaced it. The hackers left a message calling for tighter security measures on the vote counting machines (VCM) to be used during the 2016 Philippine general election on May 9. Within the day a separate group of hackers, LulzSec Pilipinas posted an online link to what it claims to be the entire database of COMELEC and updated the post to include three mirror link to the index of the database's downloadable files. The leaked files by LulzSec Pilipinas amounts to 340 gigabytes.
Ghost Squad Hackers ("GSH") is a hacktivist group responsible for several cyber attacks. Former targets of the group include central banks, Fox News, CNN, the United States Armed Forces and the government of Israel. The group is led by a de facto leader known as s1ege, and selects targets primarily for political reasons. The group forms a part of the hacktivist group Anonymous.