In computing, a denial-of-service attack is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled. The range of attacks varies widely, spanning from inundating a server with millions of requests to slow its performance, overwhelming a server with a substantial amount of invalid data, to submitting requests with an illegitimate IP address.
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.
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.
Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.
During the Russo-Georgian War, a series of cyberattacks swamped and disabled websites of numerous South Ossetian, Georgian, Russian and Azerbaijani organisations. The attacks were initiated three weeks before the shooting war began.
Operation Payback was a coordinated, decentralized group of attacks on high-profile opponents of Internet piracy by Internet activists using the "Anonymous" moniker. Operation Payback started as retaliation to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on torrent sites; piracy proponents then decided to launch DDoS attacks on piracy opponents. The initial reaction snowballed into a wave of attacks on major pro-copyright and anti-piracy organizations, law firms, and individuals. The Motion Picture Association of America, the Pirate Party UK and United States Pirate Party criticised the attacks.
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 decentralised 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.
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".
In 2013, there were two major sets of cyberattacks on South Korean targets attributed to elements within North Korea.
OpIsrael (#OpIsrael) is an annual coordinated cyber-attack where hacktivists attack Israeli government and even private websites with DDoS attacks and more. The inaugural campaign was launched in 2013 by Anonymous hackers on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The campaign has since been held annually.
Lizard Squad was a black hat hacking group, mainly known for their claims of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks primarily to disrupt gaming-related services.
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.
Hack Forums is an Internet forum dedicated to discussions related to hacker culture and computer security. The website ranks as the number one website in the "Hacking" category in terms of web-traffic by the analysis company Alexa Internet. The website has been widely reported as facilitating online criminal activity, such as the case of Zachary Shames, who was arrested for selling keylogging software on Hack Forums in 2013 which was used to steal personal information.
The IT Army of Ukraine is a volunteer cyberwarfare organisation created at the end of February 2022 to fight against digital intrusion of Ukrainian information and cyberspace after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The group also conducts offensive cyberwarfare operations, and Chief of Head of State Special Communications Service of Ukraine Victor Zhora said its enlisted hackers would only attack military targets.
Anonymous, a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective, has conducted numerous cyber-operations against Russia since February 2022 when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.
Killnet is a pro-Russia hacker group known for its DoS and DDoS attacks towards government institutions and private companies in several countries during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The group is thought to have been formed sometime around March 2022.
NoName057(16) is a pro-Russian hacker group that first declared itself in March 2022 and claimed responsibility for cyber-attacks on Ukrainian, American and European government agencies, media, and private companies. It is regarded as an unorganized and free pro-Russian activist group seeking to attract attention in Western countries.
