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.
A supply chain attack is a cyber-attack that seeks to damage an organization by targeting less secure elements in the supply chain. A supply chain attack can occur in any industry, from the financial sector, oil industry, to a government sector. A supply chain attack can happen in software or hardware. Cybercriminals typically tamper with the manufacturing or distribution of a product by installing malware or hardware-based spying components. Symantec's 2019 Internet Security Threat Report states that supply chain attacks increased by 78 percent in 2018.
Cyberwarfare by Russia includes denial of service attacks, hacker attacks, dissemination of disinformation and propaganda, participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, internet surveillance using SORM technology, persecution of cyber-dissidents and other active measures. According to investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, some of these activities were coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which was part of the FSB and formerly a part of the 16th KGB department. An analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2017 outlines Russia's view of "Information Countermeasures" or IPb as "strategically decisive and critically important to control its domestic populace and influence adversary states", dividing 'Information Countermeasures' into two categories of "Informational-Technical" and "Informational-Psychological" groups. The former encompasses network operations relating to defense, attack, and exploitation and the latter to "attempts to change people's behavior or beliefs in favor of Russian governmental objectives."
Cyberwarfare by China is the aggregate of all combative activities in the cyberspace which are taken by organs of the People's Republic of China, including affiliated advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, against other countries.
LulzSec was a black hat computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from PlayStation Network in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline. Some security professionals have commented that LulzSec has drawn attention to insecure systems and the dangers of password reuse. It has gained attention due to its high profile targets and the sarcastic messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks. One of the founders of LulzSec was computer security specialist Hector Monsegur, who used the online moniker Sabu. He later helped law enforcement track down other members of the organization as part of a plea deal. At least four associates of LulzSec were arrested in March 2012 as part of this investigation. Prior, British authorities had announced the arrests of two teenagers they alleged were LulzSec members, going by the pseudonyms T-flow and Topiary.
A cyberattack occurs when there is an unauthorized action against computer infrastructure that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its content.
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. is an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas. It provides endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyberattack response services.
The 2018 SingHealth data breach was a data breach incident initiated by unidentified state actors, which happened between 27 June and 4 July 2018. During that period, personal particulars of 1.5 million SingHealth patients and records of outpatient dispensed medicines belonging to 160,000 patients were stolen. Names, National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) numbers, addresses, dates of birth, race, and gender of patients who visited specialist outpatient clinics and polyclinics between 1 May 2015 and 4 July 2018 were maliciously accessed and copied. Information relating to patient diagnosis, test results and doctors' notes were unaffected. Information on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was specifically targeted.
Cyberwarfare is a component of the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine since the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014. While the first attacks on information systems of private enterprises and state institutions of Ukraine were recorded during mass protests in 2013, Russian cyberweapon Uroburos had been around since 2005. Russian cyberwarfare continued with the 2015 Ukraine power grid hack at Christmas 2015 and again in 2016, paralysis of the State Treasury of Ukraine in December 2016, a Mass hacker supply-chain attack in June 2017 and attacks on Ukrainian government websites in January 2022.
In 2020, a major cyberattack suspected to have been committed by a group backed by the Russian government penetrated thousands of organizations globally including multiple parts of the United States federal government, leading to a series of data breaches. The cyberattack and data breach were reported to be among the worst cyber-espionage incidents ever suffered by the U.S., due to the sensitivity and high profile of the targets and the long duration in which the hackers had access. Within days of its discovery, at least 200 organizations around the world had been reported to be affected by the attack, and some of these may also have suffered data breaches. Affected organizations worldwide included NATO, the U.K. government, the European Parliament, Microsoft and others.
During the prelude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, multiple cyberattacks against Ukraine were recorded, as well as some attacks on Russia. The first major cyberattack took place on 14 January 2022, and took down more than a dozen of Ukraine's government websites. According to Ukrainian officials, around 70 government websites, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cabinet of Ministers, and the National and Defense Council (NSDC), were attacked. Most of the sites were restored within hours of the attack. On 15 February, another cyberattack took down multiple government and bank services.
Lapsus$, stylised as LAPSUS$ and classified by Microsoft as Strawberry Tempest, is an international extortion-focused hacker group known for its various cyberattacks against companies and government agencies. The group was active in several countries, and has had its members arrested in Brazil and the UK in 2022. According to City of London Police at least two of the members were teenagers.
The 23andMe data leak was a data breach at personal genomics company 23andMe reported in October 2023. The cyberattack gathered profile and ethnicity information from millions of users. The affected customers were reported as primarily Ashkenazi Jews but also including hundreds of thousands of ethnically Chinese users. The hacker(s) stole information customers had chosen to share with their DNA matches, which could include name, profile photo, birth year, location, family surnames, grandparents' birthplaces, ethnicity estimates, mitochondrial DNA haplogroup, Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup, link to external family tree, and any text content a customer had optionally included in their "About" section. On October 6, 2023, the company confirmed that the hacker(s) had illicitly accessed data on approximately 6.9 million users.
On the morning of June 8, 2024, Kadokawa's website and the Japanese video-sharing platform Niconico, suffered a ransomware cyberattack by a Russian-linked hacker group called BlackSuit who claimed responsibility for the attack.
