Throughout human history, there have been records of secret societies who strove to right certain wrongs, even if it meant bending or breaking the rules. It is no different in today’s digital era, where a multitude of hacker groups have formed with the supposed noble intent of exposing classified information or compromising the security of organizations, thereby pointing out the flaws in these systems and showing that there is scope for improvement.
In the recent past, there have been several incidents involving hacker groups who have done everything from taking down official government websites to hacking user accounts, just to point out security flaws. But, how far should these hackers be allowed to go in the name of justice before a line is drawn?
Hackers are thought to be antisocial people who prefer to work on their own. While this may be the norm, there are many organized hacker groups that have made a big scene with their large-scale operations. LulzSec, a hacker organization that formed in the middle of 2011, has, since its inception, been a part of several projects to disrupt security and cause mayhem. Their first major attack was against Fox.com, which they attacked after the rapper Common was referred to as ‘vile’ on the Fox News channel. They have leaked user passwords for websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Amazon, etc. They have knocked gaming websites, including Minecraft, League of Legends and, World of Warcraft, offline; which obviously didn’t swing well with public sentiment. At one point they took down the CIA website for two hours. After several coordinated attacks in May and June 2011, the group informed they would be giving their final information release on 26 June. It was recently revealed that the group’s unofficial head, going by the name Sabu, was in fact working for the FBI and helped root out the other members of the organization.
Anonymous is another hacker group named because of coordinated attacks by many different individuals while maintaining their anonymity. The group is not an official organization, it is better described as several people taking part in various hacking exploits working under the name ‘Anonymous’. This group of people have collectively carried out hundreds of distributed denial of service(DDoS) attacks. One of their more recent operations was against Universal Music Group(UMG), which had filed a lawsuit against, and as a result brought down, Megaupload.
What defines the good intentions of a hacker, and where do we draw the line between hacktivism and morality? Most hackers claim that their intentions are not to cause trouble, but rather to see how different security systems work and for the challenge and thrill of getting past them. Most often, such attacks result in the development of a better understanding of the security system and how its various loopholes could be fixed. However at the same time, there have been many cases of hackers accessing restricted information and distributing it to the public, most often to undermine the people they attack or to reveal information they believe is being unfairly hidden from the general population. WikiLeaks is an important example of the latter case; the organization has, for the past few years, gained access to a lot of data from the US government archives that include reports, articles, conversations, etc. that have shaken the world and caused a lot of questions to be asked.
So what’s the conclusion? There are evil hackers, honest hackers, and those who straddle the line between the two, but all hackers have a common curiosity for the way the internet works and how to control it, whether for good or for bad.
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