Hacktivism is the act of misusing a computer system or network for a socially or politically motivated reason. Individuals who perform hacktivism are known as hacktivists.


Real life example of Hacktivism:

As hacktivism is a newer concept, is important to identify some of the larger incidents of hacktivism and identify reasons that these incidents took place.
This will assist in helping organizations understand some of the impetus behind hacktivism and perhaps analyze methods that they can utilize to avoid becoming a victim of hacktivism.

OpVenezuela:

In 2014, domestic uprisings in protest of Venezuelan government repression and censorship sparked an attack by the groups Anonymous, Lulzsec and Binary Guardians.
This widespread campaign of DDoS attacks and government website defacing by these cyber actors was to protest the Maduro government.
Furthermore, activists were able to gain access to the official Twitter account of President Maduro and posted tweets saying 'No se metan con los mejores,
hacked by @LulzSecPeru' or 'Don't mess with the best.' The primary reasoning behind these hacks was directly related to the inability to air grievances and to political opposition against censorship and state violence.

OpOlympicHacking:

Anonymous Brazil and ASO, acting as a hacker team, went after the Rio Olympic Games in August 2016. The protest was in response to the inordinate amount of funds the group felt were being spent on the Olympics,
rather than meaningful purposes within Brazil itself. Again, coordinated DDoS attacks against certain targets, in conjunction with a series of information leaks on companies that assisted with funding the Olympic Games,
were the primary attack vectors. National and local governments as well as sports organizations experienced DDoS and DoX or 'Dropping the box' attacks that leaked information and exposed sensitive data.
Doxxing is the search for and publishing of private or identifying information about a particular individual or organization on the Internet, typically with malicious intent