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Info: Hacker Historie IV
1990-2002 From Mosaic to Hacktivism
1993 introduced the Mosaic. Basically this was a graphical interface to the Internet. With this program, users with just a basic understanding of computer operation could easily download text files, images and sound. Mosaic, and other web browsers, introduced computer networks to people that had no such previous experience. This simplification of Internet access, as well as the introduction of readily available commercial Internet service providers, meant that BBS’s no longer were the main disseminators of secret knowledge. This knowledge was now available at thousands of web sites available for a much larger audience than previously before (Walleij, 1998).
Another venue of knowledge dissemination that took over from the BBS’s was the IRC networks, chat channels where the users communicated real time through text interfaces. Newcomers to the hacker scene could just listen to the conversation, or lurking as it is called, then join in and ask questions. Mentors could take newcomers in under their wing and learn them hacking skills online. Hacker IRC channels often became discursive areas pertaining to technology, recent hacking experiences and of course social banter (ibid).
The oft-publicized web defacement of corporate and governmental web sites in the mid-nineties caused much public consternation and official condemnation. Defacement usually meant replacing the home page with a message, ranging from random obscenities to political agendas. Semiotic attacks changed the meaning of the homepage, often ridiculing the original website. For example the CIA homepage was changed from Central Intelligence Agency to Central Stupidity Agency and the slogan at the British Labour party website was changed from “Road to the Manifesto” to “Road to Nowhere” (Jordan, 2001)
The nineties also saw the emergence of hacktivism as a form of online civil disobedience both on an individual and organized level. The proclamation of the Electronic Disturbance manifesto (by the Critical Arts Ensemble) in 1994 and the attacks on Mexican government network servers in support of the Zapatista movement in 1998 was hacking with a political motivation (ibid). It has also been suggested that the rise of hacktivism came about as the first generation of web hackers became politicalized in their mid-twenties and political groups became more computerized .
Hacktivism uses a variety of measures to attain their political goals but in general use the Internet for two different uses: Mass Virtual Direct Action (MVDA) and Individual Virtual Direct Action (IVDA) (ibid). MVDA involved the simultaneous use of Internet by many people to create civil disobedience. This could include trying to overflow the World Trade Organization homepage servers or jam the secret US-controlled surveillance Echelon network. IDVA are the use of classic hacker techniques for a political reason. This could be the use of semiotic attacks, network attacks and exploiting network flaws. One such exploit was the BackOrifice by the Cult of the Dead Cow group. CDC claimed the purpose of BO was to publicly uncover the security issues related to individual privacy and safety before other exploiters with a less benign motivation could exploit it (ibid). Other hacktivism activities have taken the form of giving poor economically marginalized people Internet access as a form of digital empowerment (field notes 2000). One of my informants reflected on the impact of hacktivism when I interviewed him at the H2K conference:
I think some of the things they are planning […] are great, such as providing Internet access for the Chinese. What the hacktivists are planning to do is punch some holes in their defences if you will, where they are keeping the Chinese inside and letting them out on that they can see […] the whole global internet. […] I think its time that the Chinese got their eyes open beyond what’s given to them by their government so that they can see what’s really going on out here, and let the citizens of that country decide for themselves whether or not they shall be granted that access and a revolution will occur.
(Spudz, fieldwork interview, July 2000)
The beginning
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