WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks Logo.
According to WikiLeaks.com, the purpose is to “publish and comment on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.” This M.O. is blatant about its purpose as a monitor for government misbehavior and the media has created quite the sensation out of it and its creator, Julian Assange. At 16 Assange was already a well-known hacker and dedicated to ethical computer hacking. In October 2010, WikiLeaks released the “War Logs“. Released were 391,832 documents, some of which detailed U.S. military deliberately ignoring detainee abuse by Iraqi allies and an increase of the civilian-casualty count by 15,000. WikiLeaks has led to Assange being hunted by many governments and even a few calls for his assassination by public officials.
The Blackouts
On Jan. 18 2012, Google, Wikipedia, and Craigslist, some of the most highly visited websites, “blacked out” their homepages in protest against the proposed SOPA laws. SOPA, or Stop Online Piracy Act, sought to greatly increase government control over what was put online. It would have given the DOJ the go ahead to start placing court orders/”take down notices” on many websites. In the past, web companies had been hesitant to involve users in their own battles, so the blackouts were unprecedented. It was one of the first times, that many normal internet users had been personally affected by online hacktivism and it raised awareness of some of the controls that government already has over internet usage.
Cyber Protests against World Bank
For two weeks in September 2012, users of many U.S. banks had trouble accessing certain parts of their accounts. The predecessor of that attack was the long siege against the World Bank Group that started sometime before 2008.