Hello, and welcome to today’s Tech 101, where we discuss common technology terms for the everyday person to try to bring exposure and understanding to the realm of technology. Today’s topic is a hacktivist. I wanted to throw this one in because this actually has been in the news a lot lately, and I wanted to just kind of bring some exposure and understanding to this.
So a hacktivist is a mixture between a hacker and an activist. So ideally, it is someone who blends technical skills, their understanding of technology, and especially those focused towards the traits of hacking with either a social or political agenda or purpose. They leverage their hacking tools, understanding computer networks, to spotlight where they see injustice, where they try to expose wrongdoing or push for change.
I may get slapped for this one, but you can kind of view them as a digital Robin Hood. They’re leveraging not always the best means, well, let’s be honest, it’s never the best means to bring exposure, to highlight, and to essentially try to bring to justice where they feel something is being done incorrectly. A lot of people call them protesters.
Some people lighten that because of the passion behind what they’re doing and label them as storytellers. But ideally, what they’re doing is disrupting complacency, with so much happening online and such broad global exposure on the internet. They are trying to bring some form of disruption to that complacency.
Finally, they’re trying to force conversations when there’s an internet outage or when a website has been breached. It starts a conversation. A lot of things that they typically do, just to put some sense around it, are they are a group of people who may go around exposing data, exposing secrets, or so forth.
And again, they’re not really always doing it typically for money. They’re doing it because the data exposes the wrongdoing. The secret exposes possibly inappropriate government activity.
There’s a reason or purpose behind what they’re doing. In some cases, they will deface public corporate or government websites. I had a friend several years ago.
He really, truly thought what he was doing was productive and helpful for the organization he was doing this for. But ultimately, he breached their network and posted something on a public-facing website. There was a lot of pushback.
Obviously, it was not a legal activity. His whole purpose, though, was to expose the lack of security within that organization. Right or wrong, he was passionate about it, and he wanted to expose it.
And in some cases, it’s a matter of providing free services, free opportunity, free data, free anything, almost, to marginalized, hurt, or repressed groups or individuals. They’re kind of getting there in that Robin Hood. They’re trying to help.
However, there’s extreme danger here. The first area of danger, in my opinion, is truly that they’re driven by passion. They’re not going to be paid off.
They’re not going to hit a certain amount where they can, quote, retire. These are individuals or organizations who are so focused on trying to bring light, trying to highlight where something is happening inappropriately or incorrectly. Passion becomes their focus.
And in doing so, they can, in a lot of cases, cause a lot of harm and damage. While they are focusing on this passion and trying to bring awareness, the legality of what they’re doing takes a backseat. So it’s almost that get that message out at any cost.
And that makes it very dangerous. So the real question is, how does this impact accountants, tax professionals, or anyone in financial services? And I think just the definition of what a hacktivist is, in a lot of cases, those of us in financial services are really tied to a lot of political situations. Every time there’s a new tax code.
In many cases, a group of individuals is being harmed by those changes. That would be an absolute opportunity for a hacktivist to step in and try to bring light to that harm. Even in the case of stock trading, where we see certain organizations conducting insider trading, that would be an absolute opportunity for a hacktivist.
Honestly, every activity that is completed or event that is fulfilled in financial services is a scary opportunity for a hacktivist. So if you hear the term, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s the mix between a hacker and an activist.
It’s kind of like a modern-day digital Robinhood, only instead of necessarily being about money, it’s usually about exposing wrongdoing and bringing justice. So, hopefully,
this was a little insightful about what a hacktivist is. And stick around for our next Tech 101.
Thanks. Have a great day.
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