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Ever since I got involved with computer security, I was
interested in hacker attacks and their relation to expression
of hackers' opinion - whether in politics, art or anything else.
An example would be an outrage over Visa and Mastercard
who decided not to process voluntary donations for Wikileaks
A lot of people downloaded a software that floods servers
of these companies and tries to make their website unavailable.
This worked out, but I don't think it's a good example of hacktivism
as a citizen initiative - and maybe not even a constructive way of expressing one's opinion
Much better solution was using alternative currency called Bitcoin
that does not allow censorship of payments and is value-neutral
General public usually learns about these attacks from media
we usually don't see the attack of the web site when it's actually hacked.
So I think the media image is very important
Media usually use weird words like cyberterorists, cyberwar or digital criminals
I have a very good mental trick that I use in these cases
when I read an article on a topic I understand and it's totally wrong
(not just a simplification, but total nonsense)
I don't read any other articles about topics I do not understand. Saves me a lot of time, try it!
When I read these words in the media and all those opinions and unfounded blah-blah
I usually feel something like this...
Notice especially that beautiful kitchy table with flowers. That's how the word cyberterorism sounds.
So if you find a word like this, I don't recommend reading further.
Let me show you few examples of hacks I personally like
First of them: During 1990s there was a Czechoslovak hacker group called Binary Division
A lot of people were discontented and disappointed by what was here
This is how they recreated the page of HZDS (the ruling party at the time)
There was a hacker manifesto - it was cool back then to include these
I think this type of hacktivism is very close to something like online grafitti or grafitti
People still discuss if grafitti is legitimate form of art
(you are painting on someone else's wall and some people think it's destroying the value)
Let me talk about contemporary hacks. In Czech Republic, there's an art group Ztohoven
you maybe heard of them. They became famous especially after
they did a pirate broadcast on Czech national TV of a fake nuclear blast over Krkonoše mountains.
That started pretty interesting discussion about media and if people should be allowed to do this kind of stuff
As I said, the media image is very important
but in this case, the media itself were part of an artistic critique, so they were not neutral
Members of Ztohoven call their actions in public space
a "media sculpture". They do something, but what people
think and get from it is influenced by the media
Now I'm going to tell you about Moral Reform
It's a project that I got involved with when me and my friend showed members of Ztohoven
how easy it is to send fake text message from any number
It took a place in a special type of hive that works like this:
Lords called "members of parliament" collect money from the whole country - from all of us.
It took a place during a hearing about corrupt politician called David Rath
The MPs were getting text messages from each other, like this one:
“We all have something on each other - a mutual deadlock. I feel really bad about it. Moral reform is the only way out of it. Let’s grasp this opportunity”.
So these politicians started getting these texts that they could not explain to themselves
and stopped listening to Mr. Rath and became interested in their phones
The media reaction was diverse, but most were like "hackers attacked mobile phones of MPs"
which is complete nonsense, because to send a text you don't need to attack anything
Some media even showed some of the texts
You can see them all (also in English) at Ztohoven's web site.
The original ideas were diverse, we could theoretically influence the voting or something like that
The message we wanted to show had to be positive. It should say that when politicians
are no longer embarrased, because their friends in pub don't scold them (if they go to pub, there are bodyguards..)
The idea was to do a different way of letting them understand some important things...
This wasn't the end of it. What followed was an exhibition in Dox gallery
that caused even bigger problem, because on this wall, there were phone numbers
of all politicians including mr. president and there was a cellphone
you could use to send them anonymous text message
The MPs liked this even less than the original project, because they had direct contact with shame
What's the difference between "bad" hacks that are destructive and positive ones that could be considered art?
Hacker Eric S. Raymond said, that "Hackers create things, crackers destroy them"
There are many heuristics, for example states often claim that hackers are evil
and then they hire a huge "hacker army" just to attack a government they don't like
A really good heuristic is also finding out if it's about showing off someone's ego
That "I can do this and most people can't"
or if there's something deeper, something that makes sense on a deeper level
These are the questions that I personally ask myself
The basic critique from the politicians after publishing their phone numbers was
that hackers or members of Ztohoven should also publish their phone numbers
I agree, here's mine, please write me some nice text.
Thank you for listening