Anonymous: The Generation Of Hacktivists

Anonymous: The Generation of Hacktivists “We are not hackers. We are not terrorists. We are not violent. We are citizens of the world who bear witness to tyranny, oppression and censorship.” “We resist those who seek to violate our rights as human beings.” “We are everyone and we are no one.” “United as One, Divided by Zero. We are Anonymous.” These are quotes stated by hqanon, or the Headquarter of Anonymous, describing Anonymous and the fight creates against their opponents. Through the past few decades, people's lives have revolved around technology and relied on it to enhance their way of living. People’s main source of interaction with others, acquirement of knowledge, and consumption of goods and services are being scattered across all …show more content…
Anonymous is referred to as a hacktivist group, which is a word that consists of hacker and activist (Badgley). The hacker portion of this word is associated with the abundant knowledge of networking and technology that members in this organization possess. The activist portion in the title of this group is represented as a result of their motives to try and deteriorate companies, organizations, and governments that violate the human rights. Anonymous does not, however, perform any manner of hacking unless a certain cause is specified (Badgley). Though some citizens and leaders see these actions as harsh and criminalistic, the group fulfills the necessary steps that they see fit to bring attention to a cause that has affected others negatively or brings unwanted ideals to the public's …show more content…
There are two popular types of online weapons that this group employs most frequently: DDoS and Doxing (“Denial”). DDoS is an acronym which stands for Distributed Denial of Service, however it does not try to gain personal or secretive data. Instead, it attempts to make a network unavailable for people operating it. Hacktivists such as Anonymous use this because it shuts down access to the website for the whole database of users ("Denial”). DDoS attacks achieve this goal by attempting “to overload a server by sending a large number of requests requiring resource-intensive handling and processing” (“Denial”). By doing so, the router or server can not easily juggle all of the tasks, resulting in a collapse of the network. It is a route that hacktivism takes to show its defiance toward others who do not share the same humanitarian