Hacktivism Is Back and Messier Than Ever

Russian troops have burned cities to the ground, raped and tortured civilians, and committed scores of potential war crimes during the war in Ukraine. Lawmakers across Europe labeled Russia a state sponsor of terrorism and called for ties with the country to be reduced further. The declaration was immediately responded to. The website of the European Parliament was attacked.

The website of the Parliament was disrupted by an unsophisticated attack. The attack was claimed by a pro-Russian group. The hacktivist group has targeted hundreds of organizations around the world this year and had a few small successes. There has been one player in the surge.

The re-emergence of hacktivism has occurred on a large scale. Hacktivist groups on both sides of the conflict were spawned by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The new wave of hacktivism, which varies between groups and countries, comes with new tactics and approaches, as well as blurring lines between hacktivism and government-sponsored attacks.

"It was definitely withering for some time, but I'm not going to say that hacktivism was dying, but it was definitely withering for some time." Low-level disruptions and more sophisticated attacks that could be cover for a nation-state's hacking have been the norm for the past four or five years. The current situation has more players in the space and a more beefier middle ground.

There was a spike in hacktivism activity after Russia invaded Ukraine. New groups were formed after the resurrection of the old collective. The IT Army, a group of hackers from around the world, has been attacking Russian targets with distributed denial of service attacks. A speech by Putin was delayed due to a cyberattack. Hundreds of gigabytes of data from Russia were published online by other hacktivist groups.

There are pro-Russian hacktivist groups on the other side of the conflict. Killnet, No Name 057, From Russia With Love, and XakNet are some of the other ones. The most active group is Killnet. Around 650 targets have been targeted since April. The European Parliament's targets have mostly been countries that are against Russia. The group mostly uses distributed denial of service attacks and appeals to Russian speakers.

There is still an outsize place for distributed denial of service attacks. The FBI said those behind the attacks have minimal impact on their victims. The FBI said that hacktivists often pick targets perceived to have a greater perceived impact than actual disruptions of operations. The bark is not always better than the bite.