There comes a moment in some violent anti-capitalist protests where genuine if illegal protest becomes mindless thuggery; for example turning from daubing slogans on the windows of the nearest bank, to throwing objects through the windows of the small independent shop next door. And you do have to wonder if those “hacktivists” who are supporting Julian Assange’s wish to be given safe passage to Ecuador have reached beyond that point.
First of all, I should point out that whilst I’m a supporter of WikiLeaks – or at least the idea of a website where whistleblowers can responsibly publish leaked material in raw form – I’m no supporter of Julian Assange in his attempt at escaping justice. A mentioned previously, I believe he should go back to Sweden to face the charges that will be made once he arrives.
But neither do I think that Julian Assange’s supporters should be silenced however mistaken they are about the situation. They have a right to protest, and I’m not even opposed to a bit of responsible “hacktivism” – in my private life I’m quite willing to go along with the ideal that sometimes it is ethical to break the law. But I also believe that the current flood of ‘hacktivism” is going just a little bit too far.
Those who have been reading just the mainstream media (and here) may be under the impression that the hacktivists have been attacking just a few places; more relevant media makes it plain that there is something more widespread. The first story mentions Cambridge University; none of the stories mentions that the hacktivists have claimed to have broken into up to 5 universities. The list of victims of this week’s surge seems to include :-
- Up to 5 UK Universities.
- One or possibly two UK police forces.
- A UK recruitment agency (which just so happens to mention a couple of UK government bodies).
- A Pakistani agency specialising in assisting students to come to the UK, or other English-speaking countries.
- Plus a few UK government agencies.
And this list looks a little random to me.
It’s not that difficult to break into a website – even I could do it, but the question to ask is just how many websites did they rattle the doorknobs of before they found these low-hanging fruits? And it’s always worth remembering the old classic cartoon by xkcd.com :-
Of course they didn’t just widdle a picture of Julian Assange over the front page of a web site; they also broke into some databases and stole some personal information! That’s a bit more serious. And in the case of the information grabbed from the police, it’s a lot more serious.
But if you look closely at the data stolen from the UK universities involved, it becomes a little less dramatic. It would appear that the hackers have managed to break into a few databases used by various departmental web applications. Web applications often use databases as a convenient place to “stash” stuff including account details, which is what appears to have been leaked here. These account details are normally separate from any other account details (unless of course the owner of the account uses the same password), and give access only to the web application itself.
It does not appear that any core business function data has been exposed by this – i.e. the personal details of all the students for example. If it were not for Julian Assange’s name being attached to the incident, it is very likely that the media would not be interested in the story itself which would make it far less serious for the institutions concerned.
When you come down to it, Julian Assange’s real supporters should probably be a bit dismayed by this mindless thuggery – it doesn’t reflect well on their protests if it appears the best hacktivists that they can get to support them are rather on the low end of the scale. Of course a conspiracy theorist might take this as evidence that the hacktivists here are actually deliberate making the supporters of Julian Assange look bad.