Digital Dissent: The Political Motivations of Malicious Hacktivists

• In Event: Pathways to Cyber Deviance: Motivations, Behaviors, and Radicalization in Digital Spaces

Abstract

Hacktivism—politically or ideologically motivated hacking—blurs the lines between protest, cybercrime, and cyber warfare. This paper explores the political motivations of malicious hacktivists who justify cyberattacks as acts of resistance against perceived geopolitical, ideological, or religious adversaries. While often framed as digital civil disobedience, many hacktivists engage in destructive activities such as website defacements, data breaches, and denial-of-service attacks driven by deeply held beliefs. The data for this paper comes from over a dozen interviews with active malicious hackers based in Turkey. While these hackers engage in a range of hacking of hacking activities, it is clear that a subset of their target selections are driven by socio-political and religious considerations. These include (1) Anti-Israeli cyber campaigns motivated by opinions around the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and (2) perceptions of the United States, Israel, and the wider West as insulting Islam, and (3) Perceptions of Russia as protecting traditional values. By analyzing these cases, the paper highlights how hacktivists construct narratives legitimizing their actions and examines how these beliefs are reinforced through hacktivism. The study discusses implications for global cybersecurity and urges the consideration of the ideological dimensions of hacktivist threats in an evolving digital conflict landscape.

Author

• Zacharias Pieri, University of South Florida