The ugly nature of hacktivism

UP till last year, Nov 5 held little significance for corporations in Singapore, but a spate of hacking incidents changed that. Almost overnight, CEOs were forced into acquaintance with the hacking collective called Anonymous, the Guy Fawkes celebration that it associated itself with and the cyber-havoc that it promised to wreak on that date.

This year, businesses and government agencies must again contemplate the month of November with a shudder, especially with the exposure of more than 300,000 K Box customers' personal data this week by hackers. Now, the karaoke bar chain faces an investigation by the personal data watchdog and ire from its customers. But even as we hold businesses accountable for data protection, we should also train our sights on the aggressors: the hackers.

Hackers are not new, but the hacktivist subset behind the attacks in recent years forms a more nefarious breed. The latter blend a criminal activity with the supposed legitimacy of an adopted cause - a far more worrisome approach than the financially motivated hackings of yore.