Hacktivist Matthew George.

Hacktivist Matthew George. Photo: Simone De Peak

Matthew George loved the internet. The 22-year-old confessed loner from Newcastle used to spend almost all of his waking hours online under the alias "Bush" in chat rooms and social networking sites. He downloaded music and played games.

But in October 2009 this online existence was suddenly threatened. The Rudd government had announced its plan to censor the internet. George was outraged.

A lot of young people can't really be bothered to go out and protest. It's, like, boring. They don't want to go walk around with a sign when [they] can do something else while [protesting]. You just set the computer to run and go off and do other stuff. 

The Internet Censorship Bill, introduced by Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy proposed to block a secret blacklist of "refused classification" websites. The planned filter was "technically impossible" but part of a political agenda, the supermarket storeman says.

George would now add political activism to his previously mundane internet activities, as he began communicating with members of the internet activist group Anonymous. "I decided to go [online] and have a look [at] what was happening. There were a couple of thousand people on online chat ... They were all young. I was talking to the other so-called ringleaders."

These ringleaders were to conceive "Operation Titstorm" - a co-ordinated internet attack by Anonymous members on Conroy's website and that of the prime minister. The attack would be launched on February 12 at 8am and would bombard the sites with spam, sending 7.5 million hits per second, disabling them for three days.

"We hoped to achieve a bit of media attention to why internet censorship was wrong but people kind of got confused by the message because of the name - they thought we all wanted to look at porn," he says with a hint of disappointment.

It was the first and the last time George would be involved in hacktivism, he says. In June, he was charged with inciting others to attack government websites. The magistrate equated his actions to cyber-terrorism.

The word "hacktivism" was added to dictionaries across the world last year. The term has been used for several years by cyber-theorists and media commentators to describe the act of hacking with a political purpose. Activism online dates back to the late 1980s, when a young Julian Assange mounted an attack on a NASA computer system, but this reinvigorated activity has morphed into something bigger and far more dangerous, authorities warn.

Those who call themselves hacktivists stress they are not hackers (one serious hacker could do what would take hundreds, if not thousands, of hacktivists to achieve, George says). Instead, they see themselves as political activists legitimately protesting online through denial-of-service attacks and website defacement. "You can say what you want without fearing what anyone else thinks because you feel like you can get away with anything when you're anonymous," George says.

So when the Australian Federal Police came knocking on his door with a search warrant in June last year, it was a "huge shock".

"I didn't think that I would ever get caught. I was actually downloading connections from other computers in America, so I didn't think the Australian government would be able to track me down."

George was also under the impression that his one-off involvement in "Titstorm" was a legal form of political protest.

"I had no idea that what I was doing was illegal. I had no idea that there was incitement and it was illegal to instruct others to commit a legal [sic] act."

Instead, he had seen hacktivism as an appealing method of protest for his generation.


And that's exactly what George did on the day of Operation Titstorm, setting his computer to attack government websites in the morning before heading to work. When he came home, he jumped online and "chatted a bit" while his computer continued the attack. Eight months later George was in Newcastle Local Court and fined $550. As reported by The Newcastle Herald, magistrate Elaine Truscott said she doubted that George realised how serious his actions were at the time, but it was a "serious offence because of it being able to amount to computer terrorism".

Such a lack of accountability or awareness online is a continual concern for former director and founder of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre Alastair MacGibbon.

"Hacking into someone's account or denial of service is not a legitimate form of protest ... this is political vandalism," MacGibbon says.

"Website defacement, or denial of service attacks, is very different from writing a letter. The impact of hacktivism is increasing and I would expect that to continue. This is a society who doesn't understand the consequences of online. It's a generation who we need to be teaching that what they do online has the same consequences offline. This is irresponsible activism."

Graham Ingham is the managing director of the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team, which has worked with the federal government on cyber vulnerabilities. He says hacktivism is not even on his company's radar.

"From my perspective, the sophistication of the attacks is the critical thing," he says. "Hacktivism has not had the sophistication ... because it relies on large amounts of people and it's generally political. Taking down a website doesn't scare me very much."

Criminal hackers, organised cyber-criminals and state-sponsored cyber attacks generate the most concern, Ingham says.

Hacktivism has long been put down by governments around the world as a public nuisance and nothing more than attention seeking. Recently, however, it has definitely been on the international radar. The 47th Munich Security Conference, held last month, included for the first time a special session on cyber security.

According to The New York Times, this included examining the impact of hacktivism and realities of cyber war.

The internet has exploded from 16 million users in 1995 to more than 1.7 billion today, British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the conference. Obviously, with such numbers, potential dangers of the internet can no longer be ignored.

A week before the conference, the BBC reported that Anonymous had "risen to fame in recent months" launching denial-of-service attacks against firms it regarded as pursuing policies in opposition to its ideal of freedom of the web. Its targets included online giants Amazon, Visa, PayPal and Mastercard, in retaliation for their withdrawal support for WikiLeaks.

During pro-democracy protests in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, the group crashed several government websites in all three countries. Anonymous also crashed the Italian government's website in early February to protest against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

George says Anonymous is about an ideology, rather than a structured group with members or leaders. "Anonymous isn't really a group, it's an idea," he says.

"There [are] no ringleaders, there is no set place for Anonymous to meet, Anonymous is everyone and no one, basically."

But the prized anonymity of the group has been compromised. On January 28, London's Metropolitan Police arrested five male hacktivists aged between 15 and 26 on suspicion of breaking the Computer Misuse Act 1990, as part of an international probe.

In the US, FBI agents conducted 40 raids a week earlier as part of an inquiry into the WikiLeaks retribution attacks.

The boundaries between what is considered a protest, a criminal activity or terrorism online are becoming increasingly blurred, says University of NSW law researcher Keiran Hardy. In his article, Operation Titstorm: Hacktivism or Cyber-Terrorism?, published this year, Hardy examines whether online protests could be prosecuted as acts of terrorism under the Commonwealth criminal code.

"A cyber-protest may not be 'legitimate', and may even be unlawful, but it still does not amount to computer terrorism, and criminal offences should be carefully drafted with this distinction in mind," he says.

"Terrorism is a far cry from what hacktivists, such as Mr George, hope to achieve."

As for George, now branded a terrorist under Australian law, his idyllic assumption of online anonymity has been shattered.


And his aspirations as an online activist?

"I definitely don't plan on bringing down any websites any time soon for any political or non-political reasons."