Cybercrime Report: Politically Motivated Hacking, Impact, and Defenses

This report delves into the escalating issue of politically motivated hacking, examining its origins, methods, and far-reaching consequences. It begins by defining the concept of hacking and its evolution into hacktivism, where cyberattacks are used to advance political or social agendas. The report then explores the impact of recent politically motivated cyberattacks, including those targeting government agencies and political parties, highlighting examples such as the attacks on the US Democratic Party and the WannaCry ransomware. The analysis extends to the Australian context, discussing the increasing threat of foreign powers using cyberattacks to undermine the government and influence political discourse. Furthermore, the report examines various examples of politically motivated cyberattacks, detailing their targets, techniques, and the types of data compromised. Finally, the report evaluates the available defenses against such attacks, offering recommendations for strengthening cybersecurity measures and protecting against future threats. The report emphasizes the need for increased cybersecurity budgets and implementation of advanced security technologies to safeguard against these evolving threats.

Cybercrime
Politically Motivated Hacking

CYBERCRIME
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Politically Motivated Hacking...................................................................................................3
Impact of Recent Politically Motivated Cyber Attacks.............................................................3
Increasing threat in Australia.....................................................................................................4
Examples of Politically Motivated Cyber Attacks.....................................................................5
Defences Available....................................................................................................................6
Effectiveness of defences.......................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9
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Introduction
In the past few decades, the technology has grown at a substantial rate. People and
organisations rely on modern technologies in order to perform their work. One of the most
important advancement has been the popularity of the internet and online based services. Due
to ease of access to a stable and fast internet connection, corporations rely on them to perform
their basic operations. People also rely on the internet for performing their work and entertain
themselves. With the increase in the number of online users, the number of data stored online
has grown significantly. There are a number of advantages which people and corporations
receive due to use of the internet to perform their operations such as ease of use, global
connections, faster speed, unlimited storage, and others (Bamrara, 2015). However, there are
many disadvantages of the use of internet and online based services as well such as data
privacy concerns, cyber-attacks, data breach, reliance on internet connection, downtime of
servers and others.
Along with the popularity of the internet, the risk of cyber-attacks has grown substantially.
The internet is a global platform due to which cybercriminals from all across the globe focus
on hacking into the servers of organisations and people in order to gain unauthorised access
and collect their data. Recently, the number of politically motivated hacking has increased
significantly which increases the concern of people and organisations around the world. The
objective of cybercriminals in politically motivated hacking is to leak the confidential
information about a political group or an organisation rather than focusing on gaining
personal benefits (Green, 2015). The threat of politically motivated hacking attacks is
growing as the global political environment remained unstable. In this report, the ramification
of politically motivated hacking will be discussed by evaluating relevant media articles.
Furthermore, this report will evaluate different examples of politically motivated hacking
attacks in order to assess their impact on organisations and the society. This report will also
evaluate the current defences against it along with their effectiveness.
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Politically Motivated Hacking
Hacking is referred to an act of gaining unauthorised intrusion into a company in order to
gain an unfair advantage. Cybercriminals hack into the servers of organisations to collect
their confidential data and shut down their operations. In past few years, the number of
politically motivated hacking attacks has grown substantially. These attacks are a part of
Hacktivism is referred to an act of hacking for politically or socially motivated purposes; the
people who conduct Hacktivism are called hacktivists (Vegh, 2013). Generally, the purpose
of hackers is to collect confidential information or unauthorised access to the servers of a
company for personal gain or causing harm to others. On the other hand, the purpose of
hacktivists is to raise awareness regarding social or political issues by leaking confidential
data of an organisation. The Hacktivism attacks are considered as more dangerous than
compared to other hacking attacks because the main aim of hacktivists is to demolish the
reputation of a political figure or party and make them humiliate in front of everyone rather
than gaining personal profit (Declan, 2016). Recent media articles have shown that the threat
of politically motivated hacking has increased substantially and it is affecting the political
environment across the globe.
Impact of Recent Politically Motivated Cyber Attacks
In politically motivated hacking attacks, the hackers are not interested in earning profits
rather they wanted to make a political statement by hacking into the account or servers of
global political leaders or parties. In June 2017, an international cyber-attack hit many parts
of Asia, Europe and the United States. Due to the cyber-attack, tens of thousands of
computers in hospitals, government offices and banks started to fail to work across the globe.
The New York Times posted a story on the attack which provides that over 200,000
computers were crippled by the hack in over 150 countries (Goldman, 2017). The attack
affected the companies in the United States less than compared to other nations because a
British cybersecurity expert stopped the attack from the spread in the US-based organisations.
It was revealed that the hackers found a flaw in the Microsoft Windows operating system,
and they exploited such flaw which was first discovered in the US National Security Agency
(Wong and Solon, 2017). In the first instance, it was found out that the purpose of the hack
was to collect profit from all these organisations because the hackers were demanding a
ransom of $300 in Bitcoin (Goldman, 2017).
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Experts provided that the hackers might be able to collect more than $1 billion from
individual across the globe whose computers were hacked. The hack affected many large
organisations such as the Russian Interior Ministry, Britain’s National Health Service and
FedEx. It was later found out that the attack was conducted through a virus called “wiper”
and it was spread in the computers of these organisations purely for destructive purposes. It
was later revealed that the malware was originated in Ukraine on the Constitution Day of the
country and one computer scientist provided that the purpose of the attack was to cause chaos
rather than earning money. It was provided in the news that many Ukrainians provided that
they suspect Russia is the culprit for this cyber-attack. Computer scientists provided that
cyber-attacks have always been there, and they are continuously affecting organisations
across the globe. However, the difference is their motivation which has become more social
or political oriented. William Robertson, an assistant professor in computer science, agreed
with this statement, and he provided that there is an increase in nation-state malware cropping
based on which the cyberspace is becoming more militarised to achieve geopolitical
objectives (Kornwitz, 2017).
Other than this attack, a WannaCry Ransomware attack occurred in May 2017 in which the
hackers used hacking tools which were stolen from the National Security Agency. The
hacking tools were leaking online by a cybercriminal group called the Shadow Brokers. In
this attack, the WannaCry malware affected more than 300,000 computers in over 150
countries across the globe and during this process the hacker group made over $80,000. It
was revealed that the hackers behind the wiper, dubbed “Petya”, have generated less than
$10,000 from the attack by stating that money was not their primary objective (Hern, 2017).
It is another good example in which the hacking was focused on negatively affecting and
crippling the operations of government agencies rather than focusing on generating profits.
According to Robertson, during these attacks, victims should not pay any ransom to the
attackers because it will not assist them in getting their data back (Kornwitz, 2017).
Increasing threat in Australia
In case of Australia, the politically motivated attacks are a new threat which is quickly
spreading and crippling the political organisations in the country. Stewart (2016) provided
that the country faces a new threat of politically motivated cyber-attacks which are conducted
by foreign powers in order to undermine the government of Australia and to embarrass the
decision makers and senior politicians. Generally, the threat includes hacking into the private
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emails and data of political entities and parties in order to leak their data and to embarrass
them at a global level. According to Australian security agencies, the threat of cyber warfare
is increasing at an alarming rate, and it focuses on political and social aspects whereas
traditionally it was focused on strategic and economic targets. For example, in June 2016,
after leaking of over 19,000 private emails of Democratic National Party in Washington
resulted in leaking the information about political games which run in the background of
these parties (Timberg et al., 2017). The leak led to a global level humiliation due to which
the Chairwoman of DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned from her post. According to
Dan Tehan, cybersecurity assistance of the Prime Minister of Australia, these attacks
represent a new type of cyber-attacks which are called cyber influencing in which the purpose
of the hackers is to influence the political environment by leaking confidential information
rather than gaining personal gain (Stewart, 2016).
He further told that the attack on DNC in the US was a good wake up call for Australia to
take appropriate cybersecurity measures to take guard against this threat. He told that it is less
likely that the foreign powers will use cyber espionage in order to manipulate or infiltrate the
political environment in Australia; however, the most likely candidates are China and Russia
(Stewart, 2016). For example, China attempts to influence the political environment in
Australia through donations and other benefits which resulted in the resignation of Sam
Dastyair from Labour’s frontbench. According to the security intelligence of Australia,
Russian and Chinese hackers are the most persistent which it comes to taking attempts for
infiltrating or breaching the cybersecurity of government agencies in Australia along with
private business operating in the country for economic or strategic intelligence (Uhlmann,
2015). As per Mr Tehan, the Australia government has taken appropriate steps in order to
prevent the potential threat of politically motivated cyber-attacks (Stewart, 2016). The
government is investing in increasing its defence against the cyber-attacks which are
motivated to cripple the political environment in the country and adversely affecting the
political entities.
Examples of Politically Motivated Cyber Attacks
The US Democratic Party
The attack on the Democratic National Committee in which the hackers stoles over 19
thousand private emails and leaked them to Wikileaks. The purpose of the leak was to reveal
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information about Bernie Sanders who was the main rival of Hillary Clinton. After the
incident, Debbie Schultz, chairwoman of DNC, was forced to resign from her post (Hosenball
et al., 2016). The information leaked by the hackers includes information about the donors of
the party including their name, email address along with credit card information.
Operation Cleaver
Another example of politically motivated cyber-attacks is operation cleaver in which cyber
criminals attacked critical infrastructure of 16 nations around the world, and the attack was
linked to the Iranian hackers. After the incident, Cylance, a cyber-security firm, documented
the Operation Cleaver and investigated the incident for a period of two years. It was revealed
that the attack affected over fifty targets from different critical industries which include oil
and gas, airlines and airports, universities, telecommunications companies and government
agencies (Vijayan, 2014). Later, it was revealed that the hacking team which was involved in
the operation cleaver was based in Tehran. During the hack, a large amount of data was
extracted and breached by the hackers. In this data, sensitive information regarding the
employee information and schedule, information about the airport and aircraft security, PDFs
of networks, identification photos, and housing electricity and telecom diagrams were leaked
(Khandelwal, 2014).
Shadow Network
In this attack, an espionage operation was conducted by the Shadow Network which stole
classified documents from the government of India, the office of Dalai Lama and many
others agencies. The classified documents include information about the embassies which are
situated abroad, details regarding security system of India and NATO troop activities which
are conducting in Afghanistan. In this attack, the Shadow Network used the cloud computing
platforms and social networks to collect the classified information. The details regarding the
cyber-attacks were collected by the Information Warfare Monitor which is based on the
Palantir technology (Danchev, 2010). The technology was able to identify that the
cybercriminals who were from China conducted the attack.
Defences Available
Following are few defences available against the politically motivated cyber-attacks, and
these recommendations can protect politicians and political parties from these attacks.
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 The government agencies should increase their budget of cybersecurity in order to
implement new security technology for protecting themselves from the
cybercriminals. The heavily rely on the online-based technology and in order to
protect their data online, they should install security software and firewalls to keep
their data secure (Amoroso, 2011).
 The government officials should focus on improving their cybersecurity by learning
about the appropriate security measures which they can take to prevent themselves
from cyber-attacks. They should use strong security passwords and take other security
measures such as two-step verification and security checkups to protect their data
which is stored online.
 The government should take strict actions against the cybercriminals who use their
resources to hack into the data of political parties and leak such information online.
The government should implement strict policies in order to prevent cyber-attacks,
and they should take precautionary measures to avoid such cyber-attacks.
Effectiveness of defences
These defences can be taken by politicians and political parties, however, it should be
admitted that there is no “silver bullet” solution to prevent the threat of politically motivated
cyber-attacks. However, taking appropriate security measures and increasing the awareness
about the issues can assist in mitigating the risk and potential impact of politically motivated
cyber-attacks. Thus, these defences are not effective to protect politicians and political parties
across the globe.
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Conclusion
From the above observations, it can be concluded that the number of politically motivated
cyber-attacks has increased substantially in the past few years. These attacks are more
dangerous than compared to other cyber-attacks because the primary purpose of these attacks
is to demolish the reputation of political parties and to leak their confidential information to
the public. The increasing threat of politically motivated hacking has been well documented
by the recent media which spread the awareness about the issue at a global level. Many
cyber-attacks have resulted in leaking the classified information about government agencies
in the public which negatively affects the reputation of the agency along with its members. A
good example is the leak of emails of the Democratic National Party which resulted in the
forced resignation of its chairwoman. The threat of these attacks is increasing globally, and
the government agencies are required to take appropriate securities measures in order to
protect themselves and their data from leaking on the web.
Various defences against the cyber-attacks are provided in the report which can assist the
government agencies and their agents to protect their private data from breaching. They
should increase their cybersecurity budget in order to install the latest security software and
firewalls to protect their data from the online breach. The government officials should take
appropriate security measuring such as the use of strong passwords and two-step verification
to protect themselves from cyber-attacks. The government should implement strict policies to
prevent politically motivated cyber-attacks. However, these defences are not effective, and
they should admit the fact that it is difficult to prevent these attacks. The growth in politically
motivated cyber-attacks creates new potential threats for government agencies across the
globe which increases the requirement of effective cybersecurity infrastructure.
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