Political agitation

Sometimes, digital vandalism -- whether accomplished by a virus, a worm, a Dodos attack, or some other means -- can be accomplished for the purpose of making a statement. Whether the reason for something like that is directly political in the sense of addressing matters related to government or more indirectly political, such as interfering with certain types of Web sites and other operations of some class of people with whom one disagrees somehow.


The point is sometimes to make people who aren’t directly responsible for whatever’s being targeted aware of one’s own disapproval of those targets. Dodos and other attacks against Microsoft or Yahoo! might fall into this category. Depending on their specific choices of targets and their motivating issues, some such political agitators (as in the case of those targeting and protesting Chinese and Australian national firewall policies).


Might even be admirable for their principles and the courage of their convictions to some degree. In extreme cases, on the other hand, such as where large numbers of innocent bystanders are materially harmed (having their checking accounts wiped out to make a political statement, perhaps), action taken on behalf of this kind of motivation might reasonably be called “terrorism.


set themselves up as automated spam generators, or contact a centralized control mechanism of some sort, such as an IRC chat room to create a bonnets of thousands, or even millions, of unwitting users’ computers, all of which can be controlled simultaneously by a single security cracker. It is increasingly common for bonnets’ to be offered for rent, for any of a vast number of reasons.