 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Website defacement" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Website defacement is an attack on awebsite that changes the visual appearance of awebsite or aweb page. These are typically the work ofhackers, who break into aweb server and replace the hostedwebsite withmalware or a website of their own. Defacement is generally meant as a kind of electronicgraffiti and, like other forms ofvandalism, is used to spread messages bypolitically motivated "cyber protesters" orhacktivists.[1] Website defacement can involve adding questionable content, removing or changing existing content to make it questionable, or including nonsensical or whimsical references to websites or publicly editable repositories to harm its reputation. Methods such as aweb shell may be used to aid in website defacement.
Religious andgovernment websites are regularly targeted by hackers in order to display political or religious beliefs, whilst defacing the views and beliefs of others.[2] Disturbing images and offensive phrases might be displayed in the process, as well as asignature of sorts, to show who was responsible for the defacement. Websites are not only defaced for political reasons; many defacers do it just for the thrill. For example, there are online contests in which hackers are awarded points for defacing the largest number of websites in a specified amount of time.[3]Corporations are also targeted more often than other websites on theWorld Wide Web and they often seek to take measures to protect themselves from defacement or hacking in general. Websites represent the image of a company or organisation for whom defacement may cause significant loss. Visitors may lose faith in sites that cannot promise security and will become wary of performingonline transactions. After defacement, sites have to be shut down for repairs and security review, sometimes for an extended period of time, causing expenses and loss of profit and value.
In 2024, activists hacked theInstagram account of theBerlinale film festival to advocate a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Their message read in part, "From our unresolved Nazi past toour genocidal present, we have always been on the wrong side of history." The film festival denounced the hack and said it was filing criminal charges.[4][5]
 | ThisWorld Wide Web–related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byadding missing information. |