Social:Protestware

From HandWiki

Protestware is a form of hacktivism where malware is created for a social cause or protest. The term was popularized during the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Uses

  • To describe peacenotwar: after the peacenotwar and node-ipc supply chain attacks on the npm ecosystem.[1][2]
  • To describe es5-ext: after the maintainer added code broadcasting calls for peace to Russian users via the es5-ext npm package.[3]

History

Protestware was first used by the media and security researchers to describe open-source projects who've altered their code to display "stand with Ukraine" messages, or more nefariously, to attack certain groups such Russian or Belarusian citizens.[4]


See also

  • Peacenotwar (malware)
  • Reactions to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
  • npm

References