Hacking with a political or humanitarian agenda. In response to the advent of the script kiddy and the corporation of the Internet hacktivism seeks to re-establish the meaningful roots of geek culture (remember "information wants to be free"). It is a kind of technological civil disobedience.

For more information see http://www.hactivism.org or the Cult of the Dead Cow.

Examples of hacktivism include:

• Democrats hacking Republican pages,
• DOSing of the World Trade Organization by an group calling themselves the Electrohippies.

Most hacktivism programs focus upon large group work. That is, many people are needed to participate in the flooding of a website/server.

The most interesting observation about hacktivism so far deals with its effect.
For example, barring people from entering one or two stores in a worldwide chain won't affect their business all that much. However, many companies only have one website. DOSing amazon.com, however, could, (and probably would,) cause a drastic loss in finances. This reasoning could certainly explain why hacktivism is catching on.