Hacktivism, or the nonviolent use of legal and/or illegal digital tools in pursuit of political ends, has become one of the most lethal weapons in the digital era. It’s capable of single-handedly exposing corruption and venality, and waging war between and among countries. Hacktivism dented US-China relations, as well as took down websites belonging to governments and corporations across the globe.

In the cyber realm, citizens almost have as much power as the bigwigs evident in the dynamic shifting of power that sometimes bring huge organizations into their knees.

There are four types of hackers: White Hat, Grey Hat, Hacktivists and Blackhat. The first one breaks security mostly for altruistic reasons and with least malice. The second one hacks with ambiguous code of ethics and ends up being neither altruistic nor vicious. The third one can be either of the two but with political ends. Lastly, black hat hackers hack to carry out criminal activities or simply to show off their skills.

The first act of hacktivism was demonstrated in 1989 when protestors of nuclear armaments used WANK worm to change the login screen of many computers connected to DOE, HEPNET and NASA. Check out more of hacktivism’s history here.

Recently, the Syrian government employed hackers to get a heads up of what their adversaries are doing. They do it by impersonating opposition members on social media networks to interact with their potential allies and get them to download a Trojan. This hacks the victims’ social media and email accounts, take screen shots, view content of folders and log keystrokes to send to a hidden IP address.

Perhaps the most notorious hacktivist group today, Anonymous has been making headlines since 2010. They took down Mastercard and Visa when they stopped payments to WikiLeaks, as well as attacked Tunisian and Egyptioan government websites. They also breached Biotech giant Monsanto to exact revenge for their crimes against humanity (the company is behind Agent Orange during the Vietnam War which killed or incapacitated 400,000 people and gave 500,000 babies birth defects. Anonymous was also responsible for #Operation Darknet which took down 40 child pornography sites, as well as mortified DOJ and FBI sites for shutting down Megaupload because of SOPA.

US is home to 66.1 percent of hackers, the world’s majority. Hackjobs come in many forms from credit card fraud to massive political protects.