FloodNet - technical definition

A Java applet that can be used to create a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Two hacktivists from the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), Stefan Wray and Ricardo Dominguez, launched a DoS attack with FloodNet against the computer servers of the Mexican government to express their political support for the Zapatistas. In a public forum, Dominguez said that he was not a cracker because he did not try to infiltrate a Website, rearrange it, or deliberately crash a network. Instead, said Dominguez, he and his colleague were “digital Zapatistas,” using the attention they attracted online to criticize the Mexican government, a “military-entertainment complex,” they alleged, that would typically not have heard their viewpoint by normal means.

Another EDT well-publicized event involved a FloodNet attack against the Pentagon Website on September 9, 1998. This time, EDT’s attack was defeated when the U.S. Department of Defense counterattacked with a Java applet called “hostile applet” that caused the hacktivists’ computers to crash. The activists considered taking legal action against the U.S. government because, they argued, the U.S. government violated provisions in the 1878 Posse Comitatus Law prohibiting the use of military action when enforcing domestic law.

See Also: Cracker; Denial of Service (DoS); Exploit; Hacktivism and Hacktivists; Java and JavaScript.