Hacktivism: The Chaos Computer Club

Hacktivism: The Chaos Computer Club  

The Chaos Computer Club, founded in 1981, is Europe’s largest association of hackers. As an organization they stand for ‘freedom of information’ and aim to provide ‘information about technical and societal issues’ to the public. The club currently advocates for a long list of social issues including transparency in government, the human right to communication, and universal access to computers and technological infrastructure. With such a wide range of interests comes quite a few branches and localized chapters that fall under the umbrella of the CCC.  

CCC’s Branches  

The CCC was originally incorporated in Germany, but it has now expanded across Europe. Their local chapters throughout Germany and other German speaking countries are called Erfa-Kreises. About five years after their founding, CCC chapters began to pop up in Switzerland. They eventually grew so large that the Chaos Computer Club Schweiz became the CCC’s independent sister association.  Regardless, each chapter shares the same goals as their parent association. 

 Outreach  

The CCC is known for being a very active organization that hosts annual events and consistently publishes articles and campaigns for advocacy. The Chaos Communication Congress is Europe's largest hacker gathering. Hosted by the CCC, the Choas Communication Congress has been held every December since 1984 at the Congress Center in Hamburg Germany. 2017 had the highest attendance at 15,000 participants. Each year the Chaos Communication Congress presents speakers, assemblies or tables for group collaboration, and spaces for smaller hacking groups.  

Every four years the CCC also hosts the Chaos Communication Camp which is an international outdoor gathering for hackers. Each participant pitches a tent and spends a couple of days listening to speakers and connecting with vendors and other hackers.  

The CCC also publishes a magazine called Datenschleuder and posts a monthly radio show called Chaosradio. Both focus on discussing the previously mentioned points of advocacy.  Their most regular points of public outreach include publishing information security problems, participating as expert witnesses for the German court, and regular political campaigning. 

Hacks 

The groups’ first big hack took place in 1984 when they targeted Bildschirmtext, a computer network in west Germany. Their hack caused the system to transfer $131,600 into the group's bank account. This hack was carried out just days after Deutsche Bundespost, Bildschirmtext’s agency, publicly dismissed claims from the CCC that their system had security issues. The CCC returned all of the money a day later in front of the press which established them as advanced hacktivism group in the public eye.  

The group began to get into trouble in 1987 when a loosely affiliated member, Karl Koch, led a group of hackers to break into US government computers and sell source code to the Soviet KGB. This is known as the first case of cyberespionage and landed the CCC in the press yet again, this time for negatively.  

To celebrate their twentieth birthday, the CCC hosted an interactive light installation that made an entire building in Germany look like a giant computer screen. They went on to do it again in 2002, this time in Canada. 

In 2008 the CCC started a campaign against the use of biometric data with a focus on identity devices like e-passports. During the campaign the CCC obtained the fingerprints of the German Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schauble, who was a long-time member of German parliament. They then published the fingerprints in their magazine to encourage users to dupe fingerprint readers.  

One of their biggest political campaigns was executed in 2011 when the group published an analysis of the Staatstrojaner which was a German computer surveillance program used by police for wiretapping. Their analysis found that the program actually had the ability to remotely control targeted computers. It also gave police the ability to capture screenshots and run code on those computers. These functions conflicted with the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany who ruled that the program was to be used for telephone wiretapping only. The CCC’s analysis caused public uproar especially once the Federal Ministry of the Interior publicly denied that the program was being used by the Federal Criminal Police Office. Because of this statement, the public became increasingly worried that state-level police were using the tool, which was never confirmed nor denied.  

The group also had a few more run-ins with unsecured biometric systems. First the CCC was able to unlock an iPhone 5S with only a picture of a fingerprint on a glass surface. Later, they were able to unlock a Samsung Galaxy S8 which used iris recognition. The CCC used high resolution photographs to break into multiple members’ Samsung phones. In both instances, the group broke into phones of their own members simply to prove that the authentication systems were flawed. 

The Chaos Computer club has been able to establish themselves as a well-known hacking group across the world. They have arguably the best outreach of any hacking group through their website and various publications. They do, however, teeter on illegal hacking quite frequently. With such robust goals there is no doubt that the group plans to continue their hacktivism endeavors in the future.