“Hactivists,” or those who hack into computer systems for politically or socially motivated reasons, make the news all the time. Seemingly every week, self-styled hacktivists penetrate corporate, government, and individual networks and accounts for political ends. Some hacktivists seek to stall climate change while others troll and harass climate activists. In ongoing conflicts today, such as the wars between Russian and Ukraine or Israel and Hamas, hacktivists organize volunteer organizations and are mobilized by militaries on all sides of conflicts. This leaves us wondering: who are hacktivists and what, or who, are they hacking for? Hacktivist politics are contradictory but share certain political values across groups. In this talk, we’ll go back to the origins of hacktivism in the 1960s to explain how hacktivism has evolved — and how the rest of us changed in response.