protestware en · NOUN
Pronunciation
- (UK) audio
Etymology
From protest + -ware.
Meanings
-
(neologism, uncountable) Software subverted to serve the ends of a political protest, for example by deleting files or displaying propaganda messages.
In fact, what we've seen over the last week is something called “protestware”, and that is some damaging and non-damaging code put into open source projects, specifically focused on organizations in Russia and Belarus. Now, they are making a statement, and that falls under what we call “hacktivism”.
2022 March 21, “CNN Follows Marines Fighting to Take Back Kherson from Russia”, in CNN International First Move with Julia Chatterley, spoken by George Kurtz:Commenting on the malicious code added to the “Vue-cli” application, GitHub user “nm17” said a continued expansion of protestware would erode public trust in open-source software.
2022 March 17, Brian Krebs, “Pro-Ukraine ‘Protestware’ Pushes Antiwar Ads, Geo-Targeted Malware”, in Krebs on Security:developers and project maintainers themselves sometimes engage in this activity as a form of protest or advocacy for their beliefs. This form of hijacking, often referred to as protestware is a concerning trend because it can be difficult for an organisation to recognise it before it’s too late.
2024 January 22, “DevSecOps risks: How can Indian tech mitigate software hijacking”, in Express Computer, Mumbai:In January, two other popular modules called colors and faker were intentionally sabotaged by their maintainer. Is protestware going to become a common problem?
2022 March 19, Lucian Constantin, “Developer sabotages own npm module prompting open-source supply chain security questions”, in CSO Magazine:The roots of protestware date back to the early days of computing. However, recent events in the Russo-Ukrainian war has^([sic]) sparked a new wave of protestware.
2024 September 30, Tanner Finken, Jesse Chen, Sazzadur Rahaman, “An Investigation into Protestware”, in ArXiv: