Why People Legitimise Hacking

One of the most memorable things I read during my dissertation (Pathways into Cybercrime) wasn’t about code at all. It came from psychology research at my own university: when people feel a system or authority is unresponsive to their demands, and they’re angry about it, they become more willing to see hacking against that organisation as legitimate.

The finding

Researchers at Kent (Heering et al., 2020) looked at how people perceive hackers who target organisations. Two things mattered:

• Low external efficacy: the belief that the system doesn’t listen and that normal channels won’t change anything.
• Anger at that system.

Together, they made participants more likely to support hacking as a way to “get back at” organisations that ignore them. Hackers became a proxy for justice, not just criminals.

A related idea: collective efficacy

Social and collective efficacy is the belief that together we can take on a big challenge. Combine “they won’t listen to us” with “but together we can hit back” and you have the emotional fuel of hacktivism, the story of groups like Anonymous.

Why it matters

• For the pathways question: it suggests motivation isn’t only technical curiosity or status. Grievance can make crossing a line feel justified, to the hacker and to the people cheering them on.
• For organisations: more of life happens online, and more organisations hold data worth attacking. Being seen as unresponsive (ignored complaints, opaque decisions, no route to redress) erodes public sympathy when you’re breached. Listening is a security control, of sorts.
• For communities: forums where grievance is the shared identity may be more fertile ground for legitimising harm than forums built around craft (Hacking Forums as Learning Communities).

Caveat

This is a seed. My original note captured the finding, not the full study design, so treat the details as a pointer to the paper rather than a summary of it.

Sources

• Heering, M. S., Travaglino, G. A., Abrams, D. and Goldsack, E. (2020). “If they don’t listen to us, they deserve it”: the effect of external efficacy and anger on the perceived legitimacy of hacking. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.