Should the use of hacktivists by a country against enemy organizations be considered an act of war? Why or why not? How about the use of cyberterrorists?

Explanation:

Hacktivist comes from the combination of two words --- "Hack" and " Activism" .

Hacktivist perform hacktivism that means they make use of technology and knowledge to support as well as promote the political agenda and any kind of change in the social event.

Cyberterrorism, on the other hand uses internet and technology and conduct terrorism and other anti national activities like to coerce the societies or the governments in pursuit of their goals which are  religious, ideological or political.

While Hacktivism is used for a political cause, and is done in a peaceful manner; whereas cyber terrorism tries to grab the attention of the public through their aggressive ways, specifically by putting fear among the public.

But there is no instance of any person of getting killed by a cyber-attack or cyber terrorism. The larger damage is however done by those viruses or malware which gets into other persons computers or enemy organization computer system and weakens them and steals information and data. They damage and harm the economy in a larger scale.

When Chinese government first introduced the Trojan virus on the computer systems of their opponents abroad, is that can be called as Hacktivism? In  essence, this act may be called as cyber terrorism and not hacktivism. Because the Chinese Government intend to cause major economic damage and harm to their opponents or enemy organization by targeting the software giants in the West.

These companies crashed and and many left jobless and unemployment, they caused economic problems and damage to the technologies.  However, the Chinese Government's perspective on this is that they addresses such a thing as hacktivism as it advocates the state censorship by filtering the politically or the socially-unacceptable ideas in their e-mail.

Thus, the answer is relative as to whose perspective we are looking. Either we are taking the perspective of the Chinese government or that of the enemy organization which is affected by the act of the state censorship and targeting the Western software giants.

Cyberterrorism will somehow become a serious threat to the society when people adept at hacking will sympathize and also align with terrorists activities and cause. It has become appealing since some of computer programs have the features that are easily exploited and conducive for committing cyber terrorism.