the.com/defacement
Graffiti with legal paperwork: changing a website's face without its consent.
means The act of damaging or spoiling the surface or appearance of something — a wall, a statue, a website — usually by marking, altering, or vandalizing it without permission.
from Built from 'de-' (undoing, removal) plus 'face,' rooted in Latin 'facies' meaning appearance or form. To deface, literally, is to strip something of its face — its presentable surface — leaving only the damage behind. The word has carried that same sense since it entered English centuries ago for vandalized monuments and documents, long before it got a second life describing hacked websites.
- classic move
- hackers swap homepage with their own banner
- motive
- often bragging rights, not actual theft
- real damage
- trust, not usually data
- first wave
- 1990s hacktivists loved defacing govt sites