Because hacking in such a manner is unethical, it makes me wonder why people do such a thing and whether spreading a message in this manner will gain any sympathy from the rest of the world.
Are there incidents that prove defacing a website to be an effective means of garnering support for a political cause?
Has any study been done with regards to the area of hacktivism's effectiveness?
I could not find any study related to the exact question, but hacking a single website to spread a political message is very unlikely to be effective:
On the other hand, using several methods (using legitimate web sites for politics news, fake news on various social networks etc.) can be effective.
This article explains how the political cyberhacker Andrés Sepúlveda managed to use digital techniques to manipulate the outcome of the elections in Mexico.
According to the cited article, these techniques are not very effective overall, but may have important influence on the political outcome:
Many of Sepúlveda’s efforts were unsuccessful, but he has enough wins that he might be able to claim as much influence over the political direction of modern Latin America as anyone in the 21st century.
One "success story" depicts how the hacking was performed:
With a budget of $600,000, the Peña Nieto job was by far his most complex. He led a team of hackers that stole campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices, all to help Peña Nieto, a right-of-center candidate, eke out a victory.
As a side note, this article from Symantec shows a list of security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers:
[...] we discovered that there’s an opportunity for a hacker to modify the code put on a voter’s chip card [...] We found a card reader that fits neatly into the palm of our hand and used it to reset our fake voter chip cards two different ways.
The lack of full disk encryption on the internal hard drive (as well as the external cartridges) presents opportunities for hackers to reprogram and alter ballots.
Also, the methods used by Andrés Sepúlveda are mentioned:
By propagating misinformation, a hacktivist or attacker could cause voter distrust of election results.
In our simulated election, we broadcast our results “live” on YouTube. We found that it’s plausible for hackers to hijack means of communication and spread false results on YouTube, broadcast media, social media and other channels. If voters were to follow the poll leader, they might not choose to go through the trouble of voting in an election if it looked like they were in for a landslide victory.
This is hardly an exhaustive answer. However, I think it is plausible that concerted hacking actions is effective in some contexts.
No, it isn't effective.
Israel's Support has never been higher.
This isn't unexpected, since hacking is illegal and unethical. The sort of person with questionable moral character who would engage in this sort of activity couldn't be trusted to provide a truthful political message. Which is the case here, in the linked hacked site above.
