In close to 75% of cases, hacktivist targets were warned ahead of time that they would face an attack, a tactic that rarely if ever is used by financially-motivated hackers.

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Their latest tactic has been to attack their opponents directly.

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Mr Sharon's move was partly a response to a domestic outcry about the attack, but it was also a clever tactic: it forced Mr Abbas, basking in international praise for his strong and relatively clean election victory, to jump back to concentrating on Israel's main concern, its own security.

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Yet their most effective tactic could yet be to melt away from this attack only to reform again later.

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This tactic fails too often because criminals are adept at obfuscating their attack code, allowing their activity to remain undetected for long periods of time.

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If Clinton seems inclined not to play the attack dog, one reason may be that she doesn't believe it is a tactic that is needed.

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Now comes Chief Executive Steve Ballmer's latest would-be Google-toppling tactic (after his failed bid to take over Yahoo): a sneak attack using the newly launched version of Microsoft's dominant Web browser, Internet Explorer.

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