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Glite Dictionary
🧱 Damage to appearance 💻 Website vandalism
defacement

defacement

1 7.6
Change to a website made without permission to show rude political messages
  • noun
  • /dɪˈfeɪsmənt/
  • Texting
translation icon : defacement
  • While the Israeli government almost certainly has backups of the aforementioned databases, these attacks as well as the defacements show Anonymous isn't just doing its usual spree of overloading target sites.

Examples

  • The hacker was arrested for the defacement of several government websites.

  • There are also plenty of defacements, and as of a few minutes ago, databases have also been wiped.

    Blog text (12)

  • There have so far been hundreds of takedowns and defacements of sites by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks; one Pastebin trying to list them all includes 659 websites.

    Blog text (12)

  • After the defacement of her personal blog, she worked quickly to restore its original content.

  • Authorities are investigating the defacement of the school’s website that displayed inappropriate images.

Synonyms

vandalism
vsdefacement
  • Texting
1 3.9

Damage done on purpose to websites or online content, like replacing pages with offensive images

is limited to unauthorized site changes for political or malicious display
vandalization
vsdefacement
1 5.8

Damage done on purpose to public or private property including things online

is specific to unauthorized website alteration rather than general property damage

Antonyms

restoration
98 3.4

The act of returning something to its original state

How Damaging

destruction
849 3.0
compromise
  • Specialized
11 6.5
defacement
  • Texting
1 7.6
tampering
58 5.8

Surface Forms

defacement singular
defacements plural

Morphology

defacement = deface (semi-transparent) = de + face + ment

This sense is a regular noun formation from the verb 'deface' referring to the act or result of that action.

Etymology

The word defacement comes from the parts de- 'remove' and face 'face' or 'front', so you can think of someone 'changing the face' of a page. That's why in computing defacement means the unauthorized changing of a website's appearance, often to show vandal, political, or rude messages.