Summer might be winding down, but hackers were just getting warmed up. This month, the hacktivist community asserted themselves squarely on the political stage, launching strategic, politically motivated attacks aimed at everyone from ousted Middle Eastern leaders to oft-targeted whistleblower site WikiLeaks.

Large corporations, such as Research In Motion and San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit train system [BART], also felt hackers’ wrath when they attempted to thwart political protests by interfering with cell phone and IM communications.

And no month would be complete without attacks against a few government defense and research contractors. Here are a few of the month’s cyber attack highlights.