I confess. I’m a member of Anonymous. Hail Xenu. – The Stump. On the weekend, a report appeared in the Financial Times (paywalled, but carelessly copied at Pastebin) on the internet group Anonymous, about which I’ve written a couple of pieces of late. According to the report, senior members of Anonymous face arrest because “they left clues to their real identities on Facebook and in other electronic communications.” The source of the claim was former US Navy cryptographer Aaron Barr of computer security company HB Gary Federal. Barr claimed to the FT that he had “penetrated” Anonymous – a choice of language guaranteed to induce hysterics at 4chan – and that, in the words of the journalist, “key Anonymous figures” were “fretting”.
It was only near the end of the piece that Barr’s claims began to sound a bit odd. Oh and by the way, methodological note for MSM journalists: for once you’re actually able to use the word “hacked”, which doesn’t mean participating in a DDOS attack Among the names is my own. Anonymous vows to take leaking to the next level.
WikiLeaks is going broke and could dieThe hacker group Anonymous has launched what could be WikiLeaks' heir apparentAnonleaks.ru's debut features internal e-mails Anonymous says it stole from security firm (CNN) -- WikiLeaks could have one foot in the online grave. It's been months since its last major leak, and its staff members -- former and current -- say it's so thinly staffed and broke that it can't dissect a massive file a whistle-blower handed over, allegedly naming rich and influential global players guilty of tax crimes.
Founder Julian Assange, described as a megalomaniac in a tell-all book by the group's former spokesman, is facing extradition to Sweden on sex crime charges. Many observers predict he'll face extradition to the United States next. That could mean time is running out to pay for Assange to appear at your dinner party (via video message), but it's a reason to purchase a "Free Assange" T-shirt, now available from WikiLeaks' online store.
Read more about Anonymous. Scotland Yard Has Been After Anonymous for Months | eWEEK Europe UK. The Metropolitan police has been investigating Internet vigilante group Anonymous, since well before its current online reprisals against companies not supporting WikiLeaks. “Earlier this year, the Metropolitan police service received a number of allegations of denial of service cyber attacks againat several companies by a group calling itself Anonymous,” a police spokesman told eWEEK Europe UK. “We are investigating these criminal allegations and our investigation is ongoing.” “The Metropolitan police service is monitoring the situation in relation to recent and ongoing denial of service attacks, and will investigate where appropriate,” the spokesman added. Cyber Unit Involved The spokesman also confirmed to eWEEK Europe UK that the investigation is being conducted by Scotland Yard’s ‘specialist crime directorate’, which includes the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PceU).
Wikileaks Furore. Anon pwns HBGary Federal UPDATED w/PRESS RELEASE. Like Barr's previous statements to FT, the entirety of his research is not only terrible, but in many cases less informative than is the public record. The entry on me, for instance, is entirely inaccurate despite the fact that I have not been a clandestine participant since coming out of the closet months ago. As noted by Bernard Keane, the situation is rather hilarious. More to the point, it should demonstrate that HBGary Federal is not only incapable of protecting its clients and informing on folks who were among the first to get involved in Tunisia and Egypt - it is incapable of protecting itself. Here are the 60,000 e-mails that were acquired today. Enjoy! NOTE: I'VE TAKEN DOWN THE LINK BECAUSE THOSE E-MAILS ALSO INCLUDE THOSE FROM HBGARY ITSELF, WHICH ONLY OWNS 15 PERCENT OF HBGARY FEDERAL.
THE PRESIDENT, PENNY, GAVE ME A CALL AND WAS PRETTY NICE ABOUT IT. I'll be posting additional updates and materials here over the next few minutes. In conclusion, lol. We are Anonymous. Anonymous. State of the Nation. For Immediate Distribution Press Release February 6th, 2011 Anonymous Concedes Defeat A recent article in the Financial Times cites a certain Aaron Barr of the "security services" firm HBGay Federal (amirite?) As claiming to have discovered the identities of Anonymous' operating leadership and founder, with this having been accomplished in large part by an infiltration of our entirely secret IRC server anonops.ru and in particular our ultra-clasified channels #opegypt, #optunisia, and, of course, #reporters, which itself is the most secret of all.
The following message was relayed to all Anons possessing at least 30 degrees of initiate status (17 in Scotland) or their equivalent in reddit karma, and is being leaked to the laity in an effort to gain their useless sympathy: Mr. As Mr. At this point, it is safe to assume that the underground server sites at the North Pole have been compromised as well. All Hail Xenu, -Anonymous. EGYPT: A Revolution, Unplugged. WASHINGTON, Feb 1, 2011 (IPS) - Despite the Hosni Mubarak regime's attempts at muzzling communication and dissent, and the reportedly government- sanctioned shutdown of Egypt's last standing Internet service provider to individual users Monday, Egyptians are still managing to get their voices heard and mobilise - both through advanced technical workarounds and older, traditional technologies.
"We're seeing that this is a country, a regime, which is hell-bent on trying to silence the people and not let the word get out," Middle East and North Africa regional editor of Global Voices Amira al Hussaini told IPS in a telephone interview from Bahrain. Late last week, almost all web access was disconnected, except for one Internet provider, Noor, which services Egypt's stock market. Circumventing Censorship "The Egyptian blogosphere is very robust and dynamic," Hussaini told IPS. "We went back to basics," Hussaini echoed. Organising the Old-Fashioned Way. From Lulz to Labor Unions: The Evolution of Anonymous - Gillian Terzis - Technology. The fuzzy goals of the loosely affiliated group Anonymous have changed in the last year. It wasn't so long ago that Anonymous staked its identity on relentlessly subverting culture for the lulz. The group became renowned for its mockery of egregious displays of political correctness, hypocrisy, social conservatism and lameness by way of constructing humorous memes, or by mythologizing these flaws in their satirical wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica.
Needless to say, their work had narrow appeal -- appreciated mainly by members of the group's forums. It took the inimitable trolling of Oprah -- which led to her hysterical announcement to middle America that a known pedophile network by the name of Pedobear was equipped with "over 9,000 penises that were all raping children" -- to garner the group significant time in the media spotlight. These days, the narrative could not be more different. Pinning down a cogent ideology of the group is difficult, too. Image: Hugo |-|/Flickr. WikiLeaks: Anonymous hierarchy emerges | Media. They were described as a leaderless, anarchic group of "hacktivists" who briefly brought down MasterCard, Visa and PayPal after those companies cut off financial services to WikiLeaks.
But inside Anonymous, the Guardian has found that the organisation is more hierarchical – with a hidden cabal of around a dozen highly skilled hackers co-ordinating attacks across the web. The secretive group that directs the Anonymous network was also behind the assault on the Gawker websites in the US at the weekend, according to documents seen by the Guardian. That led to email addresses and passwords of more than 1.3 million Gawker users being made public, and spawned a spam attack on Twitter that is now being investigated by the FBI. In the last 10 days, Anonymous has also orchestrated Operation Payback, which attacked Visa, MasterCard and PayPal for cutting off financial services to WikiLeaks under pressure from the US government.
"Our project has no leader structure, only different roles. Anonymous Isn't Anonymous Anymore: A small security firm has been able to determine the real identity's of several key Anonymous hackers which is resulting in a ton of arrests. :technology. Descent into Anonymous • Chronicle.SU. Part 1-Lulz from Anons Anonymous is the go to collective of hackers for media outlets that want to drum up fear for internet freedom.
The weapon of choice for Anonymous is a distributed denial of service attack, also known as DDoS. DDoS works by overloading a web server to the point where it can no longer function for a few hours. Nothing about it is very threatening in reality. I’m writing this in a public library, sick with paranoia that these preteens around me are Anons. They look like Anons. In Anonspeak an Anon is a member of Anonymous. Anons are far above the lowly label of group. Anonymous is easy to get sucked into. I’m an expert troll with over a decade of experience. If only I could have dropped it there. Part 2-Descent My magnum opus of trolling art rocketed to the top of the list of least popular stories on AnonNews.
This public library computer lab is the type of place that Anons would congregate, in my imagination. I didn’t sleep, I missed work. Part 3-Westboro Baptist. “Hello, you have reached Anonymous” » Article » OWNI.eu, Digital Journalism. “Young web genius.” “Suspected of involvement in international cyber attacks.” “Passionate about computers since he was 6 years old.” “The brains behind the WikiLeaks avengers.” In recent days, there has been a media frenzy around a 15 year old boy from Auvergne and his involvement in the pro-WikiLeaks movement. This last December several major banking companies, such as Visa and Mastercard, decided to cut their services for Julian Assange’s website. The aftermath was entirely unexpected; an “Anonymous” user launched a massive denial-of-services attacks (DDoS) which which paralyzed these companies’ websites.
Does this ring a bell? In a media environment which is buzzing with the “mysterious Anonymous,” there is a fascination of secrecy which is entangled in a traditional analytical framework. “A select few control the infrastructure” The Anonymous group is not a very structured group, but that does not mean they don’t have defined roles. Sophisticated politics. DDoS attacks harmless: Anonymous user - Security - News. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are harmless, according to Newcastle man Matthew George, who was charged for his role in the Anonymous group's bid to crash federal government websites last year.
The Anonymous DDoS campaign poster (Screenshot by Ben Grubb/ZDNet Australia) George was one of possibly hundreds of Australians under the Anonymous banner who participated in DDoS protest attacks against the Australian Parliament House and Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy websites. Melbourne resident Steve Slayo was the only other user charged for participating in the attacks. For his role, George faced 10 years imprisonment for "causing unauthorised impairment of electronic communication to or from a Commonwealth computer", but received a $550 fine with a recorded conviction. Federal police raided George's home in June last year and he faced court in October. "DDoS service attacks are harmless. Anonymous Goes Old-School, Attacks Egypt With Faxes. Anonymous is a loose organization of hacktivists best known for attacking its enemies--both corporate and governmental--via the Internet, by defacing websites or shutting them down altogether.
But with most of the Internet down in Egypt, the folks at Anonymous are apparently resorting to a positively prehistoric technology: fax machines. Members of the group are organizing to fax copies of the Egypt-related cables that WikiLeaks released today to schools in Egypt. The hope apparently is that if they can get the faxes into the hands of students, students will distribute them to other protesters. A source told Forbes the goal was to warn them that the police could not be trusted. In a chat room used for coordinating activities, the group also discussed how to get information into Egypt about a French ISP setting up free dial-up Internet access for people in Egypt. [Images: Flickr users Abhisek Sarda and Timothy Tolle] Inside the hive-mind. “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”
Hillary Clinton, January 25, Washington “When asked about the revolt in Egypt, 72% of american adults agreed that they should overthrow the current Pharaoh.” Anonymous member, #opegypt IRC, January 26, Secretary Clinton received plenty of criticism for her statements about Egypt. That was unsurprising, given they were exactly the sort of statements you’d expect from a US administration worried one of its most reliable client regimes was facing the start of the sort of rolling series of protests that brought down another faithful US ally, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Even when the State Department later offered a slightly less pro-Mubarak view — “the United States supports the fundamental right of expression and assembly for all people. Egyptian web administrators have put up a much greater fight. Anonimity a ‘challenge’, say Oz cops. Should we cheer or fear cyber vigilantes like Anonymous? | Hacking. The ongoing drama starring hacker group Anonymous and beleaguered security company HBGary has taken a startling twist: In the wake of HBGary CEO Aaron Barr resigning, a group of House Democrats plans to use information gleaned from stolen electronic documents to launch an investigation of HBGary Federal along with two other federal tech contractors for plotting to attack and discredit pro-union opponents of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to reports. The latest development once again raises the question of the role so-called hacktivists -- members of Anonymous, supporters and contributors to WikiLeaks, white-hats who publicly disclose security vulnerabilities -- play in our world.
They seem to fit best in the category of "vigilante," pushing both legal and ethical boundaries for often subjective greater good. The question remains, however, just where the line is drawn between a cyber vigilante who is more like Batman, and one who is more like the Joker. Consider the source? Anonymous Communiqué: We are Anonymous. Freedom of speech and Anonymous: 256 shades of gray. Is free speech negotiable? It depends who you ask and what country you live in, but freedom of speech is a touchy topic these days. It's also considered an inherent human right to state your opinion in public without fear of punishment or censorship. Sadly, the reality of the situation is not so obviously black or white. Instead, free speech too often falls into middle ground where, love them or hate them, Anonymous dwells, protests, or hacks in 256 shades of gray. Free speech and information is non-negotiable to Anonymous. In America, the First Amendment does not protect someone who falsely yells FIRE in a crowded theater according to the clear and present danger test.
Threatening posts are not protected speech if the message reveals a harmful intent. Take for example: as soon as WikiLeaks is mentioned, people are all fired up either for or against them. The U.S. still wants to get its hands on the WikiLeaks editor. The Daily Campus. Colbert says Anonymous targeted the Report - Morning Clip. Oh, Oh…BREIN Boss Says He Will Go After Anonymous. UPDATED: The Art of Anonymous. Anonymous Hackers Launch Wikileaks for Normal People. Anonymous criticizes arrest of web protesters | Travel and Car Hire news from CarRentals. The Daily Collegian. Anonymous Joins the Middle Eastern Fray. FBI joins campaign against Anonymous | THINQ.co.uk. Political hacking to define 2011, McAfee predicts. Anonymous activists to hit the streets. Activism: Using Social Media for Crisis Management. Anonymous, Wikileaks & Arabic Cyber Revolution: Cause | Michael Wharton.