Around Anonymous
by Steve Ragan - Dec 13 2010, 06:00 An update on the news related to Operation Payback. IMG: AnonymousArtwork
A week with Anonymous (Roundup)
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.
Anonymous vows to take leaking to the next level
WikiLeaks is going broke and could die The hacker group Anonymous has launched what could be WikiLeaks' heir apparent Anonleaks.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.
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).
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!
Anon pwns HBGary Federal UPDATED w/PRESS RELEASE
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.
State of the Nation
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.
EGYPT: A Revolution, Unplugged
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.
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.
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.“ 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. Apparently, this teenage French hacker coordinated these massive attacks from his family’s computer “ in the middle of dirty socks and t-shirts .” Does this ring a bell?
“Hello, you have reached Anonymous” » Article » OWNI.eu, Digital Journalism
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.