The Evolution of Anonymous
1. CIA Website
Hacked: CIA website, in addition to several international law enforcement accounts
Date of Incident: Feb. 3, 2012
What's Known: Anonymous made Feb. 3, 2012 the "day of action" of coordinated efforts to take down several government web properties. In the CIA.gov hack, personal data from Alabama court papers -- Social Security numbers, birthdays and addresses -- were exposed. Confidential emails from a Mexican mining agency were also released.
The same day, hackers forced their way into a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard, the UK's Metropolitan Police Service. The 16-minute call was posted onYouTube with the headline "Hacked for the Lulz."
Arrests: British teens Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis were arrested in connection with the hacked conference call. British officials who gained possession of Cleary's hard drive described him as “a 15-year-old kid who’s basically just doing this all for attention and is a bit of an idiot."
Hacked: CBS homepage, Universal Music homepage
Date of Incident: Jan. 23, 2012
What's Known: Anonymous hackers took credit for redirecting the CBS.com and UniversalMusic.com homepages to a blank index, in response to the shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload.
Anonymous also went after websites of Brazil's federal district, the city of Yangara de Serra and Brazilian singer Paula Fernandes. The string of attacks prompted the error message "If Megaupload is down, you are down too" on the websites.
3. Hate Groups
Hacked: Neo-Nazi groups
Date of Incident: January 2012
What's Known: Anonymous hackers went after neo-Nazi groups proliferating hate in Germany. The group spread the mission's goals on YouTube. Addressing neo-Nazis the group said, "Your incomprehensible actions, and your reluctance to accept the Freedom and Equality that every single human being possesses by right from birth, causes the birth to hatred and worldwide Racism." The attack included a website that published information about hate groups including personal emails and contact lists to German audiences.
4. Stratfor
Hacked: Stratfor, subscription-based provider of geopolitical, security and economic data
Number of People Affected: 50,000
Date of Incident: Dec. 25, 2011
What's Known: Subscriber emails and personal information, including credit card numbers, were hacked. Anonymous donated money to various charities with stolen credit cards.
Hacked: Anonymous worked to crash the host server of a lucrative child pornography ring on 40-plus websites. Anonymous exposed member IP addresses every time someone tried to access these websites.
Affected: Hosts and members of child porn website Lolita City hosted on a private, peer-to-peer file sharing darknet service called Freedom Hosting.
Date of Incident: Oct. 2011
What's Known: Anonymous set off to dismantle a child pornography ring online. It exposed a website known as Lolita City that carried more than 100 GBs of child pornography. The YouTube video posted by the hacktivists explained, "Anonymous took a pledge to defend the defenseless and fight for the fallen. We rallied an army called 'The Legion' and armed ourselves with our Chris Hansen canons. We set out for the great hunt which has become known as Operation Darknet."
The IP addresses found from the networks of the 40-plus child porn websites were released for FBI, Interpol and law enforcement agencies.
6. PayPal
Hacked: eBay's PayPal website
Affected: 20,000-plus PayPal users closed their accounts at Anonymous' request in retaliation for arrests related to WikiLeaks.
Date of Incident: July 2011
What's Known: Anonymous used DDoS attacks to shut down PayPal.com and waged a Twitter campaign against the company, asking PayPal users to cancel their accounts. Anonymous stated PayPal is a "corrupt and greedy" organization because after it blocked donations from WikiLeaks supporters from reaching the group. "We encourage anyone using PayPal to immediately close their accounts and consider an alternative," Anonymous wrote in an online message. On the first day of the social media campaign, PayPal lost lost an average of four members per minute. The stock value of PayPal suffered severely, resulting in a $933 million to $1 billion loss.
Arrests: 19 people in connection with attacks by U.S. authorities were arrested in the following weeks. The hacker group included people in the U.S., UK and the Netherlands.
Hacked: Tunisian government
Affected: Tunisian government websites were shut down
Date of Incident: Jan. 3, 2011
What's Known: Anonymous used DoS (denial-of-service) attacks on the official websites of the Tunisian president and government bodies. Anonymous released an Operation Tunisia press release onYouTube. "The Tunisian government has made itself an enemy of Anonymous" with its censorship and "oppression of information," the video explained.
8. HBGary
Hacked: HBGary Federal is a subsidiary of the security company HBGary, which was hired by the U.S. government to uncover members of the Anonymous network, among other protection tasks.
Affected: Former HBGary CEO Aaron Barr's Twitter account and 71,000-plus confidential company emails were hacked. Barr stepped down in aftermath.
Date of Incident: Feb. 6, 2011
What's Known: Anonymous members hacked into Barr's Twitter. They sent messages like, "Today we taught everyone a lesson. When we actually decide to bite back against those who try to bring us down, we bite back hard." Hackers also released his address and social security number on the microblogging network.
Among the information released to the public, Anonymous exposed that HBGary used illegal and unfair tactics to discredit journalist Glenn Greenwald of Salon who often wrote about WikiLeaks. Barr and his company were using cyberattacks, false information, forged docs and blackmail.
9. NATO
Hacked: National Atlantic Treaty Organization
Affected: Reports on NATO servers
Date of Incident: July 21, 2011
What's Known: Anonymous stole 1GB of data from NATO systems, and took to Twitter to tease officials, stating that publishing the sensitive information would be "irresponsible." NATO acknowledged the breach after Anonymous users published PDFs of classified documents to the web.
Hacked: Church of Scientology
Affected: Denial-of-service attacks on the Church of Scientology websites
Date of Incident: Ongoing, Jan. 14, 2008
What's Known: The Church of Scientology floated onto Anonymous' radar after the religious entity released an interview with celebrity believer Tom Cruise. Anonymous viewed the video (since removed from YouTube) as an item of propaganda.
On resources like WhyWeProtest.net, where Anonymous regularly posts notices and statements, members say they view Scientology as a false body spreading fraudulent claims and defying human rights violations. The "official" Anonymous mission video states the long-term campaign against the religious organization will not cease until the church is "destroyed."
Comments
Post a Comment