The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal and state agencies are combining forces and sharing information to better understand and combat the hacker collective Anonymous and a splinter faction known as Lulz Security (LulzSec).
A recent Freedom of Information Act request resulted in disclosure of documents outlining the FBI’s tracking and profiling of Anonymous, specifically conclusions drawn by the department’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) regarding the makeup of the organization. (Update: The FBI has denied producing the document and it was likely a work of fiction.)
Profilers in the BSU believe Anonymous is not a leaderless collective, but an organization with an influential and technically savvy hierarchy with the power to draw less experienced yet ideologically motivated hackers into their employ when many hands are needed to execute complicated missions.
These missions have grown more ambitious over the years, from harassing Bill O’Reilly’s Internet followers in 2008 to one of its more aggressive capers completed in August, 2011 – attacking the FBI’s own cybersecurity contractor, ManTech, and claiming to have stolen 400MB of data that included files belonging to the DHS, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Department of State and NATO.
Members of Anonymous announced via various channels that the ManTech attack was retaliation for the arrest of 14 people accused of participating in an earlier cyber attack on the PayPal website, which in itself was retaliation for PayPal’s decision to suspend the accounts of whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
The FBI is hitting back by collaborating with and collecting information from targeted websites and pursuing more aggressive tactics on the ground, including raiding homes and confiscating computers across the nation, while the department’s international counterparts put increasing pressure on hackers abroad.
Hacker manifestos and responses to federal announcements labeling Anonymous members a threat to national security make it clear that they are engaged in cyberwarfare, and that the battle lines have been drawn between would-be Web regulators and Internet bandits intent on defending what they see as an untamable digital frontier.
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The BSU document is fake, as revealed by the FBI……
Excellent article, among the first to acknowledge the true nature of what is taking place – the first great Information War.
There is a huge amount of misinformation about who Anonymous is or what it is fighting for. Anonymous does not refer to any single entity, but is a label any group can apply to itself. It’s a uniform. It is therefore impossible to define what Anonymous stands for or what it wants.
Broadly speaking however, the final paragraph is absolutely correct. Anonymous doesn’t like censorship or regulation. What Anonymous is really fighting against is government (or indeed corporate) control of a platform it believes to be a medium of communication which should be left completely and totally undisturbed. Many Anons view creeping internet regulations and clampdowns as an intrusion into an area where authority is neither required nor desired.
The internet got to the great heights it is at today without regulation or censorship. The Arab Spring succeeded in part due to censorship being bypassed.
Of course the government will offer legitimate excuses for censorship – preventing child pornography and terrorist recruitment, for example. And these are indeed valid concerns.
Unfortunately, as history has shown us repeatedly, governments cannot be trusted to self limit. For the moment, an unregulated internet is the lesser of two evils – it’s only a small step from banning terrorist recruitment to banning political activism (Anonymous and Wikileaks, for instance, have already been labelled “terrorists” by US officials).
Read up on Anonymous’ hacking of HBGary and revelations of their deal with the US Military and Chamber of commerce to supply phishing and social infiltration software to these clients. Allegedly created “to fight terrorist ideology”, there is already evidence that it was intended for use in disrupting legitimate activist organizations.
Government cannot be allowed to assume any amount of power over the internet. They fear the internet because it is a threat to them. Through the internet, citizens can take direct control of democracy.
This must not be impeded in any way. And Anonymous will fight to the very last, to prevent any entity from gaining the ability to control what you can or can’t post on the internet.
Knowledge is free.
We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us…
Do not be fooled by this vaguely defined group. First of all they have much darker goals in mind they use illegal actions to try and make it look like like they are engaged in”activist related operations” u can in know way control who is in the group if u have a supposed “good hacker who is motivated to try and do right by the people” and 5 times as many who are criminaly minded were do u stand. Make no mistake about it. At the head of annonymous is your typical top of the food chain mastermind criminals who lie and manipulte youth to do there bidding. They are ecconomic terrorist who do engage in physical and mental abuse. Take for instance there anti secpro movement how many individual network security professionals have they attacked. Answer is a lot. We need to attack this problem from the bottom up. Eliminate the recruties by educating the youth about anti hacking and also the ways in which the real criminals use to manipulate and lie to achieve there own personal pathetic goals. Remember this always about annonymous or lulz-sec or gangs that try to emmulate them they are masterd in the art of pcsycological manipulation (social engineering attacks on steroids) and deception. This is not An opinon this is fact from my own personal experiences dealing with the tactics they employ. Phone hacking is usually there entry point or entering your premisses to do a little config on your systems. Tools they use are the same that law enforcement uses to listen and track people onthe ground with there employment of grunts and foot soldiers on the ground. They are currently digging there own graves by calling out the drug cartels. This type of opp was all publicity to try and convince the public they have honorable intentions and believe me they do not. They have a motto ” we never forget” they are going to find out what that really means since they now think they can crossover to the all to real world of violence. If I was an annonymous member I would be throwing computer away and never look back. Besides your not doing anything good for u and yours only endangering them with your masters plans and he is your master, right. People think for yourselves you don’t have to be part of a large misdirected criminal\terrorist organisation. If you want something to change dedicate yourself to the issue and attack it with the peaceful process of your brain and some ink. You might be totally surprised by what u accomplish. Pick martin luther king book up, now that’s a real road map for changing social injustices.
The VBI
AKA. DANIEL BOONE