4chan raids (2003–2007)The name Anonymous itself is inspired by the perceived anonymity under which users post images and comments on the Internet. Usage of the term Anonymous in the sense of a shared identity began on imageboards, particularly the /b/ board of 4chan, dedicated to random content. A tag of Anonymous is assigned to visitors who leave comments without identifying the originator of the posted content. Users of imageboards sometimes jokingly acted as if Anonymous was a single individual. The concept of the Anonymous entity advanced in 2004 when an administrator on the 4chan image board activated a "Forced_Anon" protocol that signed all posts as Anonymous. As the popularity of imageboards increased, the idea of Anonymous as a collective of unnamed individuals became an Internet meme.
Users of 4chan's /b/ board would occasionally join into mass pranks or raids. In a raid on July 12, 2006, for example, large numbers of 4chan readers invaded the Finnish social networking site Habbo Hotel with identical avatars; the avatars blocked regular Habbo members from accessing the digital hotel's pool, stating it was "closed due to fail and AIDS". Future LulzSec member Topiary became involved with the site at this time, inviting large audiences to listen to his prank phone calls via Skype. Due to the growing traffic on 4chan's boards, users soon began to plot pranks offline using Internet Relay Chat (IRC). These raids resulted in the first mainstream press story on Anonymous, a report by Fox station KTTV in Los Angeles, California in the U.S. The report called the group "hackers on steroids", "domestic terrorists", and an "Internet hate machine".
Encyclopedia Dramatica (2004–present)Encyclopedia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DiGrippo, initially as a means of documenting gossip related to livejournal, but it quickly was adopted as a major platform by Anonymous for satirical and other purposes. The not safe for work site celebrates a subversive "trolling culture", and documents Internet memes, culture, and events, such as mass pranks, trolling events, "raids", large scale failures of Internet security, and criticism of Internet communities that are accused of self-censorship in order to garner prestige or positive coverage from traditional and established media outlets. Journalist Julian Dibbell described Encyclopædia Dramatica as the site "where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend." The site also played a role in the anti-Scientology campaign of Project Chanology.
On April 14, 2011, the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website named Oh Internet that bore little resemblance to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes. In response, Anonymous launched "Operation Save ED" to rescue and restore the site's content. The Web Ecology Project made a downloadable archive of former Encyclopedia Dramatica content. The site's reincarnation was initially hosted at encyclopediadramatica.ch on servers owned by Ryan Cleary, who later was arrested in relation to attacks by LulzSec against Sony.
Project Chanology (2008)Anonymous first became associated with hacktivism in 2008 following a series of actions against the Church of Scientology known as Project Chanology. On January 15, 2008, the gossip blog Gawker posted a video in which celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise praised the religion; the Church responded with a cease-and-desist letter for violation of copyright. 4chan users organized a raid against the Church in retaliation, prank-calling its hotline, sending black faxes designed to waste ink cartridges, and launching DDoS attacks against its websites.
The DDoS attacks were at first carried out with the applications Gigaloader and JMeter. Within a few days, these were supplanted by the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), a network stress testing application allowing users to flood a server with TCP or UDP packets. The LOIC soon became a signature weapon in the Anonymous arsenal; however, it would also lead to a number of arrests of less experienced Anons who failed to conceal their IP addresses. Some operators in Anonymous IRC channels incorrectly told or lied to new volunteers that using the LOIC carried no legal risk.
During the DDoS attacks, a group of Anons including Gregg Housh uploaded a video to YouTube in which a robotic voice speaks on behalf of Anonymous, telling the "leaders of Scientology" that "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind—for the laughs—we shall expel you from the Internet."Within ten days, the video had attracted hundreds of thousands of views.
On February 10, thousands of Anonymous joined simultaneous protests at Church of Scientology facilities around the world. Many protesters wore the stylized Guy Fawkes masks popularized by the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta, in which an anarchist revolutionary battles a totalitarian government; the masks soon became a popular symbol for Anonymous. In-person protests against the Church continued throughout the year, including "Operation Party Hard" on March 15 and "Operation Reconnect" on April 12. However, by mid-year, they were drawing far fewer protesters, and many of the organizers in IRC channels had begun to drift away from the project.
Operation: Payback is a Bitch (2010)By the start of 2009, Scientologists had stopped engaging with protesters and had improved online security, and actions against the group had largely ceased. A period of infighting followed between the politically engaged members (called "moralfags" in the parlance of 4chan) and those seeking to provoke for entertainment (trolls). By September 2010, the group had received little publicity for a year and faced a corresponding drop in member interest; its raids diminished greatly in size and moved largely off of IRC channels, organizing again from the chan boards, particularly /b/.
In September 2010, however, Anons became aware of Aiplex Software, an Indian software company that contracted with film studios to launch DDoS attacks on websites providing pirated content, such as The Pirate Bay.[60][59] Coordinating through IRC, Anons launched a DDoS attack on September 17 that shut down Aiplex's website for a day. Primarily using LOIC, the group then targeted the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), successfully bringing down both sites. On September 19, future LulzSec member Mustafa Al-Bassam (known as "Tflow") and other Anons hacked the website of copyright alliance, an anti-piracy group, and posted the name of the operation: "Payback Is A Bitch". Anons also issued a press release, stating:
Anonymous is tired of corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people’s rights to spread information, but more importantly, the right to SHARE with one another. The RIAA and the MPAA feign to aid the artists and their cause; yet they do no such thing. In their eyes is not hope, only dollar signs. Anonymous will not stand this any longer.
As IRC network operators were beginning to shut down networks involved in DDoS attacks, Anons organized a group of servers to host an independent IRC network, titled AnonOps. Operation Payback's targets rapidly expanded to include the British law firm ACS:Law, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft,[66] the British nightclub Ministry of Sound, the Spanish copyright society Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, the US Copyright Office, and the website of Gene Simmons of Kiss. By October 7, 2010, total downtime for all websites attacked during Operation Payback was 537.55 hours.
In November 2010, the organization WikiLeaks began releasing hundreds of thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables. In the face of legal threats against the organization by the US government, Amazon.com booted WikiLeaks from its servers, and PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa cut off service to the organization. Operation Payback then expanded to include "Operation Avenge Assange", and Anons issued a press release declaring PayPal a target. Launching DDoS attacks with the LOIC, Anons quickly brought down the websites of the PayPal blog; PostFinance, a Swiss financial company denying service to WikiLeaks; EveryDNS, a web-hosting company that had also denied service; and the website of US Senator Joe Lieberman, who had supported the push to cut off services.
On December 8, Anons launched an attack against PayPal's main site. According to Topiary, who was in the command channel during the attack, the LOIC proved ineffective, and Anons were forced to rely on the botnets of two hackers for the attack, marshaling hijacked computers for a concentrated assault. Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll also reported that the "zombie computers" of involuntary botnets had provided 90% of the attack. Topiary states that he and other Anons then "lied a bit to the press to give it that sense of abundance", exaggerating the role of the grassroots membership. However, this account was disputed.
The attacks brought down PayPal.com for an hour on December 8 and another brief period on December 9. Anonymous also disrupted the sites for Visa and MasterCard on December 8. Anons had announced an intention to bring down Amazon.com as well, but failed to do so, allegedly because of infighting with the hackers who controlled the botnets. PayPal estimated the damage to have cost the company US$5.5 million. It later provided the IP addresses of 1,000 of its attackers to the FBI, leading to at least 14 arrests. On Thursday, December 5, 2013, 13 of the PayPal 14 pled guilty to taking part in the attacks.
2011–2013
In the years following Operation Payback, targets of Anonymous protests, hacks, and DDoS attacks continued to diversify. Beginning in January 2011, Anons took a number of actions known initially as Operation Tunisia in support of Arab Spring movements. Tflow created a script that Tunisians could use to protect their web browsers from government surveillance, while fellow future LulzSec member Hector Xavier Monsegur (alias "Sabu") and others allegedly hijacked servers from a London web-hosting company to launch a DDoS attack on Tunisian government websites, taking them offline. Sabu also used a Tunisian volunteer's computer to hack the website of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, replacing it with a message from Anonymous. Anons also helped Tunisian dissidents share videos online about the uprising. In Operation Egypt, Anons collaborated with the activist group Telecomix to help dissidents access government-censored websites. Sabu and Topiary went on to participate in attacks on government websites in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Zimbabwe.
Tflow, Sabu, Topiary, and Ryan Ackroyd (known as "Kayla") collaborated in February 2011 on a cyber-attack against Aaron Barr, CEO of the computer security firm HBGary Federal, in retaliation for his research on Anonymous and his threat to expose members of the group. Using a SQL injection weakness, the four hacked the HBGary site, used Barr's captured password to vandalize his Twitter feed with racist messages, and released an enormous cache of HBGary's e-mails in a torrent file on Pirate Bay. The e-mails stated that Barr and HBGary had proposed to Bank of America a plan to discredit WikiLeaks in retaliation for a planned leak of Bank of America documents, and the leak caused substantial public relations harm to the firm as well as leading one US congressman to call for a congressional investigation. Barr resigned as CEO before the end of the month.
Several attacks by Anons have targeted organizations accused of homophobia. In February 2011, an open letter was published on AnonNews.org threatening the Westboro Baptist Church, an organization based in Kansas in the US known for picketing funerals with signs reading "God Hates Fags".[89] During a live radio current affairs program in which Topiary debated church member Shirley Phelps-Roper, Anons hacked one of the organization's websites. After the church announced its intentions in December 2012 to picket the funerals of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, Anons published the names, phone numbers, and e-mail and home addresses of church members and brought down GodHatesFags.com with a DDoS attack. Hacktivists also circulated petitions to have the church's tax-exempt status investigated. In August 2012, Anons hacked the site of Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi in retaliation for the Parliament of Uganda's consideration of an anti-homosexuality law permitting capital punishment.
In April 2011, Anons launched a series of attacks against Sony in retaliation for trying to stop hacks of the PlayStation 3 game console. More than 100 million Sony accounts were compromised, and the Sony services Qriocity and PlayStation Network were taken down for a month apiece by cyberattacks.
When the Occupy Wall Street protests began in New York City in September 2011, Anons were early participants and helped spread the movement to other cities such as Boston. In October, Anons attacked the website of the New York Stock Exchange while other Anons publicly opposed the action via Twitter.[95] Anonymous also helped organize an Occupy protest outside the London Stock Exchange on May 1, 2012.
Anons launched Operation Darknet in October 2011, targeting websites hosting child pornography. Most notably, the group hacked a child pornography site called "Lolita City" hosted by Freedom Hosting, releasing 1,589 usernames from the site. Anons also stated that they had disabled forty image-swapping pedophile websites that employed the anonymity network Tor. In 2012, Anons leaked the names of users of a suspected child pornography site in OpDarknetV2.
In 2011 the Koch Industries website was attacked following their attack upon union members, the result being their website could not be accessed for 15 minutes. In 2013 one member, a 38-year-old truck driver, pleaded guilty when accused of participating in the attack for a period of one minute, and received a sentence of two years federal probation, and ordered to pay $183,000 restitution, the amount Koch stated they paid a consultancy organisation, despite this being only a denial of service attack.
On January 19, 2012, the US Department of Justice shut down the file-sharing site Megaupload on allegations of copyright piracy. Anons responded with a wave of DDoS attacks on US government and copyright organizations, shutting down the sites for the RIAA, MPAA, Broadcast Music, Inc., and the FBI.
In 2012, Anonymous launched Operation Anti-Bully: Operation Hunt Hunter in retaliation to Hunter Moore's revenge porn site, "Is Anyone Up?" Anonymous crashed Moore's servers and publicized much of his personal information online, including his social security number. The organization also published the personal information of Andrew Myers, the proprietor of "Is Anyone Back," a copycat site of Mr. Moore's Is Anyone Up.
In response to Operation Pillar of Defense, a November 2012 Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, Anons took down hundreds of Israeli websites with DDoS attacks. Anons pledged another "massive cyberassault" against Israel in April 2013 in retaliation for its actions in Gaza, promising to "wipe Israel off the map of the Internet". However, its DDoS attacks caused only temporary disruptions, leading cyberwarfare experts to suggest that the group had been unable to recruit or hire botnet operators for the attack.
On 5 November 2013, Anonymous protesters gathered around the world for the Million Mask March. Demonstrations were held in 400 cities around the world including Washington D.C., London, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo to coincide with Guy Fawkes night.
2013–present
#OpOk (2013)Operation Oklahoma was a Mutual Aid effort responding to the 2013 flash floods and wind storms in the United States.
Operation Safe Winter (2013–present)Operation Safe Winter was an effort to raise awareness about life on the street through the collection, collation and redistribution of resources which began on November 7, 2013[108] after an online call to action from Anonymous UK. 3 Missions using a charity framework were suggested in the original global spawning a variety of direct actions from used clothing drives to pitch in community potlucks feeding events in the UK, US & Turkey.
The #OpSafeWinter call to action quickly spread through the Mutual Aid communities like Occupy Wall Street and its offshoot groups like the Open Source Based OccuWeather. With the addition of the long term mutual aid communities of New York City and online hacktivists in the US it took on an additional 3 suggested missions. Encouraging participation from the general public this Operation has raised questions of privacy and the changing nature of the Anonymous community's use of monikers. The project to support those living on the streets while causing division in its own online network has been able to partner with many efforts and organizations not traditionally associated with Anonymous or online activists.
Shooting of Michael Brown (2014)In the wake of the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African American man, "Operation Ferguson", a hacktivist organization that claimed to be associated with Anonymous, organized cyberprotests against police by setting up a website and a Twitter account. The group promised that if any protesters were harassed or harmed, they would attack the city's servers and computers, taking them offline. City officials said that e-mail systems were targeted and phones died, while the Internet crashed at the City Hall. Prior to August 15, members of Anonymous corresponding with Mother Jones said that they were working on confirming the identity of the undisclosed police officer who shot Brown and would release his name as soon as they did. On August 14, Anonymous posted on its Twitter feed what it claimed was the name of the officer involved in the shooting. However, police said the identity released by Anonymous was incorrect. Twitter subsequently suspended the Anonymous account from its service.
It was reported on 19 November 2014 that Anonymous had declared cyber war on the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) the previous week, after the KKK had made death threats following the Ferguson riots. They hacked the KKK's Twitter account, attacked servers hosting KKK sites, and started to release the personal details of members.
Shooting of Tamir Rice (2014)On November 24, 2014, Anonymous shut down the Cleveland, Ohio city website and posted a video following the death of Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy armed only with a BB gun, shot to death by a rookie police officer in a Cleveland park. Anonymous also used BeenVerified to uncover phone number and address of a policeman involved in the shooting.
Charlie Hebdo Shootings (2015)In January 2015, Anonymous released a video and a statement via Twitter condemning the attack on Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people, including eight journalists, were murdered. The video, claiming that it is "a message for al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists," was uploaded to the group's Belgian account. The announcement stated that "We, Anonymous around the world, have decided to declare war on you, the terrorists" and promises to avenge the killings by "shut[ting] down your accounts on all social networks. On January 12, they brought down one of the Jihadists' websites. Critics of the action warned that taking down extremists' websites would make them harder to monitor.
Anti-Islamic ‘Reclaim Australia’ rallyThe anomymous opposed Anti-Islamic Reclaim Australia rallies and described it as “an extreme right-wing group inciting religious hatred”. It also promised to organise counter rallies on April 4.
Operation CyberPrivacyOn June 17, 2015, Anonymous claimed responsibility for a Denial of Service attack against Canadian government websites in protest of the passage of bill C-51—an anti-terror legislation that grants additional powers to Canadian intelligence agencies. The attack temporarily affected the websites of several federal agencies.
Operation KKKOn 28 October 2015, Anonymous announced that it would reveal the names of up to 1,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan and other affiliated groups, stating in a press release, "You are terrorists that hide your identities beneath sheets and infiltrate society on every level. The privacy of the Ku Klux Klan no longer exists in cyberspace." On November 2, a list of 57 phone numbers and 23 email addresses (that allegedly belong to KKK members) was reportedly published and received media attention. However, a tweet from the "@Operation_KKK" Twitter account the same day denied it had released that information: "#ICYMI #OpKKK was in no way involved with today's release of information that incorrectly outed several politicians." The group stated it plans to reveal the names on November 5.
#OpSaudiSince 2013 Saudi Arabian hacktivists have been targeting government websites protesting the actions of the regime. These actions have seen attacks supported by the possibly Iranian backed Yemen Cyber Army.
#OpISISIn 2015 an offshoot of Anonymous self-described as Ghost Security or GhostSec started targeting ISIS-affiliated websites and social media handles.
#OpParisIn November 2015, Anonymous announced a major, sustained operation against ISIS following the November 2015 Paris attacks, declaring, “Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go.”ISIS responded on Telegram by calling them "idiots," and asking "What they gonna to hack?[sic]" By the next day, however, Anonymous claimed to have taken down 3,824 pro-ISIS Twitter accounts, and by the third more than 5,000, and to have doxxed recruiters. A week later, Anonymous increased their claim to 20,000 accounts and released a list of the accounts. The list included the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the New York Times and BBC News. The BBC reported that most of the accounts on the list appeared to be still active. A spokesman for Twitter told The Daily Dot that the company is not using the lists of accounts being reported by Anonymous, as they have been found to be “wildly inaccurate” and include accounts used by academics and journalists.
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Fri Dec 18, 2015 1:06 am