Tag: Anonymous

Fighting fire with cyber attacks:

On January 9th, the hacker group Anonymous launched #OpCharlieHebdo to take down websites and social media networks of Islamic extremist groups] as avenge the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The announcement was made on You Tube

The threat has produced results:

Anonymous blocks jihadist website in retaliation for Charlie Hebdo attack

By David Goldman and Mark Thompson, CNN Money

Hackers claiming to be with the group Anonymous say they have hacked a jihadist website in retaliation for the terror attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The website ansar-alhaqq.net, a French jihadist site, currently redirects to Duck Duck Go, a search engine. Hackers using the Twitter handle @OpCharlieHebdo claimed responsibility.

Anonymous also named dozens of Twitter accounts that the hacktivist group says belong to jihadists.

The hackers posted the Twitter handles on Pastebin, a website that lets people post information anonymously online.

So the poem starts that commemorates the Gun Powder Plot of 1605 and  Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. That night has been celebrated in England on November 5th as Guy Fawkes Night ever since with bonfires and masks inspired by Guy Fawkes’ image. The holiday, the poem and, especially, the mask was made popular again by the 2006 motion picture “V for Vendetta.” Set in the future, “V” is an anonymous masked revolutionary working to destroy the fascist, totalitarian government with  elaborate, violent, and intentionally theatrical campaign that kills the leaders of the government and inspires the people to take back self-rule.

The mask was adopted by the group Anonymous whose members wore the mask during a 2008 protest of the Church of Scientology. The group has been called “freedom fighters,” “digital Robin Hoods,” “a cyber lynch-mob” and  “cyber terrorists.” Whatever you call them they were named of Time‘s “100 most influential people in the world for 2012.

It also became a symbol of the Occupy Wall Street movement that raised the awareness of the world to social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government, especially Wall Street. Their slogan “We Are the 99%” became the probably the best known phrase of the last 2 years and the mask one of the most recognized symbols of the movement next to the dancer on the Wall Street bull.

This Guy Fawkes Day is being remembered by #OWS and Anonymous with day long protests and actions around the world with a call to action to the people to take back their self rule from the corrupt governments and corporations. Battered and scarred, they are still here but the time for revolution is ripening. The lion sleeps no more

Greetings world. We are anonymous. We are the people.

Governments of the world: take this message as your last will and testament. The game is officially over. Social media has given birth to something new. Now it’s time to set the record straight. This video is intended as that spark that gets delivered straight into the hearts and minds of the world. This video is an idea – a shared idea – so listen very carefully and make sure you are sitting down.

On the 5th of November 2013, Anonymous call for a day of global civil disobedience. This time we target all government facilities across the globe. Calling all free thinkers: the time for civil disobedience is now. This time it also seems unions from around the world are supporting this action. The lion sleeps no more. Ask yourself this: where will you be when we make history? November 5th, 2013. Worldwide. Now it’s a vendetta. Now it’s personal. Now it’s time to occupy everywhere. It’s time to throw everything we have at November 5th. It’s time to relight the flame of protest until our demands are met. Now it’s time for our brothers and sisters of the awakening to take to the streets. Austerity means war.

Here’s to the dreamers, the one’s that stand for human freedom, the Occupiers, the people that change things. It’s about solidarity, but more than that, it’s about the people, the people we meet, the people of the world standing together for a common goal. Concerned by numerous ecological and social problems, we stand united. As long as there are young and idealist people that share the views of ultimate human freedom, there will always be hope for the world.

We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. On November 5th, 2013: EXPECT US.

To find a march near you go to The Million Mask March World Event to find a city.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This afternoon in raids that extended as far as New Zealand, the FBI took down on of the most popular websites in the world, Magaupload.com charging them with internet piracy seizing $50 million in assets and arresting seven people, four in New Zealand. Who needed SOPA?

Megaupload left this comment before the website went dark:

“The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch.”

Not long after Meguploads was shut down and the news hit the web, this happened

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America. [..]

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon. [..]

Brown adds that “more is coming” and Anonymous-aligned hacktivists are pursuing a joint effort with others to “damage campaign raising abilities of remaining Democrats who support SOPA.”

Although many members of Congress have just this week changed their stance on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, the raid on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don’t need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a blow to the Web.

Brown adds that operatives involved in the project will use an “experimental campaign” and search engine optimization techniques “whereby to forever saddle some of these congressmen with their record on this issue.”

Despite the loss of support for SOPA and PIPA Wednesday night, the Democrats remain the chief sponsors of the bills. MPAA CEO Chris Dodd, the former Democratic senator from Connecticut that blocked all financial reform, and his cohort, former Senate Democrat, now Independent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman have admitted that they want to copy Chinese style censorship. In an guest post article at naked capitalism, Washington’s Blog George Washington follows the money from Hollywood’s music and film industry to the Democrats in the Senate who are the “pillars of support for PIPA”:

Far and away, the top beneficiary in the Senate from interest groups that support PIPA is Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who’s taken in just short of a million dollars from those groups, according to data from OpenSecrets.org. She’s also the most recent Senator to co-sponsor PIPA, adding her name to the list on Dec. 12. The runner-up is Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who’s taken $777,383 from PIPA-supporting interest groups, and has co-sponsored the bill since May 2011.

In fact, a list of the top 20 beneficiaries of special interest money in favor of PIPA reads like a list of the Senate’s most influential Democrats: Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) in third; Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in fourth; Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in fifth; Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the bill’s primary sponsor, in sixth; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in seventh; Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in eighth; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in ninth; and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) in tenth.

The list goes on like that until Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who places 15th with $274,600 in special interest money promoting PIPA. He has not yet announced an official position on the bill. The only other Republican on the list of the top 20 PIPA beneficiaries in the Senate is Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), in 19th place with $212,312. Corker is one of the bill’s co-sponsors.

I have to give at least one Democrat credit although she is not in the Senate, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) opposed SOPA.

This is far from over.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Saturday evening I received an e-mail from Stratfor, a security think tank based in Texas, that their web site had been hacked by “an unauthorized party” and they had shut down their servers and e-mail while the incident was under investigation by law enforcement. (Yes, I have an account.) The news of the breach hit the front page of the New York Times on Christmas morning:

On Saturday, hackers who say they are members of the collective known as Anonymous claimed responsibility for crashing the Web site of the group, Stratfor Global Intelligence Service, and pilfering its client list, e-mails and credit card information in an operation they say is intended to steal $1 million for donations to charity. The hackers posted a list online that they say contains Stratfor’s confidential client list as well as credit card details, passwords and home addresses for some 4,000 Stratfor clients. The hackers also said they had details for more than 90,000 credit card accounts. Among the organizations listed as Stratfor clients: Bank of America, the Defense Department, Doctors Without Borders, Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the United Nations.

The group Lulz Security (LulzSec), a hacking group loosely affiliated with Anonymous, has taken responsibility for the attack. LulzSec, which derives its name from the neologism “LOL, may have been involved in a previous attack against the security firm HBGary. One of its founders, Sabu, seems to act as its leader and decides what targets to attack next and who could participate in these attacks. However, the media has continued to give credit to Anonymous. Anonymous released a statement denying that they are responsible:

“The Stratfor hack is not the work of Anonymous. Stratfor is an open source intelligence agency, publishing daily reports on data collected from the open Internet. Hackers claiming to be Anonymous have distorted this truth in order to further their hidden agenda, and some Anons have taken the bait,” the group claimed in an online communiqué.

“The leaked client list represents subscribers to a daily publication which is the primary service of Stratfor. Stratfor analysts are widely considered to be extremely unbiased. Anonymous does not attack media sources.”



According to Anonymous, Stratfor has been deliberately misrepresented by “these so-called Anons” and portrayed in false light as a company which engages in activity similar to HBGary. 



“Sabu and his crew are nothing more than opportunistic attention whores who are possibly agent provocateurs… As a media source, Stratfor’s work is protected by the freedom of press, a principle which Anonymous values greatly. This hack is most definitely not the work of Anonymous,” the group added.

Since disarray and disagreement within groups and organizations these days seems to be the trend, re: Republicans and Democrats, why should Anonymous be any different? LOL