Anonops #5: Anonymous en de MO-revoluties

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AMSTERDAM - Een 16-jarige jongen is woensdagnacht in Den Haag opgepakt voor de digitale aanvallen op websites van onder meer Mastercard en Paypal. De jongen heeft een bekentenis afgelegd. Dat heeft het Openbaar Ministerie donderdag bekendgemaakt. Nu.nl

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http://news.softpedia.com/news/FBI-Investigates-Anonymous-DDoS-Against-PayPal-175442.shtml
Court fillings reveal that FBI is currently investigating the distributed denial of service attacks launched against PayPal by the Anonymous group of hacktivists.

The Smoking Gun reports that an FBI affidavit sworn in support of a search warrant at a Dallas hosting firm, reveals details of the federal probe.

At the beginning this month, PayPal froze the account used by WikiLeaks to receive donations citing illegal activities.

Shortly afterward, Anonymous, a group of Internet activists known to use DDoS as a protest method, mounted an attack against the PayPal blog.

In the days that followed, the attack moved to the main website and its API. PayPal publicly dismissed the downtime of its blog as a technical issue, but according to the affidavit, it contacted the FBI about it on December 6.

The company also supplied eight IP addresses used by Anononymous' IRC server, irc.anonops.net, where the attacks are launched from through the hive mind feature of the Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) DDoS tool.

The "hive mind" setting makes computers act like botnet clients by putting their bandwidth resources at the disposal of Anonymous leaders, who can then issue commands to attack certain targets.

One of the IP addresses provided by PayPal pointed to a hosting provider in Germany. When the German Federal Criminal Police investigated, it discovered that the server was owned by a man from France.

However, a more detailed analysis of the logs revealed that the actual commands to launch the DDoS attacks were issued by someone connected from an IP at the Dallas co-location vendor, where the FBI wants to execute a search warrant.

A separate IP addresss led investigators to an ISP in Canada, which told the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that its server is actually hosted at Hurricane Electric in Fremont, California.

The investigation continues and might lead to criminal charges against Anonymous members. Two teenagers previously received one-year prison sentences for their participation in Anonymous-organized DDoS attacks against the Church of Scientology.

Operation Bling

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Op donderdag 30 december 2010 22:07 schreef Maanvis het volgende:
Wie is anon om toch regels te stellen? Dus toch een groep/organisatie. HA!

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/31/anonymous-hackers-zimbabwe-wikileaks

Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, has become the latest victim of online attacks by supporters of WikiLeaks, it was claimed today.

Cyber activists said they had brought down government websites after Mugabe's wife sued a newspaper for publishing a WikiLeaks cable that linked her with the alleged trade in illicit diamonds .

The Zimbabwean government website was unavailable today, while the finance ministry website displayed a message saying it was under maintenance.

Anonymous, a loose-knit group that has vowed to paralyse sites that act against WikiLeaks, said on its website: "We are targeting Mugabe and his regime in the Zanu-PF who have outlawed the free press and threaten to sue anyone publishing WikiLeaks."

Grace Mugabe has launched a defamation suit against Zimbabwe's Standard newspaper for $15m (£9.5m) for publishing details released by WikiLeaks suggesting that she had gained "tremendous profits" from the trade in illicit diamonds.

The offending article quotes from a US embassy cable that alleged she was among a group of elite Zimbabweans making "several hundred thousand dollars a month" from the sale of illegal stones mined in the politically sensitive Marange district. Grace Mugabe denies the allegations.

Zimbabwe's attorney general has formed a commission to investigate the WikiLeaks cables with a view to bring charges of treason against anyone found to be colluding with "aggressive" foreign governments. This has been seen as a thinly veiled attempt to target the country's prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Anonymous, a 1,000-strong group of activists, rallied on behalf of WikiLeaks after Amazon and other companies terminated business services with the website. It launched Operation Payback to give firms deemed hostile to WikiLeaks a "black eye".

The websites of Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and the company that hosted WikiLeaks were all brought down after severing ties with the whistleblowing site.

The Swedish prosecution office's website was also attacked after it pressed for the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, from the UK to face trial over alleged sexual offences.

Anonymous's so-called "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks, which bring down sites by overpowering them with repeated requests to load, are illegal in the UK.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/10/fine-gael-website-anonymous-hackers

Ireland's main opposition party's website has been hacked into by a group which has recently come to prominence for attacks on companies related to the WikiLeaks controversy.

Up to 2,000 people's personal details were compromised in the attack by the hackers, known as Anonymous, Fine Gael said. The American internet firm ElectionMall, which reported the cyber attack to US authorities, has informed the party that the FBI is now involved in the investigation.

A statement from Fine Gael confirmed that its site, Finegael.com had been compromised by the Anonymous group, which has backed WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange against attempts by the United States government to stop the leaking of sensitive American diplomatic cables. Anonymous has launched attacks on the websites of companies such as Visa, Mastercard and Amazon over allegations that they acted against WikiLeaks.

Fine Gael has contacted the office of the data protection commissioner Billy Hawkes following the website attack, which is investigating.

It also contacted the Garda computer crime unit in relation to the incident. In a statement, Fine Gael said it had this morning emailed all of those affected to notify them.

There appears to be no obvious reason why Anonymous have targeted Fine Gael, the party most likely to be the major force in a new coalition following this year's Irish general election which will be held in March.

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Welcome to AnonOps Network

What are we?

AnonOps is an international group that was founded from within the Operation: Payback campaign. After the numerous server changes and issues that Operation: Payback encountered in regards to service, it was decided that it would be more suitable if the group ran its own services rather than relying on others. When Operation: Payback went into hiatus in mid-October 2010, the group decided that it would provide services to any Anonymous Operation, not just Operation: Payback. This could be considered the point where the network and the operations that reside on it became seperate entities. AnonOps should now be considered a standalone network with no official ties to the campaigns that use its platform.

Who are we?

We are not Anonymous. We are not 4chan. We are not Operation: Payback and we did not attack any websites. We are merely a network frequented by their movement. We do not advocate, condemn or control what our users discuss; that is not what we are here for. We are here to provide a service for anyone to speak freely on a subject, regardless of content, as long as they abide by our network rules.

What services do we provide?

The main service we provide is a central and relatively stable meeting point for Anonymous via IRC as well as user forums. In addition to this, we have a radio station (Radio Payback) and a website. Anyone is free to join the IRC network and register to access the forums. Users are free to start their own channels on any subject, so long as they abide by the aforementioned rules.

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ANONYMOUS PRESS RELEASE January 25, 2011 DEAR JOURNALISTS OF THE WORLD, You were intrigued by us when we took on the financial sector by attacking Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal as part of Operation Payback. Many of you became enamoured with us during Operation Tunisia and applauded our efforts. Some of you are now paying close attention to Operation Algeria. We know that we have gained support from even a few of you. Those few are hoping against hope that our unconventional methods will continue to have an effect on people, perhaps even the world. Those few admire us, if for no other reason than the fact that, in a world full of apathy, a world filled with people who don't even bother to read the information you painstakingly present, we are trying to do something. This intrigues you. At the very least, it inspires you to keep an eye on us, hoping we continue to take newsworthy actions. You know that, whether you are risking your own safety - perhaps even your own life - to share the truth, or whether you are beholden to your dictators or your advertisers, unable to write anything they do not approve, we, Anonymous, are on your side and are fighting for you and your freedoms. You, the journalists, reporters, and bloggers. You, the newspapers, television networks and websites who hunt down and disseminate information. We are fighting for you. Some of you have recorded milestones of our efforts. Some of you have reported upon them, and some of you have even participated in our fight. You are the press, and you have our gratitude. We need your help now. From North Africa to Gaza, people are rising up and risking their lives to demand nothing more than basic rights, an end to the corruption, and a fair chance to progress in life. What the Western world is unaware of, and the Western media largely ignores, is the fact that the people protesting and the people dying in the Arab world are just like them. They have the same desire for basic freedoms, similar ambitions for themselves and for their family and friends, the same inherent intelligence and, the same keen sense of injustice as their counterparts in the West when oppressed. Here is where we need your help. We ask you, the journalists, to bring to the rest of the world the humanity of these revolutions. What we are witnessing are not extremist acts that are committed by misled, ignorant people. Indeed, they are committed by intelligent, but desperate people people willing to sacrifice themselves in order to inspire their fellow citizens to rally against their oppressors. The world needs human news. The world needs to know who it is that needs their support, and not just the number of casualties or the politics involved. What we ask is simple. There are people protesting in Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Albania, Libya, and many other countries at this very moment. Tell us who they are and what it is they want for their country and their people, for now and in the future. So many voices are raised in protest right now and all the world can hear is the noise. Tell us what the people are saying. Some of you will ignore this message. It announces no new operations, as we are still focusing our efforts on Operation Algeria. This message issues no threats, as you are the press and are always safe from us. If you heed our request, however, it could make all the difference in the world, as it made a difference for the Tunisians to know that they were speaking and the world was hearing their message. Help us do this for Algeria, Egypt, and other countries where the people are imploring to be heard. Signed, Anonymous. We are Anonymous. We do not forgive the denial of basic human rights. We do not forget those who assist the oppressed. To the Tyrannical governments of the world... Expect us. ###

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Operation: Egypt began its recruitment campaign 3 days ago, inviting participants to join the #OpEgypt channel on its IRC network. As with the previous attacks against PayPal, MasterCard and Visa, volunteers are being sought to install and run the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) software, which can automatically bombard a website with a large volume of traffic.

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 15:31 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:
anders ook niet, trouwens papierversnipperaar.

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 15:49 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

[..]

Ik krijg anders opeens sympathie voor de Egyptische regering nu ik zie dat de anonieme hordes van computerscherm lafbekjes zich achter de revolutie scharen .

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 15:49 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:


Als je de publieke opinie positief wilt beïnvloeden voor de revolutionairen pak je een camera, probeer je Egypte binnen te komen, schiet je een paar plaatjes van politiegeweld, print ze uit, en strooi je ze uit op straat in Caïro. Dát werkt.

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ReemAbdellatif RT @bencnn: Can hear what sounds like tear gas being fired near Ramsis Street #many plainclothed policeman attacking cameraman #Jan25 #Egypt

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Je reactie laat overigens wel de kinderlijke naïviteit van jouw soort soort zien.

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Mayousef Blogspot and facebook officially Blocked in #Egypt stupid move .. the darker it gets the sooner the light will break .. #Jan25 less than 20 seconds ago via web

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 16:03 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

[..]

Ik schaar je bij een groep, leef er maar mee

[..]

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Wees eens realistisch.

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3b1b8d0c-f092-47e5-b769-ea23973193dd_normal fo0_ RT @MarietjeD66: Journalist @guardian arrested in #Egypt made live recording of back of pol.truck, Dutch journalist beaten as well http://tinyurl.com/5v32o4b

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 16:15 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:



Wat heeft Afghanistan ermee te maken? V

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 16:15 schreef Maanvis het volgende:

[..]

Dankzij de aanvallen op overheidssites weten journalisten en inwoners nu niet waar ze kunnen schuilen voor het geweld. DANKJEWEL ANON

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SuomynonaEraUoy RT @MahmoudMourad: @shaimastreet The 1-Million Protesters March, starting all over #Egypt, Just after Friday Prayers! Spread it! RT #Jan25 #1M

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 16:24 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

[..]

Leg het dan uit

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 16:25 schreef Maanvis het volgende:

[..]

Waavan is ANON 't slachtoffer!?

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 16:29 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

[..]

Te autistisch om het even uit te leggen, fair enough.

[..]

Anon is een groep achterlijke computernerdjes. Er zullen vast wel enkele Egyptenaren bijzitten, maar aangezien slechts 20 procent van de Egyptenaren in normale omstandigheden wel eens het internet bezoekt zal hun aandeel in dat kinderlijke hobbygroepje wel klein zijn.

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 16:32 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:
probeer te begrijpen

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david_7even RT @khaladk: www.mcit.gov.eg is down. Tit for tat? For taking FB,Twitter, gmail offline? Hmmm.... #Jan25 #Egypt

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NextAmCity RT @AlecJRoss: USA concerned whenever there are restrictions of freedom of expression regardless of the medium. #Egypt #Jan25

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 21:21 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

Ben ik dan de enige op wie Anonops als een groepje kinderlijke naïeve en speelse plaaggeesten overkomt? Wat doen ze nou?

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http://news.softpedia.com/news/Anonymous-Shows-Support-for-Egyptian-Algerian-and-Albanian-Protesters-180718.shtml

Various Anonymous cells have launched campaigns in support of Tunisian-inspired civil protests currently happening in countries like Egypt, Algeria or Albania.

Anonymous is a social movement characterized by strong anti-censorship views, whose supporters often organize mass Internet "operations" against companies, governments and other groups.

Anonymous is an ever changing group of people that share a set of ideals and choose to act together to achieve a common goal.

Anons have provided mirrors for Wikileaks when the organization lost the hosting for its primary website and have provided Tunisian Internet users with tools and instructions on how to avoid online traps set up by the government.

There are noew clear signs that Anonymous members are organizing similar campaigns to support protests in other countries with oppressive regimes.

The most advanced seems to be "Operation: Egypt," which has its own IRC channel where Anons are organizing a distributed denial of service attack against www.moiegypt.gov.eg, the website of the Egyptian Ministry of Interior and www.mcit.gov.eg, the Egyptian Ministry of Communications & Information Technology portal.

Earlier this week, the Egyptian government began blocking access to Twitter and other social media websites after thousands used them to coordinate protests in several cities.

The BBC reports that three people have already been killed as a result of clashes with law enforcement, including a police officer from Cairo.

"Operation: Algeria" has also been launched and participating Anonymous members threatened the country's government after street protests were banned in the country.

"We believe the Algerian attempts at censorship and oppression are doomed to fail if each one of us takes up our individual responsibilities: For only we, the people, decide to make it so," a press release read.

Meanwhile, "Operation: Albania" is also taking shape on Facebook, where Anonymous supporters posted links to censorship bypassing materials, proxy lists, encryption software and other tools.

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Op Egypt Black Fax/E-Mail Bomb Action

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Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 22:36 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:
Doe je zelf nou ook mee aan die dingen of post je het hier alleen maar?

A Message To Journalists

quote:

ANONYMOUS PRESS RELEASE January 25, 2011 DEAR JOURNALISTS OF THE WORLD, You were intrigued by us when we took on the financial sector by attacking Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal as part of Operation Payback. Many of you became enamoured with us during Operation Tunisia and applauded our efforts. Some of you are now paying close attention to Operation Algeria. We know that we have gained support from even a few of you. Those few are hoping against hope that our unconventional methods will continue to have an effect on people, perhaps even the world. Those few admire us, if for no other reason than the fact that, in a world full of apathy, a world filled with people who don't even bother to read the information you painstakingly present, we are trying to do something. This intrigues you. At the very least, it inspires you to keep an eye on us, hoping we continue to take newsworthy actions. You know that, whether you are risking your own safety - perhaps even your own life - to share the truth, or whether you are beholden to your dictators or your advertisers, unable to write anything they do not approve, we, Anonymous, are on your side and are fighting for you and your freedoms. You, the journalists, reporters, and bloggers. You, the newspapers, television networks and websites who hunt down and disseminate information. We are fighting for you. Some of you have recorded milestones of our efforts. Some of you have reported upon them, and some of you have even participated in our fight. You are the press, and you have our gratitude. We need your help now. From North Africa to Gaza, people are rising up and risking their lives to demand nothing more than basic rights, an end to the corruption, and a fair chance to progress in life. What the Western world is unaware of, and the Western media largely ignores, is the fact that the people protesting and the people dying in the Arab world are just like them. They have the same desire for basic freedoms, similar ambitions for themselves and for their family and friends, the same inherent intelligence and, the same keen sense of injustice as their counterparts in the West when oppressed. Here is where we need your help. We ask you, the journalists, to bring to the rest of the world the humanity of these revolutions. What we are witnessing are not extremist acts that are committed by misled, ignorant people. Indeed, they are committed by intelligent, but desperate people people willing to sacrifice themselves in order to inspire their fellow citizens to rally against their oppressors. The world needs human news. The world needs to know who it is that needs their support, and not just the number of casualties or the politics involved. What we ask is simple. There are people protesting in Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Albania, Libya, and many other countries at this very moment. Tell us who they are and what it is they want for their country and their people, for now and in the future. So many voices are raised in protest right now and all the world can hear is the noise. Tell us what the people are saying. Some of you will ignore this message. It announces no new operations, as we are still focusing our efforts on Operation Algeria. This message issues no threats, as you are the press and are always safe from us. If you heed our request, however, it could make all the difference in the world, as it made a difference for the Tunisians to know that they were speaking and the world was hearing their message. Help us do this for Algeria, Egypt, and other countries where the people are imploring to be heard. Signed, Anonymous. We are Anonymous. We do not forgive the denial of basic human rights. We do not forget those who assist the oppressed. To the Tyrannical governments of the world... Expect us. ###

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amgadmakarem Hillary Clinton says "Free the Internet in Egypt" #Egypt #jan25 #jan26 #tahrir #masr #cairo half a minute ago via Echofon

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3rdEyedVisions RT @AnonymousIRC: IRC: "Just got this from the Prime Minister via E-Mail ! "The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now" #OpEgypt #Jan25 12 minutes ago via Twitterfall

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/obama-nominates-top-copyright-lawyer-solicitor-general/

President Barack Obama announced Monday that he plans to nominate former Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lawyer Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. as solicitor general, a position formerly held by Elena Kagan.

Verrilli currently serves as deputy counsel to the president and previously served as an associate deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice. Prior to serving for the Justice Department, he worked in the private law firm Jenner & Block for over 20 years.

During his private practice, Verrilli had been involved in a number of prominent cases involving online file-sharing and copyright infringement, arguing on behalf of the recording and entertainment industry.

He represented 28 companies that sued the file-sharing network Grokster for copyright infringement in the US Supreme Court. In 2005, Grokster was forced to shut down its site following a $50 million legal settlement with the movie studios, record labels and music publishers.

In 2007, he led a team of lawyers that sued Google for $1 billion on behalf of the entertainment giant Viacom, alleging that Google's site YouTube was involved in massive violations of copyrighted material.

In the same year, Verrilli represented the RIAA against a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas, who allegedly made songs available on the file-sharing network Kazaa. During the case, he argued that "making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network" violated the law, "regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown."

Along with representing the recording and entertainment industry, in 2003 Verrilli argued on the winning side of a Supreme Court ruling that overturned a convicted killer's death penalty and unsuccessfully challenged the form of lethal injection used by many states to carry out executions, The New York Times reported.

He also signed an amicus curie brief that argued Jose Padilla, a United States citizen accused of being a terrorist, could not be classified as an "enemy combatant" and was entitled to due process.

If confirmed by the Senate, Verrilli would fill the powerful position now held by Neal Katyal, who became the acting Solicitor General after Elena Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court. Kagan was confirmed to the post by Congress in August 2010.

The solicitor general argues on behalf of the government of the United States in the Supreme Court and is responsible for filing amicus curiae briefs in cases where the government has a significant legal interest.

Verrilli has participated in more than 100 cases before the US Supreme Court and argued 12, according to the White House. He also served as an adjunct professor of constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law Center for more than 15 years, focusing on First Amendment law.

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Op donderdag 27 januari 2011 18:57 schreef Dlocks het volgende:
Het mooie van dit soort open lijsten is dat je zelf meldingen kan doen en deze lijst kunt vervuilen waardoor het waardeloos wordt.

Dus verzoekje aan alle rokers:

1. Ga naar: http://www.cleanairnederland.nl/asp/rookverbod_horeca.asp

2. Maak een valse melding. Je hoeft alleen de velden met een * in te vullen.

Dus voor een kroeg waarvan je weet dat er NIET gerookt wordt op plekken waar dit niet mag maak je een melding dat daar WEL gerookt wordt.

Voor een kroeg waarvan je weet dat er WEL gerookt wordt maak je een melding dat er NIET gerookt wordt.

NB: maak slechts een paar meldingen anders gaat het opvallen. Of gebruik een proxy en/of verschillende mailadressen.

Als maar genoeg rokers meewerken met het toevoegen van valse meldingen wordt deze lijst waardeloos. Dus zeg het voort.

NSB praktijken verdienen een sabotage actie.

quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/27/egypt-protest-leaflets-mass-action
Anonymous flyers provide practical and tactical advice for confronting riot police, and besieging government offices

Egyptians have been urged to come out after Friday prayers tomorrow and demand the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's government, along with freedom, justice and a democratic regime.

Anonymous leaflets circulating in Cairo also provide practical and tactical advice for mass demonstrations, confronting riot police, and besieging and taking control of government offices.

Signed "long live Egypt", the slickly produced 26-page document calls on demonstrators to begin with peaceful protests, carrying roses but no banners, and march on official buildings while persuading policemen and soldiers to join their ranks.

The leaflet ask recipients to redistribute it by email and photocopy, but not to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter, which are being monitored by the security forces.

Protesters in Cairo are advised to gather in large numbers in their own neighbourhoods away from police and troops and then move towards key installations such the state broadcasting HQ on the Nile-side Corniche and try to take control "in the name of the people". Other priority targets are the presidential palace and police stations in several parts of central Cairo.

The leaflet includes aerial photographs with approach routes marked and diagrams on crowd formations. Suggested "positive" slogans include "long live Egypt" and "down with the corrupt regime". There are no signs of slogans reflecting the agenda of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood. It advises demonstrators to wear clothing such as hooded jackets, running shoes, goggles and scarves to protect against teargas, and to carry dustbin lids – to ward off baton blows and rubber bullets – first aid kits, and roses to symbolise their peaceful intentions.

Diagrams show how to defend against riot police and push in waves to break through their ranks. "The most important thing is to protect each other," the leaflet says.

It is important to prevent policemen penetrating the ranks of demonstrators, it adds. If they do, they should be persuaded to change sides and reminded that their own families could be among the people.

Banners and posters should be hung from balconies and windows, it advises, and it provides handy models for posters – one showing a visor-helmeted riot policeman flanked by an elderly woman in traditional peasant dress and a younger one in modern clothes over the slogan "Police and people together against the regime".

The president's son Gamal – often thought likely to succeed his father – is labelled "Cowardly Mubarak", with the words "Where's Daddy now?" Another idea is the country's national symbol of an eagle with "Egypt's Liberation Day" underneath it.

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A message to Anonymous from Egypt.

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A MESSAGE TO ANONYMOUS FROM EGYPT

Anon

Tomorrow, there is a real danger that Egypt will be cut off from the world, with no internet and no mobile networks. Already we have seen Twitter go down, along with facebook and Gchat, and now Blackberry 3G. These are the means by
If it is confirmed tomorrow that our communications have been lost , we ask that you stand behind us, and protest against our ISPs and Mobile Providers, many of whom are multinationals.
Vodaphone, LinkDSL, TEData, and others have already colluded with the government to stifle freedom of speech and access to free information. The world MUST know what they are doing, and respond with boycotts and demonstrations.
Anon, we ask you that you let them know that this will not stand. You cannot be here with us, but if you can simply help us communicate with the world, you will be fighting a much larger battle, one which will come to you all soon enough.

Signed,
Anonymous

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OPEN LETTER FROM ANONYMOUS TO THE UK GOVERNMENT
Dear UK government,
We are Anonymous. It has come to our attention that you deemed it necessary
to arrest five of our fellow anons for their participation in the DDoS
attacks against PayPal, Mastercard, and others, that have been carried out
in our name in retaliation for those organisations’ actions against WikiLeaks.
We understand you are planning to charge these fellow anons with offences
under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act, which prohibits impairing the operation
of a computer or the readability of data. Anonymous believes, however, that
pursuing this direction is a sad mistake on your behalf. Not only does it
reveal the fact that you do not seem to understand the present-day political
and technological reality, we also take this as a serious declaration of war
from yourself, the UK government, to us, Anonymous, the people.
First and foremost, it is important to realize what a DDoS attack exactly is
and what it means in the contemporary political context. As traditional means
of protest (peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, the blocking of a crossroads
or the picketing of a factory fence) have slowly turned into nothing but an
empty, ritualised gesture of discontent over the course of the last century,
people have been anxiously searching for new ways to pressure politicians
and give voice to public demands in a manner that might actually be able
to change things for the better. Anonymous has, for now, found this new
way of voicing civil protest in the form of the DDoS, or Distributed Denial of
Service, attack. Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest, we block
access to our opponents infrastructure to get our message across. Whether
or not this infrastructure is located in the real world or in cyberspace, seems
completely irrelevant to us.
Moreover, we would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight
on the difference between a DDoS attack and hacking, as these concepts
often seem to be confounded when media and policy-makers talk about
Anonymous. Hacking as such is defined by the law as ‘unauthorised access
to a computer or network’, whereas a DDoS attack is simply a case of
thousands of people making legitimate connections to a publicly accessible
webserver at the same time, using up the entire bandwidth or processing
power of the given server at once and thereby causing a huge ‘traffic jam’.
ANONYMOUS PRESS RELEASE
January 27, 2011
It is clear then, that arresting somebody for taking part in a DDoS attack
is exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration
in their hometown. Anonymous believes this right to peacefully protest
is one of the fundamental pillars of any democracy and should not be
restricted in any way. Moreover, we have noted that similar attacks have
also been carried out against Wikileaks itself, yet so far, nobody has been
arrested in connection with these attacks, nor are there even any signs
of an investigation into this issue at all. Yet, we know exactly who was
responsible for that attack. Anonymous believes it is unfair and hypocritical
to attempt to put these 5 arrested anons to trial without even attempting to
find those who DDoS’ed a website which you oppose. We can therefore
only assume that these arrests are politically motivated, and were being
carried out under pressure from the US government. Anonymous can not,
and will not, stand idle while this injustice is being done.
Furthermore, the maximum sentence these 5 anons could be given under
the Computer Misuse Act is 10 years imprisonment and a fine of up to
£5000. We want you to realize just how ridiculous these sentences are,
especially given the exact nature of a DDoS attack and its lack of permanent
damage to the target website. To hand out these kinds of harsh sentences
(even to minors!) would effectively ruin their life, taking away their chance
at higher education or even any kind of proper future, simply because they
participated in a peaceful cyber-protest and stood up for their rights. A fine
as high as £5000 would also put an incredible strain on the minors’ families.
We hope that you consider changing the legal framework for what is, at
worst, a minor offence.
And last but not least: The fact that thousands of people from all over the
world felt the need to participate in these attacks on organisations targeting
Wikileaks and treating it as a public threat, rather than a common good,
should be something that sets you thinking. You can easily arrest individuals,
but you cannot arrest an ideology. We are united by a common objective
and we can and WILL cross any borders to achieve that. So our advice to
you, the UK government, is to take this statement as a serious warning from
the citizens of the world. We will not rest until our fellow anon protesters
have been released.
Awaiting your action,
Anonymous

quote:

Op vrijdag 28 januari 2011 01:09 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:
Haha, grappig geschreven weer. Tevens zielig.

Stop die ventjes gewoon even in het gevang, om een voorbeeld te stellen. Maandje of vijf? En een levenslang internetverbod.

Oh, en het arrogante snotneusje die dat artikel op zijn geweten heeft mag wat mij betreft ook heropgevoed worden. De Britse overheid bedreigen op zo een manier is treurig en idioot. Ga rebelletje spelen op het speelplein, het schrijven van zo een brief kost meer tijd en is minder leuk.

quote:

Op donderdag 27 januari 2011 22:21 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
http://imgur.com/DzIYU

[..]

Even uitgetypt.

[..]

quote:

Reports are emerging that Internet has gone down in Cairo and perhaps throughout Egypt, only hours before the largest planned protests yet.

According to a report from The Arabist, "Egypt has shut off the internet."

The fastest way to bring down a dictator is to force him to act like one where everyone can see it.

As Bill Engvall would say, "Here's your sign!"

Shutting off the internet will only enrage people all the more. Think of the rioting that breaks out during blackouts, only worse, because the people know the shutting off of the internet is a deliberate attack by the government. By this action, Mubarak has admitted the rule of law has failed and it is the tyrant against the people. My money is on the people.

Worse, even if the organizers of the protests wanted to cool things down,now they cannot. The riots will no longer be on planned locations, the rioting will be everywhere!

Way to go Egypt! Time to bury another Pharaoh!

quote:

10.18am: The UN chief Ban-Ki moon has condemned Egypt's decision to cut internet access ahead of planned protests as being against the democratic principles of freedom of expression and association, the Associated Press reports:

Speaking to reporters Friday at the World Economic Forum, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that he has been following closely the protests in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt and urged leaders to ensure that further violence is avoided. The UN chief said leaders should view the situation as a chance to address what he calls the "legitimate concerns" of their people.

quote:

Rookvrije horeca die ten onrechte op de lijst staan kunnen dit doorgeven via: meldpunt2@CleanAirNederland.nl

quote:

Op zaterdag 29 januari 2011 00:29 schreef Berlitz het volgende:
Zet het internet af en die losertjes doen niks meer.

Ze scheten al in hun broek toen er zo,n ddoser was opgepakt.

quote:

Op zaterdag 29 januari 2011 00:35 schreef Berlitz het volgende:

[..]

Dat waren geen anon-nerdjes.

Die durven de straat helemaal niet op.

quote:

The Egyptian government cut internet connections across their country to silence protests, leaving nearly all of its citizens without online access. But they weren't entirely successful. When governments shut down broadband and mobile connections, here's what to do.

quote:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20029885-83.html
January 28, 2011 8:41 AM PST
FBI issues warrants over pro-WikiLeaks attacks
by Lance Whitney

The FBI is on the hunt for the hackers responsible for a recent wave of cyberattacks launched in defense of WikiLeaks.

FBI agents yesterday executed more than 40 search warrants in the United States as part of their ongoing investigation. Pointing to the group Anonymous, which has taken responsibility for the attacks, the FBI said that the distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults were facilitated by software the group makes available as free downloads.

Late last year, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and other companies were hit by DDoS attacks triggered by activists in support of WikiLeaks after the companies cut off sources of funding to the whistle-blowing site.

The FBI apparently started its investigation after it was contacted by PayPal in December and was able to trace two of the IP addresses provided by PayPal to physical locations, one of which was in Texas where the agency seized a server.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20029885-83.html#ixzz1CO1rMRnv

quote:

President Hosni Mubarak's decision shut down access to the Internet last night to try — unsuccessfully — to stop the tide of unrest marked the first time an entire country (minus websites for Egypt's commercial international bank and stock exchange) has been sealed off. "It's quite easy, as we've seen," Lynn St. Amour, president of the Internet Society said from Davos. Indeed, in addition to recent efforts in Tunisia and Syria, Burma's military leaders partially cut off access during protests in 2005 and Nepal did the same as its king battled insurgents. China cut off access to its Xinjiang region for almost a year after ethnic unrest. But how exactly does it work? In Egypt's case it was made easier by the fact that although there are hundreds of service providers, just four own the infrastructure. Experts say newer telecommunications markets can orchestrate shutdowns relatively easily. Vodafone, one of the four internet service providers, released a statement saying, "All mobile operators in Egypt have been instructed to suspend services in selected areas. Under Egyptian legislation, the authorities have the right to issue such an order and we are obliged to comply."

Governments also have the option of closing down routers, which direct traffic over a country's border. But in Egypt's case that would have permitted access from users within the country.

But "kill switches" aren't just the province of contested regimes in the Middle East and Asia. Earlier this week, Senator Joe Lieberman brought back a bill he first introduced last summer that would give President Obama power over privately owned Internet providers and computer systems during a "national cyberemergency." The revised version of the Lieberman-Collins bill now includes language stipulating that the federal government designation "shall not be subject to judicial review." It also expanded the president's purview to include "provider of information technology." Given the government's rush to cut off access to WikiLeaks for a few thousand embarrassing but dated diplomatic cables, it's hard to trust their definition of a "cyberemergency."

quote:

The Egyptian authorities are revoking the Al Jazeera Network's licence to broadcast from the country, and will be shutting down its bureau office in Cairo, state television has said.

"The information minister [Anas al-Fikki] ordered ... suspension of operations of Al Jazeera, cancelling of its licences and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff as of today," a statement on the official Mena
news agency said on Sunday.

In a statement, Al Jazeera said it strongly denounces and condemns the closure of its bureau in Cairo by the Egyptian government. The network received notification from the Egyptian authorities on Sunday morning.

"Al Jazeera has received widespread global acclaim for their coverage on the ground across the length and breadth of Egypt," the statement said.

An Al Jazeera spokesman said that the company would continue its strong coverage regardless.

'Designed to stifle'

"Al Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists," the statement said.

"In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard; the closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people.

"Al Jazeera assures its audiences in Egypt and across the world that it will continue its in-depth and comprehensive reporting on the events unfolding in Egypt.

"Al Jazeera journalists have brought unparallelled reporting from the ground from across Egypt in the face of great danger and extraordinary circumstances. Al Jazeera Network is appalled at this latest attack by the Egyptian regime to strike at its freedom to report independently on the unprecedented events in Egypt."

quote:

RT @AymanM: Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English have just been taken off air in #Egypt (via phone)

quote:

ReichundRanicki RT @Satyagrahi_ji: R @Anon_VV Anonymous vid

OPERATION EGYPT - ANONYMOUS PRESS RELEASE - 26/01/2011

Join the hive-mind (irc.anonops.ru #opEgypt) - #anonymous #anonops #Egypt Plz spread! 27 minutes ago via TweetDeck

quote:

"Internet not working, police cars burning," sent out one Egyptian. "Today marks a great day for Egypt," sent out another.

These messages weren't coming from mobile phones or computers, but from an amateur radio sending out Morse Code somewhere amidst the chaos in Egypt.

The Egyptian government's efforts to limit communications within the country has triggered a wave of activism from an international group of free speech activists on the Internet called Telecomix.

Organizing using chat rooms, wikis, and collaborative writing tools, this largely anonymous group has worked to inform Egyptians about their communications options while receiving incoming messages from them. Telecomix has previously worked on free speech efforts in Tunisia, Iran, China and other countries who have tried to censor or block parts of the Internet.

Egypt has been identified as a "top priority" for Telecomix on one of its network sites, We Re-Build. It has a wiki set up as a one-stop shop with the latest chat rooms and resources for the ongoing efforts.

There are roughly 20 extremely active members, 50 active and some 300 total including lurkers, according to chat administrator Christopher Kullenberg from Gothenburg, Sweden.

"Think of Telecomix as an ever growing bunch of friends that do things together," Kullenberg says.
Story continues below
Advertisement

For the majority of users, anonymity is stressed and real identities are rendered obsolete.

Said one chat user, in awe from Australia: "I'm new here, just trying to help."

Here's a timeline of recent events for the group:

When Internet and mobile services were cut off in Egypt on Thursday night, though landlines were operational, members immediately got to work to send information to Egyptian fax numbers. Searching for a common string of characters found in Egyptian fax machines numbers on Google, they discovered a large amount of numbers.

At first, they sent out Wikileaks cables to these numbers, but then they determined the Egyptians didn't need additional motivation. Instead, they were interested in information on how to communicate with each other and the outside world. The activists thus began providing instructions for using dial-up modems and amateur radios, known as Ham radios, which the Egyptian people could use to communicate.

The group says it's also worked on receiving and decoding amateur radio messages, sent on frequencies recommended by the group of activists. While these groups have only been able to receive a small amount of messages of a short length with an unknown source, the Egyptian people's use of amateur radio to transmit messages represents an interesting utilization of old-fashioned technology to circumvent government restrictions.

Most activists behind these messages tell The Huffington Post they wish to remain anonymous. But besides Telecomix, other Internet groups have assisted, including "Anonymous," which has helped by sending out large amounts of faxes into Egypt. "Anonymous" was also involved in denial of service operations against organizations who took actions against Wikileaks. They've also participated in many other operations, with targets ranging from Scientology to Gene Simmons.

Have these efforts proven effective in helping the Egyptian people? "We cannot really tell," said Kullenberg. "Opening up communication channels is enough for us. What that leads up to, is up to the people communicating."

Said another user, wd40_: "Time will tell."

quote:

AlJazeera crew leave Suez as no longer safe to be there. Direct threats made against jazeera. Unsure where anger originating?Thugs? #Jan25

quote:

nolanjazeera Dan Nolan
Aljazeera Cairo bureau has been shut down. Just visited by plain clothes govt security, TV uplink is now closed #Egypt #Jan 25

quote:

toffee_va
RT @umarmirza Demonstratie voor Egypte en tegen Mubarak op t Malieveld in Den Haag (14-16.00). Spread the message! foto's > mail me #jan25
21 minutes ago from web

quote:

Op zondag 30 januari 2011 17:38 schreef schommelstoel het volgende:
over de NOS en RTL gesproken zou je haast door deze gebeurtenis kunnen laten zien dat beide nieuws programma's niet het nieuws neutraal brengen en of 100% verteld wat er wel gaande is.

VIa Fok! en andere internet media ben je meer en duidelijker op de hoogte als dan dat je NOS of RTL zou volgen.
Door het volgens van de NOS en RTL krijgen mensen een opgedrongen mening door van anderen.

Klopt totaal niet wat ze daar doen.

Een actie beginnen richting NOS en RTL nieuws?

quote:

Op zondag 30 januari 2011 17:50 schreef Muridae het volgende:

[..]

Misschien kunnen we samen een soort van "news monitor" bijhouden ?
In dit geval zou je bijvoorbeeld de berichtgeving van de NOS/RTL kunnen vergelijken met de berichten vanuit Al Jazeera, NRC, Guardian etc. Dit zou je ook kunnen doen voor binnenlands nieuws, zaken zoals de OV chipkaart etc.

Ik hoor het wel.

quote:

Op zondag 30 januari 2011 18:00 schreef Muridae het volgende:

[..]

We kunnen beginnen met een thread op Fok!.
Na de revolutie in Egypte heheh.

quote:

Op zondag 30 januari 2011 18:18 schreef schommelstoel het volgende:


Het is een begin, maar daar zijn wel meerdere onderzoekjes en terug lees acties voor nodig.
Omdat het niet alleen recentelijk gebeurt met wat nu in Egypte gaande is.

quote:

NRC Live:
Bondskanselier Angela Merkel heeft een telefoontjue gewaagd aan het overhalen van Mubarak tot hervormingen. Ze vroeg hem dit te doen om geweld te voorkomen. (Reuters)
zondag 30 januari 2011 7:22 NRC Live
7:24


NRC Live:
Ze vroeg de Egyptische president ook vrijheid van informatie te handhaven nadat Al Jazeera het land was uitgezet en internetverbinding eerder dit weekend werd beperkt.

quote:

Downing Street says that David Cameron supports President Obama's call for an "orderly transition" in Egypt. The statement from No 10 said:

"The prime minister made clear that restrictions on the media and internet were unacceptable and should be lifted immediately.

quote:

Op zondag 30 januari 2011 22:35 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

Dat lijkt mij sterk, er is geen Engelse regering

quote:

Op zondag 30 januari 2011 22:43 schreef Berlitz het volgende:

[..]

Klopt niet ze proberen deze site te downen.

http://www.redwatchonline.org/

quote:

http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2011/01/30/mass_groups_software_helps_avoid_censorship/?camp=misc:on:share:article

A Walpole-based group of Internet activists known as Tor is playing a key role in helping Egyptians get around Internet censorship during this current political turmoil.


Over the last three days, 120,000 people — most of them Egyptian — have downloaded Tor software, which helps activists protect their identity from surveillance by repressive regimes and get around blocked sites, according to Andrew Lewman, executive director of Tor, which provides the software for free.

“We saw this huge amount of traffic,’’ said Lewman, who said the group normally gets about 20,000 downloads a day worldwide. “We started looking at what was going on and the Internet service provider called us and said, ‘You are getting a huge amount of requests from Egypt.’ It didn’t look like an attack. It looked like a flash crowd.’’

Most of the downloads occurred just before the Egyptian government ordered a near-total block of the Internet on Thursday night, but usage remains high through the few pathways to the Internet that remain.

It is not the first time that Tor, which was formed in 2001 after two MIT students developed the anonymity software with a US Navy laboratory, has found itself in the center of a political uprising.

Iranian activists downloaded its software en masse during the massive protests after the contested 2009 presidential elections, and China has repeatedly tried to block Tor downloads and denied visas to Tor’s activists, who have trained people from over 20 countries, including China, at workshops in Hong Kong and Europe.

“It is plain that tools like Tor can be enormously value,’’ said John Palfrey, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, who did a study of software that activists use, including Tor. Since only the most tech-savvy know how to use such software, “there is enormous value in trainings and they pay dividends in crisis moments like this,’’ he said.

The group, which employs about 10 people, runs a network of about 2,500 computers around the world manned by volunteers who help the anonymous network run. It registered as a nonprofit in 2006 and receives about 75 percent of its funding from the US government.

About a year ago, Tor set up a special system just for Tunisian activists to protect their identity. So when the Tunisian government began monitoring Facebook pages and Twitter accounts during the recent uprising in Tunisia, “those people were already protected,’’ Lewman said.

In December 2009, Jacob Appelbaum, one of Tor’s main software developers, traveled to Cairo and held workshops for human rights activists on how to use the software to avoid surveillance on the Internet.

The workshop appears to have paid off. As protests swelled in Egypt in recent days, so many people rushed to download Tor that one of its servers crashed on Thursday. They managed to keep their service up and running, but the downloads from Egypt plummeted Thursday night after the government apparently ordered a near-total block on Internet service. [cont.]

quote:

Op woensdag 26 januari 2011 15:51 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Gelukkig maar, want de Egyptische overheid kan wel een steuntje gebruiken.

quote:

Op maandag 31 januari 2011 13:33 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

[..]

Quote je nou net jezelf?

quote:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/anonymous-hackers-threaten-egypt-govt-websites-reprisal-censorship
Global internet hackers threatened to attack websites affiliated with the Egyptian government on Wednesday in retaliation for the regime’s blocking of social-networking sites used by opposition groups to mobilize Tuesday’s “Day of Anger” protests.

The posse of hackers known only as “Anonymous” issued an online press release on Wednesday carrying the following strongly-worded warning to the Egyptian government: “Anonymous challenges all those who are involved in censorship. Anonymous wants you to offer free access to uncensored media in your entire country.”

“When you ignore this message, not only will we attack your government websites, Anonymous will also make sure the international media sees the horrid reality you impose upon your people,” the statement continued.

Egyptians were denied access to both Facebook and Twitter following Tuesday’s protests, in which tens of thousands took to the streets shouting anti-government slogans and demanding political reform. Violent clashes erupted between demonstrators and security forces, leaving at least four killed and hundreds injured. Police used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets to disperse protesters.

The “Day of Anger” was initially called for by online protest groups, including the 6 April youth movement, that had been inspired by recent events in Tunisia.

In recent years, social networking websites have been used by growing numbers of young Egyptians as a platform from which to voice their political and economic grievances. Since 2008, Facebook activists have been calling for strikes and sit-ins to protest rising inflation and chronic authoritarianism.

“By imposing censorship upon its own people and condemning these freedoms, the Egyptian government has revealed itself to be criminal and has made itself an enemy of Anonymous,” the hackers’ statement noted.

Last month, the mysterious group established themselves as a force to be reckoned with after having disrupted several major western websites that they accused of working against online whistle-blower Wikileaks. Victims included the Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon websites.

Earlier this month, Anonymous turned its attention eastward when it targeted key websites affiliated with the now-defunct Tunisian government following the successful popular uprising in that country.

ANONYMOUS - OPERATION EGYPT - A Press Release

quote:

1.
Translation:
2.

3.
Ministry of Interior
4.
Office of the minister
5.
Memo 1 # 06/b/mn [slightly illegible]
6.
Secret and Very Important
7.
Topic: Plan to fight back against popular demonstrations
8.
Strategies:
9.
- Allowing demonstrations to pass in the streets of cities and villages of the republic starting from date A and not getting in the way of their walk and being extremely careful not to use live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas unless an order is issued by the respective specialist according to the specialization table you have
10.
- Employing a number of thugs and paying them decent amounts and meeting them in their houses and in the gathering locations and one on one by the elements permitted to do so and the meetings should be unofficial and explain the deployment plan according to the attached schedule of locations labeled B1 and informing them of mobilization time and the plan to spread gradual chaos mentioned in the memo
11.
- Surveillance of all members of organizations and political parties and coordinating with printing presses and publishing houses and communication systems and enforcing a complete record of messages and incoming and outgoing phone calls and explaining their clarifying with a direct report as soon as you get the information
12.
- Communication methods (cellular – internet) will be cut off starting six AM on Friday 28/1/2011 while keeping landline services therefore all deployed officers and personnel must use handheld wireless communicators and make sure they’re in encryption mode
13.
- The plan to deploy police personnel and investigation officers [Mabahes / Maba7es – Translator] and security elements in civil clothing according to the attachment labeled B2
14.
- Limiting the walk of protests on Friday 28/1/2011 in public squares and major squares and cutting them off in case they reach warning locations according to the attached map labeled B3
15.
- Making sure security elements in plain clothing are armed with wooden sticks and metal maces of a small size (hand held) to use for arresting the primary elements present in the protest without revealing any violence
16.
- Shooting rubber bullets and tear gas without using live ammunition and informing everyone of that unless it is absolutely necessary

quote:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/28/syria-internet-down_n_815337.html

On the same day that Egypt has suspended online activity, Syria has also blocked internet service, according to reports.

Syria is known for a tight control of the internet, which was tightened further after the unrest in Tunisia, reports Reuters. Now, Al Arabiya is reporting that internet services have gone down completely in the country. Previously, Syria had blocked programs that "allow access to Facebook Chat from cellphones," according to Reuters.

Egypt's online services have reportedly been down since last night as the country's deadly protests continued into what was planned as the largest day so far.

Facebook has reportedly been blocked in Egypt for days, before which it was being used as a key tool for organizers. It was also used by the successful revolutionaries in Tunisia, raising concerns among other nations that it posed a threat.

UPDATE (10:32EST) Al Arabiya is reporting that a Syrian official has denied the internet service is down.

UPDATE: Reports are emerging that the Internet is not down in Syria, although the previous service disruptions are in place.

This is a developing story. More to come.

quote:

http://www.dailytech.com/ProWikileaks+Hacker+Group+Calls+For+War+Against+the+UK+Government/article20774.htm

Fiery statement from Anonymous follows the arrest of several of the group's hackers

Amid the drama unfolding in Egypt, drama of a very different nature was unfolding in the U.S. over the weekend. Hackers belonging to one of the highest profile online communities have accused the U.S. and UK governments of declaring "war" on them, and vow to fight back.

I. The Search

The turmoil began on Thursday, when the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations executed 40 search warrants, raiding the houses of members of the group Anonymous, a 1,000+ member group of online enthusiasts/hackers who met on the image-board site 4Chan.

The raids followed Anonymous members coordinating and executing distributed denial of service (DDoS) and other malicious attacks on credit card companies and financial institutions. The attacks came after those companies denied funding for controversial leaks site Wikileaks, saying that the site was supporting illegal activity. The hackers used a DDoS program dubbed the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) tool -- an homage to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back -- in their attacks.

Anonymous dubbed the attacks "Operation Payback". The attacks were executed during the second week of December and succeeded in briefly disabling some of the targeted businesses' web portals.

Coldbood, Anonymous's unofficial spokesman described the attacks, stating:

Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any from of censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with.

Authorities have since worked with financial institutions and antivirus software makers to weed out and block the LOIC, putting an end (for now) to the attacks.

II. The Arrests

Now international authorities are getting a bit of "payback" of their own. In the Netherlands several arrests were reportedly made. And in the UK five people ages 25 to 16 were taken in for questioning. Among those arrested was the 22-year-old spokesperson, Coldblood.

Arrests may be in store in the U.S., as well, pending the results of the FBI's investigation. As of Monday no U.S.-based arrests had been announced yet.

The FBI issued a press release, stating:

A group calling itself “Anonymous” has claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they conducted them in protest of the companies’ and organizations’ actions. The attacks were facilitated by the software tools the group makes available for free download on the Internet. The victims included major U.S. companies across several industries.

The FBI also is reminding the public that facilitating or conducting a DDoS attack is illegal, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as well as exposing participants to significant civil liability.

III. Anonymous Says it is at "War"

Following the arrests Anonymous has released a statement [PDF] commenting:

Not only does it reveal the fact that you do not seem to understand the present-day political and technological reality, we also take this as a serious declaration of war from yourself, the UK government, to us, Anonymous, the people.

First and foremost, it is important to realize what a DDoS attack exactly is and what it means in the contemporary political context. As traditional means of protest (peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, the blocking of a crossroads or the picketing of a factory fence) have slowly turned into nothing but an empty, ritualised gesture of discontent over the course of the last century, people have been anxiously searching for new ways to pressure politicians and give voice to public demands in a manner that might actually be able to change things for the better. Anonymous has, for now, found this new way of voicing civil protest in the form of the DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attack. Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest, we block

access to our opponents infrastructure to get our message across. Whether or not this infrastructure is located in the real world or in cyberspace, seems completely irrelevant to us.

Moreover, we would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight on the difference between a DDoS attack and hacking, as these concepts often seem to be confounded when media and policy-makers talk about Anonymous. Hacking as such is defined by the law as ‘unauthorised access to a computer or network’, whereas a DDoS attack is simply a case of thousands of people making legitimate connections to a publicly accessible webserver at the same time, using up the entire bandwidth or processing power of the given server at once and thereby causing a huge ‘traffic jam’.

It is clear then, that arresting somebody for taking part in a DDoS attack is exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration in their hometown. Anonymous believes this right to peacefully protest is one of the fundamental pillars of any democracy and should not be restricted in any way.

Moreover, we have noted that similar attacks have also been carried out against Wikileaks itself, yet so far, nobody has been arrested in connection with these attacks, nor are there even any signs of an investigation into this issue at all. Yet, we know exactly who was responsible for that attack. Anonymous believes it is unfair and hypocritical to attempt to put these 5 arrested anons to trial without even attempting to find those who DDoS’ed a website which you oppose. We can therefore only assume that these arrests are politically motivated, and were being carried out under pressure from the US government. Anonymous can not, and will not, stand idle while this injustice is being done.

What exact steps Anonymous will take to fight back in this "war" against the UK and Netherlands governments remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether the group will similarly call for a war against the U.S. if it makes arrests.

The members of Anonymous arrested in the UK face up to 10 years in prison and ~$8,000 USD in fines, under the UK's Computer Misuse Act.

In related news, Anonymous is calling for internet action [video] in support of protesters in Egypt. The announcement comes after Egyptian authorities are seeking to block communication, impairing protesters' ability to organize.

quote:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/01/31/egypt.protests.where.else/index.html

(CNN) -- What began as a popular uprising that toppled the Tunisian government before spreading into Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Sudan and, of course, Egypt, may now be headed for Syria.

Opposition movements in Syria are calling for mass protests on Saturday against the rule of President Bashar Al-Assad.

The groups are organizing on Facebook, with several pages promoting protests in Damascus, Aleppo and other cities.

Protest organizers want better living standards, human rights improvements and a greater voice for youth, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that studies and translates news accounts and social media postings.

It's unclear how many people might join the protests. A few thousand people had expressed their support for the movement on the Facebook pages, some of them undoubtedly from outside the country, the research institute said.

On Sunday, Sudan got a taste of the protests. An undetermined number of university students and others demanded the removal of the government in Facebook-organized protests that its leaders said were inspired by the events in Tunisia.

The students protested at a university in Khartoum, chanting "No to high prices, no to corruption" and "Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan together as one."

"The people of Sudan will not remain silent anymore. It is about time we demand our rights and take what's ours in a peaceful demonstration that will not involve any acts of sabotage," according an English language version of the group's profile on Facebook.

"We will demonstrate against the rising of the prices, the corruption, unemployment and all false practices of the government such as violence against women and lashing them in ways that breaks all laws of religions and humanity and the violation of minorities' rights."

The Sudan Tribune newspaper, citing a statement from police, said 70 people, 40 of them students, were arrested after the protests.

Meanwhile, a Facebook page has surfaced calling for a protest on Thursday in Yemen, which has been the site of a few demonstrations already.

The Tunisian protests that sparked the region's unrest sprang up after Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old college graduate, set himself on fire in protest of police confiscation of the fruit cart he had set up to make money. He later died.

The protests resulted in the collapse of Tunisia's government and inspired similar protests in other countries, including Algeria, Jordan, Sudan and Yemen.

The protests have reached their zenith to date in Egypt, where untold thousands of Egyptians have ignored government curfews and clashed with police over demands that President Hosni Mubarak resign.

A popular Facebook page that helped organize the Cairo protests was dedicated to Bouazizi.

quote:

# Oilyleaf_normal xitsawrap RT @OfficialAnonOps: #Anonymous / #OpEgypt are attacking www.moiegypt.gov.eg in support of the #Egypt protests. Retweet and join the fight against censorship. 10 minutes ago via web

quote:

Op maandag 31 januari 2011 20:53 schreef -Strawberry- het volgende:
Je bent er maar druk mee Papierversnipperaar.

quote:

Tunisians, we need your voice. Please join the IRC at our webchat (click here). We will keep you updated on new addresses for AnonNews, in case it gets blocked. The migration has been completed, we should be running stable from now on. Whoever attacks AnonNews at this moment, thanks for testing our new host.

quote:

Dear Egyptians,

We are providing a Telefax bridge to the internet for you to use. Due to the harsh internet blackout in Egypt, we are trying to establish all possible means of communications for you.

quote:

It was only last week that Google acquired SayNow, a voice messaging startup, They’re already putting them to good use. I mean really good use.

As they’ve just announced on the Google Blog, the search giant has teamed up with the incoming SayNow team and Twitter to create a simple speak-to-tweet service for people currently engulfed in the turmoil in Egypt.

quote:

Egypt says it's shutting down mobile phone networks

[Update 1:12 a.m. Tuesday in Cairo, 6:12 p.m. ET Monday] Egypt's information ministry told CNN Tuesday that the Noor Group, an Internet service provider, has been shut down. The move essentially takes the country offline.

Minnutes earlier, Egypt's information ministry that mobile phone networks will be shut down in Egypt during the next few hours ahead of demonstrators' planned "march of millions."

quote:

dinmend RT @alphaleah: PLS RETWEET!! French ISP offers free dial up internet access ~ +33 1 72 89 01 50 Login password: toto #egypt #jan25 #cairo PLS RETWEET!!

quote:

Sinistere videomanifesten, romantische compilaties van betogingen en petities tegen providers. Internetactivisten wereldwijd betuigen hun steun aan het Egyptische volk. En niet alleen dat: handleidingen om je tegen traangas te weren, tips om internetblokkades te ontwijken en nummers van bellijnen waar demonstranten verslag kunnen doen worden in rap tempo verspreid.

“Het komt goed, Anonymous zit er bovenop”, schrijft de beweging, die eerder sites van Wikileaks-vijandige bedrijven platlegde, op Facebook. Via YouTube verzoekt Anonymous de VS om “per direct alle militaire en politieke steun aan het regime van Hosni Mubarak te stoppen” en op Anonnews.org publiceerde ze een open brief aan nieuwsorganisatie Al Jazeera om te bedanken voor de “onpartijdige en moedige journalistiek”.

Anonymous ziet zichzelf als machtsfactor. “We zijn een legioen. We vergeven niet, we vergeten niet”, is de standaard afsluiting van haar manifesten. Via Twitter informeert ze duizenden volgers over de laatste ontwikkelingen. “Geen politiebureau is aan brandstichting ontkomen op de weg van Alex naar Caïro”, luidt een tweet van 14.33 uur. [er is meer]

quote:

Help those behind the firewall by lending your bandwidth.

By joining the cloud, you allow people to harness the power of free expression through the internet. The Global Proxy Cloud allows you to donate your unused bandwidth to ensure that governments can’t keep their people behind the firewall.

quote:

ioerror Jacob Appelbaum
Want to directly help Tor get non-state controlled internet access to Egypt? Give: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/egypt_blackout #egypt #jan25

quote:

With the Internet down across Egypt, Google and Twitter have come up with a way for Egyptians to tweet using their phones. Now, Dan Lyons reports, a group of hackers is close to delivering software that could turn laptops into low-cost Internet routers—and help protesters organize.

Hours after the government in Egypt shut down that country’s access to the Internet, hackers around the world started banding together to craft some kind of workaround. And one group claims to be only a day or two away from delivering a partial solution.

Their initiative is called the Open Mesh Project and it began when Shervin Pishevar, an Internet entrepreneur in Palo Alto, California, posted a message on Twitter calling for help shipping software into Egypt that could turn regular laptops into low-cost Internet routers, forming what’s known as a “mesh network,” where each computer can route messages along to the others.

Article - Lyons Egypt Internet Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images; Ben Curtis / AP Photo

Since then, engineers from around the world have been spreading the word and kicking in to help. The mesh network would at least let people communicate with others located close to them. The laptops can all talk to each other. If one goes out, messages just find another way to zip through the cluster of machines.

“This would at least let people build an ad hoc mobile network,” Pishevar said. “At the very least, people inside Egypt will be able to communicate with each other and organize.” [cont]

quote:

The Most AMAZING video on the internet #Egypt #jan25
The Most AMAZING video on the internet #Egypt #jan25
- epic vid, go to 0:45 and shit brix
http://live.reuters.com/Event/Unrest_in_Egypt - live Reuters updates
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/breakingNews.php - muslim brotherhood breaking news. most is unconfirmed and exaggerated
http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/ - live coverage
http://twitter.com/Jan25voices - egyptian in the centre of the protests calling from his phone to another country and his friend there posting the calls on twitter.
http://twitter.com/aymanm - aljazeera journalist
http://twitter.com/nolanjazeera - aljazeera journalist
http://twitter.com/rawyarageh- aljazeera journalist
http://live.cnn.com/ - good for live coverage of major events like presidents speaking
http://www.cnn.com/video/ - missed the news? check the vids

Anonymous involvement:
http://nakedsecurity.soph(...)ackers-launch-ddos-a
ttack/

ANONYMOUS - OPERATION EGYPT - A Press Release

http://hammeroftruth.com/2011/the-anonymous-revolution-in-egypt/
http://blogs.forbes.com/a(...)-mass-faxes-wikileak
s-cables-to-egypt/

For more information and for coordination purposes:
irc.accessirc.net (72.250.175.12) port 6667
channel: #egypt-revolution

Contributing to the Tor network and helping Egypt:
https://www.accessnow.org/proxy-cloud/page/join-the-cloud

What to do if your government shuts down everything:
http://lifehacker.com/574(...)de-internet-shutdown
http://www.budgetdialup.com/html/support_access_1.htm
http://lifehacker.com/140(...)-internet-connection
http://www.sailmail.com/

quote:

ANONYMOUS ITALY PRESS RELEASE
For the attention of the people of the world:
The electronic information network has moved to fill the void left by traditional media, providing citizens with the information and means necessary to push their governments to act. We share a responsibility to defend fundamental human freedoms. Now it is time to act and Anonymous will always be present in the places where human rights are in jeopardy.
The political and economical situation in Italy has become untenable. The Italian government has made it a priority to censor the internet and to turn the judicial system into a tool of corruption. It is involved with prostitution (including the prostitution of children) and it uses its dubious links with the Mafia to corrupt and manipulate the free flow of information. A government such as this will never be a government that is supported by the Italian people, nor will it be supported by Anonymous.
We do no not support violence and we are against war. We are the countless humble protectors of free speech; we are the critical mass. When the free flow of information is attacked, we organize and we show up as one to support the groups being oppressed.
Citizens of the world, governments are only now realizing that when we combine our efforts with the people we, Anonymous, have a significant influence that cannot be ignored.
We are working for our freedom, for your liberty, and we, like you, will never surrender.
For too long they have fooled us by masking their dirty deeds with the word democracy. For too long they have poisoned our environment, the same environment that will be inherited by our grandchildren. For too long we have been kept divided by false ideologies of left and right - all in the struggle to gain more power and more money.
These abuses have been perpetrated for years by the entire political class and as a result all Italians have now seen a progressive and steady deterioration of their fundamental human rights and dignity.
We are Anonymous, we are the critical mass, we are not terrorists, we are the friends of the people because we are the people. We are the instrument of the collective global consciousness that has now awakened...
Citizens: unite under our cause, because our cause is your cause.
We are Anonymous. YOU are Anonymous.
We do not forgive injustice.
We do not forget Freedom.
Expect us.

quote:

# Al Jazeera confirms signal is being blocked. Page grab of frozen screen. http://yfrog.com/h8pojekj 1 minute ago via Twitter for iPhone

# This contravenes the terms of lease of both NileSat & ArabSat. The US & EU must put pressure on the Mubarak regime to stop the info blackout 4 minutes ago via web

# Al Jazeera is now confirming that its signal on ArabSat is being corrupted. 5 minutes ago via web

quote:

A Message from Anonymous - 01/29/2011


Hello, world.

You are now breathing manually.

Over the last few weeks, North Africans have expressed an ardent desire for liberty, democracy, and justice for both themselves, and for the world. While most in the West responded with a mild interest and cynicism for which our culture has become rightly reviled, Anonymous responded with action. Beginning with Tunisia and continuing on to Egypt, thousands of world citizens have dedicated their lives to securing the liberty of others, providing tools, expertise, and long-sought encouragement to those who have already earned their rights by virtue of fighting for them.

When Tunisians bristled in indignation at the chains that have bound them for far too long, the world was silent. Anonymous was not; and thus the online venues of state propaganda were taken down and in some cases replaced with our own clear message that those who want our help will get it.

When protests erupted upon the occasion of one fruit vendor's bravery, the media ignored it. Anonymous did not, and thus Tunisians were provided with the Guide to Protecting the North African Revolutions.

When Wikileaks confirmed the cruelty and corruption of the Ben Ali regime, Western governments did nothing. Anonymous organized hundreds of Tunisians directly and thousands more indirectly.

It was the Tunisian people themselves that overcame the tyranny to which they had been subjected. They did so in the context of the digital reformation, with unprecedented assistance provided over a mere few weeks. Others will follow. Some have already begun.

...

That the Egyptian regime has reacted to the yearning of its citizens by shutting down the nation's communications is the smoking gun that should tell the world that communications are the key to liberty. That we live in the communications age should, and has been, of great alarm to all who love their power more than their people, or who consider themselves to be the only ones capable of governing the world around them. That they have failed to provide any real security should remind all concerned that such people are not only unnecessary to true security, but a perpetual threat to same.

Anonymous is a machine that harnesses the talent that other, lesser institutions often fail to acknowledge or incorporate. Man is a creature that builds institutions and thereafter loses his grip on them. Anonymous cures institutions that are dying and destroys institutions that ought to have died long ago.

All significant human activity is the result of human collaboration - including this very press release. And the means by which humans may collaborate has exploded - not expanded, not increased, but exploded - in such a way as to allow any man on earth to talk and work with any other man.

Such issues will be explored soon enough. In the meantime, we demand that all normal communications be restored to the people of Egypt by January 29th, 12:00 midnight, Eastern Standard Time. That we have occasion to make such a demand in the first place should be enough to convince all good men that the world needs revolution. That we have made it in full view of all men should be enough to convince them that we now have the means to back it up - not just against this regime, but against any and all parties that continue to prop it up even after it has conceded that the truth is its enemy.

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not Forgive.
We do not Forget.

quote:

Op dinsdag 1 februari 2011 16:36 schreef YazooW het volgende:
Anonymous die persverklaringen uitgeeft...

Message to Scientology

quote:

President M. H. Mubarak:

We are Anonymous. We, along with the rest of the world, watched and listened to the speech you gave to the Egyptian People. We were all deeply disappointed by your decision to ignore your people's desires by continuing to cling to the last vestiges of power in the face of your overwhelming lack of support. Your reign as "The Pharaoh" has come to an end, and it is only a matter of time before you are removed from your office. The method of your retirement was solely in your hands, but by your poor judgement and choices, you have handed your fate over to the people who have suffered under your tyranny for nearly thirty years. In light of this development, we have concluded that your decision to continue to hold the office of the President is an insult to the people of Egypt. It is obvious that you are no longer deserving of such a title. We are not alone in our conclusion. See for yourself the protests growing across the country; a manifestation of the people's seething anger for the whole world to witness. Hear the calls of solidarity throughout the world demanding your immediate resignation. We stand alongside the Egyptian people and we will lend them our support in order to put an end to your self-righteous, authoritarian rule.
#

#
The Citizens of The Arab Republic of Egypt have demanded that you step down from your post as President of Egypt, demands that you have blatantly ignored and the expectations that have been placed on you. Mark our words that the consequences of this course of action will be dire; do not delude yourself into thinking that the political game that you are attempting to engage in will ultimately end in your victory. The people have spoken, and your stubborness and resistance to change delays the only acceptable resolution - the removal of you and your puppets and the termination of your undemocratic regime.
#

#
You have already been judged, but it is the people of Egypt and not history that has passed the judgement. It is obvious to all that the decision they have made is not in your favour. You have been found guilty of numerous crimes against your people. You have used your influence to try to hide these crimes, and denied them when they could no longer be kept down. Even now you attempt to twist the situation and the suffering of your people to advance your own agenda. Try as you will, but your attempted political machinations have fooled no one.
#

#
Allow us to better illustrate this to you. You say that you "take pride in the long years" that you claim to have served the people of Egypt; however, the use of secret police forces, the torture of innocent citizens and political acitvists, the repression of the freedoms of speech and assembly, and the murder of the Egyptian people are all testament to your tyrannic disposition, rather than your alleged benevolent rule. It is precisely the opposite of what you claim to want for Egypt. Only a madman would flaunt such a record with pride. The uprising of your people and the reverberation of their message throughout the world is undeniable. These views speak of the true legacy you are leaving behind.
#

#
Like a cancer, the resentment for your regime has festered within the people for nearly thirty years. For the last few days, the Egyptian people have united to speak as one voice against you and together have cried out in unison for your immediate removal. People young and old, and of all classes, creeds, and religious convictions are ready to stand as one nation and ensure their basic rights of economic security, political equality, and freedom of speech and assembly. Whatever dignity you have left can only be preserved by honoring their demands. You have said that you will "die on the soil of Egypt." The Egyptian people are desperate for change, and may make you honor your words if left with no better alternative. You have indeed "served long enough." Do the right thing and step down, and do it now, and not in eight months. Let the aspirations of the Egyptian people be realized. Mr. Mubarak, free your fellow countrymen from the grasp of tyranny! You have been warned.
#

#

#
We are Anonymous.
#
We are Legion.
#
We do not forgive; We do not forget.
#
We have spoken.
#

quote:

_{Anonymous-persbericht 31 januari (Nederlands)}

Anonymous,

Het is geen geheim meer dat de overheden van de VS en het Verenigd Koninkrijk verschillende mensen proberen te vervolgen die betrokken zijn geweest bij de protesten van Anonymous tegen censuur - voornamelijk tegenover PayPal, Mastercard, en VISA, nadat zij hadden besloten niet langer financiele transacties uit te voeren voor Wikileaks. Tegen veertig mensen uit de Verenigde Staten zis een huiszoekingsbevel uitgevaardigd, ze zijn ondervraagd door de FBI, en hebben daarna een dagvaarding ontvangen. Vijf Anons in het Verenigd Koninkrijk zijn ook ondervraagd, maar we wachten nog steeds op meer informatie over hun situatie. Op dit moment weten we wat de overheid van de Verenigde Staten van plan is, en daar zullen wij dan ook op reageren.
Het feit dat de Amerikaanse anons voor een rechtbank moeten verschijnen geeft al aan dat ze geen idee hebben hoe om te gaan met deze moderne vorm van protest (zie voor meer informatie http://www.grandjuryresistance.org/ )

De rechtbank vereist dat de volgende zaken worden overgedragen:

* Enige en alle archieven, documenten en materialen die betrekking hebben op de internetactivisten-groeperingen "4chan" en "Anonymous."

* Enige en alle archieven, documenten en materialen die betrekking hebben op kwaadaardige software, code, or andere programma's gerelateerd aan Trojaanse Paarden, botnets, Denial of Service aanvallen, inclusief maar niet gelimiteerd tot Low Orbit Ion Cannon en/of High Orbit Ion Cannon.

* Enige en alle archieven, documenten en materialen die betrekking hebben op interacties tussen computers van personen die een huiszoeking hebben gehad en zij die onkwetsbaar zijn.

* Enige en alle archieven, documenten en materialen die betrekking hebben op de identificatie en locaties van perso(o)n(en) die gebruik maken van, besturen van, of verspreiden van informatie over Denial of Service software.

* Enige en alle archieven, documenten en materialen die betrekking hebben op administratie, onderhoud, gebruik, of propagatie van Denial of Service hulpmiddelen, inclusief maar niet gelimiteerd tot Low Orbit Ion Cannon en/of High Orbit Ion Cannon.

* Enige en alle archieven, documenten en materialen die betrekking hebben op identificatie en locatie van andere computers die deel uitmaken van de Denial of Service aanval en/of botnet.

* Enige en alle computerlogs onderhouden in relatie tot computers gevonden in met huiszoekingsbevel doorzochte huizen.

* Enige en alle archieven, documenten en materialen die betrekking hebben op namen, bijnames, email adressen of IP adressen van de betrokkenen van het AnonOps IRC netwerk.

Het is overduidelijk te zien aan deze punten en het hele principe van een Grand Jury dat de overheid van de Verenigde Staten geen idee heeft hoe om te gaan met deze vorm van protest. Ook hebben ze overduidelijk geen technische kennis van de hulpmiddelen die zijn gebruikt. De "DDoS-aanvallen" die Anonymous heeft uitgevoerd zijn in principe hetzelfde wat een internetbrowser doet, en maken simpelweg gebruik van wat er voor iedereen beschikbaar is op het internet. Ook lijkt de overheid van de VS niet in te zien dat het TCP/IP-protocol uitgevonden is in de jaren zeventig, en tegenwoordig in principe een gedateerde infrastructuur is, die dit soort "aanvallen" mogelijk maakt zonder enige diepgaande kennis van zaken.
Om een voorbeeld te noemen, het type aanval dat LOIC uitvoert kan gemakkelijk worden uitgevoerd op een 'naturel' Windows-systeem zonder enige special hulpmiddelen. Geen van de mensen die benaderd zijn door de FBI waren betrokken bij enige "hack", "deface", of enige andere activiteit die te maken heeft met het binnendringen van een gesloten systeem. Deze 'aanvallen' waren publiek, open voor iedereen (dit is ook duidelijk bekend gemaakt), juist omdat het doel ervan is om aandacht ergens op te vestigen, om te protesteren.
We zijn ons er allen van bewust dat we een nieuwe vorm van protest zijn begonnen - een zogenaamde digitale sit-in. Nu is de tijd aangebroken om deze nieuwe en blijkbaar zeer efficiente vorm van protest te verdedigen, zoals zovelen in de geschiedenis andere vormen van protest hebben verdedigd.
We vragen niet alleen jullie hulp voor een fysiek protest, we hebben jullie hulp - met name die van mensen die zich specialiseren in rechten - om de getroffen anons te helpen en verdedigen op elke mogelijke manier.

Dit is wat we vragen van de FBI / Politie:

* Dat ze stoppen met de huiszoekingen en het in beslag nemen van privé eigendommen zoals computers, telefoons, opslagmedia en andere electronische apparaten, en te stoppen met het dagvaarden van demonstranten.

* Dat al het eigendom dat in beslag is genomen of is gedagvaard in deze huiszoekingen aan de eigenaars wordt teruggekeerd.

* Dat de huidige dagvaardingen van demonstranten ongeldig worden verklaard.

Voor mensen die in de Verenigde Staten leven zijn er protesten gepland op de volgende data en locaties:
Kom naar deze protesten met een Anonymous-masker (en andere Anonymous-attributen waar je aan kunt komen) om je steun te tonen voor onze mede-anons.
10 februari 2011 09:30
United States District Court
United States Courthouse
280 South First Street
San Jose, California 95113

Protestacties in New York
http://anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=358

7 april 2011
Er is ook een groot protest gepland op 7 april, bij The City Hall, met sprekers van Anonymous, <executive director> van de National Lawyers Guild, Gregg Housh, Barry Eisler, Glenn Greenwald, Barret Brown, en meer. Mis dat dus niet!

Ongetwijfeld zullen er ook in Nederland en Belgie protesten plaatsvinden in de komende maanden. Houdt daarom sites als Anonnews.org, WhyWeProtest.net, Anonops.in / Anonops.ru en andere Anonymous-gerelateerde websites in de gaten!

Meer informatie
http://www.glennbecktoday.com/raidz/?p=209
http://abclocal.go.com/kf(...)nal_world&id=7924826
http://www.grandjuryresistance.org/
http://glennbecktoday.com/raidz/
http://www.anonnews.org

Kom ook naar ons IRC-kanaal!
irc.anonops.ru / irc.anonops.in
#OpClueless en #dutch
- Anonymous

quote:

11.10pm GMT:CloseLink to this update: http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)ve-updates#block-107 Malcom Gladwell, the New Yorker sociological popularist, is still trying to dismiss the influence of social media in events in Tunisia and Egypt:

Right now there are protests in Egypt that look like they might bring down the government. There are a thousand important things that can be said about their origins and implications: as I wrote last summer in The New Yorker, "high risk" social activism requires deep roots and strong ties. But surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please. People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along.

There are all sort of reasons why Gladwell has got this wrong and it deserves to be dealt with at greater length than I can here. But to deny the impact of technological change on what we've witnessed in recent weeks seems foolish, to say the least.

quote:

11.21pm GMT: Avaaz, the web-based digital activists, announces that it is supplying high-tech equipment to the protesters in Egypt to help them circumvent government restrictions:

The global campaign organisation Avaaz is working to help provide activists in Egypt with satellite phone devices together with secure online software to allow them to send and share information confidentially, beating the government crackdown on information.

This comes as Avaaz has learnt that the Egyptian government has arrested eight bulletin board service operators in Egypt who have been providing internet access through landlines.

In partnership with the TOR Project, Avaaz is providing equipment and software to increase the flow of information and online access for news dissemination via satellite phones. This comes as the crisis in Egypt continues and internet and mobile network access remains intermittent and has again been shut off today.

Providing high-speed satellite equipment is not only much faster and more reliable, it is also far safer in the context of a violent government crackdown on information.

quote:

Op donderdag 3 februari 2011 03:28 schreef truepositive het volgende:
Wat een vreselijk cynische en oningelichte opmerking, heb je de quotes hierboven gelezen, en zoja, volgens welke gedachtelijnen ben je tot die post gekomen vraag ik me af?

quote:

UPDATE: A roommate of Chen called APN to say that the roommate had received the note left by APN. He said he would forward the note to Chen. He said that Chen had met with the university's administration yesterday and was advised not to speak to any more media.

(APN) ATLANTA -- On Thursday, January 27, 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigations raided the dorm room of Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) student Zhiwei "Jack" Chen, after the FBI obtained a warrant to search for materials related to Operation Payback (OP).

OP was an effort by a group of activists and hackers, called Anonymous, to take down websites Aiplex Software, Bank of America, Mastercard, MPAA, Paypal, RIAA, Visa, and US Copyright Office, after these sites refused to process donations for Wikileaks or otherwise adversely impacted Wikileaks.

The raid was first reported by the Technique student newspaper of Georgia Tech.

The raid is one of about 40 that took place around the country in connection with the investigation of OP.

Atlanta Progressive News has attempted to contact Chen by his campus email address, but has not heard back. APN also visited Chen's dorm, Towers Hall, earlier today, but all the doors were locked and there was no front desk. APN provided a resident of the dorm with a handritten note for Chen, which the student said he would deliver to Chen's room.

Chen, 18, is a freshman studying Computer Engineering, according to Tech's website.

After the incident, Chen posted a message on the website Reddit, along with a link to a photograph posted on Imgur.com, of the warrant that he was served, an inventory of the property seized from his room, and a business card left by the FBI agent.

The Reddit post was titled "IAMA Person Questioned about Operation Payback."

"FBI had a warrant to take all my electronics," Chen wrote. "They came in the dorm room bustin in @ 7:00, and pushed everyone out of bed. They searched the place and questioned all people involved."

"I was a passive admin for Operation Payback, and quit early to avoid complications with the law, but it seems the FBI has gotten the better of me," Chen wrote.

"Questions shall be answered whenever I have time, and when I find a public computer to use as they seized all my electronic assets," Chen wrote.

"TL;DR: FBI took all my stuff and questioned me about OP. Also, AMA," Chen wrote.

"Before his account [apparently his Reddit account] was deleted, Chen offered more details surrounding the situation. Upon request, he posted a copy of the search warrant and the identity of the FBI agent who executed the search," Technique reported.

"He also stated that he never participated in the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, but confirmed that he was an administrator on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel used to coordinate the operations," Technique reported.

The search warrant cited a case number, 1:11-MJ-0078, but said the case was under seal. The warrant was approved by United States District Court, Northern District of Georgia, Magistrate Judge Russel G. Vineyard. It was issued January 25, 2010.

The warrant stated, "TO: Special Agent Roderick Franklin Coffin and any Authorized Officer of the United States. Affidavit(s) having been made before me by Roderick Franklin Coffin who has reason to believe that on the property or premises known as... See Attachment A... in the Northern District of Georgia there is now concealed a certain person or property, namely... See Attachment B... which constitutes evidence of the commission of a criminal offense and property which has been used as the means of committing a criminal offense, concerning violations of Title 18, United States Code, Section(s) 1030. I find the affidavit(s) establishes probable cause to search and seize the person or property from the person or premises described above."

The inventory of property taken from Chen's room included computers, an IPhone, handwritten notes, a digital camara, and URB drives.

Chen has denied being involved in Operation Payback, aside from having been a passive administrator on a chat room site for the group, Anonymous, that has been used to carry out OP.

"I thought 'Oh, there are some intelligent people here to chat with,' and apparently that got me into some extreme trouble," he told 11Alive news.

"I'm not involved in the attack on these sites," Chen said. "I feel devastated personally. Pretty much my life's been invaded. [The FBI] required me to give all my passwords I have and they pretty much took all my accounts, everything."

"Chen hasn't been charged with any crime and he says it could be weeks or months before he knows anything about the investigation. He is asking FBI agents to return his study materials and class documents," 11Alive reported.

The FBI issued a press release regarding the multiple search warrants executed.

"FBI agents today executed more than 40 search warrants throughout the United States as part of an ongoing investigation into recent coordinated cyber attacks against major companies and organizations. Also today, the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police Service executed additional search warrants and arrested five people for their alleged role in the attacks," the FBI wrote.

"These distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) are facilitated by software tools designed to damage a computer network’s ability to function by flooding it with useless commands and information, thus denying service to legitimate users. A group calling itself 'Anonymous' has claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they conducted them in protest of the companies’ and organizations’ actions. The attacks were facilitated by the software tools the group makes available for free download on the Internet. The victims included major U.S. companies across several industries," the FBI wrote.

"The FBI also is reminding the public that facilitating or conducting a DDoS attack is illegal, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as well as exposing participants to significant civil liability," the FBI wrote.

"The FBI is working closely with its international law enforcement partners and others to mitigate these threats. Authorities in the Netherlands, Germany, and France have also taken their own investigative and enforcement actions," the FBI wrote.

quote:

Op vrijdag 4 februari 2011 13:26 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

Payback is a bitch.

quote:

Op vrijdag 4 februari 2011 13:44 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

Oh? Daar gaan ze eerst naar de rechter om een huiszoekingsbevel te halen? Is dat voor of nadat men ze het ziekenhuis in slaat? Deze yokel is niet eens gearresteerd of opgesloten.

Man, praat toch niet zulke baarlijke nonsens.

quote:

Anonymous, the clandestine group that operates "Operation Payback" and reportedly includes members of the "/b/" bulletin board 4chan.org, has set its sites on Egyptian government Web sites.

Soon after Egypt restored access to the Internet Tuesday, the group launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the Egyptian Ministry of Interior.

"Welcome back to the Internet, #Egypt. Well, except http://www.moiegypt.gov.eg -- you stay down," the group tweeted.

Several minutes later, the group added, "Internet in #Egypt is up. Why isn't Mubarak's site? Because we do not forgive, We do not forget. Egyptians, Hang in there, we are with you."

Group spokesman Gregg Housh told the New York Times that the attack is part of a larger campaign Anonymous is running to support anti-government protests. Last month, the group also took down the Web sites for the Tunisian government and its stock exchange.

This is the latest in a string of DDoS attacks organized by Anonymous. Last month, British police arrested five men for their alleged involvement in a string of DDoS attacks that targeted the Web sites of Visa, MasterCard, Amazon, and PayPal. The companies stopped processing payments and cut hosting ties with WikiLeaks after it released 250,000 State Department cables in late November, a move with which Anonymous disagreed.

Anonymous later said the UK government had made a "sad mistake" with the arrests and said DDoS attacks are simply the digital equivalent of a protest or sit-in.

quote:

Op vrijdag 4 februari 2011 18:29 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

een Egyptische gevangenis

quote:

Op vrijdag 4 februari 2011 18:35 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:

[..]

Het enige wat ik tot dusver van dit topic heb geleerd is dat anon-falertjes niet enkel uit 14-jarigen maar ook uit oudere hoopjes vervelend bestaat

quote:

Op vrijdag 4 februari 2011 18:45 schreef Im.Kant. het volgende:



Het gaat hier namelijk gewoon om zielige hoopjes mens die hun 'roem' zoeken op het internet.

quote:

Hacktivists from the online group Anonymous have turned their attention to Yemen as part of their battle for greater net freedoms.

The website of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has become inaccessible as Yemenis stage anti-government protests.

It follows attacks on the websites of Egypt's ruling party and ministry of information this week.

Last month Anonymous shut down some Tunisian websites, including the government's official site.

Anonymous's move into Middle East politics has alarmed security experts, who warn people against jumping on the bandwagon.

"If you participate in these attacks, you are knowingly engaging in a cyber crime," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant for security firm Sophos.

Web freedoms

"If you aren't prepared to go and throw rocks, then maybe you should think again about clogging up websites with traffic," he added.

There have been five arrests in UK and the FBI launched raids across the US in connection with the Wikileaks cyber attacks, which saw members of Anonymous targeting firms which had withdrawn services from the whistle-blowing site.

Anonymous claims that it wants to uphold web freedoms around the world but as such attacks increase, it could have knock-on effect of governments seeking to make it harder to remain anonymous online, thinks Mr Cluley.

"If there was no ability for anonymity, we would all be the losers," he said.

quote:

Welcome everyone to ultimateleaks.org Our website is currently in BETA in some parts of the website. Our website was made so people can send us leaks using our secure "Ultimatepad" and will be posted once Authrized. Ultimateleaks is proud also to host a mirror site of the well known Wikileaks .

When pressing Ultimatepad at the top of the website, make sure you are using a Proxy/Tor so that you don't get caught uploading content to Ultimatepad. We also reccomend that you use outside your house and work internet, By going to a Cafe,Hotspots and more. Please make sure that you Don't Use Your IP!

**DISCLAIMER**:We dont have any connection with the owners and uploaders,nor we detain or visualise,share,or access the parent directory of the sTORage server.We discourage viewing anything related to Parent Directory On This Website.

Chat: http://www.anonops.in:9090/?nick=WebAnon....&channels=opegypt&prompt=1 --->Join #ultimateleaks <---

Follow us on Twitter for news and updates! http://www.twitter.com/ultimateleaks

quote:

Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” Hillary Clinton, January 25, Washington

quote:

When asked about the revolt in Egypt, 72% of american adults agreed that they should overthrow the current Pharaoh.” Anonymous member, #opegypt IRC, January 26,

quote:

But interestingly, in the #opegypt channel, one Anonymous member responded to criticism of Clinton by noting that, had the State Department statement been any stronger in support of the Egyptian protests, it might have enabled critics to paint them as tools of US policy, like the Iranian dictatorship did about 2009’s protests in that country. It was a subtle point, particularly for a group described variously as “juvenile”, “domestic terrorists” (thank you Fox News) and an “underground hate group”.

quote:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/2/5/175932/7709?new=true

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:

URGENT WARNING TO ALL ANONYMOUS HACKTIVISTS:

Mr. Barr has successfully broken through our over 9000 proxy field and into our entirely non-public and secret insurgent IRC lair, where he then smashed through our fire labyrinth with vigor, collected all the gold rings on the way, opened a 50 silver key chest to find Anon's legendary hackers on steroids password.

As Mr. Barr has discovered in spite of our best efforts, Anonymous was founded by Q last Thursday at the guilded Bilderberg Hotel after a tense meeting with one Morrowind mod collection, which itself includes the essential Morrowind Comes Alive 5.2 as well as several retexturing packs, all of which seem to lower one's FPS unless one has also installed the latest Risc Architecture framework and thus obtained the killer refresh rate that is the right of all world citizens, except for noted heterosexual Tom Cruise.

In addition to the sudden disappearance of Anonymous leader Q, Anonymous co-founder Justin Bieber also disappeared just before his top-secret mission to Eritrea to offer physical succour to the rebels, suggesting that Mubarak is in our base, eating our Cheetos, likely with military support authorized by Hill Dawg. All of this comes at a low point for the Official Anonymous Organization, Inc. and its valued shareholders; several Anons had already lost their Fallout New Vegas saved games in the unwarranted and faggy raids perpetrated by the U.S. federales.

At this point, it is safe to assume that the underground server sites at the North Pole have been compromised as well. Back up all porn drives now, because the super secret P2P centralized distribution server of Backdoor Sluts 9 is presumed to be immediately threatened. Male Anons have been commanded to switch back to traditional tentacle porn while femanons, or "Rei Ayanami wannabes," continue to be shared among the Echelon Nine Working Group that has since replaced Owen as sky marshall.

However, David Davidson (who might also be the legendary Ceiling Cat, as rumors have it) so far eludes custody, so all is not lost. Mr Davidson skyped the anonymous leaders from his hideout in Philadelphia to remind them that he was "Never gonna give them up, never gonna let them down". Meanwhile, the board of directors remains little more than a gin-addled menagerie of puppets.

Despite these setbacks, the planned conference in Vienna is not slated for cancellation, although the buffet may be altered to include fewer Cheetos. The scheduled appearence of Boxxy is a subject of much contention within Anonymous ranks, being an event of considerably greater importance than the 4th return of Raptor Jesus, which itself is older than the internet.

We shall note in conclusion that we like the guy and want to believe him, but we still have to ask: Did Aaron Barr shave and murder Alexander Hamilton in 1993? We're just asking questions here, people. At any rate, the Pink Horse prophecy will soon be fulfilled.

All Hail Xenu,

-Anonymous

quote:

10.52am: Our correspondent in Cairo, Jack Shenker, reports on the latest skirmishes in a propaganda war between the regime and the protesters.

Jack Shenker

The standoff between protesters in Tahrir and the Mubarak regime is a media battle as much as anything else, and it's a vastly unequal one: the Egyptian government spends millions of dollars on a trio of top Washington lobbyists to help push its message to the international media and foreign policy-making circles, whilst those opposed to the regime have to rely on word of mouth and online social media sites, access to which has regularly been cut off by the authorities in recent days.

Now though, members of the anti-Mubarak occupation are getting more savvy in their efforts to keep global opinion on their side. A new tactic is to put out fake press releases, spoofing the official statements issued to journalists by government ministers. Take for example this announcement from newly-appointed prime minister Ahmed Shafiq on Friday (sent by the Ministry of Information):

Prime Minister: Protestors will not be forced to leave

4-2-2011

Cairo – Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik reiterated Governmental commitments that demonstrated would not be forced to leave Tahrir Square.

Speaking to an Arab Satellite Channel Dr. Shafik stressed that demonstrators were free to remain in the Tahrir Square, and that no one would be arrested for participating in the protests so long as they had not committed an act of violence or vandalism.

And now the response from a group of protesters in Tahrir, sent to me this morning:

Protesters: Mubarak will be forced to leave

6-2-2011

Tahrir – Pro-democracy activists reiterated their commitment that the existing regime would be forced to leave government.

The overwhelming consensus in the participatory, democratic arena of Tahrir Square, was that Mr Mubarak would be free to flee to the country of his choosing, and that he would not meet his just rewards, despite his prolonged acts of violence and vandalism against the country.

Given the brutality perpetrated against the anti-Mubarak crowds in Tahrir and elsewhere in the country - first by the state's central security forces then by regime-backed baltagiyya (thugs) - the protesters might be forgiven for thinking that it would be relatively simple to garner support from those watching events unfold from outside the square. But the struggle to shape the news agenda hour by hour, day by day, is a tough and unceasing one, and protesters know they have to try and keep their own voices prominent as other more formal opposition forces begin dialogue with the government, claiming to speak in their name. These spoof press releases may just do the trick.

Public Enemy - Don't Believe The Hype

quote:

my blog is under attack, i will publish the documents again, feel free to distribute 26 minutes ago via web

quote:

# security experts say DDoS attack 17 minutes ago via web

# documents not verified, but still my blog is being attacked for publishing them, fishy! 18 minutes ago via web

# those were the 5 documents, save them offline, publish elsewhere if possible, i give you all permission 19 minutes ago via web

# doc 5 http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7848/sixf.jpg 20 minutes ago via web

# doc 4 http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7848/sixf.jpg 21 minutes ago via web

# doc 3 http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/4770/threehe.jpg 22 minutes ago via web

# doc 2 http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/6810/twovi.jpg 25 minutes ago via web

# doc 1 http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/9167/onexj.jpg

quote:

@bbclysedoucet: Just saw a motorcyle roar by with a pizza delivery..isn't there a curfew in Cairo? #jan25 #egypt

quote:

http://krebsonsecurity.co(...)hacked-by-anonymous/

A company that is helping the federal government track down cyberactivists who have been attacking business which refused to support Wikileaks has itself been hacked by the very same activists.

At the center of the storm is a leaderless and anarchic Internet group called Anonymous, which more recently has been coordinating attacks against Egyptian government Web sites. Late last month, authorities in the U.K. and the U.S. moved against at least 45 suspected Anonymous activists. Then, on Saturday, the Financial Times ran a story quoting Aaron Barr, the head of security services firm HBGary Federal, saying he had uncovered the identities of Anonymous’ leaders using social networking sites. Barr said he planned to release his findings at a security conference in San Francisco next week.

Anonymous responded by hacking into HBGary’s networks and posting archives of company executive emails on file-trading networks. The group also hacked the firm’s Web site and replaced it with a message saying it was releasing Barr’s findings on its own because the group was confident Barr’s conclusions were wrong.

“We’ve seen your internal documents, all of them, and do you know what we did? We laughed. Most of the information you’ve ‘extracted’ is publicly available via our IRC networks,” the statement reads. “The personal details of Anonymous ‘members’ you think you’ve acquired are, quite simply, nonsense. So why can’t you sell this information to the FBI like you intended? Because we’re going to give it to them for free.”

I tuned into this conflict late Sunday evening, after HBGary President Penny Leavy had waded into Anonymous’ public chat channel in an attempt to reason with the group. Earlier in the evening, Anonymous sympathizers hijacked several Twitter accounts belonging to HBGary employees, and used them to post offensive comments and personal information about the account holders.

The topic of the IRC channel Leavy joined said it all: “Mission: Aaron Bratt FIRED. His salary donated to Bradley Manning Defense Fund. Simple.” Leavy said the group was planning to publish online the entire email archive belonging to Greg Hoglund, the security researcher in California who co-founded HBGary, which is part owner of HBGary Federal.

A snippet from that conversation:

“[20:06:12] <+Penny> Guys, I can’t fire someone that owns a portion of the company What i can promise is we will have a meeting to discuss next steps”

In a phone interview late Sunday evening, Hoglund said that unlike the more traditional Web-site attacking activities of Anonymous, the hackers who infiltrated HBGary’s system showed real skills, even social engineering a network administrator into giving them complete control over rootkit.com, a security research site Hoglund has long maintained.

“They broke into one of HBGary’s servers that was used for tech support, and they got emails through compromising an insecure Web server at HBGary Federal,” Hoglund said. “They used that to get the credentials for Aaron, who happened to be an administrator on our email system, which is how they got into everything else. So it’s a case where the hackers break in on a non-important system, which is very common in hacking situations, and leveraged lateral movement to get onto systems of interest over time.”

Hoglund said Anonymous had crossed a line, and that posting the company’s email online would expose internal, proprietary data that would likely cost HBGary millions of dollars. He added that Anonymous activists should be able to see — if they read the email they’ve stolen — that HBGary ultimately decided not to publicly name any of the members it had identified.

“Before this, what these guys were doing was technically illegal, but it was in direct support of a government whistle blower. But now, we have a situation where they’re committing a federal crime, stealing private data and posting it on a torrent,” Hoglund said. “They didn’t just pick on any company, but we try to protect the US government from hackers. They couldn’t have chosen a worse company to pick on.”

quote:

Greetings HBGary (a computer "security" company),

Your recent claims of "infiltrating" Anonymous amuse us, and so do your attempts at using Anonymous as a means to garner press attention for yourself. How's this for attention?

You brought this upon yourself. You've tried to bite at the Anonymous hand, and now the Anonymous hand is bitch-slapping you in the face. You expected a counter-attack in the form of a verbal braul (as you so eloquently put it in one of your private emails), but now you've received the full fury of Anonymous. We award you no points.

What you seem to have failed to realize is that, just because you have the title and general appearence of a "security" company, you're nothing compared to Anonymous. You have little to no security knowledge. Your business thrives off charging ridiclous prices for simple things like NMAPs, and you don't deserve praise or even recognition as security experts. And now you turn to Anonymous for fame and attention? You're a pathetic gathering of media-whoring money-grabbing sycophants who want to reel in business for your equally pathetic company.

Let us teach you a lesson you'll never forget: you don't mess with Anonymous. You especially don't mess with Anonymous simply because you want to jump on a trend for public attention, which Aaron Barr admitted to in the following email:

"But its not about them...its about our audience having the right impression of our capability and the competency of our research. Anonymous will do what every they can to discredit that. and they have the mic so to speak because they are on Al Jazeeera, ABC, CNN, etc. I am going to keep up the debate because I think it is good business but I will be smart about my public responses."

You've clearly overlooked something very obvious here: we are everyone and we are no one. If you swing a sword of malice into Anonymous' innards, we will simply engulf it. You cannot break us, you cannot harm us, even though you have clearly tried...

You think you've gathered full names and home addresses of the "higher-ups" of Anonymous? You haven't. You think Anonymous has a founder and various co-founders? False. You believe that you can sell the information you've found to the FBI? False. Now, why is this one false? We've seen your internal documents, all of them, and do you know what we did? We laughed. Most of the information you've "extracted" is publicly available via our IRC networks. The personal details of Anonymous "members" you think you've acquired are, quite simply, nonsense.

So why can't you sell this information to the FBI like you intended? Because we're going to give it to them for free. Your gloriously fallacious work can be a wonder for all to scour, as will all of your private emails (more than 44,000 beauties for the public to enjoy). Now as you're probably aware, Anonymous is quite serious when it comes to things like this, and usually we can elaborate gratuitously on our reasoning behind operations, but we will give you a simple explanation, because you seem like primitive people:

You have blindly charged into the Anonymous hive, a hive from which you've tried to steal honey. Did you think the bees would not defend it? Well here we are. You've angered the hive, and now you are being stung.

It would appear that security experts are not expertly secured.

We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us - always.

---

Quick 'n dirty way to read the emails in a human-readable format:
1. Get a client. http://www.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird/
2. Get a file renaming tool. http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Download.php (Windows)
3. Rename all the mail files so that they have a .eml extension.
4. Drag & drop them into Thunderbird.
5. Enjoy.

quote:

ANONYMOUS PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Distribution
February 7th, 2011

Recently, the head of internet security firm HBGary Federal, Aaron Barr, sought to elevate his investigation of the Anonymous movement by providing the Financial Times with what he claimed to be accurate and useful information about those who allegedly drive our activities.

In yesterday's release we inferred that the information presented was easy to undermine by any of the millions of people around the world with a cursory understanding of internet culture. Not only was the information provided by HBGary Federal woefully inaccurate, it provided no incriminating evidence against any of the persons named.

Today, Anonymous learned that HBGary Federal intended to sell to the FBI a large document (it can be found at http://hizost.com/... ) that allegedly detailed the identities of dozens of our participants.

Within hours of learning this, Anonymous infiltrated HBGary Federal's network and websites. Anonymous acquired the document with supposed personal details of anons, along with more than 50,000 company e-mails (~4.71GB) - all of which have now been distributed on the internet. Additionally, his associated websites and social media accounts were hijacked and manipulated to stress how poorly this 'security expert' handles matters of his own security ( http://imagebin.org/... ). Woe to his clients and others who invested in his confidence.

The lack of quality in Aaron Barr's undertaken research is worth noting. Aaron Barr missed a great deal of information that has been available online, and in fact failed to identify some of those whose identities were never intended to be hidden. People such as DailyKos' diarist blogger Barrett Brown, and the administrator for anonnews.org joepie91, whose identities could have been found with a simple Google search.

It is also worth noting that Aaron Barr was also providing this documentation as an example of investigation protocol. This would introduce a systemic flaw to the FBI's investigative woodwork. The risk of institutionalising a flawed procedure exponentiates a problem, and it does so at the taxpayers expense in every sense. Had the FBI indeed bought this information from HBGary Federal, it would have been paid for by taxpayers money. Many innocent people would have been marked as leaders in actions they may not even have been associated with.

Unlike you, Aaron, we did our research, we know who you are, and now, so will everyone else. Although you have managed to ruin your credibility in an attempt to further it, you did provide us with entertainment, albeit very briefly.

Anonymous does not have leaders. We are not a group, we are not an organization. We are just an idea. What we have done today will appear harsh. It is harsh. We will respond to those who see threats to Anonymous. We understand that our participants have been concerned about recent FBI raids and companies such as HBGary lurking in our chats, so we’ve given all of Anonymous a message: we will fight back.

We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us - always.

Yours faithfully,

Anonymous.

quote:

After the first few days of protests, it was clear that it was risky to be instantly identifiable as a journalist anywhere in Cairo. The state media has been pumping out xenophobic stories about foreign journalists causing all the problems and damaging Egypt’s image. (This in itself will be an interesting dynamic once it becomes clear which has triumphed: the nimble new-media denizens of Tahrir Square or a regime in full control of the official newspapers and television channels, harnessing its power to divide and rule.)

quote:

http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/854937-anonymous-hacks-security-firm-in-revenge-for-identification-claims?ITO=socialnet-twitter-button

The head of a security company who boasted that he could identify the 'leaders' of hacktivist collective Anonymous has found his Twitter account, emails and company website hacked by members of the group.

Aaron Barr, CEO of security firm HBGary, had claimed that his firm was able to identify many of the leaders of Anonymous - the loose group with a constantly shifting membership that was behind cyber attacks on perceived enemies of WikiLeaks last year, such as MasterCard, Visa and PayPal.

Barr claimed that Anonymous only had about 30 regular participants, and 10 key individuals in leadership roles, out of the hundreds who take part in operations. He also claimed to have identified several of the key leaders.

But now he's discovered the downside of poking Anonymous, after his Twitter account was hijacked over the weekend. According to a report in the Guardian, the hijackers then started tweeting that they had full control of HBGary's websites, and had access to their email archives, financial and personal details, and had wiped a terabyte of data from their system. They also said that they were going to release the companies emails as a torrent.

In a final indignity, they also claimed to have wiped Barr's iPad.

While it's not possible to confirm the accuracy of all their claims, the HBGary website is certainly offline at the time of writing, having previously been replaced with an image that mocked the firm and Barr - reading, in part: 'You have little to no security knowledge... You think you've gathered the full names and home addresses of the "higher-ups" of Anonymous? You haven't. You think Anonymous has a founderand various co-founders? False... We've seen your internal documents, all of them, and do you know what we did? We laughed.'

'Let us teach you a lesson you'll never forget: you don't mess with Anonymous,' they added.

Penny Leavy, president of HB Gary Inc, told the Financial Times that the attack would cost the firm millions of dollars, and that they would work with police to track down those responsible, saying: 'They have committed a crime against our company and, unfortunately, we are legally bound. I wish it had been handled differently.

quote:

Sometime last night after 10pm, a /b/ user posted a proposition that the board's users troll the "pedophile" Dahvie Vanity. 4chan was still basking in its earlier harassment of Jessi Slaughter, so users quickly got on board—the thread exploded with suggestions and encouragement accompanied by unrelated pictures of boobs.

quote:

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Evidence collected by the FBI about Anonymous, which attacked websites of four companies to punish them for blocking contributions to WikiLeaks, will be considered this week by a U.S. grand jury, according to court papers and an informal spokesman for the group of activist hackers.

The federal grand jury in San Jose, California, will begin reviewing evidence tomorrow that includes computers and mobile phones seized from suspected leaders as prosecutors probe the coordinated so-called denial-of-service attacks in December, according to a federal subpoena and the spokesman, Barrett Brown. Anonymous directed activists to target payment processors MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc., EBay Inc. ’s PayPal, and U.K.-based Moneybookers.com in public chat rooms.

Among the evidence seized by the FBI during multistate raids on Jan. 27 was data taken from an individual who controls one of Anonymous’s primary servers, identified by the organization only by his cyber-handle ‘Owen,’ Brown said.

“The FBI is breaking down people’s doors with guns drawn,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a member of the board of the National Lawyers Guild , which has talked with Anonymous organizers about their legal defense. “A group of people are engaged in a modern day electronic sit-in, and the FBI wants to treat that like it’s terrorist activity.”

Anonymous responded on Feb. 6 by hacking a California-based security firm that it said was aiding the probe, hijacking 60,000 company e-mails and making them public on one of the organization’s servers. The e-mails included a proposal by the company to develop a malware tracking program for the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), among other confidential documents.

Drawn Guns

Jenny Shearer, a Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman, said the agency couldn’t comment on the probe or its targets. She said “it’s not unusual” to have drawn guns during the execution of a search warrant until “the situation is secure.”

The subpoena shows federal investigators are trying to piece together the workings of an elusive group composed of hundreds of hackers and activists stretched across several countries. Brown said about a dozen members are able to influence the direction of Anonymous .

Agents served a grand jury subpoena on a California man who goes by the screen name ‘Trivette,’ ordering him to appear before the panel tomorrow. It demands all information he has on how the December attacks were organized, including instructions to activists on how to download software that can overwhelm websites by inundating them with thousands of service requests a second.

‘Names, Handles’

The subpoena requested information on the group’s hierarchy and structure, including “names, handles, e-mail accounts, or IP addresses,” according to a copy provided to Bloomberg News by the organization.

The FBI also raided the home of a 19-year-old Nevada woman, Brown said. Agents seized two computers, including one owned by her father, her iPhone, two flash drives and a router, Brown said.

Among other recent high-profile attacks, Anonymous has claimed in public statements responsibility for crashing government websites in Egypt and Tunisia to support political protests.

Brown said the group, whose activities have sparked an international investigation and five arrests in Britain, is dedicated to “the defense of liberty.” Its goal is “a perpetual revolution across the world that goes on until governments are basically overwhelmed and results in a freer system,” he said.

History of Retaliation

Several cyber-security experts declined to speak about the group or its activities on the record because of its history of retaliating against critics, such as the Feb. 6 attack on a cyber security firm HBGary Federal, which Anonymous accused of aiding the government’s investigation.

Shearer, the FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment on any cooperation between the agency and the security firm.

Aaron Barr, the head of security services for the Sacramento-based company, was quoted in the Financial Times on Feb. 4 saying that he had information on the identity of Anonymous leaders that he planned to release at a cyber conference this month.

The following day, the group hacked into the company’s network and took more than 60,000 internal e-mails and began releasing them last night, Brown said. It also hijacked the Twitter accounts of HBGary’s employees, using them to post personal information such as social security numbers and addresses, he said.

In one e-mail provided by Anonymous, HBGary Chief Executive Officer Greg Hoglund discussed a possible “60 Minutes” interview on Anonymous, as well as how the security firm could use it to their advantage.

Public ‘Hero’

“Position Aaron as a hero to the public,” Hoglund wrote to Barr and Karen Burke, the firm’s spokeswoman. “I think these guys are going to get arrested, it would be interesting to leave the soft impression that Aaron is the one that got them, and that without Aaron the Feds would have never been able to get out of their own way.”

Burke declined to comment on that communication or the other e-mails or whether the firm negotiated with Anonymous to retrieve the internal communications before they became public, as the group claimed.

Investigation Continuing

“The investigation into our breach is still ongoing so it would be premature to comment further at this time,” HBGary Federal President Penny Leavy said in a statement.

The exposure has the potential to be extremely damaging to the security company and its reputation, said Susan Freiwald, an expert on cyber security and law at the University of San Francisco.

“It’s a security firm,” Freiwald said. “It’s especially sensitive for them to be portrayed as insecure.”

The search warrants issued by the FBI in some cases referred to possible violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the main federal anti-hacking statute, Brown said.

The law can be used to prosecute denial-of-service attacks, according to a Justice Department manual relating to computer crime and intellectual property posted on the agency website. Prosecutors must prove an attack caused at least $5,000 in damage to a company or its operations, a threshold the December attacks probably meets, Freiwald said.

No One Arrested

No one has been arrested yet in the U.S. in connection with the probe, Brown said. The Lawyers Guild’s Verheyden-Hilliard said the attacks against PayPal or MasterCard should be viewed as a form of modern-day civil disobedience, the equivalent of blocking a company’s virtual storefront.

Those attacks may have slowed or disabled the companies’ websites temporarily without affecting their payment processing functions, the companies said.

“Civil disobedience is historically more effective when the state intervenes in a heavy-handed way,” said Ryan Calo, an expert in cyber crime at Stanford University in Stanford, California. “It is not just the act but also all the follow-up -- the subpoenas, arrests, a trial. That’s all part of the act of civil disobedience.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Riley in Washington at michaelriley@bloomberg.net .

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net .

quote:

http://hbgary.com/
HBGary, Inc and HBGary Federal, a separate but related company, have been the victims of an intentional criminal cyberattack. We are taking this crime seriously and are working with federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities and redirecting internal resources to investigate and respond appropriately. To the extent that any client information may have been affected by this event, we will provide the affected clients with complete and accurate information as soon as it becomes available.

Meanwhile, please be aware that any information currently in the public domain is not reliable because the perpetrators of this offense, or people working closely with them, have intentionally falsified certain data. HBGary, Inc and HBGary Federal are committed to a comprehensive, accurate, and swift response to this crime.

Technical Support for all HBGary products and services is still available via email at support@hbgary.com

quote:

Police could be forced to adopt more extreme tactics to counter the threat posed by student protesters and "hacktivists", according to Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Speaking before major protests planned across Britain at the weekend, Orde admitted that use of text messages, Twitter and Facebook to organise campaigns in record speed had created "a whole new dimension to public order".

The Metropolitan police faced questions over its handling of violent student protests last December, but Orde defended the use of kettling [see footnote] despite admitting that it could "interfere with the rights of citizens".

"I can understand the need for it," he admitted. "[It is done] for the greater good, and that's the really complex part of policing."

Orde admitted he feared protests could become more violent as public anger grew over government cuts. He claims that the use of horses to charge protesters was, when "proportionate", a "very useful, effective tactic".

On Saturday, student groups in London and Manchester will protest against the abolition of the education maintenance allowance. On Sunday UK Uncut, a group putting pressure on wealthy tax avoiders, will repeat the high street demonstrations that shut Vodafone and Topshop branches in December by targeting other big names, including Boots.

Orde hinted that UK Uncut protesters could face criminal and civil charges if they invaded shops on Sunday.

"Walking into Topshop with an intent to cause damage, [means] you're actually a burglar," he said. " If you walk into Boots and do nothing then you are simply a trespasser and the role of the police is to stand by to prevent a breach of the peace."

Anonymous, the hacker network that came to the defence of WikiLeaks last year, has also pledged more attacks in months to come.

Orde, the head of Acpo, a limited company run by police chiefs, criticised the lack of willingness of new protest groups that have sprung up around the internet to engage with police before protests. He said if they continued to refuse to co-operate, then police tactics would have to become more extreme.

"It is not good enough to throw our hands up in the air and say 'Oh, we can't negotiate because there is no one to negotiate with,'" he told Prospect magazine in an interview published today. "There are lots of people we can talk to, but they need to stand up and lead their people too. If they don't, we must be clear that the people who wish to demonstrate won't engage, communicate or share what they intend to do with us, and so our policing tactics will have to be different ... slightly more extreme."

Referring to December's student protest which exploded into violence, he said that while the vast majority of protestors were exercising their democratic rights, he believed there had been others "embedded in that crowd [who were] absolutely determined to do anything but that and cause as much disorder and mayhem as they could for their own reasons – be they anarchists or not – people who just wanted to cause trouble".

Orde, who was praised when he was in charge of policing divided communities in Northern Ireland, admitted that the police were floundering in their efforts to keep abreast of activities planned over the internet.

The National Union of Students, for example, began planning its march last November, two months before the event, while the second protest was organised in a matter of days, using text messages and Twitter. A Facebook page titled "Day X," attracted 25,000 users in days.

Orde also admitted that the standard of policing across the UK was being jeopardised by the government's refusal to modernise the way the police forces are split across 42 parts of the UK. "There is no desire from this government to review the current police force structure so we are trying to deliver 21st-century policing against a 20th-century policing structure which I would argue is a big mistake," he said.

"[We need] a broad consensus across chiefs around what tactics can be deployed, because I do see mutual aid becoming more important [as] cops are going to have to move around the country," he added. "Otherwise when you borrow cops [from different areas] you do get potentially a far more extreme situation where cops think they are doing the same thing but they are not."

Orde went on to reveal fears that protests would become more violent as the police became the focus of growing public anger at government cuts. "We're seen [as if] we are the physical manifestation of the state … and the moment the people in a crowd think that we are the state enforcing a certain specific law … then I think the propensity to violence may increase," he said.

Orde added that the risks presented by groups such as Anonymous and cyber-criminals were leading to a new brand of policing so sophisticated that it made the current generation "look like complete amateurs".

"Forty-two different police forces spread across the country are not well able to deal with [cyber crime], which is why you have to reorganise," he said.

• This article was amended on 28 January 2011. The original wrongly gave the impression that Sir Hugh Orde used the phrase "hyper-kettling", an extreme form of the containment method used to police demonstrations. He did not. Instead, he ­defended the practice of kettling in principle. This has been corrected.

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15 years ago, John Perry Barlow published this declaration, a prophetic message that resonates just as strong today.

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15 years ago today, I wrote A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. It's still true. http://goo.gl/6cP7s

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Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral
right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public
construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social
Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter, There is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognise is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in
bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilisation of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996

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After a tip from Crowdleaks.org, The Tech Herald has learned that HBGary Federal, as well as two other data intelligence firms, worked to develop a strategic plan of attack against WikiLeaks. The plan included pressing a journalist in order to disrupt his support of the organization, cyber attacks, disinformation, and other potential proactive tactics.

The tip from Crowdleaks.org is directly related to the highly public attack on HBGary, after Anonymous responded to research performed by HBGary Federal COO, Aaron Barr. Part of Anonymous’ response included releasing more than 50,000 internal emails to the public. For more information, the initial coverage is here.

What was pointed out by Crowdleaks is a proposal titled “The WikiLeaks Threat” and an email chain between three data intelligence firms. The proposal was quickly developed by Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies, after a request from Hunton and Williams, a law firm that currently counts Bank of America as a client.

The law firm had a meeting with Bank of America on December 3. To prepare, the firm emailed Palantir and the others asking for “…five to six slides on Wikileaks - who they are, how they operate and how this group may help this bank.”

Hunton and Williams were recommended to Bank of America’s general council by the Department of Justice, according to the email chain viewed by The Tech Herald. The law firm was using the meeting to pitch Bank of America on retaining them for an internal investigation surrounding WikiLeaks.

“They basically want to sue them to put an injunction on releasing any data,” an email between the three data intelligence firms said. “They want to present to the bank a team capable of doing a comprehensive investigation into the data leak.”

Hunton and Williams would act as outside council on retainer, while Palantir would take care of network and insider threat investigations. For their part, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal would analyze WikiLeaks.

“Apparently if they can show that WikiLeaks is hosting data in certain countries it will make prosecution easier,” the email added.

In less than 24-hours, the three analytical companies created a presentation filled with publically available information and ideas on how the firms could be “deployed” against WikiLeaks “as a unified and cohesive investigative analysis cell.”

On January 2, The New York Times wrote about a late night conference call held by Bank of America executives on November 30. The reason for the call was to deal with a statement given by WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on November 29, where he said that he intended to “take down” a major American bank. The country’s third largest financial institution needed to get the jump on WikiLeaks, so they started scouring thousands of documents, and auditing physical assets.

Shortly after the late night conference call, the email from Hunton and Williams was sent. Booz Allen Hamilton, according to the Times, was the firm brought in to help manage the bank’s internal review.

A month after the proposal for the initial December meeting on WikiLeaks was created, email messages from HBGary Federal show plans for a meeting with Booz Allen Hamilton. The meeting was set after Barr emailed Hunton and Williams about information he was gathering on WikiLeaks and Anonymous. Later, this information would be the direct cause of Anonymous’ attack on HBGary.

On page two you will find an overview of the proposal developed by the three data intelligence firms.

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98 人のTwitterユーザからの情報をもとに発行されています。

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Aaron Barr believed he had penetrated Anonymous. The loose hacker collective had been responsible for everything from anti-Scientology protests to pro-Wikileaks attacks on MasterCard and Visa, and the FBI was now after them. But matching their online identities to real-world names and locations proved daunting. Barr found a way to crack the code.

In a private e-mail to a colleague at his security firm HBGary Federal, which sells digital tools to the US government, the CEO bragged about his research project.

"They think I have nothing but a heirarchy based on IRC [Internet Relay Chat] aliases!" he wrote. "As 1337 as these guys are suppsed to be they don't get it. I have pwned them! "

But had he?
"We are kind of pissed at him right now"
Aaron Barr

Barr's "pwning" meant finding out the names and addresses of the top Anonymous leadership. While the group claimed to be headless, Barr believed this to be a lie; indeed, he told others that Anonymous was a tiny group.

"At any given time there are probably no more than 20-40 people active, accept during hightened points of activity like Egypt and Tunisia where the numbers swell but mostly by trolls," he wrote in an internal e-mail. (All e-mails in this investigative report are provided verbatim, typos and all.) "Most of the people in the IRC channel are zombies to inflate the numbers."

The show was run by a couple of admins he identified as "Q," "Owen," and "CommanderX"—and Barr had used social media data and subterfuge to map those names to three real people, two in California and one in New York.

Near the end of January, Barr began publicizing his information, though without divulging the names of the Anonymous admins. When the Financial Times picked up the story and ran a piece on it on February 4, it wasn't long before Barr got what he wanted—contacts from the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, and the US military. The FBI had been after Anonymous for some time, recently kicking in doors while executing 40 search warrants against group members.

Confident in his abilities, Barr told one of the programmers who helped him on the project, "You just need to program as good as I analyze."

But on February 5, one day after the Financial Times article and six days before Barr's sit-down with the FBI, Anonymous did some "pwning" of its own. "Ddos!!! Fckers," Barr sent from his iPhone as a distributed denial of service attack hit his corporate network. He then pledged to "take the gloves off."

When the liberal blog Daily Kos ran a story on Barr's work later that day, some Anonymous users commented on it. Barr sent out an e-mail to colleagues, and he was getting worked up: "They think all I know is their irc names!!!!! I know their real fing names. Karen [HBGary Federal's public relations head] I need u to help moderate me because I am getting angry. I am planning on releasing a few names of folks that were already arrested. This battle between us will help spur publicity anyway."

Indeed, publicity was the plan. Barr hoped his research would "start a verbal braul between us and keep it going because that will bring more media and more attention to a very important topic."

But within a day, Anonymous had managed to infiltrate HBGary Federal's website and take it down, replacing it with a pro-Anonymous message ("now the Anonymous hand is bitch-slapping you in the face.") Anonymous got into HBGary Federal's e-mail server, for which Barr was the admin, and compromised it, extracting over 40,000 e-mails and putting them up on The Pirate Bay, all after watching his communications for 30 hours, undetected. In an after-action IRC chat, Anonymous members bragged about how they had gone even further, deleting 1TB of HBGary backup data.

They even claimed to have wiped Barr's iPad remotely.

The situation got so bad for the security company that HBGary, the company which partially owns HBGary Federal, sent its president Penny Leavy into the Anonymous IRC chat rooms to swim with the sharks—and to beg them to leave her company alone. (Read the bizarre chat log.) Instead, Anonymous suggested that, to avoid more problems, Leavy should fire Barr and "take your investment in aaron's company and donate it to BRADLEY MANNINGS DEFENCE FUND." Barr should cough off up a personal contribution, too; say, one month's salary?

As for Barr's "pwning," Leavy couldn't backtrack from it fast enough. "We have not seen the list [of Anonymous admins] and we are kind of pissed at him right now."

Were Barr's vaunted names even correct? Anonymous insisted repeatedly that they were not. As one admin put it in the IRC chat with Leavy, "Did you also know that aaron was peddling fake/wrong/false information leading to the potential arrest of innocent people?" The group then made that information public, claiming that it was all ridiculous.

Thanks to the leaked e-mails, we now have the full story of how Barr infiltrated Anonymous, used social media to compile his lists, and even resorted to attacks on the codebase of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon used in attacks—and how others at his own company warned him about the pitfalls of his own research.

Barr had been interested in social media for quite some time, believing that the links it showed between people had enormous value when it came to mapping networks of hackers—and when hackers wanted to target their victims. He presented a talk to a closed Department of Justice conference earlier this year on "specific techniques that can be used to target, collect, and exploit targets with laser focus and with 100 percent success" through social media.

His curiosity about teasing out the webs of connections between people grew. By scraping sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, Barr believed he could draw strong conclusions, such as determining which town someone lived in even if they didn't provide that information. How? By looking at their friends.

"The next step would be ok we have 24 people that list Auburn, NY as their hometown," he wrote to the programmer implementing his directives. "There are 60 other people that list over 5 of those 24 as friends. That immediately tells me that at a minimum those 60 can be tagged as having a hometown as Auburn, NY. The more the data matures the more things we can do with it."

The same went for hackers, whose family and friends might provide information that even the most carefully guarded Anonymous member could not conceal. "Hackers may not list the data, but hackers are people too so they associate with friends and family," Barr said. "Those friends and family can provide key indicators on the hacker without them releasing it…"

His programmer had doubts, saying that the scraping and linking work he was doing was of limited value and had no commercial prospects. As he wrote in an e-mail:

Step 1 : Gather all the data

Step 2 : ???

Step 3 : Profit

But Barr was confident. "I will sell it," he wrote.

To further test his ideas and to drum up interest in them, Barr proposed a talk at the BSides security conference in San Francisco, which takes place February 14 and 15. Barr's talk was titled "Who Needs NSA when we have Social Media?" and his plan to draw publicity involved a fateful decision: he would infiltrate and expose Anonymous, which he believed was strongly linked to WikiLeaks.

"I am going to focus on outing the major players of the anonymous group I think," he wrote. "Afterall - no secrets right? We will see how far I get. I may focus on NSA a bit to just so I can give all those freespeech nutjobs something… I just called people advocating freespeech, nutjobs - I threw up in my mouth a little."

With that, the game was afoot.

more on page 2

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When Leavy showed up [in the IRC-channels] to plead her case, asking Anonymous to at least stop distributing the e-mails, the hivemind reveled in its power over Leavy and her company, resorting eventually to tough demands against Barr.

"Simple: fire Aaron, have him admit defeat in a public statement," said Topiary, when asked what the group wanted. "We won't bother you further after this, but what we've done can't be taken back. Realize that, and for the company's sake, dispose of Aaron."

Others demanded an immediate "burn notice" on Barr and donations to Bradley Manning, the young military member now in solitary confinement on suspicion of leaking classified documents to Wikileaks.

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And who were Barr and his company up against in all this? According to Anonymous, a five-member team took down HBGary Federal and rootkit.com, in part through the very sort of social engineering Barr had tried to employ against Anonymous.

One of those five was allegedly a 16-year old girl, who "social engineered your admin jussi and got root to rootkit.com," one Anonymous member explained in IRC. Another, pleased with power, taunted Penny Leavy and her husband, who sat beside her during the chat: "How does it feel to get hacked by a 16yr old girl?"

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trollparty It looks like some Anons are looking to get another movement going to troll the 2012 US elections - more on this later #anonymous #anonops 10 minutes ago via Trillian

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jensie91 RT @Shadowflare00: Goodbye Mubarak. Burn in hell. | #anonops #anonymous #opegypt #jan25 #egypt #cyberwar 6 minutes ago via web