Anonops #6: Anonymous en de MO-revoluties

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Some time back I suggested the online “group” Anonymous was worth keeping an eye on. This suggestion was subsequently vindicated by the remarkable HB Gary saga involving cyber security consultant Aaron Barr who, to use Stephen Colbert’s now-famous description, stuck his penis into a hornet’s nest when he declared he was going to “out” senior members of Anonymous.

The subsequent crack of his company’s entire network was facilitated by some remarkably elementary mistakes by Barr in his own cyber security — so elementary that some speculate the entire exercise was an elaborate honey trap, particularly given Barr’s company had done work both on defending against honey traps and using them. If it was an elaborate plot, however, it’s exacted one helluva toll on the perpetrators — Barr, in an utterly unexpected development, has since parted ways with HB Gary Federal. But though Barr is gone, his emails live on after him, and continue to embroil a growing circle of companies.

For example, it was courtesy of Barr’s emails — many gigabytes of which are now strewn across the internet in conveniently searchable form  — that we learnt that Morgan Stanley had been one of 200 companies targeted in the 2009 “Aurora” attacks mounted by Chinese crackers. The bank itself hadn’t seen fit to share that with customers or investors.

The emails most famously detail the attack campaigns prepared for the Bank of America and the US Chamber of Commerce against WikiLeaks and its supporters, and against Chamber of Commerce critics and unions, respectively. HB Gary Federal worked with two larger IT security firms, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies. Both companies rushed to distance themselves from HB Gary in the immediate aftermath of the revelation of the campaign. However, the strategy of pretending the campaigns were a lone frolic by Barr is breaking down. US writer and activist Barrett Brown has detailed how Palantir and Berico were deeply involved in the preparation of highly aggressive, and possibly illegal, attempts to target and silence supporters of WikiLeaks and critics of the Chamber of Commerce.

Congressional Democrats are now pressing for an investigation of all three firms plus the Washington law firm Hunton and Williams, which was closely involved in the planning of the operations as well.

The emails show HB Gary was also working on techniques to simultaneously establish large numbers of online personae, a virtual army designed to assist in data mining, swamping online discussions and attacking bloggers. Such techniques would be quite handy in the manufacturing of online consent for governments, corporations and NGOs. The emails show the US government was interested in the sock-puppet software.

If you’re wondering quite what the point of establishing a hoard of sock puppets is, remember that purported Liberal grassroots uprising over Malcolm Turnbull’s support for the CPRS, which involved the spamming of Liberal MPs’ offices with emails and phone calls.

There are also plenty of copies of malware now available courtesy of the emails, including the Stuxnet virus used againsth the Iranian nuclear weapons programs, although some of the OMG Anonymous has Stuxnet! reactions overlooked that copies of the code were already available via other means.

Even Barr’s spam emails have proven illuminating, introducing us to shadowy cyber security firms such as Shield Security (enjoy their compelling use of Flash here), which promised systems to intercept Skype calls and satellite interception of data, for governments only (and, apparently, HB Gary).

Along with the likes of Palantir and Berico, these are the arms dealers and military contractors of the internet war, hoping to reap huge profits as cyber security, espionage and the deployment of online attacks by government and non-governments actors alike moves to the centre of national and corporate security strategy. This is a whole new military-industrial complex in development, out of sight, online, beyond normal accountability.

The problem is, of course, the tools of cyber security are just as useful in pursuing domestic policy goals as national security goals, as the plan for critics of the US Chamber of Commerce illustrated, and the involvement of the US Department of Justice in referring Hunton and Williams to Bank of America to develop an anti-WikiLeaks strategy.

The HB Gary crack complemented the anti-corporate tone another Anonymous operation, #OpWisconsin, which joined a variety of operations aimed at Middle Eastern regimes, some energetic, others flagging. The Wisconsin operation seems to have been intended less to support public sector unions protesting against the Republican assault on basic workers’ rights in that state than the involvement of the far-right billionaire Koch brothers. And it was Anonymous, displaying yet another string to its bow, that revealed that Republican Governor Scott Walker had included in his budget bill a clause that would enable the sale without tender public utility assets in Wisconsin, at any price. That operation also targeted the website of a Koch-funded advocacy group and several Koch Industry sites.

The political nature of the operation brought into public gaze a divide between Anons interested in more overtly political activity (and other “whiteknight sh-t”) and those interested only in core free-speech issues (particularly around the activities of the copyright mafia) or, inevitably, just the lulz. The divide has been cast as “newfags” versus “oldfags”, a reversioning of a long-running meme from source community 4chan (warning, as always — 4chan is so Not Safe For Work it’s not funny). But the latest operation, though, is one likely to heal any rift, since it is a return to a long-running Anonymous target, the copyright mafia and its extensive censorship, little of which is reported in the mainstream media.

The reason all this bears watching is that this is only one manifestation of the growing hostility to large corporations evident in the US and the UK. This isn’t to be found only within what’s left of the American union movement occupying the Capitol in Madison. There is an anti-corporate strain within the grassroots of the Tea Party movement, one that places it at odds with the party hierarchy funded by the Koch brothers and the mainstream Republican. Its biggest target is the financial sector and the GFC bank bailouts, an issue that unites left and right in deep hostility to the seeming indulgence of corporate greed.

It’s very similar in the UK. The deep anger many Britons feel toward their financial sector also remains unabated, and still plagues the Cameron government, forcing David Cameron and George Osborne to pretend to play bad cop on bankers’ bonuses.

This is a mood only likely to be worsened by the UK’s lacklustre growth — its economy contracted over the new year and the Conservative’s massive budget cuts haven’t even bit hard yet — and the possibility of an oil shock driven by the current uprisings across the Middle East — inducing, as Richard Farmer pointed out yesterday, the bizarre sight of oil markets being soothed by the promises of Hugo Chavez to intervene in the Libyan crisis (his proposal to do so, presumably aimed at propping up his good friend Colonel Gaddafi, has been rejected by Libya’s freedom fighters). Worsening economic conditions and the example of the Middle East might mean there’ll be less sullen resentment and more protesting, as we’ve already seen in Madison and from British students.

The HB Gary emails, however, reveal a corporate America with an extensive arsenal of cyber weapons at its disposal, and a willingness to deploy them against those wanting to bring greater accountability to the corporate sector and the influence it wields.

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moftasa Mostafa Hussein
by Pere_Hoquet
State Security uses a product by a German company called Gamma to hack into our emails & skype accounts http://is.gd/6DcOfs #amndawla
18 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

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Op zondag 6 maart 2011 17:32 schreef popolon het volgende:
Anonymous Hacks The Colbert Report

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http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201109/6905

Anonymous plans defense for Bradley Manning - promises a media war

Given his treatment while in confinement, as well as the list of new charges against him, Bradley Manning has gained another set of champions to his dilemma. Anonymous has promised to avenge Manning, and wage a media war with the U.S. military.

The Tech Herald has spoken to one of those involved for a rundown of current events.

"Manning is an absolute hero. If this means me going to fucking prison, then that's fine," said Barrett Brown earlier today in an interview.

Brown, best described as a self-styled spokesperson for Anonymous, who enjoys some support from the loosely associative group, but some detraction as well, is well-known to us in the media.

He comes from a military family, and has a deep respect for the fighting troops he said. Yet, Manning’s treatment while in custody at the Quantico Brig has Brown and others working with him outraged.

Earlier today, Brown said that Manning must be given clothes, sheets, blankets, and access to books within the week, adding that Anonymous’ plans for those responsible for his conditions will play out in the public soon.

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http://blogs.forbes.com/a(...)ey-mannings-jailers/
As army private Bradley Manning suffers for his alleged megaleak of secret documents to WikiLeaks, one group of hackers seems determined to make sure that others feel his pain.

Over the weekend, the loose hacker collective Anonymous declared that it will go on the offensive against those who are currently detaining Manning in a Quantico military brig, keeping him in solitary confinement and forcing him to strip nightly and stand at attention naked each morning.

In a crowdsourced document used to coordinate the group’s actions, Anonymous members name Department of Defense Press Secretary Geoff Morell and chief warrant officer Denise Barnes as targets and call on members to dig up personal information on both, including phone numbers, personal histories and home addresses. The goal of the operation, for now, is to “dox” the two officials, the typical Anonymous method of publishing personal information of victims and using it for mass harassment.

“Targets established,” reads the document, before naming Morell and Barnes. “We’re in the ruining business. And business is good.”

The group, which is calling its attack “Operation Bradical,” also lists demands as follows:

“Manning must be given sheets, blankets, any religious texts he desires, adequate reading material, clothes, and a ball. One week. Otherwise, we continue to dox and ruin those responsible for keeeping him naked, without bedding, without any of the basic amenities that were provided even to captured Nazis in WWII.”

One member of Anonymous, who tells me he’s not associated with the action, says that doxing will likely include “ruin life tactics” such as “ordering them pizza, sending them thousands of boxes, reporting them to police for drug abuse, sex offenders list, tricking their ISPs into canceling the Internet, messing with their social security numbers, false flag, fax harassment, phone harassment, email bombing, subscriptions to magazines, diapers, tampons.”

Nasty as they may be, those tactics seem relatively harmless in comparison to the attack that Anonymous recently launched against the security firm HBGary Federal in retaliation for one executive’s threats to unmask leaders of the hacker group. HBGary Federal chief executive Aaron Barr had his email archive hacked and published online along with that of his colleagues. HBGary Federal’s website was defaced and Barr’s Twitter account hijacked. After a series of scandals were revealed in the company’s published emails including a plan to launch cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns against WikiLeaks, Barr resigned last week.

Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown told the Tech Herald that harassment of Quantico officials will be just the first step in a “media war” against those detaining Manning. “Manning is an absolute hero,” Brown told the news site. “If this means me going to fucking prison, then that’s fine.”

Last week Manning was hit with 22 charges for his alleged role in a massive leak of classified information to WikiLeaks, including a charge of “aiding the enemy” that can carry a penalty of death. Since those charges were filed, Manning has been forced to strip naked nightly in a tactic that Quantico officials say is legal and aims to prevent suicide attempts, but others claim is designed to degrade and punish the young private. According to Manning’s lawyer David Coombs, Quantico officials have declined to state their full reasons for Manning’s stripping publicly to avoid “because to discuss the details would be a violation of PFC Manning’s privacy.”

“The Brig’s treatment of PFC Manning is shameful,” Coombs wrote in a statement Saturday. “It is made even more so by the Brig hiding behind concerns for ‘[PFC] Manning’s privacy.’ There is no justification, and there can be no justification, for treating a detainee in this degrading and humiliating manner.”

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wopot RT @BarrettBrownLOL: The FBI should recuse itself from #anonymous investigation until we're done investigating the FBI to see if it's full of douchebags. 15 minutes ago via web

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US probes Anonymous plans for attack on marines
US law enforcement authorities are investigating plans by members of the hacking collective Anonymous to disrupt activities at the Marine Corps base in Quantico to protest against the alleged rough treatment given ...

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Azuzunonymous RT @OfficialAnonOps: Join the #Anonymous Twitter Hive: http://bit.ly/frshVF | #OpLibya #Libya #AnonOps #HIVE | Thank You 2 minutes ago via web

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https://www.infosecisland(...)bsite-Continues.html
The denial of service (DoS) attack initiated by The Jester (th3j35t3r) on a website operated by the Westboro Baptist Church has now exceeded two full weeks in duration.

The sustained DoS attack, which began on February 21st, represents a record for the hactivist who is best known for repeated DoS attacks on militant Jihadi websites (video), as well as an attack on the WikiLeaks website in late November that forced the organization to shuffle Internet hosting providers.

According to data from NetCraft, Westboro Baptist Church's controversial "www.godhatesfags.com" website has shown no activity for over two weeks:

The Jester has tweeted several messages regarding the attack, the last (as of the writing of this article) was on March 6th and described the attack as being a "no holds barred assault".

Another of the tweets mentions that the strategy behind the sustained attacks differs from those aimed at jihadi sites because "Some people people just need to stay down, they have no value in intel terms".

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In an interview in 2010, The Jester elaborated on his anti-jihadi methodology:

"By knocking out the jihadi sites for random short periods, it causes them to be unable to rely on the site for recruitment, or co-ordination, this in turn will have the effect of drawing them out into the open and in person to do the recruiting, where the CT agencies really come into their own doing what they do best, which is intercepting and apprehending suspects".

The Jester uses a DoS tool he calls XerXeS to perform an application level attack on the targeted servers.

Where traditional TCP-based DoS attacks require multiple machines sending a large number of packets, the XerXeS attack can be performed by a single low-spec machine with relatively few packets.

On the development of XerXeS, The Jester remarked that "the aim is to create a single cohesive attack platform that will knock out with precision and no side-effects anything it comes up against, for any specified period."

How long will the WBC operation carry on? For now, the answer looks to be indefinitely.

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Op dinsdag 8 maart 2011 16:03 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Heeft iemand een abbo op de Financial Times? Dan kunnen we het artikel helemaal lezen.

Information is free

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http://www.rawstory.com/r(...)r-wikileaks-soldier/
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Tuesday it had requested an investigation into a hacker group's reported cyber threat against a military base that is being used to hold a US soldier suspected of giving documents to WikiLeaks.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said the probe was requested after news that the hacker group called Anonymous was seeking to disrupt online activities at the Quantico, Virginia, base where Private Bradley Manning is incarcerated.

"The base at Quantico, including the brig, are aware of that and they have made law enforcement agencies aware of that as well," Lapan said.

The Financial Times reported that hackers known as "Anonymous," which had claimed credit for attacks supporting WikiLeaks in recent months, was seeking to disrupt communications at the US Marine base.

Manning, 23, has been held at the prison since July under a maximum security regimen because authorities say his escape would pose a risk to national security.

The army private faces numerous charges of stealing classified files and is suspected as the source of a trove of secret documents published on the WikiLeaks website in recent months, which have infuriated and embarrassed US officials.

US military authorities brought additional charges against Manning last week, accusing him of illegally downloading vast numbers of secret government files and "aiding the enemy."

His defense lawyers have filed a legal complaint over the conditions of his detention at Quantico, which include a "prevention of injury" watch, which his lawyer said includes being forced to sleep naked.

His supporters say the regimen is inhumane and has been deemed unnecessary by psychiatric experts.

The WikiLeaks website has yet to disclose its source for the US military and diplomatic documents published in recent months, but suspicion has focused on Manning, who worked as a low-ranking army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Manning was arrested in May and authorities have yet to say when he will be put on trial. If found guilty, Manning faces up to 52 years in prison.

In December, the loose-knit group of hackers known as Anonymous staged cyber attacks on the websites of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others accusing them of withdrawing services to WikiLeaks.

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When the military becomes a threat to the people, the people must become a threat to the military

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wickedfairysad RT @Anony_Ops: Target: http://BMI.com Tango Down #ddos #Anonymous #Anonymiss #Payback - Join the hive. www.AnonOps.net 3 minutes ago via web

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_Music_Incorporated
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) is one of three United States performing rights organizations, along with ASCAP and SESAC. It collects license fees on behalf of songwriters, composers, and music publishers and distributes them as royalties to those members whose works have been performed. In 2009, BMI collected over $905 million in licensing fees and distributed $788 million in royalties.[1]

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VictoriaSyn #Libya #Anonops http://www.unitedaviation.ly - owned by the Gaddafi family ...I don't like this website 34 minutes ago via web

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helpallcreature RT @r3dpi11: #Anon #Anonops #OpLibya Why is Gaddafi's site still working? http://www.ljbc.net/home.php

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https://www.infosecisland(...)eported-Attacks.html

Emails leaked in the HBGary Federal network breach reveal a spate of high level attacks targeting leading companies across multiple industries.

The foreign-based attacks appear to be industrial espionage efforts intended to harvest sensitive trade secrets and intellectual property. The majority of the attacks are said to originate in China and Russia.

Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said "we are on the losing end of the biggest transfer of wealth through theft and piracy in the history of the planet."

HBGary Federal is one of a handful of security companies hired by large corporations to investigate network security events.

The company was the target of a hacking operation conducted by the hacktivist movement known as Anonymous which resulted in the release of tens-of-thousands of company emails.

Among the previously unreported breaches was a successful attack on financial firm Morgan Stanley, a victim of the highly sophisticated Operation Aurora cyber attacks which began in mid-2009.

Operation Aurora targeted dozens of large firms, including DuPont, Adobe, Northrop Grumman, Dow Chemical, and most famously Google.

According to the leaked HBGary Federal emails, DuPont was the target of another attack in 2010 which was not reported to investors or regulators.

Other companies revealed in the emails to have suffered network attacks include Johnson & Johnson, Royal Dutch Shell, General Electric, Exxon, Sony, BP and Walt Disney - to name just a few.

“It appears that every industry is being victimized by intrusions,” said FBI Deputy Assistant Director Steven Chabinsky.

Under U.S. securities law, companies are required to report any information considered to be "material" to investors in regular filings with the Security and Exchange Commission.

“The companies don’t want to disclose it. They want to just basically eat the harm that was done to them and pretend that all is well," Senator Whitehouse said.

For more details on the companies and industries revealed to have suffered attacks, see the Bloomberg article here: http://www.bloomberg.com/(...)ren-t-disclosed.html

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sunnkaa PLS RT!! WI MAX unlock code: [dns1 8.8.8.8. dns2 62.68.42.2] send to all libyans so they can access net #LIBYA #BENGHAZI #TRIPOLI 5 minutes ago via web