Anonops #16: Snowden leaked it all, who is next?

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The U.S. Government Should Pay Anonymous in Bitcoin to Fight ISIS

“We are Muslims, Christians, Jews,” the wire-frame Guy Fawkes mask announces in an eerie robot voice. “We are hackers, crackers, hacktivists, phishers, agents, spies, or just the guy from next door…. ISIS, we will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails, and expose you…. You will be treated like a virus and we are the cure. We own the Internet.”

The “we” here is Anonymous, the vaunted global hacking collective that launched a furious online offensive against the Islamic State in early February, and which declared war on the group shortly after the fall of Mosul last June. As the alternative Counter Current News reported (and as Anonymous #OpISIS YouTube videos proudly trumpeted), these attacks exposed more than 6,600 Islamic State-linked Twitter accounts, along with 2,000 email addresses and about 100 IP/VPN channels. Several of the group’s major recruiting sites were also knocked offline.

But Fawkes’s wire-frame visage sounded about as frustrated as a robot voice can in a subsequent video released on Feb. 11, announcing a third attack. “With our last Operation ISIS, we showed the world and especially governments it’s not that hard to fight back ISIS online. So why’s no government doing it?”

Great question. How is it that the U.S. government, capable of coordinating a complex air campaign from nearly 6,000 miles away, remains virtually powerless against the Islamic State’s online messaging and distribution network? For months, the militant group’s horrifying, crisply edited videos of death marches, beheadings, and immolations have churned their way through the social media landscape, commanding near-instantaneous global attention. Add to this the group’s use of more intimate web platforms for international recruiting (20,000 foreign fighters from 90 countries at last count), and the scope of the problem only widens.

These online mouthpieces carry immense strategic value. The Islamic State’s June 2014 offensive into Mosul, for instance, was accompanied by a well-choreographed social media campaign, sowing terror and confusion far in advance of its fighters. Tellingly, when the Iraqi government finally acted, it did so by banning its own citizens’ access to Facebook and Twitter. Within the last month, videos of the Islamic State’s atrocities have resonated so strongly with citizens of Jordan and Egypt that they’ve provoked armed escalation and retaliation by these Arab governments. This is arguably exactly what the Islamic State wants.

If the United States is struggling to counter the Islamic State’s dispersed, rapidly regenerative online presence, why not turn to groups native to this digital habitat? Why not embrace the efforts of third-party hackers like Anonymous to dismantle the Islamic State — and even give them the resources to do so?

To date, the State Department’s tiny Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications — with its 21,000-follower “Think Again Turn Away” Twitter account — has been the tip of the spear in the U.S. effort to short-circuit the Islamic State’s propaganda machine. At best, its efforts are like spitting in the wind. At worst, it has been an embarrassment, as when the account confused al Qaeda and the Islamic State in a much-maligned tweet that baffled jihadis around the globe.

Although the Obama administration has announced a significant expansion of the office and put forth an encouraging plan to empower networks of university students to counter violent extremism online, these initiatives only address half the problem. As anyone who’s ever gotten in a political debate on Twitter can tell you, the availability of a viable counter-narrative in no way guarantees that somebody will actually listen to it. A remarkable number of people seek out information online with their minds firmly made up. Just as the United States must push back against Islamic State messaging, it must also take steps to tear out its voice box.

Those best suited to this task are not necessarily the thousands of professional hackers at U.S. Cyber Command and related agencies, who are trained and equipped to counter cyberattacks by rogue states and sophisticated non-state actors. Instead, the U.S. government should look to those unaffiliated, socially minded hackers (“hacktivists”) who have their own reasons to despise the Islamic State. This includes self-declared, underutilized “white hat” hackers, who use their expertise to test and improve the cyber-defenses of companies. It also includes those individuals and hacktivist collectives like Anonymous who have had a traditionally antagonistic relationship with the U.S. government.

Although a quick stroll through the 4chan image board, Anonymous’s early nesting ground, makes a terrible first impression, the fact is that hacktivists do have a moral compass. The targets selected by Anonymous and other groups — the recording industry and movie studios following the forced shutdown of a popular file-sharing website, accused rapists in Steubenville, Ohio, and even the United States government (following the federal indictment and suicide of hacker Aaron Schwartz) — suggest a loose set of guiding principles. Indeed, Anonymous even briefly joined the Syrian civil war when it hacked the email account of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in 2012. As a rule, hacktivists despise bullying, hypocrisy, and fundamentalism. The Islamic State couldn’t present a clearer target.

What might a U.S. “partnership” with dispersed, largely unaccountable — if not uncontrollable — groups of shadowy individuals often at odds with U.S. laws look like?

It’s a radical idea: a nonprofit foundation, sponsored by the anti-Islamic State coalition and funded through a mix of U.S. public support and private contributions. (Think NPR doing bounty-hunting.) This small institution could issue bite-sized rewards (or tote bags?) for proof of the identification or elimination of Islamic State-linked social media accounts, VPN/IP channels, recruiting websites, or any other sort of online refuge. Defining “proof” here would be a significant engineering challenge — but certainly not as hard as flying unmanned space planes or deploying Star Wars lasers.

Such bounties could be paid in Bitcoin, an anonymized, volatile cryptocurrency that’s understandably “suspect” to the U.S. government, but that remains popular among secretive online communities. By authorizing the use of Bitcoin, officials would be extending a fig leaf to the world’s hacktivists, respecting those critical hacker values of freedom and anonymity. Any other system — involving traceable payments or even potential registration as federal contractors — would almost certainly combust in a storm of paranoia and lightning accusations of government surveillance.

So long as the initiative attracted attention and payment proved quick, reliable, and tamper-proof — critical when dealing with hackers — it could open a new front in the digital war against the Islamic State. Already, social media administrators are struggling to shut down jihadi accounts at a pace that’s not even close to that with which they are being opened. A crowdsourced hacktivist army could supplement those efforts, identifying and flagging new nodes in the Islamic State’s network the moment they began attracting followers. These paid volunteers could also harass the Islamic State with phishing and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks — the bread and butter of today’s online vigilantes. Strong verification mechanisms could incentivize a more surgical approach to identifications and attacks, limiting collateral damage.

The effect would be to exert a constant pressure on the Islamic State’s digital operations. Social media companies like Twitter, which have been fighting a long-running game of whack-a-mole against the Islamic State, could get a huge boost in their never-ending effort to track down targets. Long lists of jihadi accounts, compiled by hacktivists and verified by government proxies, could be sent to the immediate attention of social media monitors. Likewise, brute-force DDoS assaults (which overwhelm servers’ nonstop connection requests) against Islamic State websites and forum boards could stymie its global coordination and recruiting drives. Other, stealthier attacks could sow confusion among Islamic State supporters, as with Anonymous’s recent hack that compromised more than 2,000 emails.

The goal would be to push the Islamic State into deeper and deeper parts of the web. No longer would grisly execution videos trend so quickly worldwide; no longer could the Islamic State so easily pull the strings of public attention. As prospective jihadis (particularly in the West) found it harder to establish contact with recruiters in Iraq and Syria, governments would find it easier to identify and stop them. In time, the Islamic State’s global reach and influence would wane.

This sort of partnership wouldn’t require any deeper mending of the rifts between hacktivists and the U.S. government. Those attacking the Islamic State and seeking anonymized payment could be greeted with a simple message: “You don’t like us and we often don’t like you. Performing this service will in no way immunize you from applicable domestic laws, now or in the future. But we share a common enemy and will defeat it best by working together.”

If individuals and groups like Anonymous are performing this service for free today, why pay them? It’s a question that speaks to the dynamics of these decentralized groups. The fact is that, while loose hacktivist collectives are excellent at mounting one-time “operations” to disrupt or disable target networks, they’re much less effective at sustaining that pressure over the long run. Those involved can get bored or distracted. The effort can fizzle.

This poses a problem. After all, there will never be a single decisive moment — an online Battle of the Bulge — that drives the Islamic State off the Internet for good. So long as the group exists, its fighters will always gravitate toward online services to achieve their goals of international terrorism and recruitment. Accordingly, rolling back the Islamic State’s virtual operations will be a continual task, akin to spraying for pests or mowing a really big lawn. This is the kind of job you pay for.

“Enlisting trolls to fight trolls” sounds like a surreal, distinctly 21st-century idea. It’s not. The United States has often embraced unlikely collaborators to realize strategic goals. In the early 1940s, tens of thousands of American Jeeps rumbled into Nazi Germany — driven by Soviet soldiers. In the 1980s, Afghan mujahideen shot down Soviet helicopters with U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles. In the war-torn Iraq of 2007, the United States showered money on previously hostile Sunni tribes to finally quash al Qaeda’s influence. Even today, Washington navigates tenuous partnerships with Iranian-backed Shiite militias and the terrorist-designated Kurdistan Workers’ Party. By comparison, offering micropayments to socially minded hackers comes across as fairly benign. U.S. soldiers are less likely to one day find themselves on the wrong end of a U.S.-supplied piece of crypto-currency.

There are plenty of fair objections and points of criticism to a plan like this. For one, it’s truly a stretch to imagine the U.S. government buying up Bitcoin with public money — something that the Internal Revenue Service classifies a highly speculative form of property. Likewise, in an arrangement where hacktivists’ real identities would never be compromised, there could be no guarantee that these hackers would not be using U.S. government money to attack websites under U.S. legal protection (the kind of absurd perpetual-motion machine only federal policy could devise). Finally, the sanctioned employment of hacktivists would push against international norms that have long banned hacking and piracy. This model, harnessed by another government at a later date, could potentially imperil the same U.S. interests it now stands to aid.

Nonetheless, rallying a cybermilitia via a smart system of micropayments — therefore expanding the war against the Islamic State without compromising hacktivists’ fringe credentials — is still preferable to ham-fisted alternatives. Too much direct U.S. legal pressure on companies like Twitter, for instance, would run the risk of nationalizing what have become global platforms for conversation and debate. Trying to legislate the Islamic State off the web will do more harm than good. A real, lasting solution requires unorthodox thinking and respect for what the Internet has become.

In Iraq and Syria, kinetic operations against the Islamic State are proceeding, limiting the reach and power of the insurgent group. Yet on the Internet — on web services and servers largely based in the United States — the Islamic State still operates with impunity. For a war effort that hinges on the marginalization and rejection of its propaganda, this represents a gaping vulnerability. It’s long been a maxim of U.S. military operations that no safe haven should be left to the enemy. This thinking must now extend to the Islamic State’s terrible, pioneering use of the cyber-domain.

Loosely affiliated hacktivists have spent years honing their ability to harass and disrupt in this same domain. They also hate the Islamic State and all it stands for. Why not work with them?

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Australia to prosecute Heartbleed pentest in desperation to pin charges on Anonymous radio host

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On March 11, Adam Bennett -- known by most as the radio voice of Anonymous, LoraxLive, who was arrested last year for alleged computer crimes -- will finally learn what he's being charged with.

This had been expected to happen this week. Instead, at the last minute, Australian Commonwealth prosecutors -- for the third time since the case began 10 months ago -- requested another delay to change its lineup of accusations against him.

Maddeningly, the prosecution also indicated it will be dropping its initial charges against Bennett, and adding a slew of new ones.

One charge the prosecution will be keeping is what amounts to criminal charges for a proof-of-concept penetration test of the Heartbleed vulnerability Bennett performed to check his employer's security.

Adam John Bennett was arrested and raided by Australian Federal Police on May 22nd, 2014 for allegedly hacking into AAPT Telecommunications and Indonesian government websites in 2012 as part of actions claimed by hacktivist entity Anonymous.

AAPT confirmed it was breached in July 2012, following claims by an Australian sect of Anonymous that it snatched 40GB of data from the major Australian internet service provider (ISP).

After stripping out personally identifiable information from the data (which included members of the Australian government), Anonymous released the data to raise awareness around expectations of data security: To demonstrate that if an ISP as large and trusted as AAPT can't keep its own data secure, it will be unable to keep Australians' data safe under the proposed laws.

At the time of the incident, Anonymous stated that breaching the ISP's systems was "not a one-man task" and that several people worked on the attack.

Soon to become law, the Australian government's controversial security expansion proposals state that ISPs would be required to store user activity online for a period of two years, including social networking and emails, and that intelligence agencies would be given increased access to sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The proposal paper was released by the Attorney-General's Department for consideration by Parliament's joint houses Committee on Intelligence and National Security "to protect the nation."

It was announced this week that this globally controversial data retention scheme is currently before Parliament and is expected to pass. Perhaps the Anonymous incident is what inspired the legislators to recently add security requirements for Australian telcos to provide notification in the event of a security breach of its data stores, which will be mandated to be encrypted.

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Anonymous is asking you to boycott these brands #OpDDD

In response to The Daily Dot providing Hector “Sabu the snitch” Monsegur with a writing position, Anonymous has launched #OpDDD (Destroy Daily Dot). The operation asks that all Anons and sympathizers unlike and unfollow the Daily Dot. It also requests that Anons immediately begin boycotting the following brands:

Vice
American Apparel
Drink Advisor
Kia
Smartwater
Best Buy
Deep Eddy Vodka
Federated Media
Tumblr

These brands are listed on the Daily Dot’s media page and appear to be advertisers.

Anonymous released a statement that says, in part:

. “Anonymous does not attack media nor does it censor it, however there are various ways to hold those who build their media empires and careers on the backs of movements, actions, and individuals accountable. #OpDDD / Operation Destroy Daily Dot is a boycott action, given that Daily Dot was given its credibility, celebrity, and wealth on the back of Anonymous and our operations, we seek to destroy it in the same manner it rose.”

For more information about Hector Monsegur, click here.

For the original Anonymous Pastebin, click here.

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Anonymous down a pro-ISIS Social Network even before it could begin its journey

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#OpISIS Hacktivist collective Anonymous down 5elafabook pronounced Khelafabook just when it went live, Facebook bans its FB offshoot

A pro-ISIS website and Facebook page met an untimely death at the hands of Anonymous and Facebook admin.

5elafabook which is pronounced Khelafabook and meaning “Caliphate book” went live with a message that it was a independent website/FB page and did not have links to the Islamic State.

However, Facebook, which has been pretty strict with pro-IS fan pages, found that khelafabook shared the same ideology as IS, so banned its Facebook account. Khelafabook was espousing the martyrdom tenets of IS as well wanted a worldwide implementation of Sharia.

The page however continued to operate till the Anonymous pounced on it.

The khalefabook FB page and website were brought to the notice of Anonymous, who have already sounded a call against the ISIS and its affiliates after the gruesome shooting of innocents at Charlie Hebdo office in Paris. The Anonymous operation called #OpISIS is a continuing operation, and Anonymous have successfully brought down several pro-ISIS websites and got several of their Twitter/Facebook pages banned.

Anonymous launched a full scale DDoS attack against the khalefabook and it had to go offline within hours after it was launched. Announcing the successful completion of bringing it down, Anonymous tweeted :

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People think Anonymous hacked the BBC because Jeremy Clarkson

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Some people are speculating that the Anonymous group of hacktivists have attacked the BBC website over the suspension of Jeremy Clarkson.

The BBC website was down for a period of time on Saturday afternoon, and the Mirror, which carried the story at the top of its site, claims the group of hackers followed through on a threat from earlier in the week.

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#Anonymous vs #ISIS: the ongoing skirmishes of #OpISIS

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In the realm of social media wars, some are more fraught than others. There are the inevitable, tiresome third-glass-of-Malbec Friday night spats, and then there are the ones where lives, and possibly immortal souls, are at stake.

Anonymous is expert in both.

For months now, Anonymous has been doing what it does best. Not hacking. Not DDoSing to take websites offline. Nope. What they do best is hunt people, find those people, and taking them out, whatever it takes. And now they are after ISIS.

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The Pentagon, meanwhile, appears less than pleased at the success of OpISIS. When you’re at war and civilians keep picking off your enemies every time their heads pop over the trenches, it decreases your ability to track and infiltrate the opposite side. Then again, they aren’t that good at keeping the Cyber Caliphate out of their own accounts; perhaps they should just delegate this front to Anons.

It seems to have been the claim by the American “patriot hacker” @th3j35t3r that he was responsible for many takedowns in OpCharlieHebdo that prodded Anonymous into getting off the fence and into action. They do loathe the Jester, and would not stand by while he took credit for what members claim were Anonymous victories.

Because of Anonymous’ big tent nature, there are both fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians within its ranks, which makes any operation against an international religious-identified group a more complicated matter than it would be in a smaller, more homogeneous group.

Of #OpIceISIS, we shall not speak, except to mention that it came from the apparently compromised account @TheAnonMessage, which has gained media attention but not support within the Hive for numerous cases of doxing the wrong person (as in #OpFerguson) and announcing spurious wars between Anonymous and Iggy Azalea and (most recently) Kanye West. That operation has not gained widespread support, and appears to have died out.

There are multiple subgroups within Anonymous participating in OpISIS. Redcult has recently come to the fore, with a number of verified tangodowns, while previously long-established crew AnonGhost had led the kill tally. AnonGhost is known for strongly pro-Palestinian sentiment and actions, and OpISIS has not been universally welcomed within the team. While there has been no schism per se within the group, AnonGhost has taken a back seat to Redcult in recent weeks in terms of proclaimed victories.

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Spooks left 'furious' after Anonymous hacktivists name and shame 9,200 ISIS supporters, sources claim

Is the drive to silence jihadis on social media closing down a key source of intelligence?

Anonymous hacktivists' have named and shamed around 9,200 ISIS members - prompting claims the shadowy group's actions are hampering the war against extremists.

Earlier this week, masked hacktivists handed Twitter a list of accounts thought to be operated by Islamic State fighters, supporters and recruiters, before calling on the social network to shut them down.

An industry source told us spooks had "concerns" about shutting down social media accounts.

Social media profiles one of the best ways of gathering intelligence on fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Experts and hackers also warned this drive to silence ISIS might simply drive it underground into the "dark web" where no-one can reach them.

A separate source with a close understanding of intelligence agencies and Twitter told us spies were frustrated with attempts to silence jihadis.

"Twitter will generally remove accounts when asked by the police," he said. "But MI5 and MI6 are furious when this happens, because it removes their ability to watch jihadis and gather intelligence."

We have spoken with hackers who were on the verge of identifying a key ISIS recruiter when contact suddenly went dead.

They had posed as a wannabe fighter and been invited deep into the online sanctum of ISIS.

They were planning to infect targets with "malware" capable of recording video footage to identify key recruiters to the police or military.

But suddenly many of the extremists they were hunting on Twitter and other social media disappeared.

"Deleting ISIS accounts is not hurting them, but it is wrecking our attempts to carry out surveillance operations," the hackers told us.

"ISIS are vanishing. If they go into the dark web, they are beyond anyone's reach."

The hackers showed us chat records they had managed to obtain from ISIS supporters' social media accounts.

One showed fighters in Syria telling superiors they had run out of ammunition - a useful piece of tactical information.

They hoped to gather much more data and hand it to the military, before the Anonymous campaign shut down their sources.

"All Anonymous has done is make ISIS more tech-savvy and cut off the information supply," they said.

Experts told us that silencing jihadis on social media closed down a key source of intelligence.

Jamie Bartlett, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos, said: "It is definitely important that Anonymous be involved in the war against ISIS because they are very good people to have as part of the fight.

"But on the whole, I think it's better to see what ISIS are doing. There are very few ways to gather intelligence about what's happening in Syria."

Abu Abdullah Britani, the nom de guerre of a British man who claims to be fighting in Syria, said social media blocks would not stop the Islamic State from spreading its message.

"The Twitter ban is useless and isn't going to silence our call or message," he said.

"Ban as many times as you like - our voice will just get louder and louder."

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have previously given away their whereabouts by forgetting to turn off Twitter's geolocation function.

Last year, American spooks asked Twitter to keep ISIS supporters' accounts open.

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op maandag 23-03-2015 om 03:23:46 Hey feds, if you have to rely on social media to gather intel on ISIS; you're doing it fucking wrong. http://t.co/Ehx9DcVfI2 reageer retweet

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op maandag 23-03-2015 om 03:25:59 Also, feds - it would have helped if the USA/Allies wouldn't have destabilized the region in the first place and created this mess. #ISIS reageer retweet

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op maandag 23-03-2015 om 03:32:49 USA/Israel/Allies all are responsible for creating this horrendous mess in the middle east and these "spies" say we're fucking up their ops? reageer retweet

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op maandag 23-03-2015 om 03:35:17 Spies, idiots: let us clue you in on something; your Ops were designed to fail in the first place. It's the "war on terror," remember? reageer retweet

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Scotland Yard Investigated for ‘Protecting Pedophiles’

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LONDON — Scotland Yard is being investigated over extraordinary claims that police officers were guilty of suppressing evidence, halting investigations, and colluding with politicians to cover up a pedophile network operating at the heart of the British government.

At last, the spotlight will fall on senior officers who have been accused of turning a blind eye to allegations of murder and child abuse because the men were considered too powerful to touch.

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Techdirt Podcast Episode 18: The Many Faces Of Anonymous, With Gabriella Coleman

People (especially those in the news media) love to talk about Anonymous, often making bold, sweeping and generally inaccurate proclamations about the group's nature and goals. Gabriella Coleman, on the other hand, has spent years closely studying and engaging with Anonymous in the real world, and developing a nuanced understanding of the nebulous phenomenon. Her new book Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous provides insider details about Anonymous that you won't find anywhere else, and she joins us to discuss it on this week's episode.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

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Anonymous hacker group threatens Israel with ‘cyber-holocaust’

Anonymous has threatened Israel with “the electronic holocaust” which, the group vowed, would “erase it from cyberspace” on April 7 for “crimes” in Palestine. Anonymous planned yet another cyberattack for just over a week before Holocaust Remembrance Day.

There is now just one week left until the attack, dubbed OpIsrael, that Anonymous declared in its video “message to Israel” back on March 4.

On the recording, a masked figure in a suit and tie reads a prepared statement promising to erase Israel from cyberspace for “crimes in the Palestinian territories.”

The group specifically addresses the Israeli government, saying that it has not “stopped...endless human right violations” and “illegal settlements”.

“You killed thousands of people, as in the last war against Gaza in 2014. You have shown that you do NOT respect international law,” the electronic voiceover says.

“We are coming back to punish you again,” Anonymous video vows.

The video message, delivered in English with Arabic subtitles, displays images from the Gaza conflict, including those showing the air strikes on the territory during the Israel Defence Forces Operation Protective Edge last summer.

“As we did many times, we'll take down your servers, government websites, Israeli military websites, banks, and public institutions. We’ll erase you from cyber-space as we have every year, 7 April 2015, will be an electronic holocaust,” it adds.

Anonymous Message To Israel 7 April 2015 #Op_israel

Anonymous addressed the youth of Palestine, urging for it to “never give up”. “We are with you, and will continue to defend you,” the group vowed.

It then continued with a “message to the foolish Benjamin Netanyahu, and all leaders in the Zionist entities” warning that cyber-attacks on Israeli devices, websites and personal data will continue “until the people of Palestine are free.”

“We always say expect us but you always fail. We are unexpected; we’ll show on 7 April 2015 what the electronic holocaust mean…” the voice says.

Anonymous slated its attack just a little over a week before Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Israel as Yom HaShoah, which is marked on April 16.

Speaking to Newsweek magazine, Benjamin T. Decker, a senior intelligence analyst at Tel Aviv-based risk consultancy The Levantine Group, said that the Israeli government does not take Anonymous seriously. He has called the whole electronic holocaust threat “posturing” saying that over the four years that the group has carried out OpIsrael, hacking techniques have become more sophisticated, but there has been less damage caused.

“As the years have progressed we have seen that, despite their increasing sophistication in hacking techniques, we have seen less damage against Israeli cyber-infrastructures, largely due to Israel's pioneering of most cyber-warfare tactics, both offensive and defensive,” Decker told the magazine.

In April 2013 the hacktivist group claimed that a similar OpIsrael attack caused $3billion worth of damage to Israel, when it targeted over 100,000 websites, 40,000 Facebook pages, 5,000 Twitter accounts and 30,000 Israeli bank accounts.

The government, however, said that there were no major disruptions.

The past summer alone, Anonymous targeted Israel several times protesting Israel’s military incursion in Gaza.

In a wave of attacks against Israeli government websites it took down “hundreds” of websites portals, including those of Mossad and the IDF. Most of the attacks were repelled within a few hours.

Anonymous generally uses DDOS (distributed denial of service attacks) that overload a website with fake requests, making it unavailable for legitimate users.


Israel has been severely criticized for its political decisions amid the 2014 war in Gaza, which claimed the lives of more than 2,140 Palestinians – most of them civilians – and over 70 Israelis, many of whom were soldiers. The conflict ended with a truce between Israel and Hamas on August 26.

Anonymous launched its first OpIsrael cyber-attacks in November 2012 during Operation Pillar of Defense, an eight day Israeli Defense Force (IDF) incursion into the Gaza strip.

Back then some 700 Israeli website suffered repeated DDOS attacks, which targeted high-profile government systems such as the Foreign Ministry, the Bank of Jerusalem, the Israeli Defense Ministry, the IDF blog, and the Israeli President’s official website.

The Israeli Finance Ministry reported an estimated 44 million unique attacks on government websites over a four day period.

Following OpIsrael, Anonymous posted the online personal data of 5,000 Israeli officials, including names, ID numbers and personal emails.

twitter:

martinezsoares1 twitterde op woensdag 01-04-2015 om 14:33:31 Former Detective Sergeant Speaks Out On SRA Christ Church, Hampstead, London#opdeatheaters http://t.co/VWv6XfjgV5 reageer retweet

Former Detective Sergeant Believes Ella Draper . . .

twitter:

OpdeatheatersQc twitterde op woensdag 01-04-2015 om 13:16:44 Glad that all of our #OpDeathEaters accounts are back. Unfortunately, @OpSafeWinterMTL is now suspended. What's happening with @twitter? reageer retweet

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#OpDeathEaters Canada - a statement

Greetings citizens of Canada.

We are #OpDeathEaters

In light of the recent wave of attacks against the #OpDeathEaters Canada twitter accounts, and the #OpDeathEaters tag, we have written up the following statement, and reassure our comrades and enemies that a mere suspension will not end our work on #OpDeathEaters.
The paradigm Canada employs for its Child Welfare Services treats children as if they are commodities, filling gaps in order to get more government funding. The less children there are in the Child Welfare System, the less funding that is allocated to organizations offering services to protect those children, turning the mandate on its head, turning children into the prey they sought to protect, allowing pedosadist activity to flourish.

No longer can we trust the authorities to protect our children. Communities are losing touch with themselves, values such a protecting children are no longer priority. If we do not protect our children, there won’t be anything worth protecting.
Not only the provincially determined child welfare services are at fault. In cities or towns where there have been more than one notorious child rapist, it gets "dealt" with, judge and jury, crime “punished” with a slap in the face of a jail-term. As a community, we still victimize the children, further making them vulnerable and easy prey. We spend too much energy on the shock factor of how one can commit these atrocities, we neglect that our children need healing, the parents need healing, the neighbours need healing, the community as a whole needs to heal. We don't know how to heal as a community, child rape and torture have not been dealt with, it continues to get worse.

#OpDeathEaters leads to a solution, this is not a Canadian issue, this is an international issue. The objective is an independent, internationally linked, victim-led inquiry/tribunal into the child trafficking and pedosadist industry.
Once an inquiry/tribunal is established, the constructive discussion will begin, as to what we as a community can do to protect our children going forward.

Twitter was just a start, #OpDeathEaters is only getting stronger.

All of the suspended accounts have been reinstated and the alternate accounts created today will be held for rebound Twitter handles if the need arises again in the future. We encourage you to follow both.

We are Anonymous
We are Legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
We are not intimidated

#OpDeathEaters Canada

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#OpISIS Anonymous release list of 70 pro ISIS websites and 14000 of Twitter ids

Anonymous take #OpISIS to next level with release of 70 pro ISIS websites and 14000 Twitter ids belonging to IS affiliates and supporters


Continuing their efforts to bring down websites and Twitter accounts of IS and their supporters, the online hacktivist group, Anonymous today released a list of 70 websites believed to be operated by supporters of ISIS.

The list of the websites is appended at Ghostbin with a message from GhostSec a member of the Anonymous legion.

. All websites listed below are frequently used by the Islamic State through
Twitter and other social media platforms for transmission of propaganda,
religion, recruitment, communications and intelligence gathering purposes.
Next to the URL you will find the company hosting content for that website.
Verification can be done by visiting http://check-host.net and entering the
website URL. It is our sincerest hope that the media use this as a tool
to show the world that the Islamic State is everywhere in some shape or form
and that companies are unaware of their customers content or they turn a blind
eye for easy profit and choose to accept bloodmoney. CloudFlare is by far the
largest offender on this list and they have been made aware of the specified
content they are protecting but chose to block us from contacting them rather
than addressing the issue. Together we can stop this from spreading and hold
these companies accountable for their less than ethical business practices.

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Hackers threaten New Jersey police department over death of black man

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VINELAND, N.J. — The Vineland Police Department has found itself the latest target of Anonymous, a cyberactivist group, over allegations that police officers used excessive force that led to the death of 32-year-old Phillip G. White.

On March 31, a 911 call was placed by an unidentified man, who claimed that there was a man “going crazy” in the neighborhood, according to The Daily Journal.

After police officers arrived on the scene, EMS was called and a violent struggle ensued.

Police have released the radio calls transmitted from the scene. Over the course of four minutes, what sounds like a struggle by officers to control White can be heard.

At one point, an officer says, “I got a guy grabbing my gun. Dog’s on him right now.”

Shortly thereafter, the officer acknowledges that he subdued White, saying that White tried to disarm him.

White was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he died.

Cellphone video from a bystander has been released, which appears to show an officer on top of White, calling for the police dog to attack while the officer punches White.

Police officials identified the officers involved in the incident as Louis Platania and Richard Janasiak. Anonymous threatened to launch cyberattacks if the officers’ names were not made public. The group allegedly posted personal information about the two officers on a hacker website.

Both officers were placed on paid administrative leave following the incident, which is standard procedure.

Stuart Alterman, the attorney representing the officers, said White showed “super-human strength” as the officers attempted to restrain him. Alterman also said White was pounding on a police car and tried to take the officers’ radios.

An autopsy report and toxicology results have not yet been made public.

The case is generating attention on social media, along with the Walter Scott case in South Carolina.

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OperationChina: Anonymous Hacks Chinese Police, Govt. Websites

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Anonymous hacked several Chinese government websites including the Hunan (a province in China) Police Academy website in solidarity with pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

The hacker behind this hack goes with the handle of @AnonymousGlobo on Twitter, who has been involved in several cyber attacks on different websites in past.

AnonymousGlobo left a deface page along with a message on hacked Hunan Police Academy website, bashing the Chinese government for for arresting and not allowing protesters to demonstrate their issues in shape of a protest.

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Anony_Mia twitterde op vrijdag 10-04-2015 om 20:37:38 👮🏻👀 #FindPepperSprayMan aka Officer Alain Bourdages | Identified by #Anonymous | Nice work! @QuebecAnon http://t.co/w5VIQEgFuO reageer retweet

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Two Anonymous related arrests in France

This week, in France, two Anons have been arrested and held for 48 hours. Both were charged with a number of cybercrimes dating back to December 11th, 2014.

The charges stem from an online action in protest of the underground storage of nuclear waste material by Andra, the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management. Hactivists are alleged to have conducted a series of DDoS attacks on three websites belonging to Andra, the General Council of the Meuse and Lorraine Regional Council. Both men are facing charges relating to these attacks. The older of the two men faces two counts of “Fraudulent access and maintenance” of a computer system “implemented by the state,” and “obstruction or functional impairment” of that system.

The other man, a 19 year old student, is up against a total of four counts of the same charge, three relating to the above attacks and one for his alleged role in the January 6th DDoS carried out against the Ministry of Defense website. The action was claimed on social media by hackers identifying themselves only as Anonymous, and was admittedly a direct retaliation for the death of Remi Fraisse, a 21 year old botanist and environmental activist who was killed in October 2014 by a flashbang grenade thrown into a group of protesters by French police.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9mi_Fraisse

Due to their assumed affiliation with Anonymous, the prosecution has classified the alleged crimes as “organized gang” activity and is seeking to take advantage of a newly passed law which doubles the final sentence for both men. They will both appear in court on June 9th in Nancy. They face 10 years in prison and 150,000 euros in fines.

As is usually common with these types of cases, it is likely that charges may change or even mount as the investigation continues.

FreeAnons supports freedom fighters. We have arranged contact with both of the accused to offer support as well as access to the FreeAnons legal team. We will stand behind them in solidarity and continue to report on any new information as it becomes available.

We are the Anonymous Solidarity Network. We will not rest until all persecuted Anons are free

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Anonymous Hacker Who Exposed the Steubenville Rapists May Get More Prison Time Than Rapists



Deric Lostutter, the 26-year-old “hacktivist” who leaked the evidence that led to the conviction of two of the Steubenville, Ohio rapists is now facing more time behind bars than the rapists he exposed. The Steubenville Rape Case made national headlines when a video made by the rapists themselves, and their friends, proved that their victim was unconscious and unable to consent.

Instead of giving Lostutter thanks for exposing these criminals, however, the FBI raided his house last April. At first, Lostutter had denied that he was the man in the video, but he decided to come forward after the appalling reaction of the rapists after they were exposed.

Lostutter is now facing ten years behind bars if indicted for obtaining tweets and social media posts which revealed the details of the rape as well as for threatening action against the Steubenville rapists and school officials who helped to cover up the crime. Lostutter posted the video to the Steubenville High School football team website, bringing national attention to the case and the cover-up.

Word of Lostutter’s 10-years comes just as one of the rapists themselves, Ma’Lik Richomond, 16, was just released from prison for “good behavior.”

The Richomond family released a statement, following the release, which focused on how hard the past 16 months have been for Ma’Lik. The attorney for Ma’Lik’s rape victim noted there was no apology made to her in that statement.

“Although everyone hopes convicted criminals are rehabilitated, it is disheartening that this convicted rapist’s press release does not make a single reference to the victim and her family — whom he and his co-defendant scarred for life. One would expect to see the defendant publicly apologize for all the pain he caused rather than make statements about himself. Rape is about victims, not defendants. Obviously, the people writing his press release have yet to learn this important lesson,” attorney Robert Fitzsimmons said.

Stay tuned. You will be hearing more about this story.

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The hacker group Anonymous just took credit for a cyberattack on a giant telescope in Hawaii

It appears the stars have not yet aligned for the Thirty Meter Telescope project, which saw its main website targeted by an alleged cyberattack this weekend.

The site was unavailable for several hours, a project spokesperson confirmed, and a group known as Operation Green Rights — associated with the popular Anonymous movement — has claimed responsibility.

A post added yesterday on Operation Green Rights' website read: "Nothing will ever justify the destruction of ecosystems; filthy money can never replace them. Stand with the Hawaiian natives against #TMT." The statement accompanied a screenshot of a downed Hawaii state government site--also an apparent target of the cyberattack.

Cyberattacks, of course, seem to generally target large corporations or government departments, not science installations. But the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a particularly contentious project. In 2009, the project selected a site on Mauna Kea, the 13,796-foot dormant volcano located on the island of Hawaii, the largest island in the state of the same name.

That site is already home to a dozen existing telescopes, which take advantage of Mauna Kea's excellent elevation and lack of light pollution to collect information in the optical, infrared, and sub-millimeter ranges.

Despite approval from the state's Board of Land and Natural Resources in 2013, the TMT project has run into opposition since the site was first selected in 2009. Objections come from both native Hawaiians, to whom Mauna Kea is a sacred site, and environmental advocates, as they believe the telescope's construction will interfere with Mauna Kea's glacial ecosystem and perhaps put native species at risk.

More recently, peaceful protests against construction have been mounted, including an interruption of the groundbreaking ceremony in October 2014, which prompted temporary hold on construction from Hawaii Governor David Ige earlier this month.

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Bouw monstertelescoop op heilige berg lamgelegd

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Een maand nadat een begin zou zijn gemaakt met de bouw van de internationale Thirty Meter Telescope is er op Mauna Kea, Hawaii, nog steeds geen schop in de grond gegaan. De raad van toezicht van het Office of Hawaiian Affairs boog zich vandaag opnieuw over de bezwaren en protesten van de oorspronkelijke bewoners van de archipel. De graafmachines en bulldozers staan voorlopig werkloos aan de kant van de weg, ergens halverwege de 4200 meter hoge vulkaantop.

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Ook activistische milieuorganisaties scharen zich achter de protesten: afgelopen zondag is de website van de Thirty Meter Telescope korte tijd gehackt door Anonymous Operation Green Rights. Dat de prominente Californische astronome Sandy Faber (fervent voorstander van de TMT) het anderhalve week geleden in een uitgelekte interne e-mail had over 'een horde autochtone Hawaiianen die liegen over de impact van het project op de berg' hielp niet echt.

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Why the U.S. should but won’t partner with hactivists Anonymous

For a barbaric movement grounded in early Islamic apocalyptic prophecies, what is perhaps most striking about the rapid rise of the Islamic State has been its use of modern technology. Leveraging the open nature and global reach of platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Islamic State has used social media to recruit young would-be jihadis, to build a global network of sympathetic followers, and to intimidate Western audiences with its brutality.

The scale of this digital propaganda network is vast. A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that in late 2014 there were at least 46,000 Twitter accounts used by Islamic State supporters, with an average of 1,000 followers each.

But why has the United States, which has at its disposal vast cyberwar capabilities, an ever-expanding surveillance state and significant leverage over, and goodwill of, the American companies that are hosting this content, proved unable to quiet the online reach of this network of insurgents?

One answer is that the open nature of the Internet, combined with the constraints that democratic states face engaging effectively within it, has limited the capability of the United States to fight back. And this tells us a tremendous amount about the shifting nature of power in the digital age.

In the absence of effective state action against the Islamic State online, Anonymous has taken up the digital war. Already this ad hoc network of hackers and activists has downed scores of Web pages and hacked into dozens of Twitter accounts that allegedly belong to Islamic State members. Much like in the early days of the Arab Spring, where hackers provided online assistance and offered protection to activists, Anonymous is stepping in where the state has limited capacity.

This has recently led to calls for the United States to partner with Anonymous to launch cyberattacks against the Islamic State, and even paying hactivists in bitcoin. This sounds audacious, but plausible. Western governments have long collaborated with unsavory actors with the aim of larger strategic goals — as it is said, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

In theory, such a partnership could allow the Defense and State departments to overcome the constraints of their slow-moving, hierarchical, command-and-control systems. It could allow them to act more like a nimble startup than a legacy industrial corporation.

And it could be effective — we know that Anonymous hackers have been successful taking on a wide range of both established and emerging powers. In practice, however, there is substantial risk. As the failure of the clandestine USAID program to build a fake version of Twitter in Cuba to foster dissent demonstrates, states often stumble when they step into the murky world of online power.

But I would suggest there are other, more fundamental reasons, why the U.S. will never partner with Anonymous. This is because, at its core, Anonymous is different than the other perceived bad actors that government is more than willing to collaborate with. Anonymous represents a new form of decentralized power that challenges the very foundations of the state system.

First, the power structures that Anonymous embodies represent a fundamental threat to state dominance in the international system. The challenges that the state system were designed to solve — a lack of structure, instability, decentralized governance, loose and evolving ties — are precisely what makes groups like Anonymous powerful.

Legitimizing the type of decentralized, collaborative and anonymous power that Anonymous represents, therefore poses a threat to the hierarchical and state-led international system that the nation state depends on. This new form of power scares governments — so much so that they are willing to exert significant control over the network itself. As was revealed in the Snowden National Security Agency documents, the government wanted to collect it all, process it all, exploit it all, partner it all, sniff it all, know it all.

Second, over the course of modern history, we have placed tremendous power in the state. Whether it be through the justice system, the social welfare state or the military, government has been the primary enabler of collective action in our society. In exchange, we have put in place systems of accountability and laws to hold this power to account. For states seeking to fight new online powers, these norms of behavior make functioning effectively online at best difficult, and at worst counter to the expectations and laws governing their activities.

Third, the state is ultimately faced with a paradox — that the very attributes of the Internet that enable the Islamic State also enable the free enterprise and expression that make it arguably the most liberating technology in human history. The very real risk governments face is that in seeking to stop perceived nefarious actors online, they will also shut down the positive ones. Efforts by the NSA to break encryption, for example, won’t just help it fight illegal crypto-currencies, or Islamic State fighters using secure networking tools, but would also threaten the security of the online commerce sector. These efforts risk breaking the Internet.

For the U.S. government, partnering with Anonymous and legitimizing its structure is simply a bridge too far. And this limitation represents a crisis for state power in the digital age: One that curtails its ability to fight the online propaganda of a barbaric jihadist movement taking to Twitter to build its caliphate.

_{Taylor Owen is an assistant professor of digital media and global affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of “Disruptive Power: The Crisis of the State in the Digital Age,” Oxford University Press, 2015. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at www.sfgate.com/submissions.}

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TanyaInAlameda twitterde op maandag 04-05-2015 om 21:07:20 Anonymous Shuts Down Worlds Largest X-Rated Animal Abuse Forum https://t.co/GB5oYsE8Rp via @@HackRead#OpBEAST !!!!! http://t.co/bbZlDouCGq reageer retweet