Anonops #6: Anonymous en de MO-revoluties

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op_99 RT @Anon_Lobo: #anonymous Jester takes down site of Westboro Baptist Church www.godhatesfags.com 2 minutes ago via SimplyTweet

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/21/948079/-Anonymous-to-UN:-Help-Libya-Now

The following press release was just created by an emergent task group of Anonymous participants who have been involved in OpLibya. English and German so far.

Dear United Nations:

Anonymous wishes you to act.

We are watching the developments in Libya and are shocked.
Shocked by the images we've seen.
Shocked by the things Libya's Anons have told us.
Shocked by the fact that one man ignores the voices of his citizens and opens fire on them.
Shocked by the fact that even with generals and diplomats deserting, this man is still ignoring the will of his people and unwilling to accept their human rights

People ought not have to fear their leaders; leaders ought to fear their people. In too many places, though, this is currently not the case. A grasping dictator has taken an army to the skies and the streets to shed blood of people whom he should be protecting. Some of them have bravely refused, and thereby done their part; when will the UN do theirs?

We just want the people to be free. Please help us help them. Again, this is not an attack, but rather a bid for your full attention, which ought to be directed towards assisting Libyans in their quest for liberty.

The United Nations has the power to prevent this egregious loss of life, but it must act quickly and decisively to do so, contrary to its usual habits.

We ask not for meetings or referenda. Rather, we demand that you implement the following measures and do so in a manner that will minimize the loss of life among civilians and put an end to the rule of this degenerate tyrant.

1. Provide a blanket no-fly zone to prevent state controlled aircraft from bombing civilians.
2. Provide secured transport of medical supplies to major population centers.
3. Announce the implemention of these measures within 24 hours.

That world which you claim to protect is watching and will respond accordingly.

We are Anonymous
We are Legion.
We do not forget,
We do not forgive.

Expect us.

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ValleySeth RT @SocialistBooks: Bypass the #Wisconsin Capitol lock-out on internet sites using Kproxy.com, #Anonymous has confirmed this. Re-Tweet this. #wiunion #notmywi

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anonsdg @taa_madison #anonymous may have a list posted at some point, but for now protesters should use kproxy.com to bypass censorship. #wiunion 2 minutes ago via web

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http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/02/22/wisconsin.budget/index.html

Madison, Wisconsin (CNN) -- A left-leaning website that union supporters used to rally protesters in Wisconsin was partially blocked as demonstrators gathered in the state Capitol over a controversial budget bill.

The website, defendwisconsin.org, could not be accessed on Monday and into Tuesday morning in the Capitol building, where crowds assembled over proposed legislation that would increase the costs of benefits to public employees and curb their collective-bargaining rights.

Wisconsin Democratic Party press secretary Graeme Zielinski blamed Gov. Scott Walker and Republican lawmakers -- who returned to work Tuesday -- for causing the outage.

"In a direct assault on the First Amendment, Scott Walker's administration is blocking access in the Wisconsin Capitol to opposition websites," Zielinski said.

State Department of Administration spokeswoman Carla Vigue responded, saying, "DOA's security software automatically blocked the site, as it does all new websites."

"No one here at DOA decided to block it or took action to do so," he said. "The website is handled like any other website."

The Capitol internet service, which restricts access to certain websites considered inappropriate for lawmakers, revealed a "blocked page" when users tried to access the site using the building's wireless system.

Users were able to access the site elsewhere.

The outage comes on the heels of a speech by Walker, who defended the budget proposal and criticized unions for squandering state coffers and impeding fiscal reform.

"We're broke," he told reporters Monday. "You really can't negotiate when you don't have money to negotiate with."

Unions have argued that collective bargaining -- a process of negotiations meant to regulate working conditions -- has helped protect wages and health care, enforce workplace safety and serve as a means to arbitrate employee grievances.

The budget-repair bill, proposed by Walker to address a $137 million shortfall through June 30, would increase contributions of state workers to their pensions and health insurance benefits. It requires collective-bargaining units to conduct annual votes to maintain certification. It also eliminates the right of unions to have dues deducted from worker paychecks.

Walker warned that not passing the proposed bill would result in at least 1,500 government employees being laid off in the short term and could result in the layoffs of upward of 6,000 workers in the following budget cycle.

Last week, 14 Democratic state senators essentially boycotted the Legislature and went to Illinois to prevent a quorum from passing the bill. The measure's opponents said they won't allow a vote unless Walker negotiates on the plan to eliminate collective-bargaining rights for everything but wages.

For their part, Democrats need to draw at least three Republican lawmakers to block the bill or otherwise renegotiate the proposal.

The state's protesting teachers -- who had shut down schools across the state -- returned to the classroom Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a bill to limit the collective-bargaining power of some public-sector workers sparked protests in neighboring Ohio, where crowds gathered last week in the state Capitol.

The measure would eliminate tenure as a consideration when deciding on layoffs, require workers to pay at least 20% of their health insurance premiums and institute merit-based pay for some public-sector workers.

Elsewhere Tuesday, Michigan lawmakers approved a proposal to shrink Detroit's troubled school system, while House Democrats in Indiana may have ripped a page out of Wisconsin's book by threating to walk out on a Republican-supported bill that would reduce private-sector union rights.

In New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie is set to give his annual budget address that many analysts say will likely include big cuts to state services in an effort to avoid raising taxes.

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Op dinsdag 22 februari 2011 21:18 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:
Het loopt altijd wel storm in jouw topics, hè?

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Op dinsdag 22 februari 2011 21:27 schreef Nibb-it het volgende:
HBGAry ?

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diegomireles #xs4all #Libya #Libia access Internet via modem phone:+31205350535 user:xs4all password:xs4all #anonymous 8 minutes ago via web

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TheUsedMisfit RT @Shadowflare00: #Kh0d0hf1 is insane. Is there way to DDoS a person? | #Libya #oplibya Gadafi #cyberwar #anonops #anonymous

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Dwayne420 #Libyan Relief Effort donations - http://t.co/MY3Jb5I via @Feb17Libya (The Libyan Youth Movement Feb. 17th) #libya #anonops #oplibya about 1 hour ago via web

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Op dinsdag 22 februari 2011 22:49 schreef Fireblast het volgende:
Waarom moet dit via FOK! als letterlijk meer dan 75% van de posts in het vorige topic van jouzelf is? Volgens mij is het de bedoeling van een forum om discussies te hebben, niet om in je eentje de boel vol te spammen.

Dan kan ik ook wel een topic maken voor mensen die rode regenjassen met gele strepen verzamelen. Post het gewoon op die forums van die "organisaties", blijkbaar heeft niemand hier de behoefte om er over te discussiëren.

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Op dinsdag 22 februari 2011 23:07 schreef Fireblast het volgende:

[..]

Hoe kom je aan dat getal 30 ?

Ja ik heb er last van, staat telkens bovenaan in NWS terwijl de toegevoegde waarde 0 is vanwege ontbreken van discussie, en de mogelijkheid daartoe lees ik.

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Exclusive: Military’s ‘persona’ software cost millions, used for ‘classified social media activities’

Mystery bidder

While data security firm HBGary Federal was among the contract's bidders listed on a government website, the job was ultimately awarded to a firm that did not appear on the FedBizOpps.gov page of interested vendors.

A controversy over the HBGary firm, which recently had its inner-workings dumped onto the Internet by hackers with protest group "Anonymous," was what initially brought the "persona" contract to light.

HBGary, which conspired with Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce to attack WikiLeaks, spy on progressive writers and use malware against progressive organizations, was also revealed to have constructed software eerily similar to what the Air Force sought.

"This contract was awarded to a firm called Ntrepid," Speaks wrote to Raw Story. "In addition to the classified activities this software supports, USCENTCOM, like most military commands, does use social media to inform the public of our activities. I should emphasize that such uses do not employ the kind of technology that was the subject of this contract solicitation."

Ntrepid Corporation, registered out of Los Angeles, bills itself as a privacy and identity protection firm in some job postings, and a national security contractor in others, but its official website was amazingly just one page deep and free of even a single word of description.

In spite of their thin online presence, Speaks said the firm was awarded $2,760,000 to carry out the "persona management" contract.

He added that it was unclear why an the contract went to an unlisted bidder, and that he would try to find out and report back.

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wikileakspin leakspin doctor
#anonops down because of attacks from #iran #feb17 #libya #anonymous
1 hour ago Favorite Retweet Reply

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RT @AnonNewsNet: #Pirates of the world assemble! 30GB of #Jan25 Egyptian footage needs seeders http://goo.gl/B3JkV #Anonymous #AnonOps #Anon

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Oh hai all the protesters out there, we have followed closely the events and we want to provide you with some helpful hints.
The revolution will not be televised, all information will be on the internet.
But to get it there is one thing, to have it stay there is an entirely other thing.
So here is a collection of tools and links that will help you get your message out:

Contents:

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Comunique from A(A)A. Anon Anarchist Action

_.-oO·º'´¨`'º·Oo-._☠ Fighting against all oppression and capitalism ☠_.-oO·º'´¨`'º·Oo-._

We are Anonymous Anarchist Action
We have taken a stance, we have paid back. We have resisted the advocates of censorship,
we have retaliated and we have won, we are winning.
We master the tools and tactics that will make our revolution succeed in the name of humankind:
supporting black blocs, urban guerrillas and the cyber warfare ahead of us.
We defy all the system of oppression, your capitalists crooks, your fat cat politicians,
your racist and patriarchal ways, your intent to control peoples lives,
you who try to censor and control one of the most anarchist forms of communication (the internet),
you corporate liars, you greedy money heads... all of this we oppose.
We will fight till our end and when we are done, others will follow!
This is just the start!

As long as we obey, we are open to misdirection.
As long as we aren't informed, we are open to lies.
As long as we don't control our communications, we are open to manipulation.
As long as we aren't focused, we won't succeed.
As long as we are centralized, we can be shutdown
As long as we use for-profit tools, we are slaves to their greed.
Free your mind, free yourself!

Join us in the biggest yet social revolution that has just started!
From Greece to the streets of Cairo, to the revolutionary femmnists in Italy and the Squatters
of Spain, to the Zapatistas in Mexico AND THE ONLINE HACKTIVISTS!!
WE WILL WIN there is no other choice, for us, for our next generations, FOR EARTH!

We are Anonymous.
We are Anarchists.
We are many and we work as one
We are Anon Anarchist Action

Join us at : irc.anonops.ru (#anarchism)
http://aaa.status.net

Anon Anarchist Action - JOIN US

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De Westboro Babtist Church scam.

Re-quoting from BoingBoing

OK, for those who don’t know, here’s how the WBC scam works:

Most of Fred Phelps’ 13 adult children are lawyers, with law degrees from Washburn University in Topeka, KS. Those that are still in the church practice in the family law firm, Phelps Chartered, LLC. Phelps himself had been disbarred in 1979 for perjury, but his children carried on the law firm. Over 20 years ago, they discovered that if they picketed AIDS funerals in Kansas, distraught loved ones would lose control, and physically attack the WBC protestors. They sued, and won. Sensing a major income stream, they started protesting full-time, hoping to be attacked.

They started picketing full-time at museum exhibits, college graduations, poetry readings, rock concerts, celebrity funerals, and, of course, AIDS funerals? anywhere they could use free speech to get people to attack them.

When soldiers started coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan in body bags, they hit paydirt: Protest near (not at) funerals of soldiers, blaming America’s decline on “****,” and wait for the attacks.

They raise at least $200,000 a year doing this, and probably more. They fund the picketing business with lawsuits.

There is always a family lawyer at every protest. Every protest is videotaped, so they have rock-solid evidence when attacked. They target the highest-profile events they can, and make sure the media knows they are coming, so people are all riled up. They always protest on public property, sidewalks, and rights-of-way, so that they can’t be charged with trespassing. If there’s a legally-imposed “no protest zone” around funerals, they obey it. They are very clever to stay within the letter of the law.

And angry people fall for it, all the time. And the media never bothers to investigate how this scam works.

As mentioned this is a direct requoting from BoingBboing.

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Op woensdag 23 februari 2011 05:03 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Guerrilla Projection on UN Calling to end of Massacre in Libya. 02-21-2011

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BarrettBrownLOL Barrett Brown
A group of activists including John Penley will project #Gadafi atrocities on the side of UN HQ in NYC tonight. #oplibya

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Skepticism in the Face of Evidence Is No Virtue

Barett Brown
February 16, 2011

In the space of its short life, this column has emphasized the dynamics of the information age as of extraordinary but poorly understood relevance to skepticism as both a system of thought and a movement within society. Ongoing events require that this now be explained in a bit more detail.

Since 2005, I have been involved to various extents and capacities with the Anonymous movement. For the past year, I’ve been in communication with several of its most active participants, including one who had been outed by the Church of Scientology after helping to launch Operation Chanology, a global campaign intended to remove that organization’s grip on lives and government agencies alike. And for the past month, beginning with the Anonymous movement’s assistance programs to Tunisians, Algerians, and Egyptians who seek to win their freedom, I’ve become more actively involved in tactics, messaging, and now legal defense for my fellow Anons. Some have been raided by the FBI and other agencies, which have been investigating a campaign involving DDoS attacks against financial companies—those that had given in to government pressure to deny their customers the ability to donate to Wikileaks. All of this is now in the public record, and I confirm it here as a prelude to the subject of this column and in the interest of full disclosure.

We are coming to the close of a two-decade debate over whether or not the explosion of communicational possibilities brought to us via the information age is sufficient to allow a subject population and its supporters to overthrow a government and perhaps establish a freer one. In light of the demonstrably key role that the Internet played in Tunisia and Egypt thus far, and in a certain small sub-Saharan country soon enough, that debate should be coming to an end. Nonetheless, it will go on forever, because certain people are impossible to defeat via argument alone because they are invincible—at least in a rhetorical and professional sense.

A few months back I argued that Foreign Policy editor Eugene Morozov was not qualified to assess the above dispute, being incompetent on the subject and having at any rate committed himself to a certain position that was silly even before recent events rendered it sillier still. “Tweets don’t overthrow governments; people do,” Morozov proclaimed then, thereby dispensing with those who have presumably gone around claiming that Twitter will gain sentience and begin liberating populations into a Greater Social Networking Co-Prosperity Sphere. Out of fairness to Morozov, I’ll note that he does make somewhat more cogent arguments; out of fairness to everyone else, I’ll note that his arguments tend to be of the following caliber: “Neither the Iranian nor the Burmese regime has crumbled under the pressure of pixelated photos of human rights abuses circulated on social networking sites.” Thus it is that the infancy of the information age has not yet brought down two of the world’s most repressive regimes.

As I noted then:

Not only has Twitter failed to take down either of the two regimes Morozov lists, but one of those regimes has attempted to use the service for its own ends. Indeed, the Iranian authorities have been as eager to take advantage of the Internet as their green-clad opponents. After last years protests in Tehran, Iranian authorities launched a website that publishes photos from the protests, urging the public to identify the unruly protestors by name. We are not told how effective this turned out to be or why this necessarily cancels out the effectiveness of Twitter in organizing the protests to begin with or how the fact that dictators use websites shows that they are not being undermined by the use of Twitter. The fellows talent is being wasted in socio-political commentary when he could be writing mystery novels.

Today, I have a better and slightly less catty answer to Morozov regarding the question of whether or not the Internet is a greater boon to dictators or to populations. Rather, I have a question, for him and for everyone else who has spent the past few years building their careers on this incompetent brand of pseudo-skepticism: If dictators are so fond of the Internet, why did Mubarak turn the damn thing off?

Former “President” Ben-Ali of Tunisia did not turn off the Internet, of course, when Tunisian activists began coordinating with Anonymous and other parties in taking down the government’s websites and in some cases replacing them with messages of support to the Tunisian people, thereby proving that their government was not so powerful as it seemed; when Anonymous-affiliated journalists began bringing attention to the nascent protests, in an effort to alert those around the world who themselves were in a position to help Tunisia succeed; when guides were written by experts and distributed by Tunisians and other North Africans to the many among them who had no knowledge of street confrontation, but who now know as much as any black-bloc anarchist; or when the great and still-growing network of Tunisians, Anonymous, and other parties began building darknets and other solutions to the problem of government censorship and infiltration. Ben-Ali should have done so, but he didn’t, and even if he had, many of the same techniques used to reconnect Egyptians during the shutdown would have been employed in Tunisia with similar results. Tunisia, incidentally, is not finished with its ongoing troubles, but nor is this coalition finished with its ongoing work, which will at any rate be ignored by those whose professional interests coincide with those who would prefer that we spend less time thinking up new ways to aid subject populations and more time reading about how such a thing is impossible—despite the evidence before our very eyes.

Contrary to all the evidence, there are two general views on this matter: 1) that perpetuated by Morozov and others like him who believe that such things as Wikileaks, Twitter, Anonymous, and Facebook are not quite as relevant as many would believe, and 2) that perpetuated by those of us who have used those very same dynamics to prove that they are already more relevant than even the most enthusiastic of us were predicting not long ago, when we thought in terms of years rather than the mere months it has taken to proceed to the current situation. Everyone among the thousands of North Africans and others who poured into our IRC channels would seem to agree with the latter view, having consequently watched and participated in those things which are necessary to making any informed decision on the matter. When you have seen a teenage Tunisian girl translating into French and Arabic the guides that were minutes before compiled by activists living in five different countries and then passing them on to her family and friends and then asking what else she can do to help free her country—and receiving a dozen answers, all of them good—it is difficult to take seriously the output of those whose first instinct at such a moment is to downplay it in accordance with the opinions they already held to begin with.

This dynamic will continue and will have in fact already expanded by the time this piece is read, this being an age in which events overtake the quickest of mediums (and the slowest of dictators). Already a number of this column’s readers have worked to promote such a dynamic, and we hope that more will join us at this crucial time. Many operations are run out of irc.anonsops.ru in #OpTunisia and #OpEgypt; other efforts are hatched at irc.freenode.net #projectpm. I may be reached at barriticus@gmail.com or, for secure communications by those facing surveillance, transistor@hushmail.com. Join us for proof that in such a time as this, one can act against tyranny in the time it takes to complain about it.

(For Freemary, who earned her name.)

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Barrett Brown is the instigator of Project PM, a distributed cartel intended to reduce certain structural deficits that have arisen in the news media. He's a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, and True/Slant. His first book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Easter Bunny, was released in 2007; his second, Hot, Fat, and Clouded: The Amazing and Amusing Failures of the American Chattering Class, is set for publication in 2010. Brown can be reached via e-mail at barriticus@gmail.com.

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BarrettBrownLOL Barrett Brown
"Iranian Cyber Army": Fuck you toy fascists. We just rocked your shit.

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(CNN) -- WikiLeaks could have one foot in the online grave.

It's been months since its last major leak, and its staff members -- former and current -- say it's so thinly staffed and broke that it can't dissect a massive file a whistle-blower handed over, allegedly naming rich and influential global players guilty of tax crimes.

Founder Julian Assange, described as a megalomaniac in a tell-all book by the group's former spokesman, is facing extradition to Sweden on sex crime charges. Many observers predict he'll face extradition to the United States next.

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So, if WikiLeaks wilts, what will grow in its place?

Several leak-loving sites claim to be WikiLeaks' heir apparent. Greenleaks.org and GreenLeaks are battling to become the top site for whistle-blowers with dirt on environmental issues.

WikiLeaks' ex-spokesman and Assange's former right-hand man, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, has launched OpenLeaks, a secret information catch-all.

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But perhaps the most controversial incarnation of the WikiLeaks model comes from Anonymous, the hacker collective globally infamous for disrupting the websites of MasterCard, Visa and PayPal in December.

The hackers said the attacks were revenge after the companies cut ties to WikiLeaks. Since then, Anonymous has grown more sophisticated, and experts say it's reasonable to fear that they could do more than wait for someone to give them secret documents. They could hack into highly sensitive military and corporate computer systems themselves.

This month, Anonymous launched anonleaks.ru, a site that features a searchable database of what appear to be tens of thousands of internal e-mails from a U.S.-based internet security firm whose website was also defaced.

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The thought of an army of prankster hackers breaking into your e-mails, credit card records or business is disturbing. But it would be a mistake to portray members of Anonymous as cackling evil-doers, Ridder and Zittrain said.

Instead, Ridder said, Anonymous is driving Web culture. "They are making a significant mark on what it means to put information online."

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Xeronymous Xer
by maytweet
New provocation: PayPal cuts service to Bradley Manning support http://tinyurl.com/6cvnbb6 #anonymous #wikileaks #anonops

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San Francisco, CA – The online payment provider PayPal has frozen the account of Courage to Resist, which in collaboration with the Bradley Manning Support Network is currently raising funds in support of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. PayPal was one way people--especially international residents--were able to contribute to the grassroots effort supporting the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower. “We’ve been in discussions with PayPal for weeks, and by their own admission there’s no legal obligation for them to close down our account,” noted Loraine Reitman of the Bradley Manning Support Network (Support Network). “This was an internal policy decision by PayPal.”

“We exchanged numerous emails and phone calls with the legal department and the office of executive escalations of PayPal,” explained Jeff Paterson. “They said they would not unrestrict our account unless we authorized PayPal to withdraw funds from our organization’s checking account by default. Our accounting does not allow for this type of direct access by a third party, nor do I trust PayPal as a business entity with this responsibility given their punitive actions against WikiLeaks—an entity not charged with any crime by any government on Earth.”

The Support Network repeatedly requested and was refused formal documentation from PayPal describing their policies in this matter.

PayPal is a private company and thus under no legal obligation to provide Courage to Resist, the Bradley Manning Support Network, or anyone else with services. This was something made very clear to the Support Network by PayPal representatives.

“They opted to apply an exceptional hurdle for us to clear in order to continue as a customer, whereas we have clearly provided the legally required information and verification. I think our dealings with PayPal should be a cautionary tale for any possibly controversial not-for-profit entity with a PayPal account,” Paterson said, “While there may be no legal obligation to provide services, there is an ethical obligation. By shutting out legitimate nonprofit activity, PayPal shows itself to be morally bankrupt.”

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http://www.sfbg.com/polit(...)rence-freezing-funds
WePay, an upstart rival of PayPal, had a little pointed fun with the financial transaction behemoth today outside the Innovate 2010 software developer conference that PayPal hosted at Moscone Center. WePay employees created a large block of ice frozen around cash and the message “PayPal Freezes Your Accounts.”

It was a reference to the PayPal practice of unexpectedly freezing the accounts of grassroots groups with pending nonprofit status, a story that went viral in August after the Bay Guardian wrote about PayPal freezing the funds of the Flux Foundation just as the group was headed to Burning Man to build the Temple of Flux.

In the face of a strong public backlash, PayPal released the Flux Foundation's funds a day after our story came out. But as we reported, other small groups that don't have the same community ties and emotional resonance as the temple crew have had a hard time freeing their funds. Some even say they are preparing to sue PayPal, which started as a small Bay Area company but grew into a huge multinational corporation after being purchased in 2002 by eBay, the company where billionaire self-funded gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman made her fortune.

After their bad experience with PayPal, the Flux Foundation and many other groups have turned to WePay, which focuses on grassroots groups and other small clients. WePay co-founder Rich Aberman told the Guardian that many software developers who use PayPal to fundraise have had similar problems with funds being frozen as the grassroots groups, which is why he pursued this publicity stunt.

“It was just to raise awareness and poke a little fun at them at their own conference,” Aberman told us.

A PayPal representative that we interviewed in August said he couldn't discuss why the company freezes account or how much notice they give when they do so, citing privacy concerns, but said they were simply anti-fraud measures. Some PayPal critics note that the company makes money off investing those forzen funds and they say it is motivated by greed.

Aberman doesn't think the PayPal has malicious motives, but he says that it has just gotten too big to effectively serve small clients, focusing instead on merchants and other larger customers that are more sophisticated than small groups.

“Normal people collecting money for normal things is such a small part of their business and PayPal just don't know how to handle them. They just see these as high-risk accounts based on the anti-fraud systems they've created,” Aberman said. Where he does fault PayPal is by presenting itself as a good service for these groups: “They just need to be more forthright about the user they're trying to serve.”

By contrast, Aberman said WePay was created as a way for individuals and small groups to raise money informally: “Since our customers are different, we handle them differently.”

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https://www.wepay.com
WePay makes it easy to collect and manage money online. Unlike competitors, WePay allows users to keep their group's money in a dedicated account, and to share this account with their group. The service is great for roommates, clubs, organizations, fantasy leagues, teams, and much more. WePay was founded by Bill Clerico and Rich Aberman in Boston in 2008. The company is located in Palo Alto, CA and has 14 employees.

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Op donderdag 24 februari 2011 13:22 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Question: Honeypot?

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WE wont attack paypal again, cuz it is protected by prolexic technologies, akamai, Radware #anonymous #freebradley #bradleymanning

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This domain has been seized by Anonymous under section #14 of the rules of the Internet.

Greetings Westboro Baptist Church,

If you're reading this, it means that Anonymous has lost its patience with you, likely because you've threatened us again after we denied you a war.

Your recent antics to gain media attention for yourself were found to be laughable. In response to your rather poorly-written "bring it" letter, wherein you tried to goad Anonymous into giving you yet more attention by calling us "crybaby hackers", we wrote, sincerely, a press release explaining clearly the hoax behind the initial declaration of war against your church.

We had thought this latest release would be enough to make you realize that we have no interest in going to war with you. Anonymous is hard at work with ongoing operations such as those involving Bahrain, Libya, and Iran, not to mention we are working tirelessly to maintain coverage of all our HBGary leaks for the public to enjoy.

Your continued biting of the Anonymous hand, however, has earned you a swift and emotionless bitchslap, in the form of this very message. Despite having had the capability to hack your sites previously, we chose not to and instead responded maturely to your threats, but you have not respected this.

For this unremitting display of overzealousness, we award you no points. Take this defacement as a simple warning: go away. The world (including Anonymous) disagrees with your hateful messages, but you have the right to voice them. This does not mean you can jump onto Anonymous for attention.

God hates fags: assumption. Anonymous hates leeches: fact.

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

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http://www.scmagazineus.com/anonymous-defaces-westboro-baptist-website/article/196978/

Anonymous apparently did "bring it" after all.

The loosely affiliated hacker collective has defaced the website of the hate-spewing Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, known for its anti-gay rhetoric and purely attention-seeking protests, amid an ongoing feud between the two entities.

"Your continued biting of the Anonymous hand, however, has earned you a swift and emotionless [slap], in the form of this very message," read a message from Anonymous posted on the compromised site. "Despite having had the capability to hack your sites previously, we chose not to and instead responded maturely to your threats, but you have not respected this."

The group posted the letter during a live radio interview Thursday on the "The David Pakman Show" between Westboro spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper and an Anonymous member. Video of the interview is live.

The battle between Anonymous and Westboro began last week, when an open letter was posted to AnonNews.org, which called for the controversial church to end its protests and shut down its websites. A Westboro representative responded in a tweet, asking Anonymous to "Bring it."

But on Monday, Anonymous said it wasn't behind the letter and urged members to not launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against the church's website.

Apparently, however, Anonymous was not pleased with Westboro's continued assault on the hacker organization, including a spokeswoman's reported remarks that the group exists because its members' parents didn't spank them as children.

As of Thursday at about noon EST, Westboro's website was unreachable and downloads.westborobaptistchurch.com was defaced to include the message from Anonymous.

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anon1049 anTon onsZers by Ravana9000
#WBC suing #Anonymous? Good luck tracking down the hackers from #Belarus, #Tunisia, #Azerbadjan … Even more good luck finding a lawyer there

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AnonymousIRC Anonymous by AnonLegionGR
The @th3j35t3r and #Anonymous cooperation on #WBC was an eclipse; we're still like Sun and Moon, following our own agendas.
32 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

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randbomb Most Random
I'd rather sit next to @th3j35t3r in Hell than @meganphelps in Church. Please RT if you agree. #th3j35t3r = win #WBC = FAIL!

quote:

It's agreed among those active in Anonymous that the original Public Release to WBC was -not- an Anonymous operation.

Operations typically have an entire planning and recruitment phase (This can take a couple of days for each phase, to a couple of weeks) online before an Public Release is made; there was no planning or recruitment phase on any of the the traditional "anonymous" areas of gathering. Traditionally Anonymous has their entire operation planned prior to the release and announcement to the world of the upcoming operation. None of Anonymous traditional formations and planning was done prior to this release.

A third unknown party sparked this confrontation, either WBC themselves or another unknown; the Anonymous "Hive Mind" was in agreement after WBC's response was released that an operation against WBC was pointless and a waste of man power when currant operations in Bahrain, Iran, Libya were far more important. It was only after WBC continued to taunt Anonymous lack of response, beside the Denial Press Release, that anything was decided on Anonymous part.

The key thing about Anonymous in this entire affair was that they neither sparked nor wanted the confrontation; it was the believe of the "Hive Mind" that paying attention to WBC and giving it Media fodder would detract from what was taking place in the Middle East. However, neither the Media nor the WBC wanted to let the issue lay with sensationalist release, and Anonymous is perfectly content to respond when so many are clamoring for it. "When the people speak We listen"...It is best when it comes to Anonymous to leave them alone, avoid casting the spotlight on what they are or are not doing. They have their own agenda, but if you provoke them Anonymous will respond and it is not always in a way one can anticipate.

Anonymous is the consummate prankster; morals, ethics, laws which would keep normal groups in line with society expectations are what Anonymous will ignore simply because Our reaction to it is amusing to them.

I do not agree, nor do I disagree, with what Anonymous does or does not do. I was fairly proud that the papers and media outlets within Idaho had ignored most of sensationalism which follows in Anonymous' wake, and while this article is not sensationalist, it will provide Anonymous with ad revenue to grow and expound upon their currant operations and future ones as readers decide to google these hacktivists.

quote:

Expect movement on #OpWisconsin soon. #Koch has declared war on our democracy. Democracy will soon fight back. #anonymous #anonops #wiunion

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https://www.thepaypalblog(...)to-resist-situation/

While it is generally not our policy to comment publicly on account dealings, we are sharing the following statement to clarify information regarding the Courage To Resist organization’s PayPal account and their claim that this is somehow associated with their support of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. Let me be clear, this decision had nothing to do with WikiLeaks.

We recently placed a temporary limitation of the Courage to Resist organization’s PayPal account as they had not complied to our stated policy requiring non profits to associate a bank account with their PayPal account (for the vast majority of non-profits, this is not an issue).

In a press release issued today, the Courage to Resist organization claimed that their resistance to follow our policy is because PayPal sought to withdraw funds from their checking account. To be clear: PayPal cannot take such action without the authorization of an account holder, nor does it ever take such unauthorized actions.

Upon review, and as part of our normal business procedures, we have decided to lift the temporary restriction placed on their account because we have sufficient information to meet our statutory ‘Know Your Customer’ obligations. The Courage to Resist PayPal account is now fully operational.

–Anuj Nayar, director of communications

quote:

Butterworth sounded tired as he recounted the days for us—when we spoke, 17 had passed since the initial attack. Since then, HBGary has been flooded with phone calls and voicemails of the "you should be ashamed of yourself" type and worse; the fax machines have been overwhelmed with Anonymous outpourings; people have been "directly threatening our employees with extortion"; threats have been made. Then came RSA.

Butterworth, with a long career in military signals intelligence and private security firms, is no stranger to the dark world of cyberattacks, but he's used to adversaries who retreat after an electronic strike.

Instead, he believes that Anonymous has "decided to continue their antics. They're in it for the laughs… this is a real funny game for them." Not content with the damage they have inflicted, they "harass a company that's trying to get back to work." Each time a new story about the company appears in the press, Butterworth said that these attacks spike again.

quote:

Yeah, I don't buy the death threats accusation at all. My belief, given that culture, is that physical threats are absolutely a lie.

Notice that, mysteriously, the faxes with threats 'weren't available', and the best email they could come up with was hoping they'd die from AIDS.

I don't think, at this point, that anyone should run anything said by either Palantir or HBGary as fact without careful checking.

quote:

Op dinsdag 22 februari 2011 23:11 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

A Message to the People of the World - Transmitted by Anonymous

quote:

Op zaterdag 26 februari 2011 01:14 schreef Odysseuzzz het volgende:

[..]

Wel fijn dat we er tijdens die clip op worden gewezen dat we goedkoop geld kunnen lenen. Of mis ik weer een of andere adblocker?

quote:

Op zaterdag 26 februari 2011 01:57 schreef Odysseuzzz het volgende:

[..]

Wat is jouw idee trouwens Papier? Anonz: een idee of toch min of meer centraal aangestuurd zoals bepaalde mensen nu graag willen doen geloven?

quote:

Op zaterdag 26 februari 2011 02:16 schreef Odysseuzzz het volgende:

[..]

Ja, hoewel het woord revolutie ook hier meer een media ding is.
Dat er dingen gebeuren staat vast maar of er echt sprake is van een revolutie kun je idd alleen achteraf vaststellen.

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Kremlin gang opened new botnet against #anonymous and Mr. Putin. More recruits #DDoS er.ru && edinoros.ru holy #cyberwar as holy. #OpRussia

quote:

Op_Russia Op_Russia
New high orbit cannon launched http://tinyurl.com/4zedsf8 Get it and unzip #Feb28, password send later #anonymous #anon #OpRussia #Russia

quote:

We stand at a unique time in our history, the rise of the internet and computer technology have contributed to an unparallelled rate of prosperity for the First World. We have created for ourselves and empire unlike any other, a global network of constant trade and communication, a new age of technological advancement. We have come a long way from our humble roots in the Industrial Revolution and the days of Manifest Destiny. We are now pioneers on new digital frontiers expanding our domain from the quantum world to the far reaches of space.



And yet, the empire faces a crisis, a global recession, growing poverty, rampant violence, corruption in politics, and threats to personal freedom. As it was before in other times of crisis, the old stories have begun to repeat themselves. The half truths, this time repeated nightly on cable news and echoed through a series of tubes onto the internet: the empire is strong, change is unwise, business as usual is the answer. In times of uncertainty there are those who seek to add to the confusion, to prey on our insecurities and fears. Those who would seek to keep us divided for their own gain. The pervasive strategy takes many very convincing forms: Liberals and Conservatives, Christians and Muslims, Black and White, Saved and sinner.



But something unexpected is happening. We have begun telling each other our own stories. Sharing our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our demons. Every second, day in day out, into all hours of the night the gritty details of life on this earth are streaming around the world. As we see the lives of others played out in our living rooms we are beginning to understand the consequences of our actions and the error of the old ways. We are questioning the old assumptions that we are made to consume not to create, that the world was made for our taking, that wars are inevitable, that poverty is unavoidable. As we learn more about our global community a fundamental truth has been rediscovered: We are not so different as we may seem. Every human has strengths, weaknesses, and deep emotions. We crave love, love laughter, fear being alone and dream for a better life.



You must create a better life.



You cannot sit on the couch watching television or playing video games, waiting for a revolution. You are the revolution. Every time you decide not to exercise your rights, every time you refuse to hear another view point, every time you ignore the world around you, every time you spend a dollar at a business that doesn't pay a fair wage you are contributing to the oppression of the human body and the repression of the human mind. You have a choice, a choice to take the easy path, the familiar path, to walk willingly into your own submission. Or a choice get up, to go outside and talk to your neighbor, to come together in new forums to create lasting, meaningful change for the human race.



This is our challenge:



A peaceful revolution, a revolution of ideas, a revolution of creation. The twenty-first century enlightenment. A global movement to create a new age of tolerance and understanding, empathy and respect. An age of unfettered technological development. An age of sharing ideas and cooperation. An age of artistic and personal expression. We can choose to use new technology for radical positive change or let it be used against us. We can choose to keep the internet free, keep channels of communication open and dig new tunnels into those places where information is still guarded. Or we can let it all close in around us. As we move in to new digital worlds, we must acknowledge the need for honest information and free expression. We must fight to keep the internet open as a marketplace of ideas where all are seated as equals. We must defend our freedoms from those who would seek to control us. We must fight for those who do not yet have a voice. Keep telling your story. All must be heard.

quote:

#Anonymous announces boycott of #Koch products for crimes against democracy. http://scr.bi/fyDBsI #OpWisconsin #anonops #wiunion

quote:

Posted by Anti Vigilante
Is that a bill in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Anonymous operatives and Magnanimous contacts have formed a joint operation regarding the decision to take away collective bargaining rights from workers in Wisconsin in a rider on a budget management bill. It is the agreed upon position of the participants in this operation that the right to petition and to assemble in the first amendment is the proper basis for collective bargaining rights and these will be defended. Keep in mind Anonymous has defended the first amendment even for people and groups they do not like. This operation will be even attractive to defenders of freedom, especially the first amendment. This will be more than mere resistance. We will enter the battleground. All your law are belong to us.

We can get more senators and lawyers than the opposition can buy. We will not merely beg to be heard. We are putting a team together to not only fight this law but to also give Governor Walker a law he'll risk his career should he choose to oppose. And this is not going to be idle foolishness. We will deliver original and organic work.

We are Everywhere

We can draft bills and have them reviewed by the interested parties in Wisconsin faster than they can whine to the pliant media. This is an operation that will be armed to the teeth with legal talent, with dedicated bloggers, and with people willing to roll up their sleeves for their fellow citizens, which is the true definition of patriotism. Do not underestimate the organizing power of students, workers, families and communities

quote:

Magnanimous group is a subset of Anonymous associated (but unaffiliated as are all Anonymous) with Anons and others who are members of other groups or simply individuals. Where Anonymous may wish to see an outcome, as a subset we can take it further and build that outcome without unnecessarily warping the nature of the larger Anonymous corrective.

quote:

http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/rsa-2011-winning-war-losing-our-soul-022211#comment-6626

There was lots of noise and distraction on the crowded Expo floor of the RSA Security Conference this year. After a grueling couple of years, vendors were back in force with big booths, big news and plenty of entertainment designed to attract visitor traffic. Wandering the floor, I saw - variously - magic tricks, a man walking on stilts, a whack-a-mole game, a man dressed in a full suit of armor and a 15 foot long racetrack that I would have killed for when I was 10.

The most telling display, however, may have been the one in Booth 556, where malware forensics firm HBGary displayed a simple sign saying that it had decided to remove its booth and cancel scheduled talks by its executives. This, after the online mischief making group Anonymous broke into the computer systems of the HBGary Federal subsidiary and stole proprietary and confidential information. The HBGary sign stayed up for a couple days, got defaced by someone at the show and was later removed. When I swung by HBGary's booth on Thursday, it was a forlorn and empty patch of brown carpet where a couple marketing types where holding an impromptu bull session.

It would be easy to say that the lesson of HBGary is that "anyone can get hacked." After all, the company's founder, Greg Hoglund is one of the smartest security folks around - hands down. He's a recognized expert on malware and, literally, wrote the book on rootkit programs. HBGary Federal's customers included the U.S. Department of Defense as well as spy agencies like the CIA and NSA.

Or maybe the lesson of HBGary is simply not to "kick the hornet's nest," so to speak: needlessly provoking groups like Anonymous who have shown themselves to be hungry for publicity and have little to lose in a confrontation. Maybe, the lesson is simply that, if you're going to kick the hornet's nest, as HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr was determined to, then at least to spend some time securing your Web- and e-mail infrastructure and following password security best practices before you commence said kicking.

But I think the real lesson of the hack - and of the revelations that followed it - is that the IT security industry, having finally gotten the attention of law makers, Pentagon generals and public policy establishment wonks in the Beltway, is now in mortal danger of losing its soul. We've convinced the world that the threat is real - omnipresent and omnipotent. But in our desire to combat it, we are becoming indistinguishable from the folks with the black hats.

Of course, none of this is intended to excuse the actions of Anonymous, who HBGary President Penny Leavy, in a conversation with Threatpost, rightly labeled "criminals" rather than politically motivated "hacktivists." The attack on HBGary was an unsubtle, if effective, act of intimidation designed to send a message to Barr and other would be cyber sleuths: 'stay away.'

We can see their actions for what they are, and sympathize deeply with Aaron Barr, Greg Hoglund and his wife (and HBGary President) Penny Leavy for the harm and embarrassment caused by the hackers from Anonymous, who published some 70,000 confidential company e-mails online for the world to see. Those included confidential company information, as well as personal exchanges between HBGary staff that were never intended for a public airing. Its easy to point the finger and chortle upon reading them, but how many of us (or the Anonymous members, themselves) could stand such scrutiny?

Its harder to explain away the substance of many other e-mail messages which have emerged in reporting by Ars Technica as well as others. They show a company executives like HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr mining social networks for data to "scare the s***" out of potential customers, in theory to win their business. While "scare 'em and snare 'em" may be business as usual in the IT security industry, other HBGary Federal skunk works projects clearly crossed a line: a proposal for a major U.S. bank, allegedly Bank of America, to launch offensive cyber attacks on the servers that host the whistle blower site Wikileaks. HBGary was part of a triumvirate of firms that also included Palantir Inc and Berico Technologies, that was working with the law firm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to develop plans to target progressive groups, labor unions and other left-leaning non profits who the Chamber opposed with a campaign of false information and entrapment. Other leaked e-mail messages reveal work with General Dynamics and a host of other firms to develop custom, stealth malware and collaborations with other firms selling offensive cyber capabilities including knowledge of previously undiscovered ("zero day") vulnerabilities.

Look, there's nothing wrong with private firms helping Uncle Sam to develop cyber offensive capabilities. In an age of sophisticated and wholesale cyber espionage by nation states opposed to the U.S., the U.S. government clearly needs to be able to fight fire with fire. Besides, everybody already knew that Greg Hoglund was writing rootkits for the DoD, so is it right to say we're "shocked! shocked!" to read his e-mail and find out that what we all suspected was true? I don't think so.

What's more disturbing is the way that the folks at HBGary - mostly Aaron Barr, but others as well - came to view the infowar tactics they were pitching to the military and its contractors as applicable in the civilian context, as well. How effortlessly and seamlessly the focus on "advanced persistent threats" shifted from government backed hackers in China and Russia to encompass political foes like ThinkProgress or the columnist Glenn Greenwald. Anonymous may have committed crimes that demand punishment - but its up to the FBI to handle that, not "a large U.S. bank" or its attorneys.

The HBGary e-mails, I think, cast the shenanigans on the RSA Expo floor in a new and scarier light. What other companies, facing the kind of short term financial pressure that Barr and HBGary Federal felt might also cross the line - donning the gray hat, or the black one? What threat to all of our liberties does that kind of IT security firepower pose when its put at the behest of corporations, government agencies, stealth political groups or their operatives? Bruce Schneier - our industry's Obi-Wan Kenobi - has warned about this very phenomena: the way the military's ever expanding notion of "cyber war," like the Bush era's "War on Terror" does little to promote security, but a lot to promote inchoate fear. That inchoate fear then becomes a justification for futher infringement on our liberties.

"We reinforce the notion that we're helpless -- what person or organization can defend itself in a war? -- and others need to protect us. We invite the military to take over security, and to ignore the limits on power that often get jettisoned during wartime," Schneier observed. That kind of conflation is clear reading Barr's e-mails where the line between sales oriented tactics and offensive actions blur. The security industry veterans I spoke with at this year's show were as aghast at Barr's trip far off reservation, but they also expressed a weary recognition that, in the security business, this is where things are headed.

What's the alternative? Schneier notes that focusing on cyber crime as "crime" rather than "war" tends to avoid the problems with demagoguery. Focus on cyber crime and hacking in the same way as you focus on other types of crimes: as long term problems that must be managed within the "context of normal life," rather than "wars" that pose an existential threat to those involved and must be won at all costs. The U.S. needs peacetime cyber-security "administered within the myriad structure of public and private security institutions we already have" rather than extra-judicial vigilantism and covert ops of the kind the HBGary e-mails reveal. Here's hoping HBGary is the wake up call the industry needed to reverse course.

quote:

Submitted by Anonypussy (not verified) on Sat, 02/26/2011 - 5:12pm.

"to excuse the actions of Anonymous,"



There's no reason for excuse. Information is free.

quote:

This is where the link to openness (or the lack of it) comes in: As we all know, and the execs at BofA and HGF reinforce, zero-days can be powerful weapons. Exclusive knowledge of zero-days gives the possessor incredible power, and in cases such as these, almost always lead to corruption and misuse. It can be argued that we are better off as an industry if openness is employed as a means of elevating collective knowledge and also as a way to enforce checks and balances, so that no one company or individual is significantly more powerful in its knowledge and expertise than others. In such an industry, cyber offense is only a distant possibility, as you will be on a level playing ground with your adversaries.

Creating such an open culture for the security community requires a shift in thinking, because this is an industry that thrives on secrecy and obscurity. It requires that we recognize that secrecy, obscurity, and the act to restrict information can ultimately do more harm than good. It requires that we promote open research and build an ecosystem that rewards openness.

quote:

From the aspect of development of cyber weapons the fact that HBGary was developing them for many clients is not suprising, however what to me personally was suprising is that you ripped yet ANOTHER of my ideas, my autonomous malware not requiring a C2 connection with your Magenta rootkit. Now I grant you, your not going to actually publicly credit me for inspiring your awesome creation due to classification and Offensive IO weapons development, but neither did you consult me on my ideas or even engage me in talks. I will simply take it for what its worth, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Ironically again, I think I actually did another blog posting about that when after discussing my Malware DNA idea, you developed code for it in private 30 days later, filed for a trademark, and then patented it and released it 6 months later as a marketable product, all along declaring to Goverment clients in proposals that this was solely developed by you and another developer with PRIVATE funds

quote:

> > This law firm represents HBGary, Inc. One of the websites you are hosting,
> > http://conanthedestroyer.(...)gins-of-malware-dna/ is
> > being used to distribute confidential trade secrets and copyrighted works that have been misappropriated from HBGary as part of a well-publicized criminal intrusion into their network.

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Anony_Ops Anonymous Operations
BreakingNews: #OpEmmaa started. Women of the internets rising to support #Anonymous. Join #OpEmmaa Make yourselves heard. You are Anonymiss!

quote:

AnonymousIRC Anonymous
by miaubiz
#OpEmmaa kicked off. We're not sure what we're doing but it involves a girl, so it's awesome. Also we have dedicated DNS. @emma_a

quote:

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/02/28/hackers-vs-billionaires-anonymous-takes-down-koch-supported-websites-amid-wisconsin-protests/

The hacker collective Anonymous may have just made its highest net-worth enemies yet. In the midst of the weekend’s protests in support of Wisconsin’s public employees, the group declared war on the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, taking down two Koch-backed sites with cyberattacks and calling for a boycott on companies in which the brothers have invested.

Anonymous laid out its grievances against at the billionaires duo, tied for fifth on Forbes’ list of the richest Americans with a combined wealth of $43 billion, in a statement that tied them to the bill that aims to end collective bargaining rights for state employees in Wisconsin.

On Sunday night, both the website of Koch-backed antiregulatory group Americans For Prosperity and a community forum site for Koch-backed toilet paper company Northern Quilt were down (at least every time I checked) for more than five hours under cyberattacks from Anonymous.

“It has come to our attention that the brothers, David and Charles Koch–the billionaire owners of Koch Industries–have long attempted to usurp American Democracy,” reads the statement. “Their actions to undermine the legitimate political process in Wisconsin are the final straw. Starting today we fight back.” The statement goes on to accuse the brothers of creating fake grassroots groups to oppose the unions in order to cheaply gain a monopoly on Wisconsin’s power utilities.

The statement also called for boycotts on U.S. brands including Dixie, Brawny and Angel Soft.

Back in the offline world, more than 100,000 Wisconsinites have taken to the streets in Madison and some continue to occupy the State’s capitol building.

The attack on the Tea-Party-associated Koch brothers is the latest in Anonymous’ increasingly political actions, and not one that all members of the group seem to support. One member of the group who says he was associated with the earlier hack of security firm HBGary told me via instant message that he wasn’t involved with the Koch takedown, and that proposals to attack the Tea Party have been unpopular within the group’s ranks. A blog post about another Anonymous threat to take down Tea-Party-related websites posted to AnonNews.org was ranked among the least popular on the site.

“Anonymous does not approve,” wrote one user on the site. Another questioned whether the Tea Party might not have some ideals in common with the libertarian hacker collective. “Interestingly the rank and file of the [Tea Party] probably share similar views as we do in relation to many aspects of freedom, it seems they are co-opted by business at the top levels but not lower down at all,” writes the anonymous commenter. “Makes me wonder if hitting the baggers is more useful than trying to steal them from big business.”

quote:

There has been a lot of information brought to light about the alleged backdoor dealings between the billionaire Koch brothers and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in the weeks since public employees began protesting attempts to strip them of their collective bargaining rights. The debate that began in Wisconsin has spread nation-wide, organizations are reporting on Walker’s budget provision to allow no-bid contracts of that state’s power plants, and even the group of hacktivists known as Anonymous are firing back at Koch-funded fronts like Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party.

quote:

http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/hbgary-federal-ceo-aaron-barr-steps-down-022811

Embattled CEO Aaron Barr says he is stepping down from his post at HBGary Federal to allow the company to move on after an embarassing data breach.

The announcement comes three weeks after Barr became the target of a coordinated attack by members of the online mischief making group Anonymous, which hacked into HBGary Federal's computer network and published tens of thousands of company e-mail messages on the Internet. HBGary did not respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comments on Barr's resignation.

In an interview with Threatpost, Barr said that he is stepping down to allow himself and the company he ran to move on in the wake of the high profile hack.


“I need to focus on taking care of my family and rebuilding my reputation," Barr said in a phone interview. "It’s been a challenge to do that and run a company. And, given that I’ve been the focus of much of bad press, I hope that, by leaving, HBGary and HBGary Federal can get away from some of that. I’m confident they’ll be able to weather this storm.”

The group conducted a preemptive strike on HBGary after Barr was quoted in a published article saying that he had identified the leadership of the group and planned to disclose their identities at the B-Sides Security Conference in San Francisco.

By combining a SQL injection attack on HBGary's Web site with sophisticated social engineering attacks, the group gained access to the company's Web- and e-mail servers as well as the Rootkit.com Web site, a site also launched by HBGary founder Greg Hoaglund. Ultimately, the group defaced HBGary's Web site and disgorged the full contents of e-mail accounts belonging to Barr, Hoglund and other company executives.

Though Barr and HBGary were the victims of the hack, the contents of the e-mail messages divulged plans that cast both in an unflattering light. Among them were data mining efforts and mentions of possible disinformation campaigns on behalf of a "large U.S. bank" and the law firm that represents the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that seem to run afoul of civil liberties and professional ethics.

HBGary counted many U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Defense, CIA and NSA as customers. The disclosure of e-mail messages from the company poses a major security risk to those organizations, as well as individuals who had corresponded with the firm. The breach also raises troubling questions about the direction that HBGary and other Beltway firms have taken. Email exchanges published online revealed the firm to be at work on a variety of plans to do data mining and information operations on U.S. organizations and journalists on behalf of clients including law firms representing a large U.S. bank and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Most recently, the incident spilled into the mainstream, with comedian Stephen Colbert devoting a segment of his Colbert Report program on February 24 to the HBGary hack.

quote:

# Jonlabove_normal jonlabove RT @atopiary: Aaron Barr has quit! Join our party on IRC: http://irc.lc/Anonops/AnonLeaks | Official party music: http://bit.ly/gSTPN7 #HBGary #Anonymous 2 minutes ago via web

Original Party Hard music

quote:

ANOTHER note to journalists.

Those of you monitoring this war of press releases are witnessing the explosion of what has been a growing rift inAnonymous. There are two main camps worth discussing: ³oldfags´ and ³newfags,´ the latter sometimes known as ³moralfags.´

Oldfags are the group most associated with the controversial board 4chan. They are avid consumers (and likelyproducers) of child porn, and pics and vids of gore, including decapitated people, and tortured and dismembered animals - often acts perpetrated by oldfags themselves for the enjoyment of their inhuman brethren. They arenihilists, sociopaths and sadists. They have no perceptible morality or ethics, and are only interested in ³lulz´ thatcome at a cost of pain and suffering to others. These oldfags often sympathize with the Tea Party and other similarly antisocial brands of anarchism. They cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and in fact, can usually betrusted to do the most horrible things imaginable. They are skilled at chaos and destruction, however, and driven by an egotistical, narcissistic will that all should fear. Evil is a good definition for what oldfags represent. Fortunately,this group is small, and their influence on the ranks of Anonymous is rapidly diminishing. Anonymous only owes these cretins thanks for the meme of Anonymous, a meme which would mean little if it had not been expanded to represent newfag-style hacktivism for causes greater than the sick fulfillment of wounded, twisted egos that hate everything in the world.

Newfags are very different. While we share a lack of respect for the flawed laws of men that serve only the powerfuland wealthy - the oppressors - we have a higher purpose: The dignity of humanity and its expression and fulfillment within the framework of a new civilization, currently under development in the form of the internet. Newfags envision humanity shaking off the shackles of authority, greed and apathetic powers that have little to do with the collective will of humanity. Anonymous, newfags believe, is itself a powerful facet of that collective will of humanity, a voice growing stronger by the day. Like oldfags, we treasure lulz, but get our kicks from those acts and ideas of creative destruction that empower humanity, not diminish it.

In the end, we encourage the media and people everywhere to accept us for what we are. A flawed entity, but one that is more good than evil, a trait we share with each individual human, and with humanity as a whole. We ask that you help us be a better person. Look beyond our weaknesses and see us for our strengths, as this will help those traits develop more fully, and help us outgrow our pathetic roots.

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

Expect us ± always

quote:

Anonymous are Not Your Personal Army. I do not claim that I am or Speak for Anonymous. I do know that At least 100 years ago there was a time when Anonymous stood for nothing. Thats right nothing, but for one exception: Anonymous stood for the free and open exchange of information online, and freedom of speech. Anonymous did not stand for truth, justice, and the American way. They did not stand for equality, or rights, or anything else. They were not co-ordinated with anyone, They had no allegiance (save for a tenuous one with each other) and they certainly had no guiding purpose. They despised white knights, trolled to facebook accounts of the newly deceased for lulz, mocked moralfags, and had fun at the expense of others for no other reason then because they wanted to show the world that they can do what they want online. Why did they do that? Because that is what Anonymous was about: doing whatever you want online....for the lulz. It used to be that they only attacked those who want to get in the way of the flow of information. They were not 12, and they knew exactly what this was. They had no leaders, and no structure (see pic for perfect diagram of the anonymous hierarchy)

Now something has happened, everywhere I look it sounds like im sitting in some fucking University Sociology class with a bunch of newfags talking about how we need to be getting politically active. Anonymous is not some leftwing sockpuppet to do the bidding of unions and Rachel Maddow. Nor are they all a bunch of Ron Paul loving teapartyfags. Anonymous consists of everything from Anarchists, to Libertarians, to Conservatives, Liberals and anything else on the political spectrum. There were all kinds of people, we even had those who don't count as people (women - looking at you here) being Anonymous.

So please newfags, Fuck off and stop riding Anonymous' coat-tails. Magnanimous, you ripped off the logo, imitated anonspeak, and ended your statement with a slightly modified version of the tagline. You are poseurs. Die in a fire. You have never seen the Marblcake, you have no thrust vectoring so your skies are owned by real Anons, you have come to the wrong place, you have messed with football, and more importantly, you have closed the pool with your aids. All your efforts efforts to imitate and goad Anonymous into doing your bidding fail. You make Chips handon look legit and it's time to stop. Thank you for your time.

The return to what we once wereI call, operation chaotic neutral

I am not anonymous,

I am not legion

I forgive

I forget

Don't expect me - evar (I'm to busy masturbating to chubbies on 4chan)

P.S.Pic included with this post gives a perfect representation of the structure of Anonymous.

quote:

Op dinsdag 1 maart 2011 02:10 schreef truepositive het volgende:
Bedankt voor het constant updaten van deze thread, ik heb besloten dat dit dagelijks nieuws gaat worden voor mij

quote:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley experienced a "very sensitive" break-in to its network by the same China-based hackers who attacked Google Inc's computers more than a year ago, Bloomberg reported, citing leaked emails from an Internet security company.

The emails from the Sacramento, California-based computer security firm HBGary Inc said that Morgan Stanley -- the first financial institution identified in the series of attacks -- considered details of the intrusion a closely guarded secret, the report said.

Bloomberg quoted Phil Wallisch, a senior security engineer at HBGary, as saying that he read an internal Morgan Stanley report detailing the so-called Aurora attacks.

The HBGary emails don't indicate what information may have been stolen from Morgan Stanley's databanks or which of the world's largest merger adviser's multinational operations were targeted, according to the report.

Representatives for HBGart were not immediately available for comment.

quote:

http://www.washingtonpost(...)AR2011022805810.html
A group of House Democrats is calling on Republican leaders to investigate a prominent Washington law firm and three federal technology contractors, who have been shown in hacked e-mails discussing a "disinformation campaign" against foes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

quote:

http://blogs.forbes.com/a(...)-with-bar-complaint/
The nuclear fallout from HBGary’s tangle with the hacker collective Anonymous has blown into the territory of another player in the scandal: Hunton & Williams, the law firm that solicited proposals from HBGary on behalf of clients like Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Kevin Zeese, a lawyer with the NGOs VelvetRevolution.us and StopTheChamber.com, filed a complaint with the Washington, D.C. Bar Association earlier this week against John Woods, Richard Wyatt Jr., and Robert Quackenboss, three members of the law firm Hunton & Williams, seeking their disbarment. The complaint alleges a long list of misbehavior that includes domestic spying, cyber stalking, spear phishing, cyber attacks, and theft.

quote:

Nature of anonymous operations makes fbi arrests difficult

The world is still somewhat perplexed over Anonymous Operations, the group of online activists who temporarily shut down the websites of PayPal and Mastercard in retaliation for actions against WikiLeaks.

The organization, composed of anonymous users, has few if any official stances and no political orientation. Their activities have ranged from helping activists in Iran and Egypt, to launching cyberattacks against Amazon.com, to providing information that led to the arrest of an animal abuser.

While the FBI is targeting its members for arrest—particularly those involved in the Mastercard cyberattacks, and more recently against security company HBGary—finding a group with no leadership and whose members may or may not engage in illegal activities could prove difficult.

“Anonymous has no definite structure or leadership. It is merely a name that people use. Therefore, it’s hard to put a number on Anonymous at all, let alone the amount of people that engage in such actions,” said a member of Anonymous in an e-mail interview, who requested to be cited as “Anonymous.”

Even among Anonymous Operations (AnonOps) members, there are disagreements around the ethics of each given operation.

According to Anonymous, the different views are “the nature of the organization,” adding “consensus is not only unnecessary, but also often not reached amongst Anonymous members. We all choose, and are responsible for, our personal actions. Many of us choose perfectly legal avenues of dissent.”

A recent press release from members of AnonOps apologizes for the actions of some of its members. “We have invaded the privacy of corporations, and no matter what other Anons say, the standard behind Anonymous did not agree with the HBGary hit,” states the press release. “In fact, many of us are waiting for those who were involved in that Operation to be taken in by the law and will not associate with that sort of outlet.”

Since they have no leadership, however, there are also problems of individuals trying to represent the group as a whole or starting operations on their own.

Their most recent project, “Operation Wisconsin,” is targeting Wisconsin-based company Koch Industries, which they believe “recently started to manipulate the political agenda in Wisconsin,” according to an AnonOps press release.

Another press release, published on their AnonNews website, states otherwise: “While some Anons are undoubtedly passionate about this issue, it would be a mistake to report that Anonymous is targeting the Koch brothers, or are even uniform in their opinion of collective bargaining rights of public employees at the state level.”

Some operations also fizzle out due to lack of wide support from AnonOps members. One in particular, “Operation 1984,” was announced with a clock counting down the minutes to when it would launch. Months later, the operation never happened.

AnonOps members say they’re unsure of what happened to Operation 1984. “I don’t think anyone cared for it. It was just an operation setup by a bunch of guys,” said an AnonOps member in their official IRC chat for journalists, who requested to be cited as “Anon.”

Not all of their operations are malicious either. A large part of their “Operation Freedom” to support activists, including those in Egypt and Libya, is sending a “Care Package.”

The package is a file containing information and tools. Among them are guides to circumvent government Internet blockades, first aid information, and even a tool to remove the Tunisian government’s phishing scripts that steal e-mail and social networking accounts.

Their main tool, however, is a free program called Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) that launches distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites. A DDoS attack can shut down a website by overloading it.

They also recently obtained the binaries of the Stuxnet computer virus through e-mails stolen from HBGary. Stuxnet is the virus used to destroy nuclear centrifuges at Iran’s nuclear power plant.

According to Anon, however, they have no plans to use it. “Not sure how we could use a virus designed to destroy SCADA systems,” Anon said, adding that the binaries were already available.

“[The] vulnerabilities have been patched by now,” stated another member, also by the name “Anon,” who added, “it’s basically ... uninteresting.”

quote:

Calls to hack Gaddafi's personal webpage
Tuesday, 01 March 2011 11:27

There have been calls for protesters across Libya for cyber hacker to attack the Libyan dictators personal page at http://www.algathafi.org/html-arabic/index.htm this request has been personally targeted at the infamous hackers that call them selves anonymous.

quote:

AliTweel my opinion: to stop Libyans from killing each other, the truth must be revealed, this will not be possible without stopping LibyanTV's lies.

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LibyanAffairs ACTION NOW: PLZ email/call/fax NileSat to block Libyan State TV becuz they are promoting violence! http://bit.ly/dZ0Fto #Egypt #Libya #Feb17

quote:

http://networkedblogs.com/eUaK7

I am completely fascinated with the work/antics of the internet hactivists know as Anonymous. They have it seems, become at least in part, the Robin Hood of the intertubes.

You may not agree with their motives or their actions but the undercover group has become downright legendary. They fearlessly stand up against organizations that terrify many such as, Scientology. They defend freedom of information by guaranteeing space for Wikileaks. They help oppressed, war ravaged people comunicate and (as of the writing of this post) they do interesting little things like shut down the hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church’s website, “godhatesfags.com” for 7 days (and counting.)

The mysteries that surround the group bring up more questions than answers.

Are they preventing free speech while trying to preserve it? A little.
Are they breaking the law? Yes, in some cases.
Is it for the greater good? The jury is still out.

And now the question is: Are they feminists?

Anonymous has started a campaign to encourage women to come on board as supporters called, Anonymiss.



Anonymiss

Taken from the Anonymous news website:

Gentlemen,

tell your girlfriends, your wives, your sisters, your mothers, that we protect their freedom of speech all around the world. And tell them that it will be even more protected if they protect it themselves. And if they don’t do it for the fun, tell them to do it for the innumerable censored women all over the planet. Don’t be a wanker : share our ideal!

A quick search on the #anonymiss hash tag on twitter brings up topics ranging from teaching women how to seek online privacy by getting behind a proxy, to being an activist for the group, to joining their IRC network, to talking about getting more “hot” girls online. Hmmmm, not sure about that last one and I’m not sure what the outcome of this will be, but they have my attention.

So what do YOU make of this? Is Anonymiss pro-feminism or quite the opposite? What do you think the goal of this operation is? Could it be helpful to encourage freedom for women in oppressed places? Will it encourage more women in technology? Does anyone know where I can get a black tailored suit?

quote:

http://www.escapistmagazi(...)consin-Labor-Dispute

No longer content to be hacker watchdogs, Anonymous is now apparently blowing the whistle on the underlying government corruption in the Wisconsin brouhaha.

Anonymous brought down the Americans for Prosperity website with a DDoS attack and released a statement asking us all to boycott Koch Industries products like Quilted Northern, Angel Soft and Dixie cups. The statement claimed that the billionaire brothers Koch are undermining the democracy of our country through funding organizations to protest against the state workers of Wisconsin who are fighting for their right to negotiate their contracts as a group. Anonymous believes Koch Industries is doing this in order to profit and not because of any interest in furthering the political process. As of press time, however, the Americans for Prosperity website is back online.

The goings-on in Wisconsin have been the talk of the mainstream news in America the last few weeks. The newly elected Governor of the state previously best known for its dairy products and football teams proposed a bill that would seriously curtail state-paid workers (including teachers) medical benefits and make it illegal for them to negotiate with the state as a consolidated group. Removing the labor unions' right to collective bargaining will effectively render them useless organizations, and even though Governor Scott Walker says that he is more concerned with balancing his budget, he says he won't budge on outlawing collective bargaining.

Enter Anonymous. The hacker group discovered a little-noticed clause in the bill proposed by Walker which would allow the state to sell its utilities to anyone it chose, at any price, without the public even being notified. This clause would allow companies like Koch Industries to purchase publicly owned utility plants, and Anonymous believes this is the reason that Koch-funded "grassroots" organizations like Americans For Prosperity, Club for Growth and Citizens United are supporting Walker's plan to rid the unions of their collective power.

"It has come to our attention that the brothers, David and Charles Koch - the billionaire owners of Koch Industries - have long attempted to usurp American Democracy. Their actions to undermine the legitimate political process in Wisconsin are the final straw. Starting today we fight back," a statement purportedly from Anonymous read.

At first glance, it seems that the hacker conglomerate Anonymous is gaining legitimacy in furthering its own political agenda of freedom of information and empowering the downtrodden. Many people, myself included, want to picture this loosely-held together group of posters on a forum as something grander than they actually are. One or two, or even twenty so-called "members" of Anonymous might support the unions in Wisconsin, but there are just as many - if not more - who think the whole mess is a load of political bullshit that's not worth their attention. As one Anonymous member writes, "Anonymous is not some leftwing sockpuppet to do the bidding of unions and Rachel Maddow. Nor are they all a bunch of Ron Paul loving teapartyfags. Anonymous consists of everything from Anarchists, to Libertarians, to Conservatives, Liberals and anything else on the political spectrum."

Anonymous even has a handy guide for people who are too quick to equate the group's actions with some overarching political agenda:

Anonymous has no official position on abortion
Anonymous has no official position on tax policy
Anonymous has no official position on health care
Anonymous has no official position on collective bargaining agreements
Anonymous has no official position on campaign finance reform
Anonymous has no official position on the Tea Party
Anonymous has no official position on the Democratic Party
Anonymous has no official position on the Republican Party
Anonymous has no official position on the Green Party
Anonymous has no official position on global warming
Anonymous has no official position on off-shore drilling
Anonymous has no official position on budget deficits
Anonymous has no official position on George Soros
Anonymous has no official position on the Koch brothers
Anonymous has no official position on Fox News
Anonymous has no official position on MSNBC
Anonymous has no official position on CNN
Anonymous has no official position on NAFTA
Anonymous has no official position on the IMF or World Bank
Anonymous has no official position on Wall Street
Anonymous has no official position on entitlement programs
Anonymous has no official position on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Anonymous has a very fucking official position on LULZ

I don't know why, but that list makes me happy. My faith in the hackerdom of Anonymous is restored.

quote:

http://www.dailykos.com/s(...)p-Palantir-Do-it-now

Anonymous' counterattack against HBGary and the network of federal contractors and even government agencies that colluded in unethical and perhaps illegal activities in an effort to destroy Glenn Greenwald, Wikileaks, and various unions has yielded a number of victories for decency and transparency. Still, our work - which is yours as well - is far from over. Thus it is that we invite you to consider the following:

1. Facebook heavy Peter Thiel is pimping the firm Palantir, in which he has invested quite heavily, as the next big thing.

2. Palantir was involved in the HBGary affair, itself one of the most incredible and ostentatious conspiracies to have been revealed in years.

3. Nonetheless, Palantir initially "cut off ties" from HBGary in such a way as to leave the blame with that firm...

4. ... despite the fact that their own employee, who was presumably not working unsupervised despite insane claims to the contrary by Palantir, was heavily involved in some of the most disgusting plans.

5. After we discovered the extent of his role, I contacted Steckman via e-mail to provide terms of surrender a couple Fridays ago (and forwarded to press to protect myself). I received a call from the firm's head counsel an hour later (which I recorded and provided to a journalist, again to protect myself). He and I agreed on a conference call for 1:00 pm EST the next day - one which they seem to have decided not to attend.

6. Palantir is lying.

7. What follows is a guide, prepared by Anonymous lawyers (seriously - we have those now) which I have provided to Glenn Greenwald and other relevant parties. Now is the time to distribute it in such a way as to help ensure that a firm like Palantir does not end up being any sort of Facebook or even a ChipsAhoy.com.

8. By downloading an IRC client and joining irc.anonops.in #anonleaks, anyone may also join us in our targeted rampage against the parties that have engaged in what I would refer to as the "politics of personal destruction" were Anonymous not so rightly intent on the personal destruction of those who brought the U.S. to this sad and degenerate age.

9. We do not forgive.

10. We do not forget.

quote:

http://www.anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=619

Open Letter To The World

We stand at a unique time in our history, the rise of the internet and computer technology have contributed to an unparalleled rate of prosperity for the First World.

We have created for ourselves and empire unlike any other, a global network of constant trade and communication, a new age of technological advancement. We have come a long way from our humble roots in the Industrial Revolution and the days of Manifest Destiny. We are now pioneers on new digital frontiers expanding our domain from the quantum world to the far reaches of space.

And yet, the empire faces a crisis, a global recession, growing poverty, rampant violence, corruption in politics, and threats to personal freedom. As it was before in other times of crisis, the old stories have begun to repeat themselves. The half truths, this time repeated nightly on cable news and echoed through a series of tubes onto the internet: the empire is strong, change is unwise, business as usual is the answer. In times of uncertainty there are those who seek to add to the confusion, to prey on our insecurities and fears. Those who would seek to keep us divided for their own gain. The pervasive strategy takes many very convincing forms: Liberals and Conservatives, Christians and Muslims, Black and White, Saved and sinner.

But something unexpected is happening. We have begun telling each other our own stories. Sharing our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our demons. Every second, day in day out, into all hours of the night the gritty details of life on this earth are streaming around the world. As we see the lives of others played out in our living rooms we are beginning to understand the consequences of our actions and the error of the old ways. We are questioning the old assumptions that we are made to consume not to create, that the world was made for our taking, that wars are inevitable, that poverty is unavoidable. As we learn more about our global community a fundamental truth has been rediscovered: We are not so different as we may seem. Every human has strengths, weaknesses, and deep emotions. We crave love, love laughter, fear being alone and dream for a better life.

You must create a better life.

You cannot sit on the couch watching television or playing video games, waiting for a revolution. You are the revolution. Every time you decide not to exercise your rights, every time you refuse to hear another view point, every time you ignore the world around you, every time you spend a dollar at a business that doesn't pay a fair wage you are contributing to the oppression of the human body and the repression of the human mind. You have a choice, a choice to take the easy path, the familiar path, to walk willingly into your own submission. Or a choice get up, to go outside and talk to your neighbor, to come together in new forums to create lasting, meaningful change for the human race.

This is our challenge:

A peaceful revolution, a revolution of ideas, a revolution of creation. The twenty-first century enlightenment. A global movement to create a new age of tolerance and understanding, empathy and respect. An age of unfettered technological development. An age of sharing ideas and cooperation. An age of artistic and personal expression. We can choose to use new technology for radical positive change or let it be used against us. We can choose to keep the internet free, keep channels of communication open and dig new tunnels into those places where information is still guarded. Or we can let it all close in around us. As we move in to new digital worlds, we must acknowledge the need for honest information and free expression. We must fight to keep the internet open as a marketplace of ideas where all are seated as equals. We must defend our freedoms from those who would seek to control us. We must fight for those who do not yet have a voice. Keep telling your story. All must be heard.

quote:

http://www.thehackernews.(...)-from-anonymous.html

Anonymous

We are anonymous, and we are Legion, for every one of us you find, and everyone you manage to take down, ten shall take his place, we do not forgive, we are many and therefor can’t forget. We have conflicting goals and wants, yet we act as one, therefor we are the face of chaos, we are the perfect observer, composed of people from every standpoint and therefor impartial and the only true Harbingers of judgment.

We laugh in the face of tragedy, we mock those in pain, we ruin the lives of other people simply because we can, these things we do for the lolz and we do them with no remorse, no caring, no love, and no sense of morality, we attack all things in this way, we can, we will, and we have destroyed countless that stand to harm anonymous.

Our power lies with our numbers. We choice to use loic in our attacks. We do this because it limits our strength to our numbers. This is a good thing. It prevents people from attacking on their own, in the name of Anonymous. Yet we have spread our ranks to thin. With so many operations we are ineffective, and we are made weak.

I recommend we put all operations on hold and start Operation Shutdown.
On March 4th we will likely be presented with a rare opportunity. This chance will be given to us by the very corruption that we must rid the US government of. On March 4th the US government will shutdown and all nonessential government functions will be put on hold. This gives us a chance to show the world that we are a force to be listened to. This will give us a chance to gain leverage. This will give us an undeniable voice in the world.

We must attack while they are weak or they will eventually land a crippling blow. Besides think of the lolz

We are anonymous
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.

quote:

parnell44 RT @Think4Freedom: ICARUS has crash-landed. No Op, voted down! We repeat: NO OP! Voted down! RT @AnonymousIRC #anonymous #AnonOps #anon #cnn #fail #Honeypot !!

quote:

Bank of America Accidentally Shuts Down Web Site Trying to Delete Evidence of Fraud

quote:

http://www.benningtonvale(...)ally-shuts-down.html
Bartholomew Hyootner, a San Narciso-based IT specialist who’s been following the situation, said, “My preliminary findings suggest that a BofA network geek accidentally deleted thousands of customer records instead of the evidence that proved bank officials knowingly sold billions worth of toxic securities to investors. Happens all the time. One database table gets confused with another. It’s an honest mistake.”

quote:

Op woensdag 2 maart 2011 22:26 schreef truepositive het volgende:


Hopenlijk weten ze daar binnenkort dan ook wat smeuïge informatie uit te slepen.

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#hiyabrad RT @OfficialAnonOps: www.anti-piracy.nl has been taken down by #Anonymous #AnonOps 15 minutes ago via web

quote:

Will Anonymous become the great equalizer?

The once infamous hackers have shaken off their image of sophomoric pranksters and emerged on the world stage as a serious digital posse of hacktivists. From Egypt, to Libya, to Wisconsin, this amorphous collective of wireless wizards have shown impressive strength and proficiency. Their ability to respond quickly and effectively to situations around the globe put traditional government and military forces to shame. They’ve executed their operations with an increasing level of effectiveness, impacting the abusive powers whom they target, while respecting and protecting critical services of the innocents they support.

As their ranks swell, so does the depth of their collective personality. From youthful beginnings Anonymous has matured into a force to be reckoned with. Actions are carefully considered, contingency plans established, and outcomes weighed. The speed and responsiveness of a collective community allows for the simultaneous consideration of a multitude of options, the processing of objectives, and the establishment of action plans, or operations.

Operations Payback, Paperstorm, Leakspin, Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin, and KochBlock have each elevated the functioning level and responsiveness of Anonymous. While none have been a failure, each endeavor has built on the strengths of the last. Technology, ingenuity, and flexibility have been the key to Anonymous’ success.

In each case that the Anonymous collective has arrived at a consensus and executed an operation a full statement of their goals and reasons have been published with a clarity that the governments of the world seem unable to accomplish. Their reputation for effectiveness is quickly becoming rivaled by their reputation for integrity.



As the uprising for democracy and equality grows across the globe, so will the role of Anonymous. Unrestrained by borders, time-zones, corporate funding or politics, Anonymous is becoming a crucial force in that struggle. Free from authoritarian leadership, and seemingly immune to traditional forms of repression, Anonymous may be the best hope we have of ensuring that the Internet stays accessible for activists, organizers, and revolutionaries.

As global capitalism tries to hang on to a faltering empire voices of dissent will be met with more and more severe obstacles. As the status quo is challenged, the challenge to those seeking justice will be increased. A strong, flexible, responsible support system will be needed to realize the changes envisioned. Anonymous has already become a significant actor in world affairs and is only beginning to scratch the surface of its true potential.

We can all be a part of that support system. We all should be a part of that support system. Anonymous is not a closed community, does not have an application form, and does not collect dues. While Anonymous is pretty much ubiquitous on the web, if you’re interested, you can start here. Anonymous provides the possibility for possibilities and is quickly becoming the great equalizer.

quote:

Op donderdag 3 maart 2011 10:11 schreef truepositive het volgende:
Begint al goed zo vroeg op de dag

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DAY 9 - get the message? - www.godhatesfags.com www.godistheterrorist.com www.westborobaptistchurch.com - #TANGODOWN ALL YOUR DOMAINS. #wbc

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http://www.thetechherald.(...)with-attack-on-BREIN

Anonymous, while continuing their actions to support protestors in North Africa, the Middle East, and Wisconsin, has resumed their most infamous operation to date - Operation Payback. On Thursday, the mass protest started with a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on the Dutch anti-Piracy organization BREIN.

The attack on BREIN (anti-piracy.nl) started just after 12:00 a.m. on Thursday morning Eastern Standard Time. In a matter of minutes, 10 people using the LOIC software Anonymous is known for, were able to take the organization’s website offline.

From that point, it remained offline, only appearing intermittently around 04:00 EST. At the time this article goes to press, the domain is offline.

BREIN is the Dutch acronym for Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands. It’s also the Dutch word for brain. They have been linked to Hollywood anti-piracy efforts, and were selected by Anonymous for recent actions against a large Warez domain that impacted a legit business in the crossfire.

While targeting a Warez (illegal software) Topsite, BREIN seized several servers from hosting provider WorldStream. Among the equipment seized were servers owned by a legit ISP with no connection to the illegal software domain. According to reports, the ISP owner lost $138,000 USD worth of equipment in the BREIN raid.

TorrentFreak has more information here, including allegations of BREIN installing backdoors on the seized servers and hijacking the ISP owner’s GMail accounts.

In addition to the Warez raid that snared a legit business, Anonymous is also targeting BREIN for Operation Payback’s resurrection because of their involvement with the takedown of 11 Usenet related domains.

While the Usenet domains also included access to illegal software, BREIN’s actions resulted in cutting Usenet connections to legitimate groups, removing their right to communicate in the process. In all, the Usenet raids by BREIN impacted nearly a million people.

Right now, Anonymous is using the DDoS attack on BREIN to build momentum. They plan to stick with smaller targets until support grows. Once that happens, then the sky is the limit for them when it comes to selecting a new target for cyber protest.



“Since early 2011, Anonymous has busied itself with very successful operations which it can be very much proud of. Not only has Anonymous proven that it is a force to be reckoned with, it has grown in strength and diversity, and it continues to gain numbers and attract attention from all over the world,” a statement from Anonymous reads.

“Operation Payback has now begun its "researching" phase, due to some actions taken by some copyright organisations, including "BREIN", who have censored popular sites on the internet over the past couple of weeks. This censorship can't be taken lightly, it is time to avert some attention to them and enable them to [realize] that this kind of censorship will not be tolerated, Anonymous style.”

Operation Payback started as a campaign by Anonymous against the anti-piracy efforts of groups such as the RIAA, MPAA, ACS Law, AiPlex, and AFACT. In addition, the operation has also taken on, and taken out, MasterCard, Visa, the Swiss bank Post Finance, PayPal, and others.

Update:

Five minutes after this story was published, Anonymous started targeting ifpi.org.

From their domain: "IFPI represents the recording industry worldwide, with a membership comprising some 1400 record companies in 66 countries and affiliated industry associations in 45 countries."

quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)d&utm_medium=twitter
While larger companies can afford blanket protection from computer criminals, and the national infrastructure receives an "extremely good" protection service, Williams warns that smaller businesses, universities and individuals are still dangerously exposed to criminal rings from around the world looking to steal everything from cash and identities to intellectual property.

"We are very concerned at the extent and growth of cyber crime. It is getting to be an increasingly larger problem," said Williams. "The agencies policing this are bringing all of their skills and capacity to the table to fight this. If we don't, it will have such a profound effect on share prices, on investment, and on how much the government has to spend on pensions. It is big stuff."

A Cabinet Office report released two weeks ago and written in conjunction with private firm Detica, a subsidiary of weapons manufacturer BAE Systems, estimated cyber crime losses at £27bn.

Williams conceded there were real problems with collecting cyber crime data but she said £27bn was a conservative estimate of the losses.

She drew attention to the increasing youth of online fraudsters and her fears that e-criminals, including politically motivated hackers or 'hacktivists', may be too readily sucked into breaking the law because of a lack of human interaction.

quote:

>> Here is some information that I have gathered that we can think about including. Of course using Palantir and automating some of the collection will make this a lot more powerful and complete.
>>
>> 235 Linked in Profiles currently employed with H&W
>> 68 LInked in Profiles of Partners currently with H&W
>> Corporate email address structure: abarr@hunton.com (first initial, last name @ hunton.com
>>
>> email addresses are great to use to see if people have used them to sign up for other accounts, for example jwoods@hunton.com signed up for a sabre.com account using this email address (the UVA football team - his alma mater).
>>
>> or
>>
>> Bob Tata and his wife, Anne Ferrell, live in Virginia Beach with their four children, Peyton, Carter, Riley.
>> Also found a spam list containing other possible email addresses for btata.
>> btata56207@msn.com
>> btata@att.net
>> btata@bellsouth.net
>> btata@hunton.com
>> btata@massed.net
>> btata@msn.com
>> btata@usa.net
>> btata@worldnet.att.net
>> This is a rather large group that just gets larger through associates, attorneys, etc. Lots you can tell about individual people from social link and artifact analysis. For example. John Woods does rarely uses his Facebook account. 95%+ of his friends are from his hometown/high school. To get to him I would create someone from his past, find someone he went to high school with on Classmates.com that doesn't have a FB profile and create him/her. Either that or I would go through a professional association, but thats harder to pull off.
>>

quote:

AnonOfTheAbove RT @Arktist: FYI: nsa.gov is National Security Agency domain/site. IRC fm there is either mis-use of Internet site or NSA is interested in #Anonymous 18 minutes ago via TweetDeck

quote:

AnonOfTheAbove RT @Arktist: Repeating my question of late last night: Why was someone fm nsa.gov domain in an #Anonymous IRC chat last night? Whose side is (s)he on? 18 minutes ago via TweetDeck

quote:

There is no Anonymous

If you are talking about the Anonymous from 4chan, then there isn't any group like that. That implies to much organisation, a hierachy, an organization.

The idea originally was related but NOT the same to "I am Spartacus". And many people don't even understand that statement.

The "I am Spartacus" statement is this: "I hereby declare that I am the person you are seeking and accept all responsibility for my actions." If you state this, you BECOME Spartacus, you are it and LOOSE yourself with it. You can't say, "I smallfurrycreature represent Spartacus", you surrender yourself to the cause and become it. In the movie, the people all nailed up, are ALL Spartacus and by doing so the idea of Spartacus if not the person becomes invincible. No matter how many Spartacusses you nail to a cross, there is always one more just around the corner. It is the undying hero, the person dies but the idea goes on.

This doesn't sit well with our individual culture.

Anonymous takes this even further, if people understood it. You cannot state "I am Anonymous" for this is silly. The moment you tie yourself to this concept, you are no longer anonymous. You can speak with a thousand voices, you can at best be one voice representing a thousand but never a thousand. You cannot be anonymous only be a non-significant part of it.

The real idea behind it all on 4chan was to give a name to the movements/actions that were observed. It is like watching the migration patterns of animals and calling them Bob. Just because it now sounds like a person doesn't mean that a wildebeast migrating represents Bob or is controlled by the motives of Bob.

Does any of this rant matter

Yes. The Muslim brotherhood, are they the protesters in Egypt? Some western "news" stations would have you believe this. BUT this has NOT been an Islamic revolution. It might or might not become one but the protests where NOT guiden or orchastrated by them... some PROTESTERS might have been but not the "protest". It can be hard to grasp the difference. It is the difference between the resentment of the masses and individual grievances. Same as the protests in Tunesia were not about a closed vegetable stand or in Egypt about the beating of a youth or in France about cake or in the USA about tea.

Anonymous is not a group that exists on 4chan in /b/. If anything it is the behavior of individual but unknown people who use the web to do something in a minimally organised way to have a far reaching effect. It is the mob effect on the internet.

That means that there is no point in ousting its leaders. You can get the leaders of one mob and might even be cheered for that by the mob next to it. Anonymous cheers cat killers and hunts them down. It is not a singleton, it is a class. You can spawn things from it but almost by its nature, the moment you do that is ceases to be the idea and it becomes Anonymous XYZ the group.

Anonymous doesn't have its hands on anything and has its hands on everything because we can all be Anonymous and we all aren't.

But media doesn't grasp that since they need to put a face to the name. But ultimately this means that Anonymous will just get more legenday. Strike one group down and another will take its place. Just as killing a few hundreds protestors, and arresting/torturing far more, did NOTHING to stop the protest in Egypt. Or killing all the buffalo stopped Bob.

quote:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/a(...)ak-afp-339310749.htm

Reticent judges and slow legal frameworks are passing out soft and unbalanced charges to online criminals including members of the Anonymous collective, a move that is frustrating the Australian Federal Police

Australian members of Anonymous — a loose online activist collective responsible for a string of devastating cracking and denial-of-service attacks — were caught last year after they helped bring down the Prime Minister's website under Operation Titstorm.

The operation was a response to the Federal Government's mandatory internet content filtering plan which the collective fiercely opposes.

The AFP launched an operation called Whisk to look into the online attacks and netted two Anonymous participants using intelligence from the Defence Department's Cyber Security Operations Centre.

Both men, Melbourne resident Steve Slayo and Newcastle resident Matthew Gordon George, faced 10 years imprisonment for "causing unauthorised impairment of electronic communication to or from a Commonwealth computer" but received a good behaviour order and a $550 fine with a recorded conviction respectively.

Those penalties are not enough, according to one AFP officer involved with the case.

"Judges are not willing to hand out tough sentences," AFP High Tech Collection and Capability manager Grant Edwards said. "They don't understand the threat."

Catching Anonymous members is not the problem because Internet Protocol addresses can be traced, Edwards said, but rather the lack of understanding of the severity of the crime.

"It is difficult to create laws against cybercrime," Edwards said, citing problems of tracking perpetrators overseas.

"Unless we understand the impact, we can't create the laws. The issue is also the speed to create these laws," he added.

The AFP's High Tech Crime Investigations unit is charged with investigating and prosecuting individuals for attacks against Australia's critical infrastructure and information systems. It works in collaboration with the Cyber Security Operations Centre and the newly fledged CERT Australia.

Judges are also handing weak and unbalanced sentences to paedophiles charged with holding online child pornography, Edwards said.

quote:

To illustrate the problem, Edwards said one paedophile charged with holding 200,000 child pornography was sentenced to 14 months in jail, while another caught with 100,000 images was sentenced to four years.

The AFP said in a statement that "activities such as hacking, creating or propagating malicious viruses or participating in DDoS attacks are not harmless fun [and] can result in serious long-term consequences for individuals, such as criminal convictions or jail time".

quote:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49979252/IRC-Intro

IMPORTANT!!!
Communicating via IRC is NOT a crime in any way. Is talking in Japanese on the phone a crime?FUCK NO! If someone says otherwise, smack them with a giant fishbot.

quote:

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2011/02/on-anon.html

As I've described in a lengthy introduction, I encountered the phenomenon of Anonymous, often described as a "looseknit online community of hackers," in the virtual world of Second Life. I've detailed three major incidents that defined my involvement, starting with a comment on their offensive art; then moving to abuse reports on their violations of the Terms of Service inworld; and progressing to regular documentation of their raids and posses against me, my tenants and others in the virtual world. In time, I began to follow their activities elsewhere on the Internet, but I don't claim any special expertise or knowledge; I just claim common sense and a basic willing to report the truth -- something that is often absent in the treatment of Anonymous by the mainstream media and various blogs, whether by tech specialists, "progressives" or conservatives.

1. The most fundamental truth about Anonymous is that they lie: they lie about little things and big things; they lie about lying; they lie about lying about lying -- and so on.

2. Anonymous is not a looseknit movement. It's very structured, in fact. It has very rigid cultural norms and rules; it has very strict lines of communication. It is a cult and its members behave like cult members and its leaders behave like cult leaders. To describe Anonymous as "loose," like, say, a Facebook group that "likes" Coca Cola or Lady Gaga is "loose," or a group that teens make on Facebook with names like Didyouhearthatstupidthingmrhallsaidtoday is "loose" is to not get it about gangs, cults, dysfunctional movements of various types -- they are all about rigidity; they are all about very, very stiff and not fluid relations. Anonymous is often described as some really versatile franchise that enables the franchiser to pick from a huge menu of options. That would be like saying a McDonald's franchiser can put out baked home-made sweet potatoes instead of standard frieds made in standard Fry-Max with standard seasoning. It's simply untrue. You have only to watch and look and stop reading tripe in the media.

3. Anonymous is not anonymous. First of all, Anonymous are people like your best friend's son or your uncle's coworker -- you know them. Secondly, they are definite people with definite identities who do very specific acts -- those who rise to the level of actually leading and perpetrating attacks are not so great in number, are known, especially inside the movement, and are identified by law-enforcement and intelligence and even journalists or casual observers. They trip up and expose themselves many times; they are exhibitionists and want to be caught many times and be heroes/martyrs. If Anonymous were really so, it wouldn't have to tell you. That's all.

4. Anonymous are caught; they go to jail. The man who broke into Sarah Palin's mail account was sentenced to one year. Five Anonymous activists were arrested in the UK over the WikiLeaks scandal; there are many others who have in fact been arrested and known. Nearly all the dozens of people in SL are known and identified and banned several times over.

5. Anonymous is not legion; its numbers are fairly small. To be sure, the lookie-loos and the day-trippers and weekend w-hatters may seem like a lot of people at times, but even they fit into the usual online power curve of 10 percent of any community who do anything at all while the rest watch, and are a tiny percent of that 10 percent (less than one). Anonymous numbers have been fairly accurately assessed by some smart people who have noticed a thing that they all inevitably do and have tabulated it, and put the numbers ranging from about 8700 to 12,500 around the world, with seasonable and episodic variations -- but with only about 700-800 who actually plan and execute major attacks. Like Wikipedia and other online cults, there is a tiny number of collectivized leaders, sometimes turning over frequently, who make major decisions.

6. 4chan.org is a big part of Anonymous. Saying 4chan.org is a mere images board where people trade jpeg pictures is like saying the SDS was merely a student group that discussed textbooks. The main action at 4chan.org is the long chats in forums where the pictures are merely a kind of prop to the chat. 4chan.org is where attacks are planned and coordinated; 4chan is where people can get links to the various other chat places and IRC channels and pastebin.org chatlogs. If the authorities want to cut to the chase and stop fooling around with expensive security firms that embarrass themselves by doing retarded things like going in an IRC chat and deciding they now have a list of Anonops, they could more strategically simply call in Ken Lerer, the owner of the holding company of Huffington Post, and Christopher Pool, the owner of 4chan.org whom Ken Lerer has hired as an adisor on what is "cutting edge," and have a chat with them about what is on their servers. They will deny involvement in DDOS attacks but will in fact have inevitably participated in them, and they can stop them by having 4chan take a public position and by backing it up with bans and blocks. They won't do that. That's the problem. See no. 7.

7. Anon is not reformable. Members of Anon never truly leave the organization when they claim to; they may cease griefing expeditions for a time but always come back. They lie about reforming; they are never sincere. Think "Eddie Haskell".

8. A popular griefing mechanism of Anon involves a dramatic claim of a come-to-Jesus moment when a griefer realizes "the error of his ways" and "quits griefing". After his confession and altar-call, he "reforms" and takes up an activity like "volunteering for Relay for Life" at the American Cancer Foundation or some other charity. This is always fake, and is merely another operation. After gulling innocent first-timers and even gullible repeat-believers, they come back and grief again -- Lucy and the football, Charlie Brown.

9. You can never know enough about Anonymous. You are always wrong, and always off balance.You said they were in this faction; they were in the other one. You claimed they were behind this hacking; they were actually not, but behind another that didn't have their fingerprints. You are stupid; they are clever. You don't get it; they are on the inside. You thought you were a specialist; guess what, you were played. Anonymous is all different than you say! Anonymous is all wonderful! You aren't!

10. You can never hope to keep up with the memes and inside jokes. You thought "cool story bro" was the joke of the week? You are hopelessly behind the times and a newb and a feeb. Oh, you hope to establish your savvy by indicating that in fact it's "You mad bro?" this week? You couldn't be more wrong. 4channer girls are laughing hysterically about "Perhaps....dresses?" this week...and you aren't...but you're a girl, aren't you?

11. Anonymous are thought to be closet gays, or gays unhappy with their sexuality, or ambivalent bisexuals, or transgendered males changing to females. Perhaps some of this is true, but there is another factor that explains more about their character and their sexuality: they are autoerotics. They have come to find online-assisted masturbation so compelling that they attracted to other men not because of homosexuality, but because of insular autoeroticism. A real homosexual is capable of falling in love with another man or at least of affection; the Anonymous is a narcissist in love with himself and his online reflections. Other people are toilet paper to him.

12. Far from being anarchists in the details of their online lives, Anonymous in fact are finicky and particular and heavy control freaks. They like order and repetition. They crave the incessant repetition of the same pictures and words over and over again like toddlers having to see the same video or hear the same story again because it helps order their chaotic nervous systems and cope with their overstimulation. They are not free; they are under heavy constraint. They need to do the same thing over and over and over again *in the same way*, like obsessive-compulsives and bear striking resemblance to them. They can repeat the same griefing action incessantly, day after day, with crushing boredom and regularity because it sooths them not only to get the same reaction out of another person and annoy them, but also to gain a sense of power from the routine. That this makes it easier to catch them doesn't seem to bother them; their need for repetition is GREAT.

13. Far from being loose-knit, the Anonymous movement is very structured. It has strict codes of conduct, definite lines of authority, very precise marching orders. Many an observer, close or far, has mistaken the Politburo-like "democratic centralism" of the movement, where a topic or action might be discussed "freely" in a group as being "loose knit"; in fact, the rituals and procedures for the topics and debates are very limited, and bear no resemblance to open parliamentary debate or Roberts Rules of Order; they are a cult, even if not listed on rickross.com

14. Many people think that Anonymous is successful because it has lots of people and can easily and flexibly decide in an uncoordinated way to do various actions -- as noted, it is considered to be a kind of vast franchise where ideas spread like wildfire and get acted upon. In fact, Anonymous doesn't work like the flu or a viral video, but works like an army -- there are recognized cult leaders and recognized signals of authority. While any effort to try to isolate some badge or code of authority would fail, there are markers and signals that a few key individuals develop and spread with rigid connivance.

15. One of the more retarded things a certain faction of Anonymous tried to do was start a caper that involved hacking a weather site and claiming that they were trying to "hack winter" and "make it spring." This action was taken directly after the hacks (yes they are hacks) of Amazon, PayPal, etc. and was designed as a counterspin against a growing public dislike and distrust of the movement -- a period when it was ceasing to be cool and being now alarming. This dodge and feint was a flop and convinced nobody and never attracted significant following among the ranks to catch on. Anonymous always reverts to ugly, horrid form -- it is not evolving or getting better, and more than the Lord's Resistance Army is "getting better".

16. In the same way, a false flag operation (FBI or other foreign intelligence or freelance security operatives mounting an action made to look like Anonymous and confuse them) mounted not long after the Paypal attacks, implying that now a "new" Anonymous was being born that would focus on political causes like attacking the Egyptian government's sites wasn't typical and wasn't convincing. This effort of hostile outsiders or possibly an insider faction hoping to distract the public with a positive message wasn't typical. Whether it had significant backing or whether it was just a cynical dodge, soon the b-tards were back hacking and slashing again like they always had and this dodge made no difference.

17. Nobody can stop or call off Anonymous or deflect them. The confused and babbling John Perry Barlow, now in his dotage, that he had "called off" people that had "misunderstood" or "overreacted" to his call to war in cyberspace is absurd (and an admission of guilt -- how can you "call off" that which you claim you hadn't "called on"?)

18. The movement has not changed or matured or evolved. Some members are visibly associating themselves with the Egyptian cause; but the same or other members are going around harassing online worlds and communities with horrible obscene and racist content, and attacking the firm HBGary, and telling the female executive to show her tits in chat messages. All the ugly and disgusting behaviour continues; all the racist and sexist talks continues everywhere, merely distracted from.

19. The fight against Scientology was not a fight for freeodom or human rights or secularity against religious cultism; it was a competition by one cult with another, by a newer online cult by an older one that was among the first to harness the earliest forms of the Internet for its cause. It's a gang war for turf, and not a liberal struggle for rights for all.

20. Anonymous have a concerted plan to fan out to forums and argue with people who criticize them in various formulaic ways -- lying, obfuscating, challenging the critic's credentials, or using the Saul Alinsky tactics, as they conservatives call them, of picking out some feature of the target and exaggerating it, or picking out some aspect of the issue and insisting that it's in the target's own interests to agree with them, or part of the target's own values to concede their point. Always and everywhere, Anonymous tell you that you are wrong about whatever you think of their movement; that you don't have that facts; that you mixed something up; that you have laughably taken something too seriously.

21. Anonymous often word-salads or obfuscates various technical issues; they describe themselves as having "2,000 nodes" (Jacob Appelbaum), something giving precise numbers to lies to make them seem more convincing.

22. Anonymous are not teenagers are young men only. In fact, many are 30-40-50 year old men, some with prestigious IT jobs or academic or media jobs. Anonymous is a professor or an executive, not just a kid in his mom's basement.

23. Anonymous is penetrated by foreign intelligence agencies. This wasn't hard to do given both the ostensibly loose nature of the movement *and* the rigid culture which makes it brittle and unable to resist undermining -- it is very easy captivated or manipulated in fact. The Russian FSB seems to be obviously at work here, and there are quite a few examples of the use of sites with the RU address, various Russian cultural features, not to mention of course the Soviet memes, which are sometimes adopted as a joke, to tweak what they see as fanatical critics invoking their Leninism, but which also has its roots in actual belief systems.

24. Anonymous has what is called the "bro code". This brotherly set of ethics, if you will, chiefly involve never reporting on a fellow member to authorities such as police. When this appears to happen, it is often part of an elaborate caper that is itself merely setting up the next griefing operation. Those appearing to turn state's evidence may be involved in merely a more elaborate form of social hack.

25. Probably 75 percent or more of Anonymous hacks are social hacks that don't involve actual computer programming skills. They involve spying on or simply observing people and gathering clues about them to use to guess or attempt to produce their password or to find some other aspect of their lives online or off that can be accessed.

26. But Anonymous themselves have the same propensity for leaving enormous numbers of clues to their identities and activities online that they are not particulary good at covering up. They have a propensity, like all totalitarian movements seeking total power, to document their crimes as a form of narcissism and cultic reinforcement. Often, they make tapes of phone conversations; they compulsively save chatlogs; they make video tapes of themselves griefing or planning to grief, and they can't help showing off, online and in real life. The videos in particular often contain telltale clues to their locations and corroborating evidence that helps establish who they are despite careful work by their enablers to hide their real names (*waves to Mullet Handelsohn*).

27. The downfall of many an Anon is the victory dance. The victory dance usually has to follow each griefing posse or raid or major DDOS attack or other hacking operation. It is an essential part of the ritual and has to be participated in and documented. It is no fun crashing a server or hacking into an email system and publicizing its contents if you can't go somewhere afterwards and have a party to wash down the success, as it were; the victory dance often involves elaborate manifestations of the memes and catch phrases, where not only is the story told and retold, but those who didn't participate and who may even keep strategic distances from the actual perpetrators may show up, on a guest appearance, to tacitly give their nod of approval in some way. Somebody who elaborately hid his tracks with proxies while griefing might log on from his home to go to a victory dance by mistake.

28. Anonymous always tries to minimize the damage they have caused. They scoff and snort outright at anyone putting costs to damages; they decry the "Internet as srs business", they say that victims are "butthurt". They always remind people that online life isn't real; if they are crying about a rape in cyberspace, they are indignantly told to grasp the horror of real rape. An online virtual rapist thrusting a giant penis in somebody's face in Second Life might simultaneously also angrily tell you on a forums that his sister was raped; that we have no idea of the pain and how dare we compare these utterly unlike things. This pixel peniser might in fact even volunteer for a group in SL doing real-life fund-raising for victims of domestic violence, just to show you what a good guy he is, and laugh all the while at your protestations that his behaviour is inconsistent and unfair.

29. Anonymous always tells you that they never forget, that they remember slights and punish them for ages, relentlessly. Yes and no. Anonymous are capable of planning an elaborate raid, but suddenly logging off in boredom because something better came up on TV. They may stalk you for months and suddenly stop, because they got bored or simply found a jucier target. Some of them are methodical and repetitive, but just as many have ADHD.

30. Anonymous talk a good game and brag a lot; they vowed to take down AT&T just because their site was blocked for a time when it was a victim of a DDOS attack. They made the most violent and horrible comments about AT&T and its executives, but stopped short of any RL violence or even hacking attacks once AT&T executives made a statement that the site had only been temporarily blocked. In fact, Anonymous often stops short of crossing that blood-brain barrier called of "taking it to real" -- going into real life to pursue somebody online. They don't mind getting b& but they don't want to go in the real-life paddy wagon downtown.

31. Anonymous never shows solidarity to their fellows when arrested. It's as if they died in World of Warcraft and their characters got teleported home to respawn later if the right potion is found. They never mention them. They never defend them. They never sign petitions. They never speak to the media about them. They never try to reason with anybody to get them out. They turn their backs on those fallen behind enemy lines, and never look back, like brave little soldiers in war. An arrested Anonymous is easy to break because he has no solidarity, no brotherhood, nothing like an old-world mafia to fall back on. This is both a strength and a weakness of Anon. To be sure, Anon might laughingly make graveyards of banned avatars or mentioned banned people in reverential tones but they never cross the street to actually defend them.

32. Many times Anonymous claim they do things just for laughs -- for the lulz. Other times they imply, but never rally specify, that they are engaged in some short-term goal of "doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do," i.e. fighting Scientologists or the Egyptian government. The reality is that Anonymous has a very conscience and very specific purpose that is very deeply and zealously felt by every cult member: they wish to prevent anyone from using the Internet in any way they think it should not be used, and especially not to take it seriously.

33. Sometimes Anonymous is believed to be a new cutting-edge progressive movement, some sort of new form of online democracy. In fact, Anonymous is profoundly conservative. Its structures resemble more of an 18th or 19th century Masonic Lodge than they resemble casual Facebook groups in the newest form of social media. Anonymous has leaders; it has followers. It has codes; it has rituals. It has a certain way of doing things; and has ruthless conformity procedures.

34. Anonymous is most ruthless to its own people. It will use the most outrageous pressure tactics. If somebody's parents have to be called up to harass a young person out of line, that will be done; if somebody fails to conform, they can be harmed at their job with a deliberate harassment tactic or pizzas can be sent to their door or even the SWAT team of the local police urged to storm the apartment.

35. Anonymous is often described as having "16 year old girls" in it. These are more than likely men in drag, i.e. 30 or 40 year old men taking on the persona of a 16 year old girl. This is very, very common. There are, to be sure, real 16 year old girls, but not that many of them.

36. Although they are styled as anarchists at heart and indeed do hew to the traditions of Bakunin and others, they are in fact strict legalists, always and everywhere fanatically invoking law and rules and procedures. On every forum, they will invoke TOS regulations, even the most obscure paragraphs; on any chat discussion they will cite Constitutional clauses or Supreme Court decisions or various arcane agency regulations with superior and smug glee; they can be the most assiduous abuse-reporters on any platform and take keen delight in bringing down someone else on a technicality. Always and everywhere, this apparenty legalism is a sham -- it is lawfare that exploits law to wage a war; it is a distraction from their own inherent lawlessness. They are legal nihilists, that is, they do not care to have any rule of law over themselves. They prefer "rule-by-laws" that breeds arbitrariness rather than "rule of law" that would imply some higher power to which they were accountable.

37. While they pride themselves as being Anonymous, faceless, colourless, melting into the crowd, in fact, the b-tards cling fiercely to identifying marks -- groups they join, nicknames, memes, pictures. If a moderator of a board were to rule that the name Anonymous or Anon E. Moose cannot be used, or rule that no pictures of suits with question marks over the heads can be used, or no Guy Fawkes masks -- that is, to behave like a high school principal in New York City might behave to demand the removal of gang insignia -- they will erupt into an uproar of outrage about the suppression of their free expression and the supposed hysteria and drama and "security theater" sins of the moderators. They will downplay the significance of insignia that in fact they hold dear. The most important thing is the group and its name.

38. I could go on and on.

quote:

Op vrijdag 4 maart 2011 21:17 schreef Odysseuzzz het volgende:

[..]

Het is ook nog eens totale onzin.
Maar dat zie je wel vaker met de combinatie second life en bloggers. Die denken dat ze antropologie aan het bedrijven zijn.

quote:

http://www.myce.com/news/(...)ilitary-brass-40933/

The clandestine hacker group known as Anonymous has been quite busy lately.

Yesterday we discussed how the group’s myriad operations might be affecting its overall impact – something an alleged member quickly countered in the comment section. Now we’re hearing new reports that the secretive members are focusing on military personnel in addition to the corporate executives they’ve long battled.

The New York Daily News wrote about Anonymous’ renewed efforts, citing a post at DailyKos. The statement made by Barrett Brown read, “The decision to charge Bradley Manning with a capital offense in addition to other charges is a provocation, and Anonymous is set to respond accordingly.”

Bradley Manning is the U.S. Army soldier charged with passing on classified, top-secret information to whistleblower site, WikiLeaks. More charges were recently added, including “aiding the enemy.” Manning faces life in prison if convicted.

In the past, Anonymous stood up for the controversial site created by the controversial man Julian Assange, going so far as to launch DDoS attacks against companies fighting against it – such as MasterCard. While the hacker collective promised to continue fighting against “corporate execs involved in plots against WikiLeaks,” its threat against the U.S. military for arresting and jailing Manning is certainly a new wrinkle in the ongoing story.

What type of cyber attack will be launched, and against whom? The statement specifies “military officials,” which suggests officers and other high ranking members.

Considering Anonymous’ recent shutdown of HBGary, a security company which saw CEO Aaron Barr resign last week thanks to a truly bizarre saga, there are no doubts the group will follow through with its promise. Just how much chaos it will cause is unknown.

quote:

http://www.myce.com/news/(...)mpaign=related_posts

The United States Department of Justice’s (DOJ) handling of the Wikileaks investigation is drawing criticism not only from Anonymous, a vigilante activist group that has been fighting against censorship involving the leak of US diplomatic cables, but also from an 85 member European Parliament group known as the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

The European politicians organized a protest on Wednesday against the DOJ’s attempt to obtain private information from Twitter about close Wikileaks supporters including Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Jacob Appelbaum, and Iceland Parliament member Birgitta Jónsdóttir. They planned to call upon the EU to request clarifications from the US government about the Twitter subpoenas.

The United States Department of Justice’s (DOJ) handling of the Wikileaks investigation is drawing criticism not only from Anonymous, a vigilante activist group that has been fighting against censorship involving the leak of US diplomatic cables, but also from an 85 member European Parliament group known as the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

The European politicians organized a protest on Wednesday against the DOJ’s attempt to obtain private information from Twitter about close Wikileaks supporters including Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Jacob Appelbaum, and Iceland Parliament member Birgitta Jónsdóttir. They planned to call upon the EU to request clarifications from the US government about the Twitter subpoenas.

“[Our group defends] the right to offend which is an essential part of freedom of expression, and we will stand with those who come under pressure to freely express their views,” said German European Parliament Member Alexander Lambsdorff at an event back in July which hosted both Assange and Jónsdóttir.

Meanwhile, Anonymous released a new video on their blog Wednesday which announces global protests to take place on Saturday January 15th “in defense of Wikileaks and freedom of expression”. That video contained the following message:

“Beneath this mask there is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof. We believe that free speech is non-negotiable. The quality of an idea matters more than its authorship and the radical notion that information should be free. We are done waiting for someone to save us from tyranny and censorship. The internet needs champions and we will rise. We didn’t start this to destroy a cult. We took on a cult to defend free speech. Tens of thousands strong, we lie in wait as the real battle approaches. We are Anonymous, and so are you. Stand up and fight. Every city, everywhere, January 15th. Expect us.”

All of this comes as worry grows that Wikileaks’ founding member Julian Assange may face the death penalty in the US if Swedish officials are successful in extraditing Assange to their country where he faces allegations of raping two woman. Assange’s defense attorney, Mark Stephens, outlined his concerns in a 35-page legal document released on Tuesday.

“It is submitted that there is a real risk that, if extradited to Sweden, the U.S. will seek his extradition and/or illegal rendition to the USA, where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, in conditions which would breach Article 3 of the ECHR,” Stephens states in the document. ”Indeed, if Mr. Assange were rendered to the USA, without assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out, there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty. It is well-known that prominent figures have implied, if not stated outright, that Mr. Assange should be executed.”

Lately, I have been talking with others in my local community about Wikileaks events and how the case should be handled, and the responses have been quite mixed. Some believe that the information contained in the leaked diplomatic cables should be openly published and that the government should learn a lesson about transparency from the situation. Others believe that the cables represent stolen property and should never have see the light of day. The situation is dividing not only Americans, but citizens around the world on views of government control and freedom of expression.

My personal feelings are mixed on the matter. While I believe that the actual theft of the cables is wrong, I don’t necessarily agree with the US government’s response on the matter. Since the cables were already out, I believe that government officials should have taken the opportunity to assist Wikileaks in redacting personal information contained in the cables before they were published, rather than taking the hard stance which caused cables to be published with information intact that has put some of the people involved in grave danger. Should Assange be severely punished? Is the US treatment of PVC Bradley Manning wrong? These are questions that I’m having difficulty answering.

What are your views on the Wikileaks situation? Let your opinion be heard in the comments.

quote:

http://torrentfreak.com/o(...)er-anonymous-110304/

Oh, Oh…BREIN Boss Says He Will Go After Anonymous

Earlier this week, anti-piracy group BREIN was subjected to a DDoS attack which took their website offline. BREIN boss Tim Kuik said he believed that supporters of the now defunct Usenet portal FTD were behind the attack.

Just hours later, Anonymous – the infamous loose-knit collective of Internet activists – announced they would revive Operation Payback, the series of actions that took down many anti-piracy related websites in the latter part of 2010.

One of their first targets was announced as BREIN and sure enough yesterday a DDoS attack took down the Dutch group’s website yet again. It’s not known if the attack earlier this week was Anonymous-linked, but there’s little doubt that the overwhelming traffic experienced by BREIN yesterday was.

News site NU.nl is now reporting that BREIN boss Tim Kuik has told them that information will be gathered on the attackers and they will be reported to the authorities.

In fairness, Kuik probably has little option but, as framed by Stephen Colbert this week, if he wants to stick a part of his male anatomy into the Anonymous ‘hornets nest’, that’s his business. Just as long as he knows it might sting a bit.

quote:

Op vrijdag 4 maart 2011 23:13 schreef truepositive het volgende:

quote:

Alg_anonymous_blue_normal anonleet RT @TheLibertyLamp: @AnonymousRx || tell BREIN 2: "BRING IT ON...BITCH" #AaronBarr #LULZ #Anonops #4chan #420chan

quote:

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.

quote:

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

quote:

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

quote:

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.

quote:

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.”

quote:

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

quote:

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

quote:

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".

quote:

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.

quote:

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

[..]

[..]

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

Information is free

quote:

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.

quote:

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

quote:

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

quote:

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

quote:

http://paranormalis.com/threads/anonymous-to-attack-sony.2541/

Good evening,

Anonymous is preparing to target the Sony corporation for bringing litigation against innocent individuals who have been creating features for the Playstation 3 which were previously openly available to the public. We refer largely to the ability to install the Linux operating system.

Despite the fact that this was a largely advertised feature, Sony has cut access to the Playstation 3's firmware under the guise of "security concerns". They have removed a core feature after millions of consumers have handed over their hard earned money.

Those who opted not to upgrade their systems were cut off from PSN access, purchased media and lost the ability to to play some games ans Blu-Ray discs. This is unacceptable.

As Techland reported, George Hotz, a programmer, figured out how to "jailbreak" the PS3; thus unlocking the above mentioned features. Hotz (who posts under the handle GeoHotz) published instructions for jailbreaking the PS3 on his personal website. Sony has since brought legal action against him and has received permission to subpoena Bluehost (Hotz's hosting company) to acquire a list of every IP address that ever visited his site.

This is an affront against personal privacy, one which Anonymous will not ignore.

Our demands are these:

* Sony must end any and all attempts to prosecute individuals trying to alter a product that they legally own.
* Sony must end all current or pending/upcoming litigation against George Hotz and any individuals behind the collected IP addresses.
* Sony must allow for end-user modification of their product, as was heavily advertised and available before the 3.21 update.

Anonymous recognizes that there are events of greater magnitude occurring in the world today and is actively pursuing those as well. However, threats against our privacy and consumer rights cannot (and will not) go unnoticed.

We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
You should have expected us.

quote:

Op donderdag 10 maart 2011 22:52 schreef Opa2012 het volgende:

[..]

Ik zie dat er nog een eis ontbreekt: een kop warme chocolademelk.

quote:

Op vrijdag 11 maart 2011 15:14 schreef yavanna het volgende:

AP offers a fascinating profile of the rebels fighting for Ras Lanuf and hoping to work their way to Tripoli:

"The front-line force is surprisingly small. Not counting supporters who bolster them in the towns along their path, it is estimated at 1,500 at most Libyans from all walks of life, from students and coffee-shop owners to businessmen who picked up whatever weapons they could and joined the fight. No one seems to know their full size, and they could be picking up new members all the time

"The rebel force is a leaderless collection of volunteers, operating in an evolving collaboration with soldiers who deserted various units over the past month and are still be trying to organise themselves. It's not clear who, if anyone is giving orders

"The volunteer militiamen largely have been acting and reacting as a pack to government assaults, launching initiatives wherever they can. They ride around in dozens of pick-up trucks, some with machine guns and anti-aircraft guns strapped to the back. Some rebels have weapons, while others seem hardly able to operate a gun

"Many of the fighters come from Benghazi, the main city in the rebel-controlled eastern half of the country. They are united by hatred for Gaddafi and a burning desire to overthrow him and establish a state under the rule of law

quote:

http://www.thejournal.ie/(...)hacktivists-2011-01/

FINE GAEL’S NEW WEBSITE was last night defaced by the anonymous hacker group ‘Anonymous’, which replaced the party’s new ‘tell us what you think’ campaign with a holding page telling visitors that the party was censoring submissions.

quote:

Nothing is safe, you put your faith in this political party and they take no measures to protect you.

They offer you free speech yet they censor your voice.

WAKE UP!

quote:

Anonymous Hackers will Expose Something Awful About Bank Of America On Monday !

Last year Wikileaks' Julian Assange said he had documents on a major bank -- everyone kind of figured that it was Bank of America -- though it now seems that there isn't much to it.
Now Gawker's Adrien Chen points out that a member of the hacker group Anonymous going by the handle OperationLeaks on twitter is claiming to have damning docs on the bank that will likely be released Monday.
OperationLeaks has been teasing all day on twitter about having received documents on the bank from a disgruntled employee.
Chen's own sources within Anonymous suggest there's something real to the leaks.
In terms of substance, it's not clear what we might see. This tweet, regarding is the closest thing to anything explanatory:



If something does go up Monday, it's likely to be at Anonleaks.ch.

quote:

https://docs.google.com/d(...)wY/edit?hl=en&pli=1#
Please check the bottom of this document. I included a guide on how you can help us
jam the following frequencies as well

quote:

Op zondag 13 maart 2011 21:49 schreef truepositive het volgende:
Het gaat wel heeel snel nu, wow

quote:

Op maandag 14 maart 2011 13:02 schreef Muridae het volgende:

[..]

Voila :

http://bankofamericasuck.(...)ortgage-fraud-part-1

quote:

Franzys999 RT @AnonNewsNet: And lo, the interwebz did render the BOAleak as a Google Doc: http://goo.gl/stY37 #Anonymous #AnonLeaks #BlackMonday #OpESR 6 minutes ago via web

quote:

Report: Iran's paramilitary launches cyber attack

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian hackers working for the powerful Revolutionary Guard's paramilitary Basij group have launched attacks on websites of the "enemies," a state-owned newspaper reported Monday in a rare acknowledgment from Iran that it's involved in cyber warfare.

The report followed an announcement in January that Iran had formed its first cyber police unit in an attempt by authorities to gain an edge in the digital world.

The Internet has also been a key outlet for Iran's opposition since the 2009 disputed presidential election. In addition, Iran has been trying to boost its web defenses after the Stuxnet computer worm made its way into computers involved with the country's controversial nuclear program.

Gen. Ali Fazli, acting commander of the Basij, was quoted by state-owned IRAN paper as saying Iran's cyber army is made up of university teachers, students and clerics. He said its attacks were a retaliation for similar attacks on Iran, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. There were no further details about the possible targets or the time of the attacks.

"As there are cyber attacks on us, so is our cyber army of the Basij, which includes university instructors and students, as well as clerics, attacking websites of the enemy," Fazli said. "Without resorting to the power of the Basij, we would not have been able to monitor and confront our enemies."

So far, the Revolutionary Guard — Iran's military-industrial powerhouse — was believed linked to the secretive "Cyber Army" that emerged to fight opposition websites and blogs after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in 2009.

In February, Guard chief, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, signaled that the force supports the cyber army, describing it as a "defensive, security, political and cultural need for all countries." Jafari claimed at the time that the Guard have been successful in cyber warfare.

Iran has been seeking to master the digital world as a crucial step to prepare for what it calls "soft war," which includes fighting against cyber attacks such as the Stuxnet computer worm that Iran said was aimed at sabotaging its uranium enrichment program.

Iranian officials claimed there were no setbacks in nuclear operations from Stuxnet but a November report by the U.N. nuclear agency said Iran's enrichment program was temporarily shut down in a possible link to the worm's infiltration at the Natanz nuclear facility.

The origins of Stuxnet are unclear. But it's considered a highly sophisticated malware designed to attack industrial systems and could have been aimed at the centrifuges used in uranium enrichment. Washington and others worry that Iran could eventually produce nuclear material for warheads, but Iran insists it only seeks to enrich uranium for energy and research.

The country has also been wary about Western cultural influences while trying to gain the upper hand in cyberspace against web-savvy opposition groups. Opposition groups use proxy servers and other tactics to stay ahead of authorities.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

quote:

Anonymous ‘OperationLeakS’ Exposes Bank of America Fraud Emails

At 12:00 midnight, Eastern Standard Time, the dawn of ‘Black Monday’ broke on America. Anonymous leaked the first in a series of email files aimed at proving Bank of America’s involvement in serious fraud. The access to the actual site where the following information was first posted by @OperationLeaKs, and where the larger size of the screen images are posted, is limited at times, but patients will prevail. Updates can be obtained through the Twitter account @OperationsLeakS . Many thanks to all those involved with Anonymous for shining a light on this information and bringing the facts to the public.

Links to information for how you may help Anonymous will be posted at the bottom.

quote:

http://www.dailykos.com/s(...)lton-VP-Caught-Lying

Pursuant to our ongoing investigation into the various intelligence contractors who worked in conjunction with the Department of Justice and other agencies to commit unethical and possibly illegal acts against Wikileaks, Glenn Greenwald, and Anonymous, I placed a call this morning to William Wansley, senior vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton. I asked Mr. Wansley about his relationship to incompetent federal contractor and former HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, who himself was fundamental to the conspiracy linking his company to Palantir, Hunton Williams, Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, Endgame Systems, and other entities, including Booz. He said he had no relationship with HBGary, which is odd insomuch as that this e-mail would seem to indicate otherwise.

Incidentally, I made the call from a one-party consent wiretapping state - good old Texas - pursuant to an investigation by Anonymous Holdings Company LLC/Anonymous Institute of the Rule of LAWL, which is to say it is entirely legal for me to record such a conversation and, say, upload it to the internet.

quote:

I forgot to mention. I had a meeting yesterday with Bill Wansley over at Booz yesterday. He said Mike McConnell is walking around like the cat that got the canary because their is something to happen or be released soon that is very significant in the cyber arena. Any knowledge?

Aaron

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 29, 2011, at 7:58 AM, Tom Conroy wrote:

> Aaron -
>
> Here is the note I sent to a senior at USCYBERCOM. I'll let you know if I hear back.
>
> As you can see, I took off your email address to protect you from immediate attention, though it would be easy to identify you by checking the speakers at the conference you reference. Let's see what they do with our offer.
>
> BTW, if they do research your identity by going to the online B-Sides agenda, what are they going to think of you when they see the title you've chosen? You have certainly chosen a topic that will generate lots of interest.
> Name: Aaron Barr
> Talk: Who Needs NSA when we have Social Media
>
> Tom
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Fwd: Ongoing Research
> Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 07:48:35 -0500
> From: Tom Conroy
> To: Dave
>
>
> Dave -
>
> This comes to me from someone I trust deeply and who has developed some
> extraordinarily valuable and effective capabilities for our former
> agency. He is fully SCI cleared. When I first heard of Aaron's work I
> figured you, or someone in your organization, would or should be
> extremely interested in learning about his work before he takes it public.
>
> When Aaron first mentioned his research, he told me that the "Anonymous"
> group has also been directly involved in Cyber attacks on MasterCard,
> and the governments and nations of Venezuela, Tunisia, and Egypt. That,
> it seems to me, would make them of high interest to the State Department
> and FBI as well as your organization. Please let me know if you would
> like to meet him.
>
> Tom
>
> P.S. I have also encouraged him to offer his research to ODNI and to
> others. In response to my encouragement he has reached out to Dawn
> Meyerriecks at ODNI as well as others whom I don't know.
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Ongoing Research
> Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 01:23:57 -0500
> From: Aaron
> To: Tom Conroy
>
>
>
> Tom,
>
> I have been researching the Anonymous group over the last few weeks in
> preparation for a social media talk I will be giving at the BSIDES
> conference in San Francisco on Feb. 14th. My focus is to show the power
> of social media analytics to derive intelligence and for potential
> exploitation. In the talk I will be focusing how effective it is to
> penetrate three organizations, one military (INSCOM), one Critical
> Infrastructure (Nuclear Power Plant in PA), and the Anonymous Group.
> All penetrations passed social media exploitation are inferred (i.e. I
> am not delivering any payload).
>
> I am surprised at the level of success I am having on the Anonymous
> group. I am able to tie IRC Alias to Facebook account to real people.
> I have laid out the organizations communications and operational
> structure. Determined the leadership of the organization (mostly - some
> more work here to go).
>
> I have to believe this data would be valuable to someone in government,
> and if so I would like to get this data in front of those that are
> interested prior to my talk, as I imagine I will get some press around
> the talk and the group will likely change certain TTP's afterwards.
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Aaron

quote:

Op maandag 14 maart 2011 15:52 schreef MangoTree het volgende:
Mar 14 - 2:36 PM:
Libyan state TV website has been hacked! http://ljbc.net/home.php (Digest Report)


Klopt dit?

quote:

How did this mystery girl become a hacker? Kayla says that’s down to her dad, a software engineer who won custody over her after a divorce that deemed him the “more ’stable’ parent.” They moved to the countryside where others her age were few and far between. The house was meanwhile littered with programming books on Linux kernel, Intel manuals and networking books. “I just started reading them,” she says. By the time Kayla was 14 she could fully program C and x86 assembly.

“My dad encouraged it at first,” she says. “He thought it was awesome I was so in to what he did.” Dad allegedly showed her how to find bugs in C source code and exploit them. It was all harmless and Kayla had only been using the Internet to talk to friends on MSN. But she began looking into hacking, and learned scripting languages like Perl, Python and PHP, figuring out how to use databases like MySQL and how to attack them using SQL injection.

quote:

http://pastebin.com/HhVT728R
[20:16] <josie> So was a 16 year old girl really involved in the HBGary deal??
[20:17] <PKE> lol
[20:17] <PKE> no
[20:17] <PKE> its a hoax
[20:17] <@esc> lol
[20:17] <@wew> no
[20:17] <@wew> xD
[20:17] <josie> meme right?!
[20:17] <PKE> but shh
[20:17] <@wew> hahha
[20:17] <PKE> or is it?
[20:17] <@wew> no no josie i am she : )
[20:17] * @esc grins
[20:17] <josie> ohhhh.. k.
[20:18] <&Topiary> wew: your missed half the lulz which was a shame
[20:18] <&Topiary> *you

quote:

Anonymous To Release Documents Showing ‘Virtual Armies’ Used To Identify Dissidents

Members of the international hacking group Anonymous claim to have documents and e-mails that put Virginia-based consulting company Booz Allen Hamilton at the center of accusations of developing software used against dissidents in countries including Azerbaijan.

Spokespeople at Booz Allen could not be reached for comment on the phone or via e-mail.

Anonymous adviser Barrett Brown claimed on the group’s Radio Payback show earlier today that the software had led to rebels in Azerbaijan, where Booz Allen has offices, getting arrested. The software creates “armies of fake people” through social media sites like Facebook, he said, which results in identifying dissidents with anonymous profiles, a method also known as astroturfing.

The information came to light through thousands of e-mails belonging to software security firm HBGary’s former CEO, Aaron Barr, who’s accounts were hacked by supporters of Anonymous after he claimed to have identified members of the group by (ironically) using fake profiles on social media.

Another member of the group known as Topiary says the information, which it promises to release within the next few hours, does not amount to “solid proof” but comes from informants who have worked closely with companies involved and can confirm that Booz Allen created the software, having allegedly won a contract with the U.S. Air Force. The hacker was also unsure if Booz Allen sold the software to the government of Azerbaijan or was using it on its behalf, but believes it may also have been used in Iraq.

“We know the U.S. Air Force and the Pentagon asked for it, we do know that Booz Allen and Aaron Barr [of HBGary] bid for the contract, we’ve got confirmation from Booz Allen themselves that the software exists,” he claims.

Booz Allen Hamilton is a technology and engineering consultancy that provides services primarily to the U.S. government in the defense, intelligence, and civil sectors, as well as corporations, institutions, and nonprofit organization, according to its web site.

“This entire thing is a result of leverage from the leaked HBGary emails,” says Topiary, “which was a result of leverage from an infiltrated Google Mail App of HBGary Federal, which was a result of leverage from Aaron Barr using the same password twice.”

quote:

Op donderdag 17 maart 2011 02:33 schreef truepositive het volgende:
Ik vroeg me eerder nog af waarom HBG zo belangrijk zou zijn, maar dat begint nu toch wel heel duidelijk te worden.

quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)-networks?CMP=twt_gu

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media using fake online personas designed to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with the US Central Command (Centcom) to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities at once.

The contract stipulates each persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 controllers must be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".

The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet.

Centcom's contract requires the provision of one "virtual private server" in the United States and eight appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world. It calls for "traffic mixing", blending the persona controllers' internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer "excellent cover and powerful deniability".

Once developed the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with a host of co-ordinated blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.

Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."

He said none of the interventions was in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

OEV is seen by senior US commanders as a vital counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation programme. In evidence to the US Senate's armed services committee last year, General David Petraeus, then commander of Centcom, described the operation as an effort to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard". He said the US military's objective was to be "first with the truth".

This month Petraeus's successor, General James Mattis, told the same committee that OEV "supports all activities associated with degrading the enemy narrative, including web engagement and web-based product distribution capabilities".

The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.

Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

Centcom confirmed that the $2.76m contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a newly formed corporation registered in Los Angeles. It would not disclose whether the multiple persona project is in operation or discuss any related contracts.

Nobody was available for comment at Ntrepid.

In his evidence to the Senate committee, Gen Mattis said: "OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda." Centcom was working with "our coalition partners" to develop new techniques and tactics that the US could use "to counter the adversary in the cyber domain".

According to a report by the inspector general of the US defence department in Iraq,, OEV was managed by the multinational forces rather than Centcom.

Asked whether any UK military personnel had been involved in OEV, Britain's Ministry of Defence said it could find "no evidence". The MoD refused to say whether it had been involved in the development of persona management programmes, however, saying: "We don't comment on cyber capability."

OEV was discussed last year at a gathering of electronic warfare specialists in Washington DC, where a senior Centcom officer told delegates that its purpose was to "communicate critical messages and to counter the propaganda of our adversaries".

Persona management by the US military would face legal challenges if it were turned against citizens of the US, where a number of people engaged in sock puppetry have faced prosecution.

Last year a New York lawyer who impersonated a scholar was sentenced to jail after being convicted of "criminal impersonation" and identity theft.

It is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene UK law. Legal experts say it could fall foul of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that "a person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person's prejudice". However, this would apply only if a website or social network could be shown to have suffered "prejudice" as a result.

quote:

http://imgur.com/7JJ9u
Oh, Hai there Adrian Lamo. You should pay more attention to what's on your computer screen while you're being interviewed!

quote:

http://www.tgdaily.com/se(...)operation-metal-gear
The cyber activist group known as Anonymous has launched a new campaign dubbed Operation Metal Gear.

According to an Anonymous press release circulated Wednesday evening, Metal Gear is primarily investigative in nature, as it seeks to track down an enigmatic, yet sophisticated military app designed to spawn multiple cyber personalities.

quote:

db_s_turbosnail RT @atopiary: There needs to be a mass celebration in #OpLibya - http://irc.lc/AnonOps/OpLibya | Please retweet, join the IRC, share the win! #Anonymous

quote:

troopy78 RT @KforKallisti: In case of Revolution, break glass http://t.co/PjNeH3j <----- Most excellent. Love it! #Anonymous #Anonymiss #AnonOps #Wikileaks

quote:

RRowleyTucson Another #Libya propaganda site down http://bit.ly/fQE9Pb Join the #anonymous fight with #OpNewBlood 3 minutes ago via web

quote:

alwayssilent RT @OfficialAnonOps: Do u want to join #Anonymous to Help Yemen ppl? | Mass Recruiting for #OpYemen NOW | http://anonops.net | #Yemen Plz RT

quote:

Ex-Anonymous Hackers Plan To Out Group’s Members

The nameless revolution that calls itself Anonymous may be about to have its own, online civil war.

A hacker startup calling itself Backtrace Security–made up of individuals who formerly counted themselves as part of Anonymous’ loose digital collective–announced plans Friday to publish identifying information on a handful of active members of Anonymous. According to one source within the Backtrace group, it will release the names and instant messaging logs of several Anonymous hackers who took part in attacks on PayPal, Mastercard, the security firm HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and the Marine officials responsible for the detainment of WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning.

That spokesman, who goes by the name Hubris and calls himself BackTrace’s “director of psychological operations,” tells me that the group (Backtrace calls itself a company, but Hubris says it’s still in the process of incorporating) aims to put an end to Anonymous “in its current form.” That form, Hubris argues, is a betrayal of its roots: Fun-loving, often destructive nihilism, not the political hacktivism Anonymous has focused on for much of the past year. “[Anonymous] has truly become moralfags,” says Hubris, using the term for hackers who focus on political and moral causes instead of amoral pranks. “Anonymous has never been about revolutions. It’s not about the betterment of mankind. It’s the Internet hate machine, or that’s what it’s supposed to be.”

Backtrace has posted a triple-encrypted torrent file labeled “insurance”–a tip of the hat to WikiLeaks–on its website, BacktraceSecurity.com, and says it’s posting hundreds of links to copies on filesharing sites. Early next week the group plans to release the keys to unlock that file, which contains the names, pseudonyms, chat logs and methods of the Anonymous hackers. It’s a tactic, Hubris says, designed to cause “maximum fear and distress” for the individuals Backtrace is outing.

Backtrace’s members largely haven’t been active in Anonymous for years–Hubris says he only participated in the anti-Scientology protests in 2009 and none of its more recent operations. But he and others with Backtrace gained access to Anonymous hackers’ information by infiltrating the group with false identities and other “social engineering” tricks that he says fooled members into revealing themselves. “The whole point of this is that we didn’t break any laws,” Hubris says. “All we did was hack peoples’ minds, because they’re fucking retarded.”



Backtrace hopes to turn those digital dark arts into a business. Hubris sent me a “mission statement” for the group that calls Backtrace “an information security provider” focusing on “psychological operations/social engineering and deep investigative research.”

“Backtrace Security assists our clients predict and neutralize emerging social threats,” the statement reads. “While other security companies specialize in hardware/software vulnerabilities and exploitation; Backtrace specializes in the human experience.”

And doesn’t the group fear the same retaliation from Anonymous that hit HBGary Federal, the last firm to claim it could identify Anonymous’ leaders? In that case, Anonymous spilled 71,000 of the company’s emails onto the Web, defaced the company’s website, and hijacked the Twitter account of Aaron Barr, its chief executive. After a variety of dirty tricks were revealed in the company’s hacked emails, including proposals to launch cyberattacks on WikiLeaks and threaten its supporters, Barr resigned from the company.

Hubris says he’s confident Backtrace won’t face the same fate. He calls the Anonymous hackers “script kiddies” and downplays their skills, arguing that the HBGary hack was based merely on the company’s reusing passwords and falling victim to social engineering. ”If you do enough damage to someone, you don’t have to fear retaliation.” says Hubris. “Once the world sees who these kids are and what they stand for, no one will follow them.”

Hubris hopes to launch Backtrace as a startup while also calling attention to what he sees as Anonymous’ hypocrisy. “They say they fight for free speech, but then they use fear and intimidation, like Scientology or Fox News,” he says. “That’s not freeodm of speech, and we won’t put up with that crap.”

And how would Hubris prefer Anonymous spend its time? “Making fun of stupid people on the Internet. Laughing at natural disasters. Like back to the good old days,” he says. “Not trying to overthrow governments.”

quote:

http://techland.time.com/(...)orations-vulnerable/

Thursday, the RSA Security division of EMC Corporation reported a security breach, potentially leaving many corporations and governments vulnerable who rely on its products.

In an open letter, the company revealed that the “advanced persistent threat” had managed to pull information from the company. According to CNET, these types of attacks often target source code and useful information. The hacker often knows some knowledge of the company's inner processes.

It is not known where the threat originated from, and the company has refused to comment on the situation beyond an open letter posted yesterday.

RSA sells security measures that go beyond the multi-character password: users have to carry around a device that has a number. The numbers change at set intervals, and users type it in along with a password.

Read more: http://techland.time.com/(...)rable/#ixzz1GzeCVUbc

quote:

# 41448_528456493_4619_q_normal albaheth4 RT @r_yemen: #yemen Ministry of human rights website hacked http://bit.ly/fBkT59 #anonymous #opyemen 1 minute ago via TweetDeck

quote:

HACKED BY (Mr.MoHaMeD & هتلر الخراز & ولد صنعاء & يمنيه حره )

c5y@hotmail.com

quote:

Inside Anonymous’ Secret War Room

John Cook and Adrian Chen — Inside Anonymous' Secret War RoomDissident members of the internet hacktivist group Anonymous, tired of what they call the mob's "unpatriotic" ways, have provided law enforcement with chat logs of the group's leadership planning crimes, as well as what they say are key members' identities. They also gave them to us.

The chat logs, which cover several days in February immediately after the group hacked into internet security firm HBGary's e-mail accounts, offer a fascinating look inside the hivemind's organization and culture.

quote:

Gens_Anon I see your sock puppetry. Prepare yourselves for #OpMuppet. All your tweets are belong to us. Of course. #anonops #anonymous

quote:

carrycandy RT @laughingliberal: #Moonwalker MEETUP POINT: State St. Statue, Madison, WI ~ 11 AM Google Arial View: http://tinyurl.com/45r4psf #Anonymous Wants You! #WeAreWI about 1 hour ago via web

quote:

carrycandy RT @P1edPiper: Saturday in #Madison! Mass Mooning of the capitol! Details- http://twitpic.com/4a8b3o #anonymous #moonwalker #wiunion #weareWI about 1 hour ago via web

quote:

http://tweakers.net/nieuw(...)ciale-netwerken.html

Het Amerikaanse leger heeft de firma Ntrepid gecontracteerd voor de bouw van software om sociale media te manipuleren. Met de 'Online Persona Management Service' zou een soldaat tien niet-bestaande karakters kunnen aansturen.

Dat meldt The Guardian op basis van informatie uit een aanbesteding van de Amerikaanse luchtmacht. In de contractvoorwaarden met softwarebouwer Ntrepid is te lezen dat de via de Online Persona Management Service aangestuurde valse personages overtuigend moeten overkomen, inclusief 'kloppende' achtergrondinformatie en locatiegegevens. Het contract zou een waarde van 2,8 miljoen dollar hebben.

De 'sokpoppen', die ontraceerbaar zouden zijn door het gebruik van vpn's en regelmatig veranderende ip-adressen, moeten actief zijn op sociale-netwerkdiensten en weblogs. Het leger zou één server in de VS willen stallen, terwijl acht servers 'virtueel' in het buitenland zouden staan. Doel van de persona-software zou het manipuleren van websites en sociale netwerken in het buitenland zijn, maar opmerkelijk genoeg zouden de valse identiteiten nooit in het Engels mogen communiceren, omdat dit in strijd zou zijn met de wet.

Volgens het Amerikaanse leger vormt de software om met niet-bestaande personages sociale netwerken te manipuleren een belangrijk wapen in de strijd tegen het terrorisme en het tegengaan van vijandelijke propaganda-operaties. Het leger heeft bevestigd dat het een contract aan de firma Ntrepid in 2010 heeft verstrekt, maar wil niet ingaan op de vraag of de software al gebruikt wordt.

De software voor de manipulatie zou deel uitmaken van een grootschaliger programma van het Amerikaanse leger. Het leger zou in samenwerking met andere landen onder de naam Operation Earnest Voice op Iraakse websites actief zijn geweest in de hoop zo de rekrutering van opstandelingen tegen te gaan. Het programma zou inmiddels een budget hebben van 200 miljoen dollar.

Inmiddels heeft Anonymous op zijn website gereageerd op het programma dat zij tot Operation Metal Gear hebben gedoopt. De los-vaste actiegroep heeft gegevens gepubliceerd over de vermoedelijke opdrachtgevers van het project, in de hoop zo meer informatie over de software in te zamelen.

quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/20/google-gmail

Google has accused the Chinese government of hacking into its popular Gmail email system. The move follows extensive attempts by the Chinese authorities to crack down on the "jasmine revolution" – an online dissident movement inspired by events in the Middle East.

According to the search giant, Chinese customers and advertisers have increasingly been complaining about their Gmail service in the past month. Attempts by users to send messages, mark messages as unread and use other services have generated problems for Gmail customers.

In the wake of the catastrophic earthquake in Japan, Google set up an application to help people find relatives and friends lost in the disaster. This service too seems to have been compromised.

"Relating to Google there is no issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail," said a Google spokesman. China's embassy in Washington was not immediately available for comment.

The announcement follows a blog posting from Google on 11 March in which the firm said it had "noticed some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users. We believe activists may have been a specific target." The posting said the attacks were targeting a vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. The two firms have been working to address the issue. At the time, Google declined to elaborate on which activists had been targeted or where the attacks had been coming from.

Last January Google said it had been the victim of highly sophisticated attacks originating from China. At first the firm thought its intellectual property was the target. The company's investigations found at least 20 other internet , financial, technology, media and chemical companies had been similarly targeted. Google said it had uncovered evidence that the primary goal of the attacks was the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

The search firm is not commenting further on this latest attack, but technology experts said it seemed to show an increasingly high degree of sophistication. "In the wake of what is happening in the Middle East I don't think China wants to be seen making heavy-handed attacks on the internet, that would draw too much attention," said one internet executive who wished to remain anonymous. He said making it look like a fault in Google's system was extremely difficult to do and the fact that these attacks appear to come and go makes the attack look "semi-industrial and very, very sophisticated."

In February dozens of political activists were arrested in China after an anonymous call online for people to start a jasmine revolution. The crackdown came as China's president Hu Jintao called for tighter internet controls to help prevent social unrest. Much of the unrest in the Middle East has gone unreported in China, where the internet is already heavily censored. Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube are all blocked in China.

Google first opened for business in China in 2005. But after announcing that it had been hacked in January last year the company said it was no longer prepared to censor its search results and moved its operations to Hong Kong.

"We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, said at the time.

According to WikiLeaks cables, China's political elite have a love hate relationship with the internet. On the one hand the authorities want the information they can obtain via the web and on the other they are extremely concerned by the threat they perceive it presents to their authority. The cables suggest China has successfully hacked the US and other governments as well as private enterprises.

The leaked cables also chronicle the pressure put on Google to comply with Chinese censorship. As well as removing references to the Dalai Lama and to 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre, Google was asked to censor images of government facilities displayed on the Google Earth mapping service.

Last month the Chinese authorities launched Panguso, a search engine joint venture between Xinhua news agency and the state-owned telecoms giant China Mobile. The site appears to be even more heavily censored than Baidu, the largest search firm in China. Searches on Panguso reportedly produced no results for Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.

quote:

http://www.volkskrant.nl/(...)-beschuldiging.dhtml

PEKING - China heeft dinsdag kwaad gereageerd op de beschuldiging van internetbedrijf Google, dat de autoriteiten problemen veroorzaken met maildienst Gmail. 'Dit is een onacceptabele beschuldiging', aldus een woordvoerster van het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken.

Internetgebruikers in China klagen al weken over moeilijkheden met Gmail. Google zei maandag dat de problemen niet worden veroorzaakt door een technisch probleem bij het bedrijf. 'Dit is een blokkade van de overheid, die zo gemaakt is dat het lijkt dat het probleem bij Gmail ligt', aldus Google.

quote:

Glider-inverse_normal h4x0r3d RT @Peaceful_Anon: BREAKING!! #Anonymous has taken down 26 Iranian websites related to the prison system http://prisons.ir/ 26 domains http://bit.ly/fKFBUU

quote:

Backtrace fails to intimidate Anonymous

A team of "dissidents" claiming to be former members of Anonymous have apparently failed in their rather transparent efforts to intimidate the cyber activist group.

The latest initiative to discredit Anonymous was conducted by (at least) two so-called representatives of Backtrace Security, who threatened to post "identifying information" on key "centralized" personnel within the enigmatic organization.



Backtrace fails to intimidate Anonymous"[Anonymous] has truly become moralfags. Anonymous has never been about revolutions," Hubris, BackTrace's so-called director of psychological operations, proclaimed to Forbes on Friday.

"It's not about the betterment of mankind. It's the Internet hate machine, or that's what it's supposed to be."

BackTrace rep A5h3r4 expressed similar sentiments to Gawker before handing over what he considered to be incriminating evidence against Anonymous later that day.

"The bastards are becoming arrogant sociopaths. Acting first, not thinking of the consequences. They're recruiting children. I am a pretty far left person - I believe in privacy and free expression, but Anonymous is a vigilante group now," A5h3r4 told the publication.

"A mob without conscience. And I worry they will radicalize even more. In short, I believe they're on their way to becoming a genuine threat."

However, Anonymous member Barrett Brown, who describes himself as a spokesperson for the decentralized group, said the "security breach" which yielded the purported logs was actually detected quite a long time ago.

"We're aware of the security breach as other logs from 'HQ' have been posted before. I should note that HQ is not really HQ anyway - you will [see] the actual coordination of performed hacks [does] not appear in those logs.

"I can [also] tell you those who were responsible for pulling off HBGary no longer use that room due not only to this security breach, but other factors as well."

Meanwhile, p2pnet's Jon Newton scoffed at Backtrace for attempting to discredit Anonymous and criticized Gawker for facilitating the feeble scheme.

"It's the second time. Ask Aaron Barr and Greg Hoglund of HBGary infamy. But Gawker is just as wrong now as Barr and Hoglund were then. Not that it'll stop vested interests which desperately want there to be names so people can be found, arrested and jailed, from grasping at this latest straw.

"[Yes], Gawker may be well pleased with itself, and Forbes for a 'scoop,' and it isn't beyond the realms of possibility the 'exposure' isn't much more than a way to launch a new business to profit off Anonymous. Whichever and whatever, Anonymous is now firmly established as a hard-edged presence online and, off, and it isn't going away."

quote:

HBGary chief tech officer: ‘Anonymous’ members are criminals and pseudo-journalist

The chief technology officer of the data security firm HBGary described the collective of hacktivists named 'Anonymous' as a small group of criminal hackers who "use the media as a tool."

"They are not at all what people think they are," HBGary CTO Greg Hoglund told Robert Lemos of CSO Online. "There aren't very many, first of all. There are not thousands, they are not a legion. That is all just stuff they say to make people fearful or intimidate."

"They have a whole propaganda wing," he continued. "So lets get this straight: A lot of the people in Anonymous are pseudo-journalists, they write the news."

The website of Washington DC-based HBGary Federal was defaced by 'Anonymous' in February after former CEO Aaron Barr told the Financial Times that he'd identified the "core leaders" of the group and had information that could lead to their arrest.

'Anonymous' also gained access to more than 44,000 company emails and released them to the public in a 4.71 gigabyte Torrent file. The emails would later reveal the firm was working on a plan to attack and discredit progressive critics of the US Chamber of Commerce, and had worked on ideas to take down secrets outlet WikiLeaks on behalf of Bank of America.

Hoglund said the company had been focused almost entirely on cyber attacks originating in China and was completely blindsided when the 'Anonymous' attack occurred.

Shortly after the cyber attack, Barr resigned from his position to focus on taking care of his family and rebuilding his reputation.

Although members of 'Anonymous' claim they "are not a group" and that they do "not have leaders," according to Hoglund there are about a dozen criminal hackers "at the center" of Anonymous.

"'Anonymous' is a group that hacks criminally into systems, and we are talking about probably over five corporations that I know of right now in the United States that are being actively targeted by them," he said. "When they get access, they are going to steal the data off those system, email, files off the file system, they are going to do everything they can, and then they are going to leak it and manipulate it and create stories about it."

The group has targeted Sarah Palin, PayPal, Bank of America, the Church of Scientology, MasterCard, the Westboro Baptist Church and even the governments of Egypt, Tunisia, Zimbabwe and Libya.

Recently, 'Anonymous' called for a campaign of civil disobedience against the private central banking system that underpins all the world's industrial economies.

quote:

Backtrace Security Exposed

quote:

backtracesecurity.com .net and .org

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Rubenstein, John d72xy57g328@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com

John Rubenstein is 'Housespider' in Jennifer Emick's fail skype troll group aka The Treehouse.
The Treehouse has been suspected for months as being behind the anonops doxing and other doxing of anons.

quote:

After two years of making accusations, they failed to provide one shred of evidence and
were counter-trolled hard.

quote:

We are collating dox on Drifter and other backtrace failtards.
More dox will be forthcoming.

quote:

Unfortunately for Backtrace Securities we know that many of these entries are incorrect. There are a couple explanations, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as to how they could be certain enough in their facts to publish something this inaccurate:

quote:

De schaduwzijde van internet

Weer knaagt iemand aan het idee dat internet en snelle communicatie democratisering bevorderen. “Just let these people know what blogging and connectivity is and all of a sudden they will ask for more democracy“, zoals Evgeny Morozov, een wetenschapper uit Wit-Rusland verbonden aan het Program on Liberation Technology van de Stanford Universiteit, in een heerlijk geïllustreerde lezing neerbuigend poneert. “Cyber-utopians“, noemt hij de stam die zo denkt.

Niet alleen zijn samenlevingen iets ingewikkelder, internet biedt ook regeringen mooie mogelijkheden een bevolking te controleren. Twitter accounts zijn openbaar dus elke oproep tot protest is te volgen. In Thailand kan het publiek websites die geen respect tonen voor het koningshuis bij een speciale site aangeven waarop ze onmiddellijk worden gesloten. In Iran gebruiken de autoriteiten het internet om via crowdsourcing eerder gefotografeerde demonstranten te identificeren.

Ofwel, we verwarren bedoeld gebruik van technologie met het werkelijke gebruik. Ook aan de zijde van de burger/consument moeten we ons niet in de mens vergissen. Jongeren zijn niet per definitie allemaal voor revolutie en democratie. Tegenover de enkeling die een rapport van Human Rights Watch zullen downloaden staan volksstammen die liever online porno bekijken. Ook jongeren Ofwel, democratisering heeft met heel veel politieke, culturele, sociale en economische factoren te maken.

Morozov is niet de eerste die de rol van internet in een ander daglicht zet. In een veel besproken (ook op deze site) artikel in The New Yorker in oktober 2010 benadrukte Malcolm Gladwell de maatschappelijk omstandigheden die nodig zijn voor, bijvoorbeeld, een revolutie, zoals solidariteit en doorzettingsvermogen.

Morozov gaat echter nog een stap verder met het aanstippen hoe de autoriteiten internet juist voor het tegenovergestelde doel kunnen gebruiken: Big Brother is watching you, zogezegd. De titel van Morozov’s eerder dit jaar verschenen boek: The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

RSA Animate - The Internet in Society, Empowering or Censoring Citizens

quote:

TOR Made for USG Open Source Spying Says Maker

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:57:39 -0400
From: Michael Reed <reed[at]inet.org>
To: tor-talk[at]lists.torproject.org
Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology

On 03/22/2011 12:08 PM, Watson Ladd wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Joe Btfsplk<joebtfsplk[at]gmx.com> wrote:
>> Why would any govt create something their enemies can easily use against
>> them, then continue funding it once they know it helps the enemy, if a govt
>> has absolutely no control over it? It's that simple. It would seem a very
>> bad idea. Stop looking at it from a conspiracy standpoint& consider it as
>> a common sense question.
> Because it helps the government as well. An anonymity network that
> only the US government uses is fairly useless. One that everyone uses
> is much more useful, and if your enemies use it as well that's very
> good, because then they can't cut off access without undoing their own
> work.

BINGO, we have a winner! The original *QUESTION* posed that led to the
invention of Onion Routing was, "Can we build a system that allows for
bi-directional communications over the Internet where the source and
destination cannot be determined by a mid-point?" The *PURPOSE* was for
DoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, covering
of forward deployed assets, whatever). Not helping dissidents in
repressive countries. Not assisting criminals in covering their
electronic tracks. Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAA
prosecution. Not giving a 10 year old a way to bypass an anti-porn
filter. Of course, we knew those would be other unavoidable uses for
the technology, but that was immaterial to the problem at hand we were
trying to solve (and if those uses were going to give us more cover
traffic to better hide what we wanted to use the network for, all the
better...I once told a flag officer that much to his chagrin). I should
know, I was the recipient of that question from David, and Paul was
brought into the mix a few days later after I had sketched out a basic
(flawed) design for the original Onion Routing.

The short answer to your question of "Why would the government do this?"
is because it is in the best interests of some parts of the government
to have this capability... Now enough of the conspiracy theories...

-Michael
_________________

24 March 2011

A sends:

From: A
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:41:41 +0000
Subject: Cryptome Fwd: Re: Fwd: The onion TOR network
To: cryptome[at]earthlink.net

Following the publication of the email extract on TOR, I asked
the EFF what they made of it. Here it is. You can of course publish it.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Rebecca Jeschke <rebecca[at]eff.org>
Date: 23 March 2011 21:29
Subject: Fwd: Re: Fwd: The onion TOR network
To: A

Hi A. This is from Senior Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. Thanks -- Rebecca

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: Re: Fwd: The onion TOR network
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:15:24 -0700
From: Seth David Schoen <schoen[at]eff.org>
To: Rebecca Jeschke <rebecca[at]eff.org>
CC: chris <chris[at]eff.org>, Peter Eckersley <pde[at]eff.org>,
Seth Schoen <schoen[at]eff.org>

Rebecca Jeschke writes:

any thoughts on this?

It's totally true that the military people who invented Tor were
thinking about how to create a system that would protect military
communications. The current iteration of that is described at

https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en#military

right on the Tor home page.

However, the Tor developers also became clear early on that the
system wouldn't protect military communications well unless it had
a very diverse set of users. Elsewhere in that same e-mail
discussion, Mike Perry (a current Tor developer) alludes to this:

https://lists.torproject.(...)11-March/019898.html

In fact, the best known way we have right now to improve anonymity
is to support more users, and more *types* of users. See:

http://www.freehaven.net/doc/wupss04/usability.pdf
http://freehaven.net/~arma/slides-weis06.pdf

The first link is to a paper called "Anonymity Loves Company", which
explains the issue this way:

No organization can build this infrastructure for its own sole use.
If a single corporation or government agency were to build a private
network to protect its operations, any connections entering or
leaving that network would be obviously linkable to the controlling
organization. The members and operations of that agency would be
easier, not harder, to distinguish.

Thus, to provide anonymity to any of its users, the network must
accept traffic from external users, so the various user groups can
blend together.

You can read the entire (ongoing) discussion about government funding
for Tor development via

https://lists.torproject.(...)11-March/thread.html

(search for "[tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology").

--

Seth Schoen
Senior Staff Technologist schoen[at]eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation https://www.eff.org/
454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 +1 415 436 9333 x107

Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology
From: A3
To: John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com>
Cc: A2, cypherpunks[at]al-qaeda.net

On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 17:43 -0400, John Young wrote:
> Fucking amazing admission. No conspiracy theory needed.

Wasn't this already very common knowledge?

Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Iran cracks down on web dissident technology
To: A3, A2, cypherpunks[at]al-qaeda.net
From: John Young <jya[at]pipeline.com>

That's what the Eff-folks advocating TOR are saying. And point to a
file on Torproject.org. See:

http://cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm

However, this appears to be a giant evasion perhaps a subterfuge,
even reminds of what Big Boys say when customers learn they are
siphoning customer data. Read the privacy policy the lawyer-advised
apologists bark, and upon reading the privacy policy see that it only
emphasizes the subterfuge. Openly admitting siphoning is supposed
to make it okay because everyone does it under cover of lockstep
privacy policy. Reject that.

If the Tor operators really know what they are being used for, then
they should admit to being agents of the USG, as Michael Reed had
the guts to do.

Claiming this US spying role for Tor is well known is a crock of slop,
but then spies lie all the time and care not a whit that they peddle
shit for eaters of it. If you believe them and like what they do then
don't shilly-shally, just do what Michael Reed did but others are
too ashamed to do after having been duped since 1996.

If Reed's precedent for honesty is followed, there will be an
admission that the Internet was invented for spying by its inventor.
And then cryptography and other comsec tools. And then cellphones
and the like. Hold on now, this is getting out of hand, the apologists
will bellow, everybody has always known that there is no privacy
in digital world.

Actually, no, they did not. And those who knew keep their Janusian
mouths writhing to reap the rewards of deception. Now that is a truth
everyone knows. No conspiracy theory needed.