Anonops #17: Lood en dolfijnen?

Its Over 9000!!! [Original Video and Audio]

LOLPRAH: OVER 9000 PENISES!

Tom Cruise Scientology Video - ( Original UNCUT )

Message to Scientology

Operation Payback #Anonymous Message RE: ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, Internet Censorship & Copyright

twitter:

BarrettBrownLOL twitterde op maandag 03-09-2012 om 02:16:10 And all this because man put in motion systems that returned to enslave him #ProjectPM reageer retweet

Anonymous Hacks Westboro Baptist Church Website LIVE

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http://www.thinq.co.uk/20(...)persecute-anonymous/
NATO leaders have been warned that WikiLeaks-loving 'hacktivist' collective Anonymous could pose a threat to member states' security, following recent attacks on the US Chamber of Commerce and defence contractor HBGary - and promise to 'persecute' its members.

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From a single hashtag, a protest circled the world

(Reuters) - It all started innocuously enough with a July 13 blog post urging people to #OccupyWallStreet, as though such a thing (Twitter hashtag and all) were possible.

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Gabriella Coleman Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication

Trained as an anthropologist, Gabriella (Biella) Coleman examines the ethics of online collaboration/institutions as well as the role of the law and digital media in sustaining various forms of political activism. Between 2001-2003 she conducted ethnographic research on computer hackers primarily in San Francisco, the Netherlands, as well as those hackers who work on the largest free software project, Debian. Her first book, "Coding Freedom: The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking" is forthcoming with Princeton University Press and she is currently working on a new book on Anonymous and digital activism. She is the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, and awards, including ones from the National Science Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the Institute for Advanced Study.

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Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action

^{Gabriella Coleman, April 6 2011}

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Our Weirdness Is Free

The logic of Anonymous—online army, agent of chaos, and seeker of justice.

_{by Gabriella Coleman, [01.13.2012]}

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Coding Fredom [PDF]

The Aesthetics and the Ethics of Hacking

^{Gabriella Coleman 2013}

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Anonymous And The War Over The Internet

This article is the first in a two-part series tracing the development of the amorphous online community known as Anonymous, pranksters who have become a force in global affairs.

^{The Huffington Post, Saki Knafo. Posted: 1/30/12 12:20 PM ET | Updated: 2/1/12 07:36 PM ET}

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Anonymous Shuts Down Japanese Airport Website After "The Cove" Actor Is Arrested

Members of the Anonymous hacker collective have launched DDoS attacks on the website of the Narita airport in Tokyo to protest the "allegedly" illegal arrest of Ric O'Barry, the main star of "The Cove."


Besides being one of the men that helped train the dolphins used on the set of the famous "Flipper" TV show, Ric O'Barry's main claim to fame is his appearance in Oscar-winning "The Cove" documentary, which depicts the horrible dolphin slaughter that takes place annually in the town of Taiji, Japan.


Ric O'Barry denied entry to Japan, arrested afterwards

According to the Dolphin Project, a non-profit charitable organization Ric's part of, the TV actor was detained by Japanese authorities on January 18, when he arrived at Tokyo's Narita airport.

Authorities refused Ric the right to enter the country, and after declining to leave, they placed him under arrest at a deportees facility, where he remains even now.

"O’Barry was repeatedly interrogated and placed in a deportees’ facility, similar to a jail, where he has been held behind bars ever since," a statement from the Dolphin Project reads. "He has not received proper nourishment, his only food coming from the airport’s 7 Eleven convenience store, and sleep has been minimal at best."

This is not O'Barry's first time in a Japanese prison, having spent another night in jail last August, after he didn't have his passport on him. In that case, Japanese police were not willing to search his car for his passport, choosing to keep him for a night in jail before eventually finding his passport and setting him free.

O'Barry has stated many times that, after "The Cove" documentary was released, he has been subject to harassment from Japanese authorities, who have done their best to deter him from returning to the country.


Anonymous comes to the rescue

After the incident was leaked to the press, members of the Anonymous hacker group came to Ric's aid and launched DDoS attacks on the Narita airport's website. First attacks were launched at around 09:00 PM on Friday, January 22, and the website was restored the following day at 01:00 AM.

This is not the first time Anonymous attacked the Narita airport website, having previously taken it down in October 2015.

Anonymous has a long-lasting feud with Japanese authorities, especially for their habit of hunting and killing endangered specials of whales and dolphins. Softpedia has written many times on Anonymous' #OpWhales and #OpKillingBay campaigns in the past.

Bron: news.softpedia.com

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Op maandag 25 januari 2016 18:07 schreef Metalfrost het volgende:
Typo in de OP (en waarschijnlijk alle OPs in de reeks)

[..]

'verspreid' is het voltooid deelwoord van 'verspreiden', de letter 'e' komt niet voor als hoofdletter in het hulpmiddel TaXiKoFSCHiP, dus met een 'd' op het eind.

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Klimaatbewuste hackers beweren NASA in de tang te hebben

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Zelfs voor een filmscript klinkt het ongeloofwaardig: een groep anonieme hackers heeft twee jaar lang gevoelige informatie van de Amerikaanse ruimteorganisatie NASA gestolen en dreigt die openbaar te maken en een kostbaar onbemand vliegtuig te laten crashen - tenzij de NASA volledige openheid geeft over het manipuleren van het klimaat door het kunstmatig fabriceren van regen.


Toch is dat precies wat hackersgroep AnonSec via sociale media beweert. De groep zou sinds 2013 via in het geniep gekochte inloggegevens de systemen van NASA zijn binnengedrongen. Jarenlang hebben de hackers informatie buitgemaakt, zoals de namen en adressen van 2.400 medewerkers, gegevens van meer dan tweeduizend NASA-vluchten en zeshonderd video's van missies. Die informatie wil AnonSec nu openbaar maken als NASA niet binnen een maand aan de eisen voldoet.

Bron: www.volkskrant.nl

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Debunked: AnonSec's NASA Hack, Global Hawk Hijack, Evidence of Chemtrails [Public Domain Data]

This text file (a pruned version of which is attached to this post) and data release has been used by many groups that promote the "chemtrails" theory as "proof" that chemtrails are real, and that there's some kind of secret geoengineering program going on.

Here's the facts behind these claims.

Bron: www.metabunk.org

Anonymous Message to the 1's Afraid

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

twitter:

YourAnonCentral twitterde op vrijdag 05-02-2016 om 04:26:33 Anonymous Operation all can participate in. #OpGlasgowKiss #TurnAwayReturnOfKings #ReturnOfKings #RooshV https://t.co/dxIO4PzrYF reageer retweet

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Return of Kings rallies cancelled over safety concerns - British Columbia - CBC News

A controversial U.S. blogger who has published material suggesting rape inside a private home should be legal says he has cancelled rallies planned across the globe this weekend over safety concerns.

"I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend on Feb. 6, especially since most of the meetups cannot be made private in time," Roosh V wrote on his blog on Wednesday.

"While I can't stop men who want to continue meeting in private groups, there will be no official Return Of Kings meet-ups."

He apologized to his supporters and a listing of locations has been removed from the website.

"I'm moving to save as many of these meet-ups as I can before Saturday so that men can still meet in private away from a loud, obnoxious, dishonest, and potentially violent mob," he added.

The blog, founded by Daryush (Roosh V) Valizadeh in 2012, describes itself as a blog for heterosexual, "masculine" men.

It preaches something called "neomasculinity," which supports traditional gender roles — including the beliefs that a woman's value "significantly depends on her fertility and beauty," and that the patriarchy is "a superior societal system that catered to the innate abilities of the sexes."

The rallies, which were planned in several Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Calgary and Toronto, were denounced by several mayors.

.@ReturnofKings Your pro-rape, misogynistic, homophobic garbage is not welcome in Ottawa​ ​#its2016 ​​#TurnAwayReturnOfKings

What he said. Goes double for Calgary. Thanks for your leadership on this, Jim. https://t.co/xyD7T1o1wA

No place for intolerance, hatred & misogyny in Toronto. I'm with you @nenshi @jimwatsonottawa #TurnAwayReturnofKings https://t.co/ys8FWjN8js

Hatred and misogyny have absolutely no place in Vancouver or anywhere else in this world #TurnAwayReturnOfKings https://t.co/Xlbia4YjfH

Not acceptable in #Edmonton. Nor, I suspect, anywhere in this country in this day and age. #TurnAwayReturnOfKings https://t.co/wnV6RcCkEe

The hashtag #turnawayreturnofkings was trending in Canada on Tuesday, with some suggesting online that they wanted to show up at the planned rallies with protests.

©2016 CBC/Radio-Canada. All rights reserved
Bron: www.cbc.ca

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Not so cool now! Pro-rape pick-up artist pictured in a sweat-stained T-shirt at the door of his mother's home (where he lives in the BASEMENT!)

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This is the man at the center of a worldwide storm after advocating legalizing rape on private property - in a sweat-stained T-shirt at the door of his mother's house.

Daryush 'Roosh' Valizadeh, 36, the self-proclaimed 'King of Masculinity' called police after receiving death threats from around the world and canceled a series of 'tribal meetings' in 45 countries set for this weekend.

Valizadeh, who is at the center of public protests at home and in Canada, Australia and the UK, is on record as advocating women be banned from voting, describing a woman's value as dependent on her 'fertility and beauty', and stating that women with eating disorders make the best girlfriends.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

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Wahrheit unerwünscht: Merkel-Regime sperrt Facebookseite von Anonymous

Nachdem Anonymous entlarvende Dokumente von Innenministerium, Polizei und BKA und leakte, sperrten Behörden die Facebookseite der Aktivisten. Justizminister Heiko „Orwell“ Maas hat versprochen, Facebook jetzt mit Denunzianten zu durchseuchen, um jeglicher Kritik am Establishment eine weitere Plattform zu entziehen. Und er hat Wort gehalten. Mit Anetta Kahane engagierte er seit neuesten eine ehemalige Mitarbeiterin der DDR-Staatssicherheit. Im Auftrag von Merkel hat die Ex-Stasi-Agentin Kahane nun über 100 Blockwarte angeheuert, die ab sofort, unter dem Deckmantel gegen Hassbeiträge vorgehen zu wollen, unliebsame Kommentare und Beiträge auf Facebook zensieren. Was ein „Hasskommentar“ oder ein „Hassbeitrag“ ist, wird allerdings nicht durch ein Gesetz definiert, sondern nach freien Ermessen festgelegt, von Maas und seinen willigen Zensur-Schergen. Genau auf diese hat man nun die deutschsprachige Seite Anonymous, mit 1,8 Millionen Abonnenten, mundtot gemacht. Was war passiert?

Bron: www.compact-online.de

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Leaked police files contain guarantees disciplinary records will be kept secret | US news | The Guardian

Guardian analysis of dozens of contracts revealed by hackers shows more than a third allow or require destruction of civilian complaint records

Contracts between police and city authorities, leaked after hackers breached the website of the country’s biggest law enforcement union, contain guarantees that disciplinary records and complaints made against officers are kept secret or even destroyed.

A Guardian analysis of dozens of contracts obtained from the servers of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) found that more than a third featured clauses allowing – and often mandating – the destruction of records of civilian complaints, departmental investigations, or disciplinary actions after a negotiated period of time.

The review also found that 30% of the 67 leaked police contracts, which were struck between cities and police unions, included provisions barring public access to records of past civilian complaints, departmental investigations, and disciplinary actions.

Samuel Walker, a professor in criminology at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, said there was “no justification” for the cleansing of officers’ records, which could contain details of their use of force against civilians.

“The public has a right to know,” Walker said. “If there was a controversial beating, we ought to know what action was actually taken. Was it a reprimand? A suspension?”

Walker said that while an officer’s whole personnel file should not be readily available to the public outside of court proceedings, records of disciplinary action should be.

The leaked contracts became publicly accessible last week, when hackers breached the Fraternal Order of Police’s website and put around 2.5GB worth of its files online. These provide a glimpse into the influence of police unions, which Black Lives Matter activists have accused of impeding misconduct investigations, particularly after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland in April.

Related: Hackers post private files of America's biggest police union

The documents date back almost two decades and include agreements from unions such as the Policemen’s Benevolent Association and the International Brotherhood of Police Officers. Many contain numerous recurring clauses that slow down misconduct investigations, prevent public access to complaints and disciplinary records, and enable the destruction of complaints and disciplinary records after a negotiated period of time.

At least as recently as 2007, if an officer in Independence, Missouri, was “involved in a shooting incident”, that officer could not be interrogated for at least 12 hours nor be “treated a suspect” unless local authorities thought there was reasonable suspicion or probable cause that a crime had been committed. This protocol was mandated in the local police union’s contract in a clause specifically designed for “officer-involved shooting investigations”.

In recent years, Independence has made headlines for cases of police brutality and police shootings.

From small towns in Nebraska and New Jersey to major cities like Cincinnati, Ohio and Jacksonville, Florida, “expungement” clauses allowed for records of formal investigations and written reprimands to be “purged” after a few years or, in some cases, months.

Chuck Canterbury, the FOP president, said that such contract provisions were designed to protect the due process rights of police officers. “Disciplinary files are removed because they affect career advancement,” said Canterbury. “People make mistakes and if they learn from them, they should be removed. This is standard HR practice.”

Other deals contained provisions focused on blocking public access to records that were preserved. A 2006-2008 contract from Burlington Township, NJ, for example, required the police department’s Investigations Commander to keep formal complaints and internal investigation documents “in a locked file”, barring access to all except the department’s investigations commander and chief law
enforcement officer.

Similarly, in Ralston, Nebraska, the 2009-2012 FOP contract created a “Police Officers’ Bill of Rights”, which said: “Unless agreed to by the Officer, the City shall not divulge the reason for any disciplinary action that is not appealed to the Civil Service Commission.” The city was also bound to “make every reasonable effort”
to prevent a photograph of the officer from being released to the public or news media.

Among five other FOP contracts, where such confidentiality clauses could not be inserted because of state open records laws, several included language seemingly designed to help officers beat public records requests.

One 2009-2011 FOP contract from Hamilton County, Nebraska, initiates a mandatory five-step response to public records requests, in which the department would ascertain the identity of the person making the request, provide the officer with a summary of the would-be released information, guarantee the officer five days to object to the request, and allow the officer a departmental hearing to make the case that the release could threaten his or her personal security.

Devon M Jacob, a civil rights attorney and former police officer, said: “These are public employees, so their performance should be available to the public. There’s no reason matters of waste or wrongdoing should be kept away from the public. I disagree with this idea that unsustained complaints or investigations don’t matter.”

Speaking to the rationale for sealing off investigatory and complaint records, Canterbury, the FOP president, said: “It’s mostly the false or unsustained complaints that officers feel unduly hurt their careers. Nobody expunges guilty adjudicated use-of-forces, so if these acts are found unsustained in the first place, why should they continue to have any bearing on officers?”
In Jacksonville, Florida, however, according to a 2008-2009 FOP contract, if an officer were to receive a written reprimand with suspension or loss of pay, after a sustained formal investigation, that action would have to be purged after five years.

Often, even substantiated use-of-force allegations fail even to garner penalties as high as a reprimand with suspension. To put this in perspective, even in cases between 2010 and 2015 in which the NYPD’s office of the inspector general confirmed that officers had used unwarranted excessive force, officers were given no discipline 35.6% of the time.

According to the contracts, however, most of the investigations into police misconduct are led by officers’ supervisors or investigators within the department – a process that leaves some reform advocates skeptical. One leaked 2004-2006 contract from Worthington, Ohio, said that any city official who received a citizen complaint about a police officer must advise the complainant to go to the police department instead. “If the citizen does not wish to contact the Division of Police,” the contract said, “City staff should contact the Division of Police in a timely manner and advise a supervisor of the complaint.”

Alex Vitale, an associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, said such contract measures in effect undermined the possibility of robust civilian review boards for police. “You could pass a law to create a civilian oversight commission, but that law can’t supersede what’s in the contract,” said Vitale. “They just want to make clear what the process is and make sure there aren’t independent investigations. The police think ‘no one understands what we do’. It’s all part of this ‘us against the world’ mentality that dominates police thinking.”

Canterbury said the FOP rejects the idea of civilian review boards. “Departments do much better than civilian review boards because civilians have no knowledge of law enforcement or expertise on procedures,” he said. “Police departments do a very good job on internal reviews, plus we already have external review processes like local governments, prosecutors’ officers, and grand juries.”

Black Lives Matter activists argue, however, that there are too many conflicts of interest for the police to impartially investigate their own members. “Beyond the role nepotism and cronyism continues to play in the corruption of law enforcement, there is an inherent distrust of the police’s ability to keep communities safe,” said Delaine Powerful, an organizer in the Black Youth Project. “We cannot trust a system born out of slave patrols and night watches to conduct its own criminal investigations into unnecessary and unwarranted force by police.”

Ron Hampton, a former director of the National Black Police Association and a police officer in Washington DC, said: “People just don’t feel that the police can investigate themselves thoroughly or impartially.

“When we see all of this stuff on film, then it goes to the internal investigation and grand jury, etc, and then no indictment, no trial ... I don’t see how you can have trust in a process that doesn’t work for you.”

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Anonymous Hackers Target North Korea in Response to Satellite Launch

Hackers associated with the Anonymous collective have attacked North Korean state websites in response to the country’s latest satellite launch.

The New World Hackers targeted three websites hours after the launch on Sunday, with the group claiming up to 200 sites were affected as a result of the attacks.

“Our main motive for these attacks was to stop communications between the satellite and the websites, leaving the government wondering why they can’t launch a test, or possibly even a real missile strike at any point in time,” a member of the group tells Newsweek.

“If you attack a site linked to a satellite that constantly updates off of that site, you’re really disrupting something somewhere. We at least slowed down their progress.”

It is not clear if communications with the satellite were affected but proof of sites being knocked offline by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was shared with Newsweek. This method of attack overloads the servers used to host websites with traffic from multiple sources.

New World Hackers has previously been credited with the largest DDoS attack ever carried out, using its “BangStresser” tool to disable all of the BBC’s websites for a period of several hours in December 2015.

The same tool has also been used to repeatedly disrupt Donald Trump’s campaign website, as well as dozens of sites associated with the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) as part of Anonymous’s OpISIS campaign. New World Hackers has said that while it takes part in certain Anonymous operations and supports the hacktivist collective, it operates independently of the group.

North Korea has defended the satellite launch as a way of tracking weather patterns. However, the U.S. and other countries have accused Pyongyang of using the launch as a front for a ballistic missile test.

“North Korea continues to develop their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, and it is the responsibility of our alliance to maintain a strong defense against those threats,” General Curtis M. Scaparrotti, U.S. Forces Korea commander, said in a statement.

The United Nations Security Council also “strongly condemned” the launch and promised to take punitive steps against North Korea.

Bron: europe.newsweek.com

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Anonymous makes good on #OpAfrica promise, targets SA government websites - htxt.africa

Earlier this week Anonymous proclaimed that under the handle of Operation Africa, it will be targeting African governments over corruption, internet censorship and child labour.

Starting with Uganda and Rwanda it hacked into several government websites, and inferred that South Africa could be next.

The veiled threat seems to have materialised, after South Africa’s State Security Agency (SSA) released a warning and advisory through an email statement.

In the mail sent to subscribers, the Computer Security Incident Response Team said that “Hacktivists Anonymous hacked a South African Government Department under the operation #OpAfrica and publicised the information from their database to a website.”

Capture

A hacker going by the Twitter handle @TobitowTHA has released a rather extensive list of websites that have been hacked.

Going alphabetically, the hacker posted websites listed started with ‘A’ and at the time of publications released the names of websites starting with the letter ‘C’. The websites listed are private in nature, and don’t seem to have any connection to the government.

Softpedia, however, is reporting that Anonymous members claim to have hacked a local site called V-Report and procured data on government employees, which they then posted online.

“We had information about 33,000+ job seekers,” the hackers told Sofpedia. “But we just prefer to publish government officers data.”

Bron: www.htxt.co.za

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Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge - ScienceAlert

Welcome to the Pirate Bay of science.

A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles - almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published - freely available online. And she's now refusing to shut the site down, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world's biggest publishers.

For those of you who aren't already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it's sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn't afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it's since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court - a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.


"Payment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them," Elbakyan told Torrent Freak last year. "Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal."

If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that's because it kinda is. But in this story, it's not just the poor who don't have access to scientific papers - journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard and Cornell have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand - with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier in part for its excessive paywall fees.

Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.

But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

For those of you who aren't already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it's sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn't afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it's since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court - a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.


"Payment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them," Elbakyan told Torrent Freak last year. "Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal."

If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that's because it kinda is. But in this story, it's not just the poor who don't have access to scientific papers - journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard and Cornell have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand - with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier in part for its excessive paywall fees.

Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.

But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

"Payment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them," Elbakyan told Torrent Freak last year. "Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal."

If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that's because it kinda is. But in this story, it's not just the poor who don't have access to scientific papers - journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard and Cornell have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand - with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier in part for its excessive paywall fees.

Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.

But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that's because it kinda is. But in this story, it's not just the poor who don't have access to scientific papers - journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard and Cornell have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand - with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier in part for its excessive paywall fees.

Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.

But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.

But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

"They feel pressured to do this," Elbakyan wrote in an open letter to the New York judge last year. "If a researcher wants to be recognised, make a career - he or she needs to have publications in such journals."

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

That's where Sci-Hub comes into the picture. The site works in two stages. First of all when you search for a paper, Sci-Hub tries to immediately download it from fellow pirate database LibGen. If that doesn't work, Sci-Hub is able to bypass journal paywalls thanks to a range of access keys that have been donated by anonymous academics (thank you, science spies).

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

This means that Sci-Hub can instantly access any paper published by the big guys, including JSTOR, Springer, Sage, and Elsevier, and deliver it to you for free within seconds. The site then automatically sends a copy of that paper to LibGen, to help share the love.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

It's an ingenious system, as Simon Oxenham explains for Big Think:

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

"In one fell swoop, a network has been created that likely has a greater level of access to science than any individual university, or even government for that matter, anywhere in the world. Sci-Hub represents the sum of countless different universities' institutional access - literally a world of knowledge."

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

That's all well and good for us users, but understandably, the big publishers are pissed off. Last year, a New York court delivered an injunction against Sci-Hub, making its domain unavailable (something Elbakyan dodged by switching to a new location), and the site is also being sued by Elsevier for "irreparable harm" - a case that experts are predicting will win Elsevier around $750 to $150,000 for each pirated article. Even at the lowest estimations, that would quickly add up to millions in damages.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

But Elbakyan is not only standing her ground, she's come out swinging, claiming that it's Elsevier that have the illegal business model.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

"I think Elsevier’s business model is itself illegal," she told Torrent Freak, referring to article 27 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits".

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. "All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold," she said.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

Elbakyan hopes that the lawsuit will set a precedent, and make it very clear to the scientific world either way who owns their ideas.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

"If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge," she said. "We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong."

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

To be fair, Elbakyan is somewhat protected by the fact that she's in Russia and doesn't have any US assets, so even if Elsevier wins their lawsuit, it's going to be pretty hard for them to get the money.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

Still, it's a bold move, and we're pretty interested to see how this fight turns out - because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's scientific knowledge. In the meantime, Sci-Hub is still up and accessible for anyone who wants to use it, and Elbakyan has no plans to change that anytime soon.

Bron: www.sciencealert.com

quote:

Anonymous: Hackers reveal how to start a cyber activist operation in step-by-step guide

Hacking collective Anonymous is one of the most recognised names in the world of cyber activism and anyone who wants to follow in its footsteps can do so after hackers released a step-by-step guide on how to do things the Anonymous way.

Responsible for starting campaigns and operations to protest against everything from political issues to injustice, the secret group has been behind government and organisation websites being taken down as well as declaring war on Isis and the Ku Klux Klan.

Now, Anonymous has posted online a document that provides a checklist on how hacktivists can carry out and expose their own operations with the same style as the famous group. It covers everything from where to submit hacked data, how to start a protest, and what to do to begin your own Anonymous operation.

Hackers are advised to safely submit their information to sites such as WikiLeaks, while activists are instructed to start an organised protest and tweet the event.

It details that operations should be planned carefully and charges individuals to question its purpose, message and end goal. "Why should people care about the op? The op is nothing if no one cares about it. You had better be able to tell the rest of us why we should care. It should also be said that not every grievance and/or government wrongdoing is a reason to rally an op."

Pointers on how the campaign is promoted are also given. Anonymous affiliates are prolific users of social media and aren't shy to tell the world the details of their latest act as the more exposure the better to highlight the message. The document tells people to "spread the word" and "create Anonymous social media accounts and propaganda, spread flyers during protests and use street art to express your support, ask for permission of creators of Anonymous videos to reupload the video on your channel."

The one caveat it states is: "Please do not make a press release for an operation if you haven't done anything to backup your words."

For those who are wanting to be involved in starting your own Anonymous-style movement, here's the release in whole:

Hackers:

Submit your information safely to WikiLeaks https://wikileaks.org/#submit or to other websites like BalkanLeaks http://www.balkanleaks.eu/

Activists:

Start protests and make clear where and when the protest is happening, contact local, national or global activist organisations for support and tweet the information to @YourAnonNews

Academics:

Research our leaks and those of our allies like @WikiLeaks, @CthulhuSec etc.
Upload the research in PDF format to https://www.docdroid.net/ or https://pdf.yt/ and tweet to @YourAnonNews

An Anonymous operation should be planned carefully, this checklist should get you along the way
*What is the purpose of the op?
*What are you trying to accomplish?
*What kind of message are you trying to spread?
*Make sure that the operation has a foundation that has been thoroughly thought out so that the op doesn't have to suffer later because of poor planning.
*Why should people care about the op? The op is nothing if no one cares about it. Clearly, you care about it so you had better be able to tell the rest of us why we should also care. While we encourage ops, it should also be said that not every grievance and/or government wrongdoing is a reason to rally an op.
*What are the relevant/vital pieces of information relating to the op? Assume nobody else but you know anything about the topic of the op. Gather the more important information that will get people up to speed quickly.
*How will you communicate the op to the public? Whether you are going to use Facebook, Twitter, videos, press releases, etc. have a solid plan on how to execute and spread the op.

PLEASE DO NOT MAKE A PRESS RELEASE FOR AN OPERATION IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO BACK UP YOUR WORDS

There are a million things that can go wrong in the planning of an op and when you don't deliver while getting the public excited with a press release it causes a MAJOR discredit for the movement as a whole.

Spread the word:

Create Anonymous social media accounts and propaganda, spread flyers during protests and use street art to express your support, ask for permission of creators of Anonymous videos to reupload the video on your channel.

Please note Anonymous is a decentralized movement, no one can speak for Anonymous as a whole, nor is there any official Anonymous account. Where Anonymous does not have a power structure, the most effective Anonymous operations had a temporary structure for an effective and efficient way of communication amongst operatives.

Bron: www.ibtimes.co.uk

quote:

Anonymous hacktivists share personal info of Cincinnati cops as revenge for deadly shooting

quote:

After releasing a threatening video, the notorious hacking group Anonymous exposed personal information of 52 Cincinnati Police Department officers in retaliation for the death of an Ohio man at the hands of law enforcement.

In the video posted on Sunday, someone wearing a mask and hood discussed the group’s anger over the Cincinnati PD’s handling of an officer-involved shooting last Wednesday that resulted in the death of Paul Gaston, a black man.

“Greetings world, we are Anonymous Anon Verdict. The following clip you are about to see are three separate cell phone clips of Cincinnati Police Department murdering a black man named Paul Gaston while he held his hands up on February 17th. With the evidence provided it is quite obvious that he was complying and had his hands in the air,” the figure said with a synthesized voice in the three-minute YouTube video.

quote:

France - French Anonymous hackers go on trial for targeting police officers - France 24

International News 24/7

A prosecutor asked a Paris court to hand the three men, aged 22 to 27, a one-year suspended sentence and a 5,000 euro (5,500 dollar) fine each, a lawyer for the police officers, Daniel Merchat, told The Associated Press.

The three are also accused of breaking into two government sites and blocking public access for days.

The names, phone numbers, and personal and professional email addresses of 541 police officers who were members of the SGP-FO police union were posted online in January 2012 after a hacking attack claimed by the Anonymous organization, a loosely-associated international network of hackers.

The police officers are asking for 73,000 euros (80,400 dollars) in damages overall, another lawyer for one of the defendants, Matthieu Hy, told the AP.

The criminal court will deliver its ruling March 22.

Merchat told France Info radio "the contact information for these police officers is accessible to all people planning to target France".

After his arrest, one of the defendants told the police the hacking attack was carried out in retaliation to the arrests of several Anonymous activists by French police and the closure of the popular website Megaupload by the US department of justice days earlier.

The shutdown of Megaupload, a platform that ran online storage and viewing services, led to so-called denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on a range of government, police and copyright organization websites by the Anonymous group, including the French attacks, according to court documents.

Bron: www.france24.com

quote:

Judge confirms what many suspected: Feds hired CMU to break Tor | Ars Technica

A federal judge in Washington has now confirmed what has been strongly suspected: that Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers at its Software Engineering Institute were hired by the federal government to do research into breaking Tor in 2014. The judge also made a notable statement in his court order that "Tor users clearly lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in their IP addresses while using the Tor network."

However, some of the details that Tor alleged previously seem to be wrong: the research was funded by the Department of Defense, not the FBI. Tor Project Director Shari Steele told Ars earlier this year that the organization still couldn't get straight answers from CMU. According to the judge, that research was then subpoenaed by federal investigators.

The Tor Project did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. Meanwhile, Kenneth Walters, a CMU spokesman, refused to answer Ars' questions, referring us only to the university's last statement, from November 2015, which hinted that the university was served with a subpoena.

The revelation, which was first reported by Vice Motherboard, came out as part of the ongoing criminal case against Brian Farrell, allegedly one of Silk Road 2.0’s top administrators. CMU's research enabled investigators to find him. Farrell was arrested over a year ago in Washington state—his trial is scheduled for April 25, 2016, to be held in federal court in Seattle.

The Tuesday court order by US District Judge Richard Jones was in response to a still-sealed motion to compel discovery filed by Farrell. According to Judge Jones, "the defendant seeks to compel disclosure of additional material pertaining to the relationship between SEI and federal law enforcement and the methods used by SEI to identify the defendant’s IP address."

In the order, the judge seems to suggest that even though Farrell took measures to protect his privacy, his actual IP address—which was what betrayed him and made it trivial for law enforcement to find him—was not in and of itself private.

Judge Jones wrote:

In the instant case, it is the Court’s understanding that in order for a prospective user to use the Tor network they must disclose information, including their IP addresses, to unknown individuals running Tor nodes, so that their communications can be directed toward their destinations. Under such a system, an individual would necessarily be disclosing his identifying information to complete strangers. Again, according to the parties’ submissions, such a submission is made despite the understanding communicated by the Tor Project that the Tor network has vulnerabilities and that users might not remain anonymous. Under these circumstances Tor users clearly lack a reasonable expectation of privacy in their IP addresses while using the Tor network. In other words, they are taking a significant gamble on any real expectation of privacy under these circumstances.

Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, told Ars that the court’s analysis here is "right, although the application of that idea depends on how the surveillance occurred."

He suggested that Ars examine a 1992 case decided in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that just because someone takes steps to protect privacy, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they continue to have a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

That case, US v. Scott, involved a man suspected of tax fraud by the Internal Revenue Service. The man used a paper shredder to destroy some documents, which were then picked up as garbage by investigators, "which when painstakingly pieced together produced incriminating evidence."

Scott challenged the collection of his trash, arguing that because he had "manifested an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the shredded remnants" that the evidence should be suppressed. He won on this argument at the district court level but then lost on appeal.

The 1st Circuit found in that case:

What we have here is a failed attempt at secrecy by reason of underestimation of police resourcefulness, not invasion of constitutionally protected privacy. There is no constitutional protection from police scrutiny as to information received from a failed attempt at secrecy.

…

Appellee here thought that reducing the documents to 5/32 inch pieces made them undecipherable. It turned out he was wrong. He is in no better position than the citizen who merely tears up a document by hand and discards the pieces into the sidewalk. Can there be any doubt that the police are allowed to pick up the pieces from the sidewalk for use of the contents against that person? Should the mere use of more sophisticated "higher" technology in attempting destruction of the pieces of paper grant higher constitutional protection to this failed attempt at secrecy? We think not. There is no constitutional requirement that police techniques in the detection of crime must remain stagnant while those intent on keeping their nefarious activities secret have the benefit of new knowledge.

However, not all legal scholars agree on this point.

Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University in St Louis, said that this "reasonable expectation of privacy" for Internet users is "an open one." The so-called third-party doctrine, which stemmed from the 1979 Supreme Court decision Smith v. Maryland, found that telephone users do not have a privacy interest in the phone numbers that they dial, as the phone company has access to them.

"Law enforcement have argued that this sharing rationale applies to all Internet and digital data held by third parties—ISPs, e-mail providers, fitness trackers, cloud storage providers, etc," Richards told Ars. "The strong form of this argument is nonsense. Law enforcement in the past also argued that they didn’t need warrants to open mail or tap telephones, and ultimately lost on both counts. The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on e-mail yet, but lower courts require a warrant for e-mail, and the Supreme Court has made clear in recent cases that a majority of Justices are very concerned about digital privacy and are eager to extend the Fourth Amendment to that, just like they did for telephone calls in the 1960s."

Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, concurred.

"The expectation of privacy analysis has to change when someone is using Tor," he said. "Rotely applying precedent leads to bad results, like courts finding that someone 'clearly' lacks a privacy interest in their IP address, even though they're using technology specifically designed to protect that privacy interest."

Expand full story

Cyrus Farivar / Cyrus is the Senior Business Editor at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His first book, The Internet of Elsewhere, was published in April 2011.

Bron: arstechnica.com

quote:

Twitter shuts down Anonymous accounts “for harassing” ISIS jihadis | Breaking UK news

The social media site has come under fire from the hacktivists who recently told Express Online they are shutting down thousands of ISIS accounts every month.

While Twitter says it is making strong efforts to shut down terrorist accounts, said they do not see this happening, but they have been targeted themselves.

As quickly as ISIS sets up accounts and spreads propaganda, hackers from groups like Anonymous and Ctrl Sec are taking them down in their own online campaign #OpISIS.

The group updates followers, linking to the accounts they have spotted, while calling on other to join them and report Jihadi profiles.

But they have said the social media site is shutting them down.

Twitter has received severe criticism over its handling of the ISIS crisis in recent months.

In January, a Florida woman, Tamara Fields, filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that it breached the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act by “spreading extremist propaganda,” which caused an attack in Jordan that killed her husband, a private contractor, Lloyd “Carl” Fields Jr.

Twitter later published a blog post saying that since mid-2015 it suspended 125,000 accounts for “threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS.”

But this has been hotly disputed.

A statement from WauchulaGhost, an anti-terrorist hacker with the hacker collective Anonymous, said: “Who suspended 125,000 accounts? Anonymous, Anonymous affiliated groups, and everyday citizens.

“You do realise if we all stopped reporting terrorist accounts and graphic images, Twitter would be flooded with terrorists.”

After the announcement by Twitter angered Anonymous members revealed they have had their accounts banned – not ISIS.

In one day in February 15 hackers had their accounts shut down on Tiwtter, despite months of finding and reporting jihadis.

Their supporters complained to Twitter in their droves and their accounts were reactivated within two hours.

WauchulaGhost said in an interview with Epoch Times it is widely believed Twitter is shutting down the accounts because of “anti-bullying” pledge

He said: “I can say they are suspending a lot of accounts for harassment. Good accounts not Daesh accounts.

“Even a lot of our (Anonymous) accounts are being suspended for harassment.”

The hacker also said that if Twitter is committed to stopping terrorism they should add a “terrorism” button to the reporting options.

There are about 2,000 ISIS-supporting Twitter accounts active each day, and Twitter and Facebook are the two main platforms used by ISIS supporters to spread their propaganda, according to a February report from George Washington University.

Of those 2,000 accounts, there are around 350 Twitter accounts that act as the main core for ISIS propaganda on Twitter—and these accounts are used to re-establish the followings of accounts each time one is banned.

According to the George Washington University report, each time an ISIS account gets suspended, the user needs to create a new account, and over time these accounts have “suffered devastating reductions in their follower counts.”

A Twitter spokesman told the Epoch Times: “We have teams around the world actively investigating reports of rule violations, and they work with law enforcement entities when appropriate.”

Bron: news24uk.info

February 15, 2016 RIP D.T

quote:

Anonymous hacked the Donald Trump 's voicemailsSecurity Affairs

The Anonymous hacking collective continues its personal battle against Donald Trump, this time hacking the voicemail of the presidential candidate.

On Thursday, Gawker received an anonymous email containing recordings from Donald Trump’s voicemail inbox. The recordings include messages left for Trump by various celebrities, Joe Scarborough from MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski, and Tamron Hall.

The journalists from MSNBC television can be heard thanking Mr Trump for donations.

The Gawker journalists could not determine the exact dates of the messages neither ensure their authenticity. A number of messages make references to the events of the 2012 presidential campaign season.

Anonymous “declared war” on Mr Trump in December, when he called for a sweeping ban on Muslims entering the United States soil.

anonymous Donald Trump 2

Other messages were sent by popular journalists and anchors, MSNBC news anchors Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Tamron Hall have been tasked with analyzing the evolution of the Mr Trump’s Republican primary campaign.

Mr Scarborough and Ms Brzezinski, the co-hosts of a morning show on MSNBC, can be heard thanking Trump for his donation to a charity event.

The recording includes also the Mr Trump’s recommendations for an MSNBC interview, it is possible to hear Mr Trump instructing both Mr Scarborough and Ms Brezinski to “make us all look good”, and asks for “nothing too hard” when Ms Brezinski asked if she should question him about his immigration issues.

The Tweets by the anchors after the disclosure of the recording seems to confirm their authenticity

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) 4 marzo 2016

In another recording a woman identifying herself as “T Hall”, likely MSNBC’s Tamron Hall, can be heard saying she was going to use Mr Trump’s discount in a luxury clothing store.

Anonymous also released a video that shows hackers gaining access to the administration console of Donald Trump’s answerphone and change settings.

One of the messages was left by Barack Obama’s advisor David Axelrod can also be heard thanking Mr Trump for donating to his epilepsy charity.

It is curious that Trump has criticized Hillary Clinton for her use of an insecure private email server during her time as Secretary of State, but as highlighted by Gawker, “Unfortunately for Trump, it would seem that his voicemail isn’t much safer.”

Stay Tuned …

Bron: securityaffairs.co

quote:

How Anonymous Fooled Donald Trump, the Secret Service, and the FBI

Claire Bernish
March 19, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) United States — Anonymous just pulled a fast one on Donald Trump, his campaign staff, the Secret Service, and the FBI — in one brilliant and telling fell swoop.

To support the White Rose Society and the White Rose Revolt, which began as a response to fascist leanings by Trump and his supporters, Anonymous launched #OpWhiteRose — and the billionaire presidential hopeful fell right into the ‘trap.’

On Friday, Anonymous announced it had released Trump’s personal information online — including such details as his cell phone number and Social Security number. Backlash from the Trump front promptly followed, as well as an announcement from the Secret Service and FBI that an investigation had begun.

However, the information had not been hacked or leaked. In fact, everything Anonymous posted had been online — and available for anyone to see — for years.

Anonymous RedCult released a second video to explain the ruse, in which the narrator explains the information “was online since 2013.” Indeed, as the video states, “The government and law enforcement authorities are seeking the arrest of the people responsible for attempting to illegally hack Mr. Trump’s accounts and telephone information.”

Why law enforcement at every level was so quick to pounce on a non-crime and effect arrest of those behind it — without investigating whether a crime had even been committed — paints a telling portrait of exactly the fascist tendencies Anonymous wished to prove.

RedCult included a snippet of ABC News coverage of the non-hack, which reports it as if it were a serious crime. Again, this information has ostensibly been available on the internet for years — so, as the narrator points out, “Trump want[s] to turn America into a fascist dictatorship where anyone can be arrested for just posting old information online.”

It’s arguably not far from the truth.

Indeed, as Trump indiscriminately aims his hatred of the press, protesters, activists, and anyone who disagrees with his twisted vision for the future, Anonymous might have proven a crucial point.

“Thank you Trump and Trump campaign. Thank you police, FBI, and the Secret Service for being a part of our little experiment on how we should expect the so-called New America will be,” the narrator stated.

Whatever your feelings about the collective known as Anonymous, the experiment was a frightening, facile ‘success’ — of sorts.

Though the joke was on Trump this time, it proves his fascist tendencies are nothing to joke about.

Bron: theantimedia.org

quote:

Anonymous Speaks: “Thank You Very Much, Mr. Loftsson”

quote:

One of the most controversial practices Iceland engages in on the international stage is in whale hunting. The industry has seemed virtually unstoppable, even in the face of international petitions and condemnation from the White House itself. However, hacktivist group Anonymous have gotten involved in fighting whaling, as a part of a campaign called #OpWhales.

By Anonymous’ nature, there is no central committee who decides where everyone is to focus their energy. Rather, #OpWhales is the brainchild of Amber Stone. Amber reluctantly agreed to speak with Grapevine about the campaign, why it matters, and where #OpWhales is headed.

quote:

Anonymous's 'total war' on Trump raises questions of jurisdiction

On March 15, the group known as Anonymous declared cyber war on the Donald Trump campaign.

Anonymous has been labeled by some as a virtual state, while others place the group under the hacktivists label. Either way in keeping with their normal process, the group posted a video on YouTube.

In it, the group called for their followers and loyalists to “Shut down [Trump’s] websites” and to “research and expose what he doesn’t want the public to know.”

The Anonymous leader called on his loyalists to “dismantle his campaign” and “sabotage his brand.” Finally, he declared “This is a total war!”

Those are strong words to be sure, and words that Anonymous intends to make sure become a reality. Some have estimated that the cyber technical capabilities of Anonymous rank up there with the top 10 countries around the world.

It appears Anonymous has called for the attacks, referred to as #OpTrump, to begin on April 1. Within hours the video was viewed nearly 900,000 times, with thumbs-up ratings beating thumbs-down by more than three to one.

Just how many people are part of Anonymous is unknown. Some researchers have stated that the hacktivist group is large and dispersed internationally to a great degree. As evidence, the researchers point to the over 22 million likes on just one of the many social media pages for the group. Clearly a formidable adversary.

Who’s in charge?

Anonymous has launched dozens of cyberattack campaigns over the years. They have clearly demonstrated their ability to carry-out successful cyberattacks; and therefore the threat should be taken seriously. This is an attack against Donald Trump and his candidacy. Does that place this in the hands of the Secret Service? If the attacks target his online brand or the numerous systems in his hotels, does that put this in the hands of the FBI?

Another possibility is that the Trump organizations follow a path that a few firms have taken and defend themselves by launching counter-offensives.

What if Trump becomes the Republican nominee? Will Anonymous continue the cyber war? It is not just about Donald Trump. If they carry out their threat, this is an attack on the process the United States uses to elect those who govern the country. Does that move this to the hands of the Homeland Security Department?

Given the international nature of Anonymous and their attacks, as well as any counter-attack that might be launched, the U.S. State Department will have to be involved. What happens if Trump is elected president and Anonymous continues the cyberattacks? If so, that is an attack on the highest office in the land. Does that constitute an act of cyber war? After all, those are the words Anonymous used. That would surely place it in the hands of U.S. Cyber Command and the military.

We have entered new territory and there are so many questions that need answers fast. The executive branch, Strategic Command, Cyber Command, the Intelligence Community, FBI, Secret Service and others better be meeting right now to get ahead of this issue.
Bron: www.federaltimes.com

quote:

Anonymous hacks Angolan government after activists jailed | World news | The Guardian

Collective says it attacked official websites in retaliation to sentences given to 17 members of a book club in Luanda


A Portuguese branch of the Anonymous hacking collective says it has shut down around 20 Angolan government websites in retaliation to the jailing of 17 youth activists for plotting a “rebellion”.

The youths, including well-known rapper Luaty Beirão, were sentenced on Monday to between two and eight-and-a-half years, in a ruling that Amnesty International said was “an affront to justice”.

Related: Angola jails 17 activists for rebellion after public reading of political book

In a statement on its Facebook page the Anonymous Portugal group listed the government websites it said it had attacked. None of the websites were accessible on Wednesday.

“The real criminals are outside, defended by the capitalist system that increasingly spreads in the minds of the weak,” Anonymous said.

There was no immediate comment from the Angolan government on the alleged cyber attack.

Beirão, who holds dual Portuguese and Angolan nationality, has a loyal fan base in Portugal, the colonial ruler of Angola until the country won its independence after a protracted war in 1974.

Amnesty called for the immediate release of the activists, 15 of whom were detained during a weekly book group meeting in the capital Luanda last June.

“Angolan authorities use the criminal justice system to silence dissenting views,” said Amnesty director Deprose Muchena.

“The activists have been wrongly convicted in a deeply-politicised trial. They are the victims of a government determined to intimidate anyone who dares to question its repressive policies.”

At the sentencing, about 30 protesters outside the court yelled “free the youths, arrest dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos”, the president of Angola since 1979.

A man who shouted inside the court that the sentences were a “travesty of justice” was himself sentenced on Tuesday to eight months in jail.

The jailed activists insist they are peaceful campaigners lobbying for Dos Santos, 73, to step down.

This month, he said he would retire in 2018 but the announcement was received with scepticism following two similar pledges in the past. His current mandate ends at the end of next year.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

quote:

Anonymous linked hacker asked to hand over crypto keys to United States » TechWorm

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has demanded that a British computer scientist suspected of hacking into US federal computer networks and causing “millions of dollars in damage,” decrypts a number of devices seized by the agency back in 2013.

Lauri Love, the Anonymous linked hacker in question, was arrested in 2013 for the alleged intrusions but released afterwards; however, he was rearrested in 2015. He is currently fighting extradition to the US for hacking charges after charges revealed last year accused him of breaching the networks of the US Army, the Federal Reserve, NASA and other high-profile targets.

Love has until now refused to comply with a Section 49 RIPA notice to decrypt the devices, a refusal that carries potential jail time. However, British authorities in the on-going court proceedings have not charged Love with any crime, leading him to counter-sue in civil court for the return of his devices. The devices in question include a Samsung laptop, a Fujitsu Siemens laptop, a Compaq computer tower, an SD card, and a Western Digital hard drive. The NCA in particular wants Love to decrypt TrueCrypt files on the SD card and external drive.

The government’s demands threaten to erode the right against self-incrimination, Dr. Richard Tynan of Privacy International told Ars. “This is the first time we have heard of a UK agency using two different legal mechanisms to compel the decryption of data,” he said. “It is particularly worrisome given that no prosecution is underway against the individual [Love] and is in the context of a serious extradition case to the US. The right not to provide evidence against oneself is cherished in the US and around the world but apparently not so in the UK.”

In Love’s civil case, his argument is that if the police are not going to charge him with a crime, they should return his property. “The problem is that the NCA are effectively arguing that any information that cannot be read and comprehended by the police has a presumption of guilt,” Love told Ars in an e-mailed statement. “This has clear and troubling implications for groups that handle sensitive communications or other data—journalists, advocates, activists and whistleblowers, and members of the legal profession.

“An executive body of the state is saying that any information to which they are not privy… cannot be owned and kept securely but instead confiscated and access denied,” Love added. “This is a fundamental reversal of rights and the potential for abuse is alarming.

However, the NCA said that it would not return the devices as it was unable to decrypt their contents and argues that Love should decrypt his devices in order to demonstrate that the data they contain belongs to him.

Now, court proceedings show that the agency has demanded Love hand over the passwords and encryption keys to the seized goods, according to Ars. The NCA also wants Love to provide a witness statement indicating why he is entitled to the data held on the devices – which investigators believe contains “pirated versions of copyrighted films,” “data from the ‘Police Oracle‘ website,” and “data obtained from the United States Department of Energy and the United States Senate.”

Nevertheless, Tor Ekeland, Love’s attorney in the US, believes that the NCA’s demands have nothing to do with the ongoing civil law suit. “I think they want to gain access to the information on Lauri’s computers in order to turn it over to the US authorities, with whom it seems to me they are plainly cooperating,” he told Ars. “Lauri is currently under indictment in the US, and it appears the UK government is sharing information with the US, so the question on our end is whether the UK government is violating Lauri’s US constitutional rights as a criminal defendant by engaging in activity that US prosecutors may not be able to do in the US.

“Are the UK prosecutors acting as agents for the US in this instance?” Ekeland asked. “The possibility that the US government may use foreign sovereigns to do an end run around US constitutional criminal defendant protections is disturbing to me.”

The FBI and Department of Justice (DoJ) claim that as part of the hacking collective Anonymous, Love has been involved in hacking into various governmental agencies, resulting in millions of dollars’ worth of damage. The court is set to hear arguments on the decryption demand on April 12 at Westminster Magistrate’s Court while the next extradition hearing set for June 28 and 29. The FBI has stated that if convicted by a US court, he could face up to 12 years in prison.

Source: Ars

Bron: www.techworm.net

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The Anonymous 'war' on Donald Trump fail - Business Insider


The "total war" that Anonymous declared earlier this month against Donald Trump has quickly devolved into a civil war among hackers fighting within the group and pro-Trump supporters who are trolling them within their chat rooms.

The "total war" that Anonymous declared earlier this month against Donald Trump has quickly devolved into a civil war among hackers fighting within the group and pro-Trump supporters who are trolling them within their chat rooms.

Back in early March, hackers affiliated with Anonymous tried to reboot their Operation Trump campaign by calling for everyone to take down Trump's websites in a coordinated effort on April 1. Almost immediately, the initiative was criticized by people within Anonymous as irresponsible and "cringeworthy," but a dedicated group apparently moved on with the plan.

It's April 1st: Many of the GOP frontrunner's sites are still standing, there are now two competing "Op: Trump" chatrooms with totally different missions, and one of them has been flooded with pro-Trump supporters and others leaving trolling comments like "Hitler did nothing wrong."

In short: The so-called war seems to be a complete disaster.

It's unclear when the split between Anonymous factions occurred, but it seems to have happened sometime after a hacker named Beemsee, who has been leading the original OpTrump effort, released a new statement claiming that attacking Trump's websites was all a ruse for publicity around April Fools' Day.

"There is no DDoS," Beemse and two other hackers wrote, using the acronym for a distributed denial-of-service attack, a tactic used to overload a website. "It's only purpose was to gain attention, which this Operation needs. ... the point of this Operation is not to attack Donald Trump. Instead, it is going to try to give citizens some insight."

Beemse and their cohorts say in their statement that people should try and capture "the darker nature of Trump's supporters" and post it on social media sites with hashtags like #OpTrump and #Trump2016.

But a hacker called AnonymousLoyalist disagreed. In a competing statement, the hacker wrote that they moved to a "far more organized channel, which has already seen unsurprisingly large amounts of success." That channel is #OpTrump2016, but it was unclear exactly what that success boiled down to.

trump christieAndrew Harnik/AP

When Tech Insider viewed the #OpTrump2016 chat room on Friday, it was an unorganized mess. Most Anonymous chatrooms are moderated in some way, and people usually get kicked out for spamming or posting nonsense. But it appeared to be flooded with trolls intent on calling them children, "social justice warriors," and more often than not, homophobic slurs.

"A mess is happening," wrote one user in #OpTrump, expressing a shared frustration among others in Beemse's chatroom.

It was clear on Friday that at least some of Trump's websites were indeed under cyberattack. The website CitizensForTrump.com is currently unreachable, and the site for Trump's hotels brought up an error for a few seconds before pulling up a cached version powered by CloudFlare, a service that protects from attacks like this.

trump.com cloudflare protectionTrump.com

Anonymous may be able to bring down some of Trump's unprotected websites, but they will almost certainly come back online after a few hours or days. And many of his other sites are probably not at risk at all, since Tech Insider previously spoke with CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince, and he wasn't particularly worried.

"DDoS attacks are not particularly sophisticated cyber attacks," Prince said. "They are sort of the functional equivalent of a caveman with a club."

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Tech Insider. However, spokesperson Hope Hicks previously told TI: "The government and law enforcement authorities are seeking the arrest of the people responsible for attempting to illegally hack Mr. Trump’s accounts and telephone information."

Depending on who you believe in Anonymous, the plan is a coordinated DDoS attack or a social media shaming campaign against Trump's supporters. But Beemse left open the possibility of something else, perhaps an actual way to take over one of their targeted websites — which the hacker collective has been scanning for vulnerabilities since the beginning.

"This is NOT the last time you hear of this operation," Beemse wrote. "We will be watching, and will act when the time is right."

Bron: uk.businessinsider.com

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Wearing an Anonymous Mask in America Can Get You Arrested

AnonWatcher
April 8, 2016

(ANONHQ) A man in an Anonymous mask, who was sitting peacefully, was harangued by police and arrested. All caught on camera, bystanders recorded the event while a multitude of witnesses yelled out that he did nothing wrong or illegal. The incident took place in the House Gallery, during the Maricopa County hearing over the suspected election fraud.

Two officers attended the arrest of the man. Although the man in question didn’t have his face concealed by the mask—the mask had been resting on the top of his head—the first arresting officer approached from behind and kicked at him lightly until he left his chair.

Bystanders went to the man’s defense, with several phones filming the event. One bystander even said the arrest was made because the man was sporting an Anonymous mask.

In the video, another bystander accuses the police of choking the man as the officers unduly restrained him while he was quietly sitting between the chairs. Chants of “shame” and “the whole world is watching” were cried as the man was forced to his feet and escorted away.

After the removal of the man, one of the bystanders states: “you promised us if we were silent you wouldn’t remove us.” Officials then began to plead with the crowd. At the end of the video, one official agreed that the man with the mask did nothing wrong.

Janet Higgens, who uploaded one of the videos, stated: “We were at the point of chaos. All brought on by the police. For a man sitting quietly. With dreadlocks. His name is Jonathan S. McRae. He is currently in jail, charged with trespassing and resisting arrest. I disagree. He was harassed, held to the floor for over 5 minutes, and kidnapped. I don’t know if he was injured in the attack.”

“We the people of the United States are tired of this stuff,” another witness yelled as a bystander warned that this would all end up on YouTube.

Arrested for wearing an Anonymous mask…

You can view the long version of the video here.

Bron: theantimedia.org

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Matthew Keys Sentenced to Two Years for Aiding Anonymous

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Matthew Keys, a former social media editor, was sentenced today to two years in prison for aiding members of Anonymous so they could hack the Tribune Company.

Keys was convicted last October and faced a possible maximum sentence of 25 years. His conviction drew rounds of condemnation on the web from people who believed that the crime associated with him—the minor defacement of an LA Times headline online—should have been charged as a misdemeanor not a felony.

Keys worked for the Reuters news agency when he was indicted in 2013 for allegedly providing a username and password to members of Anonymous three years earlier to gain access to a server belonging to his former employer, the Tribune Company. In 2010, Keys had parted ways with Fox-40, a TV station owned by the Tribune Company, and allegedly encouraged the hackers to use his credentials to “go fuck some shit up.” Someone subsequently used them to hack into the web site of the Los Angeles Times, also owned by the Tribune Company, and change the headline of a story. During a recorded FBI interview in October 2012, Keys admitted his involvement in the hack. But he has since insisted that he is innocent. In a brief note published online today he wrote, “I am innocent, and I did not ask for this fight. Nonetheless, I hope that our combined efforts help bring about positive change to rules and regulations that govern our online conduct.”

Although the government expended a lot of effort to prosecute Keys, authorities never charged the person who conducted the hack, even though they had a solid lead on a suspect.

quote:

Keys’ attorney, Tor Ekeland, told WIRED last year that he plans to appeal the conviction on the grounds that the government wrongfully and deceptively used irrelevant losses to assess damage to the victim.

Although Keys was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for causing unauthorized damage to a protected computer, prosecutors calculated losses for unrelated activities that caused no damage to a computer. Ekeland maintains that they did this to inflate the victim’s losses and elevate Keys’ computer crime from a mere misdemeanor to a felony and to increase his sentence. The CFAA requires a minimum of $5,000 in losses to qualify as a felony; and the amount of damages can have a profound effect on a defendant’s sentence.

quote:

Anonymous Investigate Arizona Election Fraud, “Sanders Was Hacked” AnonHQ

The hacktivist group Anonymous have launched their own official investigation into claims of Arizona election fraud committed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Claims of election fraud began circulating last Tuesday when thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters were prevented from voting for Sanders due to their votes mysteriously being changed from Democratic to Independent.

Anonymous have issued a press release saying that the abnormally low vote total may be the result of Clinton’s campaign hacking the sanders campaign voter database.

In their preliminary report, anonymous say:

Anonymous has begun a thorough investigation into the as-of-yet unverified claim that Bernie Sanders’ campaign offices in Arizona were hacked and that the information gathered may have been used to switch his supporters from registered Democrats to Independents, Republicans, or Libertarians.

We will be asking four relevant questions:

1) Are claims that Sanders’ Arizona campaign computers were hacked credible

2) How feasible would it be to use that information to change his supporters’ voter registration from Democrat to something else?

3) Were only, or primarily, Sanders supporters affected or did Clinton supporters and Republicans have similar problems?

4) Why were less than 35,000 Democratic votes tallied in Maricopa County (Phoenix), population 4,000,000 on March 22, 2016? Note: The New York Times reported 185,000 + early ballots. The total for Maricopa, 100% reporting, is less than 220,000.


Bron: anonhq.com

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American #Anonymous Activist Joe Fionda Detained and Interrogated in UK

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En route to the Business Rocks conference this Thursday and Friday in Manchester, “notorious” activist and actor Joe Fionda was detained today at Immigration at Manchester airport, where he was held for two hours.

The welcoming party, consisting of Business Rocks’ publicist Nathan Newman and Norwegian Pirate Party activist Raymond Johansen, was simultaneously interrogated and photographed by unidentified persons at the Information desk.

quote:

All in all, it’s been a rough welcome to the UK for Fionda, who flew to Manchester from New York to take part in an illustrious international panel addressing the Hackathon for Homelessness, a multidisciplinary challenge combining hackers and business leaders to work towards practical solutions for homelessness. Among the other members of the panel are Johansen, Lord John Bird of The Big Issue, Lauri Love of Hacker House, and Higinio Ochoa of Austin, Texas, the last two beaming in Snowden-style, via Skype.

Johansen gave us the blow-by-blow as events went down, via an ingenious combination of Skype and Facebook messaging, necessitated by his injured wrist.

“Joe Fionda is being held by immigration! Nathan got interrogated by MI5 or GCHQ or whatever, they’re trying to find a paragraph to keep him out of the country. We’re probably stuck here for seven or eight hours at the airport,” he reported, his voice shaking. “I’ve had five buddies in the last year been fucked about by MI5 and GCHQ at airports. So we’re just gonna wait until it’s over but it was quite some interrogation that Nathan got put through. We had a call to go to the information desk here at Arrivals. We went there, we were connected on the phone to a person interrogating Nathan, asking all sorts of questions. Was he paid by Business Rocks, how did he connect to Joe Fionda, all questions about what Nathan does for work and details about everything, really.”

“We were told, like I’ve experienced before, it can take several hours before he’s let go or sent back. That depends on if they can find a way to send him back. That’s what the information desk told us.”

We asked why his voice was shaking. “I’m not nervous about Joe. We’ll come through this all right. I’m nervous about the guys swarming around us and taking photos. That gets me stressed.”

The who? Did you get photos?

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Anonymous: OnionIRC

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Greetings! We are Anonymous.

The continued effort of governments around the globe to censor our seven sovereign seas has not gone unnoticed. This is why we, once again, raise our Anonymous battle flags to expose their corruption and disrupt their surveillance operations. We are proud to present our new chat service residing within the remote island coves of the deep dark web.

The OnionIRC network is designed to allow for full anonymity and we welcome any and all to use it as a hub for anonymous operations, general free speech use, or any project or group concerned about privacy and security looking to build a strong community. We also intend to strengthen our ranks and arm the current and coming generations of internet activists with education. Our plan is to provide virtual classrooms where, on a scheduled basis, ‘teachers’ can give lessons on any number of subjects.

This includes, but is not limited to: security culture, various hacking/technical tutorials, history lessons, and promoting how to properly utilize encryption and anonymity software. As always, we do not wish for anyone to rely on our signal alone. As such, we will also be generating comprehensible documentation and instructions on how to create your own Tor hidden-service chat network in order to keep the movement decentralized.

Hackers, activists, artists and internet citizens, join us in a collective effort to defend the internet and our privacy.
Come aboard or walk the plank.

We are Anonymous,
we’ve been expecting you.

Protip: This is not a website, it’s an IRC chat server. You must use an IRC chat client to connect. You cannot connect simply through a browser.
Some popular IRC clients are: irssi, weechat, hexchat, mIRC, & many more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari…;
Here is an example guide for connecting with Hexchat: https://ghostbin.com/paste/uq7bt/raw
To access our IRC network you must be connecting through the Tor network! https://www.torproject.org/

Humanity Party vote anonymous 2016.com EXPOSED Agenda 21

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Anonymous say The Humanity Party is fake and using their name for votes » TechWorm

With the US presidential elections underway, the fight to get the votes is hotting up. One such party is The Humanity Party which claims to be the offshoot of Anonymous and is seeking votes in the name of Anonymous.

The online hacktivist group, Anonymous has taken a strong opposition to this claim and have said that The Humanity Party have nothing to do with the hacktivist group. According to Anonymous, The Humanity Party is just a front of Christopher M Nemelka, who seeks votes in the name of goodwill generated by Anonymous is U.S.A.

An Anonymous arm has already doxxed Nemelka and published his details online. Anonymous claims that Nemelka is not an Anonymous member but actually pushing Mormon agenda behind all the facade.

The Anonymous have also said that the upcoming LDS Temple Symposium to be hosted by Nemelka is a indication of his true aim behind The Humanity Party.

From Anonymous 4 Justice website :

The website also claims that AnonHQ is by no means the official news portal of the Anonymous group, is allegedly supporting The Humanity Party.

There have been murmurs in the Anonymous rank and file over US elections and presidential candidate they should support. While it is well within the individual’s right to support any candidate, the Anonymous frowns upon lending their name to any candidate. Anonymous members are beginning to notice and are reacting. In a statement released at the start of February, the group bluntly calls out what others have only speculated.

Bron: www.techworm.net

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Hacking group Anonymous announces war against Bank of England and New York Stock Exchange - Mirror Online

Hacking group Anonymous has announced a cyber-attack war against the Bank of England and New York Stock Exchange.

The organisation - made up of international hackers - warned of a series of attacks against the world's central banks over the next month.

In a new YouTube video - called Shut Down the Banks - it said its main targets would be the Bank of England and New York Stock Exchange.

It said these financial institutions help to ensure that the world's most powerful organisations and governments maintain their secrecy and remain in power.

A voice on the video says of the Bank of England and New York Stock Exchange: "They feel comfortable in their ivory towers built on the broken backs of labourers of the world.

READ MORE: Anonymous steps up war against Ku Klux Klan with second hack attack

Anonymous target banks in new video
Anonymous has targeted the world's most powerful banks in a new video

"......It is time to show the world the true power and the true face of the faceless.

"The powers that be have flown to close to the sun and the time has come to set the wings of their empire ablaze and watch the system their power relies on come to a grinding halt and come crashing down around them.

...."This time our target is the New York Stock Exchange and Bank of England.

"This is a call to arms, brothers."

The warning comes after the group targeted Greece's central bank with a cyber attack which disrupted its website.

In the video, the group said: "Olympus will fall. A few days ago we declared the revival of operation Icarus."

Getty Cyber Attack Crime
Anonymous has warned of attacks against the world's banks

Read more: 10-year-old boy hacks into Instagram and deletes users' comments - and Facebook awards him $10,000

"Today we have continuously taken down the website of the Bank of Greece," the statement continued.

"This marks the start of a 30-day campaign against central bank sites across the world."

A Bank of Greece official today confirmed the attack.

A spokesman said: "The attack lasted for a few minutes and was successfully tackled by the bank's security systems.

"The only thing that was affected by the denial-of-service attack was our web site."

Unmasked: What the website www.kkkknights.com looked like before it was wiped off the internet
Unmasked: What the website www.kkkknights.com looked like before it was wiped off the internet

Anonymous originated in 2003, adopting the Guy Fawkes mask as their symbol for online hacking. The mask is a stylized portrayal of an oversized smile, red cheeks and a wide moustache upturned at both ends.

Hacktivists linked to Anonymous recently launched a "war" against the Ku Klux Klan.

Read more: iPhone users in the UK targeted by (another) iCloud phishing scam - don't be fooled by phony message

Two weeks ago, The Mirror exclusively revealed that hacktivists had launched a new campaign against the KKK by clobbering their main website with a digital blitzkreig called a DDoS attack.

A hacker using the name Ghost Squad has taken down a page run by the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan at the address www.kkkknights.com.

"We believe in free speech but their form of beliefs is monolithic and evil," the hacktivist told HackReads.

"We stand for constitutional rights, but they want anyone who is not Caucasian removed from earth so we targeted the KKK official website to... send a message that all forms of corruption will be fought.

"They are the fascists and they are the racists.”

A former stand-up comic targeted for his faith suffered a catalogue of terrifying incidents - from verbal and physical assaults to death threats and Nazi symbols daubed on his home

The information included nearly 400 people, including names, email addresses and known aliases as well as two-dozen social media pages allegedly affiliated with the far right group

Bron: www.mirror.co.uk

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Latest Anonymous News • Anonymous takes down gov't websites from Sergipe...

*English translation of the Olhar Digital article.*

Accounts of social networks linked to the group Anonymous web activists say the collective took the air several pages linked to the government and the judiciary of the State of Sergipe.

The attitude, according to the accounts, would be a retaliation against WhatsApp blockade in Brazil that went into effect today at 14h. The Facebook page AnonOpsBrasil held two posts showing the sites www.se.gov.br (state government of Sergipe), www.tjse.jus.br (Sergipe Court of Justice) and www.jfse.jus.br (Federal Court of Sergipe) were off the air.

The posts are accompanied by a picture with the mask traditionally associate to Anonymous and DDOS letters, suggesting that the group carried out a DDoS attack on the sites. To date, they go off the air. On Twitter, the AnonH4 account has also sent similar messages, showing the fall of the sites. Both on Twitter as on Facebook, accounts using the hashtag #OpStopBlocking, suggesting a collective retaliation against the application of the blockade on the country.

According to other users using the same hashtag, sites should be off the air for 72 hours also (the period initially determined by the righteousness of Sergipe to lock WhatsApp); The posts of the groups also bring other information.

Collective suggests to followers who always use encryption on your connections and, if possible, to create their own VPNs (proven virtual networks). The pages also direct your readers to a guide on how to circumvent censorship WhatsApp. Digital Look have also produced a similar guide, which you can access through.

Source: Olhar Digital’s article. *This is a translation. *

Short URL

Portrait/Logo
Bron: latestanonnews.tumblr.com

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OpIcarus: Anonymous hackers shut down Bank of England, call for ‘online revolution’

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Hacktivist collective Anonymous has launched cyber-attacks on major financial institutions across the world, including the Bank of England, in order to “start an online revolution.”

Hackers claimed to have taken down the Bank of England’s internal email server as part of an operation dubbed ‘OpIcarus.’

Mail.bankofengland.co.uk was down for part of Friday.

quote:

Hackers affiliated with Anonymous also claimed to have shut down several international banks over the past four days, including the National Reserve Bank of Tonga, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the central banks of Sweden, Myanmar and Laos.

A hacktivist who goes by the name ‘S1ege’ claimed responsibility for the attacks, stating they want to “start an online revolution” to retaliate against the “elite banking cartels putting the world in a perpetual state of chaos.”

quote:

New Weapon for Fighting ISIS: Anonymous Attacks Twitter Accounts of Terror Group with Porn AnonHQ

2016 is the busiest year so far for the online hacktivists group, Anonymous. While taking on governments, corporations, and world institutions, Anonymous is still not giving the terrorist group of the self-proclaimed Islamic States of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) a breathing space on social media.

After the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, Anonymous declared a cyber war on ISIS. In a cyber hacking activity known as #OpISIS, Anonymous disrupted many of their online activities, especially on social media. So strong was #OpISIS that the terror group abandoned many of the social media accounts, opting for the dark web.

However, in recent months, because Anonymous has been busy on other equally important assignments – attacking governments and corporations – ISIS had taken the opportunity to reactivate their accounts on social media to spread propaganda and recruit fighters.

s 4

Recently, we reported that ISIS fighters are even using Facebook to sell captured young girls as sex slaves to potential buyers. ISIS is also using other social media platforms to sell artifacts they looted from Syria. On Twitter, ISIS and its supporters have begun using the platform to start their old activities.

This has drawn the attention of Anonymous, once again. This time, Anonymous has found a new and effective weapon to fight the terror group. The terror group practices a strict version of Sunni Islam. This makes indecent photos and videos very offensive to the group.

Anonymous has capitalized on this opportunity to bombard the group with pornographic images. The nude pictures are highly disturbing to the group, with many of its supporters abandoning their accounts on Twitter. Thousands of ISIS affiliated Twitter accounts has since been abandoned, since Anonymous started attacking the group with the porn images.

s 2

Anonymous is using something called pornbots to send the nude pictures to the accounts of ISIS. The pornbots do not tweet, but have explicit images as their display picture, causing disturbances to ISIS linked accounts.

Mirror reports that the pornbot hackers have targeted Twitter accounts that use known ISIS hashtags. Among the accounts to be targeted were the Amaq, the ISIS media agency, who were bombarded by pornbots before their account was disabled.

A French citizen who also reportedly praised the killing of journalists in Syria and Iraq by ISIS on Twitter, was attacked with the porn. It is said immediately after he tweeted the praise, he found more than 800 of the pornbots as followers. He has since abandoned his account.

In a video released online, a member of the Anonymous group in a Guy Fawkes mask appeared with these words for ISIS:

s 1

Some observers have publicly praised Anonymous for it cyber fight against the terror group. ISIS has forcefully annexed territories in Syria and Iraq, committing serious crimes against people. It is even believed that Anonymous’ attacks on ISIS is more effective than the social media companies themselves targeting and deleting accounts linked to the terror group.
Bron: anonhq.com

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De bedenker van het web is het web beu - rtlz.nl

^{RTL Z-redacteur Frederieke Hegger over de economie van de toekomst, duurzaamheid en de keuzes die we elke dag maken.}

Je staat er vast nooit bij stil, maar ooit – en niet eens zo lang geleden – creëerde iemand het wereldwijde web. En die persoon heet Tim Berners-Lee.

In 1989 bedacht hij een soort platform waardoor wetenschappers met elkaar informatie konden uitwisselen. Maar het werd iets revolutionairs. Iets waardoor nu iedereen wereldwijd informatie met elkaar uitwisselt. Iets waar we niet meer zonder kunnen leven.

Berners-Lee is uiteraard blij dat het allemaal wat groter is geworden dan hij had voorzien, maar het web heeft inmiddels ook grote gebreken, stelt hij.

Grote bedrijven als Google, Facebook en Twitter zijn veel te dominant, en zijn achterdeurtjes voor inlichtingendiensten geworden. Mensen worden bespioneerd, Chinezen kunnen bepaalde websites niet bezoeken en je betaalt met persoonlijke informatie voor 'gratis' diensten.

En ja, dat was allemaal niet de bedoeling. De bedoeling was een decentraal web: power to the people, meer macht naar jou en mij. Niet naar overheden en grote bedrijven.

Het web heeft, kortom, een mega-metamorfose nodig, vindt Berners-Lee. En dus kwam vader van het web vorige week met de crème de la crème uit internetland samen om na te denken over het web van de toekomst.

Wat nou als we ervoor kunnen zorgen dat mensen meer privacy hebben, overheden minder kunnen neuzen en sturen, en er niet zulke machtige partijen meer zijn? Wat nou als we de techniek achter digitale valuta bitcoin kunnen gebruiken om ons niet alleen te 'verlossen' van banken, maar ook van andere grote centrale partijen en hun servers? Wat als we in de toekomst niet meer hoeven te betalen met onze persoonlijke informatie? De techniek om dat te bewerkstelligen is er, stellen de webexperts.

Het is nog hartstikke vroeg. Maar de grondleggers van het web leggen as we speak de bouwstenen voor een nieuwe versie. En als die net zo'n revolutionair en toch ook positief effect gaat hebben als het huidige web, dan kijk ik ernaar uit.

Bron: www.rtlz.nl

quote:

Hackers Hijack ISIS Twitter Accounts With Gay Porn After Orlando Attack

Twitter accounts belonging to supporters of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) have been hacked in the wake of the Orlando shooting, with jihadist content replaced with gay pride messages and links to gay pornography.

A hacker affiliated with the hacktivist collective Anonymous, who uses the online moniker WauchulaGhost, first began hijacking pro-ISIS Twitter accounts several months ago. Following the mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 13, the hacker decided to replace ISIS imagery posted to the accounts with rainbow flags and pro-LGBT messages.

“I did it for the lives lost in Orlando,” the hacker tells Newsweek. “Daesh [ISIS] have been spreading and praising the attack, so I thought I would defend those that were lost. The taking of innocent lives will not be tolerated.”

WauchulaGhost does not disclose his real name or exact location, other than to say he is based in the United States and that “shit is getting too close to home.”

The vigilante hacker claims to have taken over 200 Twitter accounts belonging to ISIS supporters. However, many have since been taken down by Twitter. WauchulaGhost plans to continue the campaign with two other hackers who go by the name Ebony and Yeti.

isis hacker anonymous gay porn twitter orlando Some pro-ISIS accounts displayed rainbow flags, a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pride. Screengrab

ISIS has used social media platforms like Twitter as a tool for recruitment and to spread propaganda. Twitter claims to have shut down more than 125,000 accounts promoting extremism since 2015.

Messages posted to the compromised accounts include “I’m gay and proud” and “Out and proud.” A link to a gay porn site is included in some of the hacked accounts, although no explicit images have been posted in respect to Islam.

“One thing I do want to say is we aren’t using graphic porn and our purpose is not to offend Muslims,” WachulaGhost says. “Our actions are directed at Jihadist extremists. Many of our own [group of hackers] are Muslim and we respect all religions that do not take innocent lives.”

Bron: europe.newsweek.com

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Anonymous Operation Turkey door @AnonymousVideo

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Anonymous Press Release Operation Turkey #OpTurkey.
Turkish people will liberate the country against the impact of the oppression made by the Turkish Government. With all kinds of interventions, we will try to empower the people of turkey. You can support us to fight Erdoğan and you can do something to prevent the ongoing purge of freedoms in Turkey, we have to enlighten Turkish people to reveal the truth.

Now the government persecuted the people of Turkey by helping ISIS and its supporters, come and join us in the fight Together Against ISIS and Erdoğan.

- We are Anonymous.
- We are legion,
- We do not forgive,
- We do not forget.
- Turkey, expect us !
- IRC.CyberGuerrilla.org | SSL Port : 6697 | Channel #OpTurkey

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anonymousvideo.eu/anonymous-operation-turkey.html

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Anonymous Hacks Turkish Energy & Gas Provider Website

Anonymous hackers are conducting cyber attacks on Turkish cyberspace, especially after the failed coup — Latest target is Izmir Gaz company!

The online hacktivist Anonymous conducted a cyber attack on the website of Izmir Gaz (izmirgaz.com.tr), a Turkish-based Energy and Gas contractor headquartered in Izmir city on Turkey’s Aegean coast. The motive behind the attack was to protest against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and vowing to help the citizens in post-coup crackdown.

The attack on Izmir Gaz website allowed attackers to steal financial and personal records stored in the server including plain-text and hashed passwords for 479 users ending up leaking them online. As cited by SoftPedia, leaked files also contained maintenance reports, budgeting and billing files stolen from the server.

According to official blog post from Anonymous, the reason for targeting Izmir Gaz website: ”We hacked www.izmirgaz.com.tr for two reasons: Company owners have good relations with Erdo[Retracted] and İzmir is city what Prime Minister Binali Yildirim elected.”

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In a brief statement, Anonymous accused Erdogan of censoring social media in the country and urged citizens to go through AKP emails leaked by WikiLeaks recently. Hacktivists are also planning on translating the 300,000 leaked email and 500 thousand documents to raise awareness about the situation in Turkey.

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Proliferation of hacker culture helped keep Anonymous from being branded terrorist org

Advocating for gender diversity together

How has Anonymous avoided being labeled as a terrorist group? That is a serious question that was proposed by an anthropologist during the eleventh Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) Conference in New York City on Friday. During a session Gabriella Coleman discussed the close series of events that helped the hacktivist group avoid the fate of other activist groups and leaders.

Nelson Mandela, the Tarnac 9, and BlackLivesMatter have all at one time been accused of terrorist activities. Many of the tactics used by Anonymous have run the risk of setting the group up for a similar fate, including the use of Guy Fawkes masks as a protest symbol.

For much of U.K. history, Guy Fawkes was “sort of an equivalent to an Osama bin Laden figure,” said Coleman, a professor at McGill University who has published two books that explore hacker ethics and the Anonymous movement.

The considerable exception of the hacktivist group is due in part to the proliferation of hacker culture and Anonymous into popular culture. The number of popular works of fiction in which Anonymous appears “is staggering,” Coleman said. Hacker culture have been portrayed in an overall positive light in several TV series, including “House of Cards” and “The Good Wife” – and high culture. The Royal Court Theater produced a play called “Teh (stet) Internet is Serious Business.”

As a comparison, Coleman asked the audience, “What was the last movie you saw that portrayed animal rights activists in a positive light?” to which one audience member shouted out in response, “Charlotte's Web!”

The exceptional fate of Anonymous has a complex racial history. Hacktivists are often perceived as harmless partially due to a stereotype of hackers as “nerdy white kids,” Coleman said.

Finally, Coleman mentioned that culture and arts “really matter,” despite often being dismissed as ‘soft power.' “If you don't have people's hearts and minds, then they will not be motivated to change public policy,” she said.

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Anonymous Created Special DDoS Tool Just for the #OpOlympicHacking Attacks

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Members of the Anonymous hacker collective have created a custom tool that allows them and any person to launch DDoS attacks against five built-in targets.

The tool was released to aid the group in its recent hacktivism campaign named #OpOlympicHacking, which debuted at the beginning of the month, just in time for the Rio Olympic Games.

The tool is a Windows executable that launches a window with six buttons, as pictured below this article. The first five buttons are for attacking five built-in targets while the sixth is for stopping the attacks.

"The tool can be used only for #OpOlympicHacking attacks"

The five targets are the official Rio 2016 Olympics website, the Brazil 2016 government portal, the Brazil Olympic Committee website, the government portal for the city of Rio de Janeiro, and the website for Brazil's Sports Ministry.

These are only a few of the targets Anonymous hackers included in a list they uploaded online when they announced #OpOlympicHacking at the start of the month.

The DDoS tool is offered online as a free download called "opolympddos." Softpedia has discovered links to this tool on Twitter.

At the time of writing, the links are dead, so we couldn't check and see if the DDoS tool came with other malware built-in. Users should not download and run this tool because (1) they would be carrying out an illegal activity; (2) they would be exposing themselves to possible malware infections.

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4chan is running out of money—and Martin Shkreli wants to help out | Ars Technica

4chan, the infamous message board whose users once labelled it "the asshole of the Internet," is nearly out of money and will have to take drastic action if it wants to survive, according to its new owner. Meanwhile, the notorious hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli has offered to help out.

The site, which hosts notoriously racist and sexist message boards, and which in the form of its /b/ board launched 1,000 unpleasant trolling campaigns, has long suffered money troubles, with users unwilling to subscribe and legitimate advertisers put off by unpalatable content. Its founder, Christopher "Moot" Poole, sold up in January 2015 to Hiroyuki Nisimura, the man who founded the board that inspired 4chan, Japan's almost equally unpleasant 2Channel.

In a post on Sunday, entitled "Winter is Coming," Nisimura wrote that he "had tried to keep 4chan as is. But I failed. I am sincerely sorry." He added:

Some notice there are no more middle ads and bottom ads on 4chan.
Ads don't work well. So we reduced advertisement servers cost.
4chan can't afford infrastructure costs, network fee, servers cost, CDN and etc, now.

He went on to describe three options to cut costs, none of which is likely to impress the site's fractious users. To stay afloat, the site apparently would need to halve traffic costs by closing some boards, limiting image sizes, and using slower servers; or have more pop-up or even "malicious" ads; or have more paying users.

However, an unlikely saviour has seemingly emerged. Shkreli—who erupted to notoriety of his own last year when his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, acquired the manufacturing licence to the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and jacked its price up by 5,556 percent, from $13.5 to $750 per tablet (£10.60 to £588)—tweeted Nisimura to indicate that he would be "open to joining the Board of Directors of 4chan."

Nisimura replied, and the two apparently took the discussions away from public view.

Shkreli is currently on bail, pending a trial over federal charges for alleged securities fraud, after his arrest by the FBI in December last year. He also recently offered people the chance to punch him in the face for $50,000 for charity, to support the young son of his former PR guy Mike Kulich, who passed away suddenly a few weeks ago.

It looks like 4chan still has a few allies in the tech world, despite its unpleasant reputation. In a now-deleted but still-cached tweet, billionaire Minecraft founder Marcus "Notch" Persson apparently also expressed an interest in helping the site, writing: "Assuming it's not too expensive, and assuming I don't have to do any actual work myself, I'm in."

Poole, meanwhile, has scored himself a job at Google, where he is "building online communities."

Expand full story

^{Tom Mendelsohn / Tom is Ars Technica UK's Contributing Sub Editor. Descriptivist, not prescriptivist.}
Bron: arstechnica.com

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Anonymous speaks to WIRED about taking on terrorist group Daesh | WIRED UK

On the sweltering morning of June 16, 2015, Selfeddine Rezgui ran a handful of gel through his hair, then snorted a line of cocaine.

College was over and Rezgui, a 23-year-old electrical engineering student from Gaâfour, in north-west Tunisia, had the day off. He piloted a boat to the beach at Port El Kantaoui in Sousse, 145km south of the Tunisian capital. As he disembarked, Rezgui looked just like any other young local: barefoot and dressed in swimming trunks and black T-shirt. He strolled through the wash, a parasol dangling from one hand, as he made a call on his white Samsung Galaxy smartphone. Moments later he threw the phone into the sea, as if skimming a pebble.

"Go now," Rezgui told a few locals, as he continued his stroll. Then, at 12.10pm, the young man pulled a Kalashnikov from its hiding place inside the umbrella, raised the gun and began to fire, first at a paraglider overhead, swooning in the breeze, then at the tourists bronzing on sunloungers. Reguzi first swept the beach with gunfire before entering the nearby Imperial Marhaba Hotel, where, the night before, 565 guests had slept. At times he laughed through his drug-smeared haze, which perhaps caused him to forget the crude home-made bomb tucked in a belt slung around his chest. Twenty minutes after Rezgui fired his first bullet, armed police shot him in the street. During his brief rampage, he had claimed 38 victims. Thirty-nine more lay injured. As he lay dying, Rezgui seemed to reach for the bomb's detonator, which had tumbled from his pocket on to the ground, a few metres away from 
his head. More shots. Then silence.

Somewhere in the middle of America, a man who calls himself Raijin Rising was sitting in his pyjamas at his desk in his home office when he saw the first breaking news report of the attack. Raijin opened Telegram, the encrypted messaging service, and set up a new chat room titled "Tunisia". Then he issued an invitation for colleagues to join him there. Even before the full details of Rezgui's attack had been reported, the chat began to fill with columns of troubling links - not to news stories describing the attack, but to Twitter posts celebrating its effects.

One message in particular gave Raijin cause for alarm. "What happened in Tunisia was just the starters," read the tweet from Abu Hussain Al Britani, nom de guerre of Junaid Hussain, a notorious young British hacker who left his home town of Birmingham in 2014 to travel to Syria and join Daesh (also referred to in the west as "ISIS", "IS" and "ISIL"), the militant jihadi group that had claimed responsibility for Rezgui's attack on the beach.

"I had a theory," Raijin told WIRED recently. "Hussain's Twitter accounts would be silent for weeks or months. Then, whenever he started tweeting again, a major attack would immediately follow. I started to believe he was sending trigger messages." In this context, Hussain's next tweet was even more worrying. "Today you are scared to go on holiday," it read. "Tomorrow you will be scared to step foot outside your door."

Raijin opened Telegram and began to type: "There's going to be another attack in Tunisia."

Rezgui never left his home country. This clean-shaven breakdancer, brought up in a moderate Muslim family, was instead radicalised online, specifically in the Café de la République, a Tunisian internet café where he was a regular. He is typical of many Daesh sympathisers around the world who have been turned to violence not through the words of local hate preachers, but rather inside online chat rooms: Daesh runs its own news service, employs online press officers and, in May, launched an Android app to teach children the Arabic alphabet and jihadi-related terms. It even uses hacker groups - including one that was, for a time, run by Hussain - to take down the websites of its enemies and flood the internet with images and videos of atrocities. In this way social media has become both an ideological battleground and a tool for the most effective recruitment-cum-incitement campaign of any terror group.

In recent years, the rise of terror groups that co-opt the internet as a medium for spreading hatred and ideology has been matched by an opposing army of young vigilantes. The energy of these groups has been sustained by the online outrage that follows each new attack by Daesh or al-Qaeda affiliates. Many grew up frequenting the same online communities from which Daesh plucks recruits. And, in recent months, these vigilantes have matched the organisational efforts of their Daesh counterparts.

Raijin was 19 years old when Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait in 1990. "I was in college and we were all shitting ourselves thinking we were about to be drafted," he says, having chosen, after a week of trust-building back and forth via email, to tell WIRED his story. "We were glued to CNN. Ever since that day I've been a geopolitics junkie."

Years later, Raijin began to see news about a jihadist militant group called Daesh routinely appearing in his Twitter timeline. "There was so much information that wasn't hitting the US news, so I started an ISIS watch list." Shortly after that, Raijin heard about an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel - an invitation-only chat room - where members of Anonymous, the disparate hacktivist group, collated details of pro-Daesh Twitter accounts, then reported them to the social media company in batches. Raijin wanted to help. He began adding to the stream.

To sift through the mass of information, Raijin wrote some tools using Twitter's API to capture the names of accounts that followed prominent Daesh members. He kept a database of pro-Daesh relationships, noting who tweeted what, when and which accounts, then shared those same tweets. After six weeks of sifting the intel, Raijin realised that the information he had gathered might be of greater use than as a mere tool for reporting Twitter accounts. "That's when I heard about 'IS Hunting Club'," he says.

IS Hunting Club was one of the most prominent anti-Daesh accounts. It was run by a member of Ghost Security Group, a close-knit team of open-source intelligence gatherers. "I believe our youngest is 18 and our eldest is in his forties," says Raijin. "We know very little about each other - it's safer that way."

Following Hussain's warning about another attack, Raijin and the other 11 members of Ghost Security Group narrowed their searches to northern Tunisia, looking for signs of a follow-up. Raijin noticed the hashtag "#jerba" appearing in pro-Daesh accounts, a reference to the island of Djerba, 220km from Sousse. "The tweets didn't feel right," Raijin says. "So we dove in and started looking for areas of the town that might be another tourist hotspot that could make for a suitable target for another terrorist attack."

Using Google Maps, Raijin says that the group identified Houmt El Souk, a popular market for European tourists, which had been mentioned in some tweets alongside threats, written in English, about a potential attack on a nearby synagogue. They gained access to two of the accounts ("You'd be surprised how many of accounts use 'AllahAkhubar' as a password," he says), harvested their private direct messages and the IP addresses, which gave a geographical fix on the tweeters. They passed the information to Michael Smith, an adviser on terrorism to members of the US Congress, whom they'd read about online. Smith, in turn, passed the intel to the FBI.

A few days later, French media reported that four arrests had been made in Djerba in relation to a planned terror attack. Raijin and his colleagues wasted no time in claiming responsibility for the captures. They put out a statement. "Ghost Security Group detected multiple accounts on social media citing threats and co-ordinating what appeared to be an attack targeting British and Jewish tourists in Djerba, Tunisia," it stated. "Information was forwarded to law enforcement and subsequently a total of 17 arrests 
were made and a terror cell… disrupted."

Claiming glory in this way - against Smith's advice - was risky, especially when the group had no way of knowing to what extent its information had led to the arrests. Smith, not wanting to deny Ghost Security Group its moment (or, perhaps, to discourage them from sharing further intel by doing so), showed a Newsweek journalist email correspondence in which a law-
enforcement official verified that the intel had led to the arrests (something which, Smith says, resulted in a call from the FBI). It was enough to prove that hacktivists could have an effect; that their efforts could save lives. Suddenly, online vigilantes had a role model.

Five months after the beach attack in Tunisia, seven gunmen shot and killed 130 people in Paris. It was an act of vivid and appalling hatred. On November 18, five days after the spree, a video was posted to the official Anonymous YouTube channel. In it, a man wearing the group's signature V for Vendetta mask, and with his voice distorted to conceal his identity, stated: "Hello, citizens of the world. We are Anonymous. It is time to realise that social media is a solid platform for ISIS's communication as well as neutering their ideas of terror amongst youth. However, at the same time, social media has proved it is an advanced weapon. 
We must all work together and use social media to eliminate the accounts used by terrorists."

Although vigilante outfits had been passing open-source intelligence gathered from pro-jihadi social-media accounts and forums to authorities for months (Ghost Security Group was founded on January 10, 2015, and existed in different forms and under different monikers before then), Anonymous's message offered a rousing call to every young hacker who felt helpless when faced with harrowing news reports. "ISIS, we will hunt you and take down your sites, accounts, emails and expose you. From now on, there is no safe place for you online. You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure," the spokesman concluded.

A rallying hashtag - #OpParis - was created. Anonymous users set up a dedicated IRC channel filled with manuals for how anyone could get involved in taking the online fight to Daesh. As well as starter guides such as "How To Help", these documents include tutorials for "Noob hackers"; lists of jihadi-related keywords to search for on social media; tutorials for how to report offensive material; how to mount DDoS attacks on jihadi websites in order to overwhelm them with traffic and take them offline; the names of specific people within Daesh to be on the lookout for, and even a dictionary of Arabic. There were video tutorials for "approved" members and know-your-enemy style links to Daesh's own guides on how to improve online security and hack others.

Much of what followed was tinged with Anonymous's brand of humour. One pro-Daesh website hosted on the dark web was replaced with a link to an online store that sold Viagra. The group declared December 11, 2015 "Troll Day" against Daesh, encouraging followers to Photoshop rubber ducks and goats into previously grotesque propaganda images, alongside the jeering hashtag #Daeshbags. Daesh, which itself has dedicated online teams around the world managing its messaging, responded in kind. "Anonymous hackers threatened in [a] new video release that they will carry out a major hack operation on the Islamic State," the statement read. "Idiots."

However, adventurous Anonymous members began to infiltrate Daesh social media networks and forums - but failed to alert authorities to the names of accounts they were using. In numerous cases, according to Smith, these rogue accounts became subjects of official investigation, distracting efforts away from genuine targets. In a video release, self-proclaimed members of #OpParis announced that they had alerted law enforcement to an alleged planned Daesh attack on a WWE wrestling event in Atlanta. The FBI publicly discredited the information, stating: "We do not have specific or credible information of an attack at this time."

Misinformation soon curdled to infighting among members. Hacktivist "th3j35t3r" described the #OpParis campaign as a "comedy of errors". On November 22, 2015, the Anonymous Twitter account joined in. "Seriously, after #OpISIS there have been too many fame whores," one tweet stated. "It's not about the follows or RTs. It's about the truth. Have some integrity."

These missteps added weight to criticisms of such well-meaning but amateur efforts. Besides - who cares about a few social-media accounts when people are being gunned down on beaches? The online vigilantes, however, knew only too well how much of an effect just one of their number could have in the terror arena. After all, Junaid Hussain, the hacker from Birmingham whom Raijin believed was triggering attacks through his Twitter messages, was a former Anon.

Hussain grew up in Birmingham but, like many of those involved in #OpParis, was raised on the internet. At the age of 15 he co-founded "TeaMp0isoN", a hacker group with whom he operated under the moniker "TriCk". Hussain's activity, in his early days, was little more than digital vandalism, the hacker's equivalent of daubing a penis on the side of a railway carriage. He first gained notoriety for publishing the name and addresses of members of LulzSec, the hacker collective renowned for breaching the security of high-value targets such as the CIA and Sony Pictures. Hussain's crimes were serious, but tinged with the mocking irreverence of the teenage internet troll. He was jailed for six months, for example, for stealing the personal address book of former prime minister Tony Blair.

In time, Hussain's work gained a political bent, often falling in line with pro-Palestinian causes. In 2011, for example, TeaMp0isoN claimed to have helped "clean Facebook" of more than 1,000 pages that, the group claimed, contained what it regarded to be racist or Zionist content. The operation's targets also included British far-right groups such as the English Defence League. "I started using hacking as my form of medium by defacing sites to raise awareness of issues around the world, and to 'bully' corrupt organisations and embarrass them via leaks," he told the website Softpedia in 2012. "That is how I got into hacktivism."

Although Hussain's splinter group still rolled with Anonymous, a supposedly apolitical movement, he became increasingly zealous in his beliefs. Hussain was quoted in The Daily Telegraph in 2012: "Terrorism doesn't exist. They create the terrorism and fabricate it to demonise a certain faith." At the time he claimed that TeaMp0isoN did not follow a particular religion or political group. After his arrest in 2012, however, he swapped the pro-Palestinian rhetoric (the avatar on his Twitter account, for example, displayed a child's face decorated with a Palestinian flag) for a pro-Daesh stance (in his new Twitter avatar, Hussain looked down the sights of a machine gun aimed at the camera, his mouth covered with a black scarf).

Hussain arrived in Syria with his wife, Sally Jones, a former punk rocker from Kent, whom he reportedly met via Anonymous, in August 2014. "You can sit at home and play Call of Duty," he tweeted from one of his many now-deleted accounts. "Or you can come here and respond to the real call of duty… the choice is yours."

He became known as one of "The Beatles", the four British jihadists nicknamed by western captives because of their British accents. As his standing grew, Hussain began to employ in the service of Daesh the skills and techniques that he'd learned as a teenage hacker working under the banner of Anonymous. In January 2015, he claimed credit for an audacious hack on the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US Central Command, which co-ordinates strategy from the Middle East to Central Asia. On April 5, 2015, Hussain's group, the Cyber Caliphate, seized control of a French television network for several hours in one of the highest-profile hacks of the year. These attacks mirrored those for 
which Anonymous was known.

The symmetry is not coincidental. "Counter-terrorism analysts have struggled, without much success, to discern some religious, economic or even psychological trend among the more than 30,000 foreign fighters who have joined the Islamic State," says Emerson Brooking, a consultant to the New America Foundation. "What they most have in common is a sense of alienation and disempowerment in the places where they've grown up - a yearning for a greater purpose that they somehow find in the Syrian desert."

This sense of alienation and disempowerment is shared by the hacktivists who now hunt Daesh. Both groups find their purpose in the equalising power of the internet. Both groups are attracted to the online fight both for and against Daesh that they are uniquely equipped to handle.

The ideological knife-edge on which many young hackers sit is no clearer demonstrated than in the circumstances surrounding Hussain's death. On August 24, 2015 - less than two months after the foiled attack in Djerba - the US Department of Defense declared that the 21-year-old had been killed by a US drone strike outside Raqqa, Syria. "[Hussain] was involved in recruiting ISIL sympathisers in the west to carry out lone wolf-style attacks," US Air Force Colonel Patrick Ryder told Pentagon reporters. "He had significant technical skills and expressed a strong desire to kill Americans… He no longer poses a threat."

Two months later, a former member of Hussain's childhood hacker group claimed to have been responsible for supplying the Department of Defense with a lead on Hussain's location just before the strike. In a series of tweets posted in November 2015, the hacker claimed to have sent Hussain a link that, when clicked, inadvertently revealed his location. This drew the Sauron-like eye of the drone hovering in the sky above. If true, the anecdote shows how easily previously allied members of hacktivist groups can be recruited to opposing sides. If untrue, it reveals another wrinkle: in the amateur intelligence community, everyone wants to claim their place in history.

This was not their achievement," says Mikro, regarding Ghost Security Group's claim to have foiled the attack in Djerba. Mikro is founder of Control Sec and the man who claims to have coined the hashtag #OpISIS. "Sorry for my sharp reaction, but everyone I speak to asks about their role in that case. I am honestly a little fed up." Mikro, who says that he is in his twenties and lives in Europe (his Telegram avatar shows, revealingly perhaps, a photograph of a dog at the wheel of a British police car), contradicts Raijin's account of what happened in the foiling of the second Tunisian terror plot.

"It happened like this," he says. "We got a tip from one of our sources in Tunisia who has a connection to Daesh that there was something going on. I guess they were pretty proud of the beach attack the week before, so they were starting to brag about their next move. We knew the name of the market and the fact a second attack was planned to target Jews."

There was no searching of Twitter for the #jerba hashtag, Mikro says. Nobody guessed the password of incriminating Twitter accounts ("We did that kind of thing a while back, but the info is reachable for authorities so why waste time on it?"). Although, Mikro concedes, Control Sec and Ghost Security Group shared information "in the working environment" at the time, he also insists that all that the rival organisation did was pass his information on to Smith and the FBI.

When Ghost Security Group claimed responsibility for foiling the attack, Mikro was furious. "Working together was a bad move," he says. "The fact that I have to sit here and sound like a big-headed idiot to get the story out there says enough, doesn't it?" This wrangling for credit could be cleared up if the intelligence services were willing to publicly praise their informants. According to Raijin, however, this will never happen. "I don't think any law enforcement would publicly admit they relied on information from hackers to stop a terrorist event," he says. "It would either make them look crazy for trusting us, or embarrass them that we could find that information when they couldn't."

This scramble for credit reveals a contradiction at the heart of vigilante action. Young hackers often enter these groups hoping to gain prominence and glory for their successes, something to elevate their standing within a group where esteem can be measured in the primary currencies of our time, those dopamine-injecting "Likes" and "retweets". Anonymous may benefit from anonymity, but the allure of fame and notoriety is equally powerful. Much intelligence work, however, is clandestine by design. Sources must be protected. Victories are often left unannounced so as not to reveal techniques and strategies to the enemy. Narcissists are a poor fit for intelligence services.

This lack of co-ordination between the amateurs and professionals creates deeper problems. Although police and others are generally in favour of removing harmful, jihadi-related content from the internet, unless this whitewashing work is co-ordinated, valuable intelligence can be lost. "For intelligence agencies interested in open-source-intelligence collection, the elimination of these accounts can be a source of frustration," Emerson Brooking says. "Then, of course, there's the issue that Anonymous has been responsible for the takedown of a large number of accounts that have absolutely nothing to do with jihadis: the websites of academics, activist and journalists. There is a significant hit-and-miss aspect to all of this."

Twitter is adamant that it does not rely on vigilante information to monitor accounts. In a statement published last year, a company spokesperson said that the company is not using the lists generated by Anonymous, as research has found them to be "wildly inaccurate". Another representative of a social media company, who asked for both her and her employer's name to be withheld, was even clearer: "Tech companies ignore vigilante lists because they're garbage," she said.

Mikro disagrees. "That's not even close to the truth," he says. "Every day I see ISIS-related profiles that have been up for 12 to 16 hours. Seconds after we target them they go down." To prove his point, he tells WIRED to watch the CtrlSec Twitter feed as he tweets out the names of jihadi Twitter accounts for his followers to report en masse. Just as he promised, 
the accounts are taken offline shortly afterwards.

Maura Conway, a researcher at Dublin City University on the impact of violent online political extremism, also believes that social-media companies benefit from crowdsourced moderation. "Flagging activity has a fairly long history," he says. "YouTube has a 'trusted flagger' programme, that allows agencies and individuals to fast-track the reporting and deletion of terrorist material." Many believe, however, that Twitter, Facebook and the rest should do more, that their willingness to rely on their audience's self-policing exacerbates the problems associated with vigilantism. Some, such as Brooking, have even suggested that social-media companies deputise and pay hacktivists who spend hours per day hunting and reporting ISIS accounts.

Whether it's paid for or offered gratis, vigilante action is evolving. Mikro claims to work on OpISIS for 18 hours a day (he refuses to explain how he earns a living). Raijin spends much of his spare time loitering in ISIS-run Telegram message groups ("this second I am sitting in more than 100 ISIS Telegram channels writing variously in Arabic, Russian, Indonesian and English," he tells WIRED), sifting through the messages which include links to YouTube videos on how to make bombs, or material that identifies targets in the Iraqi and Syrian armies, their faces circled in red on digital photographs. Raijin, Ghost Security Group's technical lead, has developed tools with elaborate graphical interfaces that show, in pictorial terms, the connections that exist between individual suspects on the web, a substantial undertaking.

"We shed our 'underground' ways and now work within legitimate means," he tells me. "In the old days you may have found someone DDoSing an ISIS website, or perhaps hacking into their social-media accounts or forums. In most countries, information obtained via those methods can't be used in a legal procedure, so we needed to work above board. All the data in the world is useless if people won't take it from you."

Despite these efforts to professionalise their operations, it's unlikely that any vigilante group, Anonymous or otherwise, will ever be able to work openly with intelligence agencies. "Even in the case of the best intentioned vigilantes, their co-operation with the US government could set a precedent whereby another nation such as Russia could justify its own use of organised trolls to stifle political dissidents," Brooking says. "The world is currently united against ISIS, but future scenarios are unlikely to be this clear-cut."

This absence of legitimacy does nothing to dampen the resolve of Mikro, who spends so many hours trying to stem the flow of propaganda. For him, the sense of community and belonging - the same traits offered by the terrorist group against which he works - is enough. "I take my inspiration from the people I do this with," he tells me. "That is the driving power behind 
all this. That is enough of a pay-off."

Bron: www.wired.co.uk

quote:

Commander X - Press release

quote:

.Commander X Press Release - Behind The Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous

Thursday - September 29, 2016 10:00 AM ET

On November 1, 2016 at Noon ET I will release to the public my first book entitled "Behind The Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous". In order not to give any advantage to the government of the USA, who may try and disrupt the publication of my book - I will not be pre-announcing the name of my publisher. "Behind The Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous" will be released in stages as follows:

On November 1st at Noon I will release the First Edition - Hardbound version of "Behind The Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous" via an announcement on Twitter. It will ba available from our publisher directly at that time, or on Amazon soon after. Local bookstores will be able to order copies via their normal procedures, and readers can request this. The book itself will be gold embossed cloth covered harbound with a full color high-gloss paper dustjacket. It will be industry standard 6" by 9". Final page count is not available at this time. Retail cost will be approx. $18.00 to $20.00 USD depending on final page count.

On November 15th at Noon ET I will release the First Edition - Paperback version of "Behind The Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous". It will ba available from our publisher directly at that time, or on Amazon soon after. Local bookstores will be able to order copies via their normal procedures, and readers can request this. The book itself will be softbound with a full color high-gloss cover. It will be industry standard 6" by 9". Final page count is not available at this time. Retail cost will be approx. $9.00 to $10.00 USD depending on final page count.

On November 28th at Noon ET, which is "cyber monday" I will release the eBook and audio book versions of "Behind The Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous". They will be in industry standard formats, and available directly through my publisher, on Amazon - and other outlets. The eBook will retail at $3.00 to $5.00 USD depending on final page count. The audio book will be approx. $2.00 USD. And that will complete the release cycle. There is a countdown timer to release day on the website for "Behind The Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous".

There will be absolutely no pre-release copies distributed prior to publication. After publication, media outlets and individual journalists may request a complimentary PDF of "Behind The Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous" for review purposes directly from the author (me).

Twitter: @CommanderXanon

Main Website: www.CommanderX.cf

Book Website: www.BehindTheMask.cf