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Wikipedia

Anonymous (hacker group)

February 16, 2024

Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous
An emblem that is commonly associated with Anonymous. The "man without a head" represents anonymity and leaderless organization.[1]
Individuals appearing in public as Anonymous, wearing Guy Fawkes masks
Formationc. 2003
Type
Purpose
Membership
Decentralized affinity group

Anonymous originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an "anarchic", digitized "global brain" or "hivemind".[2][3][4] Anonymous members (known as anons) can sometimes be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta.[5] Some anons also opt to mask their voices through voice changers or text-to-speech programs.

Dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks in countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, South Africa,[6] Spain, India, and Turkey. Evaluations of the group's actions and effectiveness vary widely. Supporters have called the group "freedom fighters"[7] and digital Robin Hoods,[8] while critics have described them as "a cyber lynch-mob"[9] or "cyber terrorists".[10] In 2012, Time called Anonymous one of the "100 most influential people" in the world.[11] Anonymous' media profile diminished by 2018,[12][13] but the group re-emerged in 2020 to support the George Floyd protests and other causes.[14][15]

Philosophy

The philosophy of Anonymous offers insight into a long-standing political question that has gone unanswered with often tragic consequences for social movements: what does a new form of collective politics look like that wishes to go beyond the identity of the individual subject in late capitalism?[16]

Internal dissent is also a regular feature of the group.[17] A website associated with the group describes it as "an Internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives".[17] Gabriella Coleman writes of the group: "In some ways, it may be impossible to gauge the intent and motive of thousands of participants, many of who don't even bother to leave a trace of their thoughts, motivations, and reactions. Among those that do, opinions vary considerably."[18]

Broadly speaking, Anons oppose Internet censorship and control and the majority of their actions target governments, organizations, and corporations that they accuse of censorship. Anons were early supporters of the global Occupy movement and the Arab Spring.[19] Since 2008, a frequent subject of disagreement within Anonymous is whether members should focus on pranking and entertainment or more serious (and, in some cases, political) activism.[20][21]

We [Anonymous] just happen to be a group of people on the Internet who need—just kind of an outlet to do as we wish, that we wouldn't be able to do in regular society. ...That's more or less the point of it. Do as you wish. ... There's a common phrase: 'we are doing it for the lulz.'

— Trent Peacock, 'Search Engine: The Face of Anonymous, February 7, 2008.[22]

Because Anonymous has no leadership, no action can be attributed to the membership as a whole. Parmy Olson and others have criticized media coverage that presents the group as well-organized or homogeneous; Olson writes, "There was no single leader pulling the levers, but a few organizational minds that sometimes pooled together to start planning a stunt."[23] Some members protest using legal means, while others employ illegal measures such as DDoS attacks and hacking.[24] Membership is open to anyone who wishes to state they are a member of the collective;[25] British journalist Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer compared the group's decentralized structure to that of al-Qaeda: "If you believe in Anonymous, and call yourself Anonymous, you are Anonymous."[26] Olson, who formerly described Anonymous as a "brand", stated in 2012 that she now characterized it as a "movement" rather than a group: "anyone can be part of it. It is a crowd of people, a nebulous crowd of people, working together and doing things together for various purposes."[27]

The group's few rules include not disclosing one's identity, not talking about the group, and not attacking media.[28] Members commonly use the tagline "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."[29] Brian Kelly writes that three of the group's key characteristics are "(1) an unrelenting moral stance on issues and rights, regardless of direct provocation; (2) a physical presence that accompanies online hacking activity; and (3) a distinctive brand."[30]

Journalists have commented that Anonymous' secrecy, fabrications, and media awareness pose an unusual challenge for reporting on the group's actions and motivations.[31][32] Quinn Norton of Wired writes that: "Anons lie when they have no reason to lie. They weave vast fabrications as a form of performance. Then they tell the truth at unexpected and unfortunate times, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. They are unpredictable."[31] Norton states that the difficulties in reporting on the group cause most writers, including herself, to focus on the "small groups of hackers who stole the limelight from a legion, defied their values, and crashed violently into the law" rather than "Anonymous's sea of voices, all experimenting with new ways of being in the world".[31]

Arrests and trials

Since 2009, dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks, in countries including the U.S., UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Turkey.[33] Anons generally protest these prosecutions and describe these individuals as martyrs to the movement.[34] The July 2011 arrest of LulzSec member Topiary became a particular rallying point, leading to a widespread "Free Topiary" movement.[35]

The first person to be sent to jail for participation in an Anonymous DDoS attack was Dmitriy Guzner, an American 19-year-old. He pleaded guilty to "unauthorized impairment of a protected computer" in November 2009 and was sentenced to 366 days in U.S. federal prison.[36][37]

On June 13, 2011, officials in Turkey arrested 32 individuals that were allegedly involved in DDoS attacks on Turkish government websites. These members of Anonymous were captured in different cities of Turkey including Istanbul and Ankara. According to PC Magazine, these individuals were arrested after they attacked websites as a response to the Turkish government demand to ISPs to implement a system of filters that many have perceived as censorship.[38][39]

Chris Doyon (alias "Commander X"), a self-described leader of Anonymous, was arrested in September 2011 for a cyberattack on the website of Santa Cruz County, California.[40][41] He jumped bail in February 2012 and fled across the border into Canada.[41]

In September 2012, journalist and Anonymous associate Barrett Brown, known for speaking to media on behalf of the group, was arrested hours after posting a video that appeared to threaten FBI agents with physical violence. Brown was subsequently charged with 17 offenses, including publishing personal credit card information from the Stratfor hack.[42]

Operation Avenge Assange

Several law enforcement agencies took action after Anonymous' Operation Avenge Assange.[43] In January 2011, British police arrested five male suspects between the ages of 15 and 26 with suspicion of participating in Anonymous DDoS attacks.[44] During July 19–20, 2011, as many as 20 or more arrests were made of suspected Anonymous hackers in the US, UK, and Netherlands. According to the statements of U.S. officials, suspects' homes were raided and suspects were arrested in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington DC, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio. Additionally, a 16-year-old boy was held by the police in south London on suspicion of breaching the Computer Misuse Act 1990, and four were held in the Netherlands.[45][46][47][48]

AnonOps admin Christopher Weatherhead (alias "Nerdo"), a 22-year-old who had reportedly been intimately involved in organizing DDoS attacks during "Operation Payback",[49] was convicted by a UK court on one count of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers in December 2012. He was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment. Ashley Rhodes, Peter Gibson, and another male had already pleaded guilty to the same charge for actions between August 2010 and January 2011.[49][50]

Analysis

Evaluations of Anonymous' actions and effectiveness vary widely. In a widely shared post, blogger Patrick Gray wrote that private security firms "secretly love" the group for the way in which it publicizes cyber security threats.[51] Anonymous is sometimes stated to have changed the nature of protesting,[8][9] and in 2012, Time called it one of the "100 most influential people" in the world.[11]

In 2012, Public Radio International reported that the U.S. National Security Agency considered Anonymous a potential national security threat and had warned the president that it could develop the capability to disable parts of the U.S. power grid.[52] In contrast, CNN reported in the same year that "security industry experts generally don't consider Anonymous a major player in the world of cybercrime" due to the group's reliance on DDoS attacks that briefly disabled websites rather than the more serious damage possible through hacking. One security consultant compared the group to "a jewelry thief that drives through a window, steal jewels, and rather than keep them, waves them around and tosses them out to a crowd ... They're very noisy, low-grade crimes."[53] In its 2013 Threats Predictions report, McAfee wrote that the technical sophistication of Anonymous was in decline and that it was losing supporters due to "too many uncoordinated and unclear operations".[54]

Graham Cluley, a security expert for Sophos, argued that Anonymous' actions against child porn websites hosted on a darknet could be counterproductive, commenting that while their intentions may be good, the removal of illegal websites and sharing networks should be performed by the authorities, rather than Internet vigilantes.[55] Some commentators also argued that the DDoS attacks by Anonymous following the January 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act protests had proved counterproductive. Molly Wood of CNET wrote that "[i]f the SOPA/PIPA protests were the Web's moment of inspiring, non-violent, hand-holding civil disobedience, #OpMegaUpload feels like the unsettling wave of car-burning hooligans that sweep in and incite the riot portion of the play."[56] Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle concurred, stating that "Anonymous' actions hurt the movement to kill SOPA/PIPA by highlighting online lawlessness."[57] The Oxford Internet Institute's Joss Wright wrote that "In one sense the actions of Anonymous are themselves, anonymously and unaccountably, censoring websites in response to positions with which they disagree."[58]

Gabriella Coleman has compared the group to the trickster archetype[59] and said that "they dramatize the importance of anonymity and privacy in an era when both are rapidly eroding. Given that vast databases track us, given the vast explosion of surveillance, there's something enchanting, mesmerizing and at a minimum thought-provoking about Anonymous' interventions".[60] When asked what good Anonymous had done for the world, Parmy Olson replied:

In some cases, yes, I think it has in terms of some of the stuff they did in the Middle East supporting the pro-democracy demonstrators. But a lot of bad things too, unnecessarily harassing people – I would class that as a bad thing. DDOSing the CIA website, stealing customer data and posting it online just for shits and giggles is not a good thing.[27]

Quinn Norton of Wired wrote of the group in 2011:

I will confess up front that I love Anonymous, but not because I think they're the heroes. Like Alan Moore's character V who inspired Anonymous to adopt the Guy Fawkes mask as an icon and fashion item, you're never quite sure if Anonymous is the hero or antihero. The trickster is attracted to change and the need for change, and that's where Anonymous goes. But they are not your personal army – that's Rule 44 – yes, there are rules. And when they do something, it never goes quite as planned. The internet has no neat endings.[59]

Furthermore, Landers assessed the following in 2008:

Anonymous is the first internet-based super-consciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they’re a group? Because they’re travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely.[61]

Media portrayal

Sam Esmail shared in an interview with Motherboard that he was inspired by Anonymous when creating the USA Network hacktivist drama, Mr. Robot.[62] Furthermore, Wired calls the "Omegas", a fictitious hacker group in the show, "a clear reference to the Anonymous offshoot known as LulzSec".[63] In the TV series Elementary a hacktivist collective called "Everyone" plays a recurring role; there are several hints and similarities to Anonymous.[64]

History

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of events associated with Anonymous.

4chan raids (2003–2007)

Main article: 4chan
 
KTTV Fox 11 investigative report on Anonymous. The report focused on what were then contemporary instances of Internet bullying by Anonymous.[65]

The name Anonymous itself is inspired by the perceived anonymity under which users post images and comments on the Internet. Usage of the term Anonymous in the sense of a shared identity began on imageboards, particularly the /b/ board of 4chan, dedicated to random content and to raiding other websites.[66] A tag of Anonymous is assigned to visitors who leave comments without identifying the originator of the posted content. Users of imageboards sometimes jokingly acted as if Anonymous was a single individual. The concept of the Anonymous entity advanced in 2004 when an administrator on the 4chan image board activated a "Forced_Anon" protocol that signed all posts as Anonymous.[67] As the popularity of imageboards increased, the idea of Anonymous as a collective of unnamed individuals became an Internet meme.[68]

Users of 4chan's /b/ board would occasionally join into mass pranks or raids.[66] In a raid on July 12, 2006, for example, large numbers of 4chan readers invaded the Finnish social networking site Habbo Hotel with identical avatars; the avatars blocked regular Habbo members from accessing the digital hotel's pool, stating it was "closed due to fail and AIDS".[69] Future LulzSec member Topiary became involved with the site at this time, inviting large audiences to listen to his prank phone calls via Skype.[70][a] Due to the growing traffic on 4chan's board, users soon began to plot pranks off-site using Internet Relay Chat (IRC).[72] These raids resulted in the first mainstream press story on Anonymous, a report by Fox station KTTV in Los Angeles, California in the U.S. The report called the group "hackers on steroids", "domestic terrorists", and an "Internet hate machine".[65][73]

Encyclopedia Dramatica (2004–present)

Main article: Encyclopedia Dramatica

Encyclopedia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DeGrippo, initially as a means of documenting gossip related to LiveJournal, but it quickly was adopted as a major platform by Anonymous for parody and other purposes.[74] The not safe for work site celebrates a subversive "trolling culture", and documents Internet memes, culture, and events, such as mass pranks, trolling events, "raids", large-scale failures of Internet security, and criticism of Internet communities that are accused of self-censorship to gain prestige or positive coverage from traditional and established media outlets. Journalist Julian Dibbell described Encyclopedia Dramatica as the site "where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend."[74] The site also played a role in the anti-Scientology campaign of Project Chanology.[75]

On April 14, 2011, the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website named Oh Internet that bore little resemblance to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes.[76] In response, Anonymous launched "Operation Save ED" to rescue and restore the site's content.[77] The Web Ecology Project made a downloadable archive of former Encyclopedia Dramatica content.[78][79] The site's reincarnation was initially hosted at encyclopediadramatica.ch on servers owned by Ryan Cleary, who later was arrested in relation to attacks by LulzSec against Sony.[80]

Project Chanology (2008)

Main article: Project Chanology
"Message to Scientology", January 21, 2008

Anonymous first became associated with hacktivism[b] in 2008 following a series of actions against the Church of Scientology known as Project Chanology. On January 15, 2008, the gossip blog Gawker posted a video in which celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise praised the religion;[81] and the Church responded with a cease-and-desist letter for violation of copyright.[82] 4chan users organized a raid against the Church in retaliation, prank-calling its hotline, sending black faxes designed to waste ink cartridges, and launching DDoS attacks against its websites.[83][84]

The DDoS attacks were at first carried out with the Gigaloader and JMeter applications. Within a few days, these were supplanted by the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), a network stress-testing application allowing users to flood a server with TCP or UDP packets. The LOIC soon became a signature weapon in the Anonymous arsenal; however, it would also lead to a number of arrests of less experienced Anons who failed to conceal their IP addresses.[85] Some operators in Anonymous IRC channels incorrectly told or lied to new volunteers that using the LOIC carried no legal risk.[86][87]

 
Protesters outside a Scientology center on February 10, 2008

During the DDoS attacks, a group of Anons uploaded a YouTube video in which a robotic voice speaks on behalf of Anonymous, telling the "leaders of Scientology" that "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind—for the laughs—we shall expel you from the Internet."[88][89] Within ten days, the video had attracted hundreds of thousands of views.[89]

With more than 10 thousand followers on their IRC server waiting for instructions, they felt they had to come up with something, and got the idea of a worldwide protest. Because they both wanted to use a symbol or image to unify the protests, and because all protesters were supposed to be anonymous, it was decided to use a mask. Due to shipment problems caused by the short amount of time to prepare, they improvised and called all the costume and comic book-shops in the major cities around the world, and found that the only mask available in all the cities was the Guy Fawkes mask from the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta, in which an anarchist revolutionary battles a totalitarian government. The suggestion of the choice of mask was well received. On February 10, thousands of Anonymous joined simultaneous protests at Church of Scientology facilities in 142 cities in 43 countries.[90][91][92] The stylized Guy Fawkes masks soon became a popular symbol for Anonymous.[93] In-person protests against the Church continued throughout the year, including "Operation Party Hard" on March 15 and "Operation Reconnect" on April 12.[94][95][96] However, by mid-year, they were drawing far fewer protesters, and many of the organizers in IRC channels had begun to drift away from the project.[97]

Operation Payback (2010)

Main article: Operation Payback

By the start of 2009, Scientologists had stopped engaging with protesters and had improved online security, and actions against the group had largely ceased. A period of infighting followed between the politically engaged members (called "moralfags" in the parlance of 4chan) and those seeking to provoke for entertainment (trolls).[98] By September 2010, the group had received little publicity for a year and faced a corresponding drop in member interest; its raids diminished greatly in size and moved largely off of IRC channels, organizing again from the chan boards, particularly /b/.[99]

In September 2010, however, Anons became aware of Aiplex Software, an Indian software company that contracted with film studios to launch DDoS attacks on websites used by copyright infringers, such as The Pirate Bay.[100][99] Coordinating through IRC, Anons launched a DDoS attack on September 17 that shut down Aiplex's website for a day. Primarily using LOIC, the group then targeted the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), successfully bringing down both sites.[101] On September 19, future LulzSec member Mustafa Al-Bassam (known as "Tflow") and other Anons hacked the website of Copyright Alliance, an anti-infringement group, and posted the name of the operation: "Payback Is A Bitch", or "Operation Payback" for short.[102] Anons also issued a press release, stating:

Anonymous is tired of corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people’s rights to spread information, but more importantly, the right to SHARE with one another. The RIAA and the MPAA feign to aid the artists and their cause; yet they do no such thing. In their eyes is not hope, only dollar signs. Anonymous will not stand this any longer.[103]

As IRC network operators were beginning to shut down networks involved in DDoS attacks, Anons organized a group of servers to host an independent IRC network, titled AnonOps.[104] Operation Payback's targets rapidly expanded to include the British law firm ACS:Law,[105] the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft,[106] the British nightclub Ministry of Sound,[107] the Spanish copyright society Sociedad General de Autores y Editores,[108] the U.S. Copyright Office,[109] and the website of Gene Simmons of Kiss.[110] By October 7, 2010, total downtime for all websites attacked during Operation Payback was 537.55 hours.[110]

In November 2010, the organization WikiLeaks began releasing hundreds of thousands of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables. In the face of legal threats against the organization by the U.S. government, Amazon.com booted WikiLeaks from its servers, and PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa cut off service to the organization.[111] Operation Payback then expanded to include "Operation Avenge Assange", and Anons issued a press release declaring PayPal a target.[112] Launching DDoS attacks with the LOIC, Anons quickly brought down the websites of the PayPal blog; PostFinance, a Swiss financial company denying service to WikiLeaks; EveryDNS, a web-hosting company that had also denied service; and the website of U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who had supported the push to cut off services.[113]

On December 8, Anons launched an attack against PayPal's main site. According to Topiary, who was in the command channel during the attack, the LOIC proved ineffective, and Anons were forced to rely on the botnets of two hackers for the attack, marshaling hijacked computers for a concentrated assault.[114] Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll also reported that the "zombie computers" of involuntary botnets had provided 90% of the attack.[115] Topiary states that he and other Anons then "lied a bit to the press to give it that sense of abundance", exaggerating the role of the grassroots membership. However, this account was disputed.[116]

The attacks brought down PayPal.com for an hour on December 8 and another brief period on December 9.[117] Anonymous also disrupted the sites for Visa and MasterCard on December 8.[118] Anons had announced an intention to bring down Amazon.com as well, but failed to do so, allegedly because of infighting with the hackers who controlled the botnets.[119] PayPal estimated the damage to have cost the company US$5.5 million. It later provided the IP addresses of 1,000 of its attackers to the FBI, leading to at least 14 arrests.[120] On Thursday, December 5, 2013, 13 of the PayPal 14 pleaded guilty to taking part in the attacks.[121]

2011–2012

 
A member holding an Anonymous flier at Occupy Wall Street, a protest that the group actively supported, September 17, 2011

In the years following Operation Payback, targets of Anonymous protests, hacks, and DDoS attacks continued to diversify. Beginning in January 2011, Anons took a number of actions known initially as Operation Tunisia in support of Arab Spring movements. Tflow created a script that Tunisians could use to protect their web browsers from government surveillance, while fellow future LulzSec member Hector Xavier Monsegur (alias "Sabu") and others allegedly hijacked servers from a London web-hosting company to launch a DDoS attack on Tunisian government websites, taking them offline. Sabu also used a Tunisian volunteer's computer to hack the website of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, replacing it with a message from Anonymous.[122] Anons also helped Tunisian dissidents share videos online about the uprising.[123] In Operation Egypt, Anons collaborated with the activist group Telecomix to help dissidents access government-censored websites.[123] Sabu and Topiary went on to participate in attacks on government websites in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Zimbabwe.[124]

Tflow, Sabu, Topiary, and Ryan Ackroyd (known as "Kayla") collaborated in February 2011 on a cyber-attack against Aaron Barr, CEO of the computer security firm HBGary Federal, in retaliation for his research on Anonymous and his threat to expose members of the group. Using a SQL injection weakness, the four hacked the HBGary site, used Barr's captured password to vandalize his Twitter feed with racist messages, and released an enormous cache of HBGary's e-mails in a torrent file on Pirate Bay.[125] The e-mails stated that Barr and HBGary had proposed to Bank of America a plan to discredit WikiLeaks in retaliation for a planned leak of Bank of America documents,[126] and the leak caused substantial public relations harm to the firm as well as leading one U.S. congressman to call for a congressional investigation.[127] Barr resigned as CEO before the end of the month.[128]

Several attacks by Anons have targeted organizations accused of homophobia. In February 2011, an open letter was published on AnonNews.org threatening the Westboro Baptist Church, an organization based in Kansas in the U.S. known for picketing funerals with signs reading "God Hates Fags".[129] During a live radio current affairs program in which Topiary debated church member Shirley Phelps-Roper, CosmoTheGod hacked one of the organization's websites.[130][131] After the church announced its intentions in December 2012 to picket the funerals of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, CosmoTheGod published the names, phone numbers, and e-mail and home addresses of church members and brought down GodHatesFags.com with a DDoS attack.[132] In August 2012, Anons hacked the site of Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi in retaliation for the Parliament of Uganda's consideration of an anti-homosexuality law permitting capital punishment.[133]

In April 2011, Anons launched a series of attacks against Sony in retaliation for trying to stop hacks of the PlayStation 3 game console. More than 100 million Sony accounts were compromised, and the Sony services Qriocity and PlayStation Network were taken down for a month apiece by cyberattacks.[134]

In July 2011, Anonymous announced the launch of its social media platform Anonplus.[135] This came after Anonymous' presence was removed from Google+.[136] The site was later hacked by a Turkish hackers group who placed a message on the front page and replaced its logo with a picture of a dog.[137]

In August 2011, Anons launched an attack against BART in San Francisco, which they dubbed #OpBart. The attack, made in response to the killing of Charles Hill a month prior, resulted in customers' personal information leaked onto the group's website.[138]

 
Anonymous protestors at the Brussels Stock Exchange, Belgium, January 2012

When the Occupy Wall Street protests began in New York City in September 2011, Anons were early participants and helped spread the movement to other cities such as Boston.[19] In October, some Anons attacked the website of the New York Stock Exchange while other Anons publicly opposed the action via Twitter.[53] Some Anons also helped organize an Occupy protest outside the London Stock Exchange on May 1, 2012.[139]

Anons launched Operation Darknet in October 2011, targeting websites hosting child pornography. In particular, the group hacked a child pornography site called "Lolita City" hosted by Freedom Hosting, releasing 1,589 usernames from the site. Anons also said that they had disabled forty image-swapping pedophile websites that employed the anonymity network Tor.[140] In 2012, Anons leaked the names of users of a suspected child porn site in OpDarknetV2.[141] Anonymous launched the #OpPedoChat campaign on Twitter in 2012 as a continuation of Operation Darknet. In attempt to eliminate child pornography from the internet, the group posted the emails and IP addresses of suspected pedophiles on the online forum PasteBin.[142][143]

In 2011, the Koch Industries website was attacked following their attack upon union members, resulting in their website being made inaccessible for 15 minutes. In 2013, one member, a 38-year-old truck driver, pleaded guilty when accused of participating in the attack for a period of one minute, and received a sentence of two years federal probation, and ordered to pay $183,000 restitution, the amount Koch stated they paid a consultancy organization, despite this being only a denial of service attack.[144]

On January 19, 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice shut down the file-sharing site Megaupload on allegations of copyright infringement. Anons responded with a wave of DDoS attacks on U.S. government and copyright organizations, shutting down the sites for the RIAA, MPAA, Broadcast Music, Inc., and the FBI.[145]

In April 2012, Anonymous hacked 485 Chinese government websites, some more than once, to protest the treatment of their citizens. They urged people to "fight for justice, fight for freedom, [and] fight for democracy".[146][147][148]

In 2012, Anonymous launched Operation Anti-Bully: Operation Hunt Hunter in retaliation to Hunter Moore's revenge porn site, "Is Anyone Up?" Anonymous crashed Moore's servers and publicized much of his personal information online, including his social security number. The organization also published the personal information of Andrew Myers, the proprietor of "Is Anyone Back", a copycat site of Moore's "Is Anyone Up?"[149]

In response to Operation Pillar of Defense, a November 2012 Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, Anons took down hundreds of Israeli websites with DDoS attacks.[150] Anons pledged another "massive cyberassault" against Israel in April 2013 in retaliation for its actions in Gaza, promising to "wipe Israel off the map of the Internet".[151] However, its DDoS attacks caused only temporary disruptions, leading cyberwarfare experts to suggest that the group had been unable to recruit or hire botnet operators for the attack.[152][153]

2013

See also: Million Mask March

On November 5, 2013, Anonymous protesters gathered around the world for the Million Mask March. Demonstrations were held in 400 cities around the world to coincide with Guy Fawkes Night.[154]

Operation Safe Winter was an effort to raise awareness about homelessness through the collection, collation, and redistribution of resources. This program began on November 7, 2013[155] after an online call to action from Anonymous UK. Three missions using a charity framework were suggested in the original global spawning a variety of direct actions from used clothing drives to pitch in community potlucks feeding events in the UK, US and Turkey.[156] The #OpSafeWinter call to action quickly spread through the mutual aid communities like Occupy Wall Street[157] and its offshoot groups like the open-source-based OccuWeather.[158] With the addition of the long-term mutual aid communities of New York City and online hacktivists in the US, it took on an additional three suggested missions.[159] Encouraging participation from the general public, this operation has raised questions of privacy and the changing nature of the Anonymous community's use of monikers. The project to support those living on the streets while causing division in its own online network has been able to partner with many efforts and organizations not traditionally associated with Anonymous or online activists.

2014

In the wake of the fatal police shooting of unarmed African-American Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, "Operation Ferguson"—a hacktivist organization that claimed to be associated with Anonymous—organized cyberprotests against police, setting up a website and a Twitter account to do so.[160] The group promised that if any protesters were harassed or harmed, they would attack the city's servers and computers, taking them offline.[160] City officials said that e-mail systems were targeted and phones died, while the Internet crashed at the City Hall.[160][161] Prior to August 15, members of Anonymous corresponding with Mother Jones said that they were working on confirming the identity of the undisclosed police officer who shot Brown and would release his name as soon as they did.[162] On August 14, Anonymous posted on its Twitter feed what it claimed was the name of the officer involved in the shooting.[163][164] However, police said the identity released by Anonymous was incorrect.[165] Twitter subsequently suspended the Anonymous account from its service.[166]

It was reported on November 19, 2014, that Anonymous had declared cyber war on the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) the previous week, after the KKK had made death threats following the Ferguson riots. They hacked the KKK's Twitter account, attacked servers hosting KKK sites, and started to release the personal details of members.[167]

On November 24, 2014, Anonymous shut down the Cleveland city website and posted a video after Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy armed only with a BB gun, was shot to death by a police officer in a Cleveland park.[168] Anonymous also used BeenVerified to uncover the phone number and address of a police officer involved in the shooting.[169]

2015

In January 2015, Anonymous released a video and a statement via Twitter condemning the attack on Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people, including eight journalists, were fatally shot. The video, claiming that it is "a message for al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists", was uploaded to the group's Belgian account.[170] The announcement stated that "We, Anonymous around the world, have decided to declare war on you, the terrorists" and promises to avenge the killings by "shut[ting] down your accounts on all social networks."[171] On January 12, they brought down a website that was suspected to belong to one of these groups.[172] Critics of the action warned that taking down extremists' websites would make them harder to monitor.[173]

On June 17, 2015, Anonymous claimed responsibility for a Denial of Service attack against Canadian government websites in protest of the passage of bill C-51—an anti-terror legislation that grants additional powers to Canadian intelligence agencies.[174] The attack temporarily affected the websites of several federal agencies.

On October 28, 2015, Anonymous announced that it would reveal the names of up to 1,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan and other affiliated groups, stating in a press release, "You are terrorists that hide your identities beneath sheets and infiltrate society on every level. The privacy of the Ku Klux Klan no longer exists in cyberspace."[175] On November 2, a list of 57 phone numbers and 23 email addresses (that allegedly belong to KKK members) was reportedly published and received media attention.[176] However, a tweet from the "@Operation_KKK" Twitter account the same day denied it had released that information[177][178][179] The group stated it planned to, and later did, reveal the names on November 5.[180]

Since 2013, Saudi Arabian hacktivists have been targeting government websites protesting the actions of the regime.[181] These actions have seen attacks supported by the possibly Iranian backed Yemen Cyber Army.[182] An offshoot of Anonymous self-described as Ghost Security or GhostSec started targeting Islamic State-affiliated websites and social media handles.[183][184]

In November 2015, Anonymous announced a major, sustained operation against ISIS following the November 2015 Paris attacks,[185] declaring: "Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go."[186][187] ISIS responded on Telegram by calling them "idiots", and asking "What they gonna to [sic] hack?"[188][189] By the next day, however, Anonymous claimed to have taken down 3,824 pro-ISIS Twitter accounts, and by the third day more than 5,000,[190] and to have doxxed ISIS recruiters.[191] A week later, Anonymous increased their claim to 20,000 pro-ISIS accounts and released a list of the accounts.[192][193] The list included the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, The New York Times, and BBC News. The BBC reported that most of the accounts on the list appeared to be still active.[194] A spokesman for Twitter told The Daily Dot that the company is not using the lists of accounts being reported by Anonymous, as they have been found to be "wildly inaccurate" and include accounts used by academics and journalists.[195]

In 2015, a group that claimed to be affiliated with Anonymous, calling themselves as AnonSec, claimed to have hacked and gathered almost 276 GB of data from NASA servers including NASA flight and radar logs and videos, and also multiple documents related to ongoing research.[196] AnonSec group also claimed gaining access of a Global Hawk Drone of NASA, and released some video footage purportedly from the drone's cameras. A part of the data was released by AnonSec on Pastebin service, as an Anon Zine.[197] NASA has denied the hack, asserting that the control of the drones were never compromised, but has acknowledged that the photos released along with the content are real photographs of its employees, but that most of these data are already available in the public domain.[198]

2016

The Blink Hacker Group, associating themselves with the Anonymous group, claimed to have hacked the Thailand prison websites and servers.[199] The compromised data has been shared online, with the group claiming that they give the data back to Thailand Justice and the citizens of Thailand as well. The hack was done in response to news from Thailand about the mistreatment of prisoners in Thailand.[200]

In late 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory first emerged on 4chan, and adherents used similar terminology and branding as Anonymous. In response, anti-Trump members of Anonymous warned that QAnon was stealing the collective's branding and vowed to oppose the theory.[201][202][13]

A group calling themselves Anonymous Africa launched a number of DDoS attacks on websites associated with the controversial South African Gupta family in mid-June 2016. Gupta-owned companies targeted included the websites of Oakbay Investments, The New Age, and ANN7. The websites of the South African Broadcasting Corporation and a political parties Economic Freedom Fighters and Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF were also attacked for "nationalist socialist [Nazi] rhetoric and politicising racism."[203]

2020

See also: BlueLeaks

In February 2020, Anonymous hacked the United Nations' website and created a page for Taiwan, a country which has not had a seat at the UN since 1971.[204][205] The hacked page featured the Flag of Taiwan, the KMT emblem, a Taiwan Independence flag, and the Anonymous logo along with a caption.[204][206] The hacked server belonged to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.[204]

In the wake of protests across the U.S. following the murder of George Floyd, Anonymous released a video on Facebook as well as sending it out to the Minneapolis Police Department on May 28, 2020, titled "Anonymous Message To The Minneapolis Police Department", in which they state that they are going to seek revenge on the Minneapolis Police Department, and "expose their crimes to the world".[207][non-primary source needed][208] According to Bloomberg, the video was initially posted on an unconfirmed Anonymous Facebook page on May 28.[209] According to BBC News, that same Facebook page had no notoriety and published videos of dubious content linked to UFOs and "China's plan to take over the world". It gained repercussions after the video about George Floyd was published[210] and the Minneapolis police website, which is responsible for the police officer, was down.[211] Later, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that every computer in the region suffered a sophisticated attack.[212] According to BBC News, the attack on the police website using DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) was unsophisticated.[210] According to researcher Troy Hunt, these breaches of the site may have happened from old credentials. Regarding unverified Twitter posts that also went viral, where radio stations of police officers playing music and preventing communication are shown, experts point out that this is unlikely to be due to a hack attack – if they are real.[210] Later, it was confirmed by CNET that the leaks made from the police website are false and that someone is taking advantage of the repercussions of George Floyd's murder to spread misinformation.[213]

On June 19, 2020, Anonymous published BlueLeaks, sometimes referred to by the Twitter hashtag #BlueLeaks, 269.21 gigabytes of internal U.S. law enforcement data through the activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets, which called it the "largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies".[214] The data — internal intelligence, bulletins, emails, and reports — was produced between August 1996 and June 2020[215] by more than 200 law enforcement agencies, which provided it to fusion centers. It was obtained through a security breach of Netsential, a web developer that works with fusion centers and law enforcement.[216] In Maine, legislators took interest in BlueLeaks thanks to details about the Maine Information and Analysis Center, which is under investigation. The leaks showed the fusion center was spying on and keeping records on people who had been legally protesting or had been "suspicious" but committed no crime.[217]

In 2020, Anonymous started cyber-attacks against the Nigerian government. They started the operation to support the #EndSARS movement in Nigeria. The group's attacks were tweeted by a member of Anonymous called LiteMods. The websites of EFCC, INEC and various other Nigerian government websites were taken-down with DDoS attacks. The websites of some banks were compromised.[218][219][220][221]

2021

See also: Texas Heartbeat Act and 2021 Epik data breach

The Texas Heartbeat Act, a law which bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, came into effect in Texas on September 1, 2021. The law relies on private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who performs or induces an abortion, or aids and abets one, once "cardiac activity" in an embryo can be detected via transvaginal ultrasound, which is usually possible beginning at around six weeks of pregnancy.[222] Shortly after the law came into effect, anti-abortion organizations set up websites to collect "whistleblower" reports of suspected violators of the bill.[223]

On September 3, Anonymous announced "Operation Jane", a campaign focused on stymying those who attempted to enforce the law by "exhaust[ing] the investigational resources of bounty hunters, their snitch sites, and online gathering spaces until no one is able to maintain data integrity".[223] On September 11, the group hacked the website of the Republican Party of Texas, replacing it with text about Anonymous, an invitation to join Operation Jane, and a Planned Parenthood donation link.[224]

On September 13, Anonymous released a large quantity of private data belonging to Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist content.[225] Epik had briefly provided services to an abortion "whistleblower" website run by the anti-abortion Texas Right to Life organization, but the reporting form went offline on September 4 after Epik told the group they had violated their terms of service by collecting private information about third parties.[226] The data included domain purchase and transfer details, account credentials and logins, payment history, employee emails, and unidentified private keys.[227] The hackers claimed they had obtained "a decade's worth of data" which included all customers and all domains ever hosted or registered through the company, and which included poorly encrypted passwords and other sensitive data stored in plaintext.[227][228] Later on September 13, the Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) organization said they were working to curate the allegedly leaked data for more accessible download, and said that it consisted of "180 gigabytes of user, registration, forwarding and other information".[229] Publications including The Daily Dot and The Record by Recorded Future subsequently confirmed the veracity of the hack and the types of data that had been exposed.[230][228] Anonymous released another leak on September 29, this time publishing bootable disk images of Epik's servers;[231][232] more disk images as well as some leaked documents from the Republican Party of Texas appeared on October 4.[233]

2022

See also: Russo-Ukrainian War, 2022 Ukraine cyberattacks, 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis, and Operation Samantha Smith

On February 25, 2022, Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous declared that they had launched a 'cyber operations' against the Russian Federation, in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The group later temporarily disabled websites such as RT.com and the website of the Defence Ministry along with other state owned websites.[234][235][236][237][238] Anonymous also leaked 200 GB worth of emails from the Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr, which provided logistical support for Russia in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[239] Anonymous also hacked into Russian TV channels and played Ukrainian music[240] through them and showed uncensored news of events in Ukraine.[241]

Operation Russia

Main article: Anonymous and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

On March 7, 2022, Anonymous actors DepaixPorteur and TheWarriorPoetz declared on Twitter[242] that they hacked 400 Russian surveillance cameras and broadcast them on a website.[243] They call this operation "Russian Camera Dump".[242]

Between March 25, 2022 and June 1, 2022, DDoSecrets collected hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes and millions of emails allegedly from the Central Bank of Russia,[244] Capital Legal Services,[245] All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK),[246] Aerogas,[247] Blagoveshchensk City Administration,[245] Continent Express,[248] Gazregion,[249] GUOV i GS - General Dept. of Troops and Civil Construction,[250] Accent Capital,[251] ALET/АЛЕТ, CorpMSP,[252] Nikolai M. Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO),[253] the Achinsk City Government,[253][254] SOCAR Energoresource,[253][255] Metprom Group LLC,[256] and the Vyberi Radio / Выбери Радио group,[257] all of which were allegedly hacked by Anonymous and Anonymous aligned NB65.[245]

Iranian Protests

On September 18, 2022, YourAnonSpider hacked the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran's official webpage that belonging to Ali Khamenei in retaliation to the death of Mahsa Amini.[258] Anonymous launched a cyber operation against the Iranian government for the alleged murder of Mahsa Amini. Anonymous launched distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against Iran's government and state-owned websites.[259] On September 23, 2022, a hacktivist named "Edaalate Ali" hacked Iran's state tv government channel during the middle of broadcast and released CCTV footage of Iran's prison facilities.[260][261] On Sunday, October 23, 2022 that an Iranian hacker group known as "Black Reward" published confidential files and documents email system belonging to Iran's nuclear program.[262][263] Black Reward announced on their Telegram channel that they have hacked into 324 emails which that contained more than a hundred thousand messages and over 50 gigabytes of files.[264] A hacktivist group by the name "Lab Dookhtegan" published the Microsoft Excel macros, PowerShell exploits APT34 reportedly used to target organizations across the world[265].[266][267]

Chinese Protests

In response to the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China, "Anonymous OpIran" launched Operation White Paper, attacked and took down Chinese government controlled websites, and leaked some Chinese government officials' personal information.[268]

Related groups

LulzSec

Main article: LulzSec

In May 2011, the small group of Anons behind the HBGary Federal hack—including Tflow, Topiary, Sabu, and Kayla—formed the hacker group "Lulz Security", commonly abbreviated "LulzSec". The group's first attack was against Fox.com, leaking several passwords, LinkedIn profiles, and the names of 73,000 X Factor contestants. In May 2011, members of Lulz Security gained international attention for hacking into the American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) website. They stole user data and posted a fake story on the site that claimed that rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were still alive and living in New Zealand.[269] LulzSec stated that some of its hacks, including its attack on PBS, were motivated by a desire to defend WikiLeaks and its informant Chelsea Manning.[270]

In June 2011, members of the group claimed responsibility for an attack against Sony Pictures that took data that included "names, passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses and dates of birth for thousands of people."[271] In early June, LulzSec hacked into and stole user information from the pornography website www.pron.com. They obtained and published around 26,000 e-mail addresses and passwords.[272] On June 14, 2011, LulzSec took down four websites by request of fans as part of their "Titanic Take-down Tuesday". These websites were Minecraft, League of Legends, The Escapist, and IT security company FinFisher.[273] They also attacked the login servers of the multiplayer online game EVE Online, which also disabled the game's front-facing website, and the League of Legends login servers. Most of the takedowns were performed with DDoS attacks.[274]

LulzSec also hacked a variety of government-affiliated sites, such as chapter sites of InfraGard, a non-profit organization affiliated with the FBI.[275] The group leaked some of InfraGard member e-mails and a database of local users.[276] On June 13, LulzSec released the e-mails and passwords of a number of users of senate.gov, the website of the U.S. Senate.[277] On June 15, LulzSec launched an attack on cia.gov, the public website of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, taking the website offline for several hours with a distributed denial-of-service attack.[278] On December 2, an offshoot of LulzSec calling itself LulzSec Portugal attacked several sites related to the government of Portugal. The websites for the Bank of Portugal, the Assembly of the Republic, and the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Development all became unavailable for a few hours.[279]

On June 26, 2011, the core LulzSec group announced it had reached the end of its "50 days of lulz" and was ceasing operations.[280] Sabu, however, had already been secretly arrested on June 7 and then released to work as an FBI informant. His cooperation led to the arrests of Ryan Cleary, James Jeffery, and others.[281] Tflow was arrested on July 19, 2011,[282] Topiary was arrested on July 27,[283] and Kayla was arrested on March 6, 2012.[284] Topiary, Kayla, Tflow, and Cleary pleaded guilty in April 2013 and were scheduled to be sentenced in May 2013.[285] In April 2013, Australian police arrested the alleged LulzSec leader Aush0k, but subsequent prosecutions failed to establish police claims.[286][287]

AntiSec

Main article: Operation AntiSec

Beginning in June 2011, hackers from Anonymous and LulzSec collaborated on a series of cyber attacks known as "Operation AntiSec". On June 23, in retaliation for the passage of the immigration enforcement bill Arizona SB 1070, LulzSec released a cache of documents from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, including the personal information and home addresses of many law enforcement officers.[288] On June 22, LulzSec Brazil took down the websites of the Government of Brazil and the President of Brazil.[289][290] Later data dumps included the names, addresses, phone numbers, Internet passwords, and Social Security numbers of police officers in Arizona,[291] Missouri,[292] and Alabama.[293] AntiSec members also stole police officer credit card information to make donations to various causes.[294]

On July 18, LulzSec hacked into and vandalized the website of British newspaper The Sun in response to a phone-hacking scandal.[295][296] Other targets of AntiSec actions have included FBI contractor ManTech International,[297] computer security firm Vanguard Defense Industries,[298] and defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, releasing 90,000 military e-mail accounts and their passwords from the latter.[299]

In December 2011, AntiSec member "sup_g" (alleged by the U.S. government to be Jeremy Hammond) and others hacked Stratfor, a U.S.-based intelligence company, vandalizing its web page and publishing 30,000 credit card numbers from its databases.[300] AntiSec later released millions of the company's e-mails to Wikileaks.[301]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Topiary was later revealed to be Jake Davis, a teenager living in the Shetland Islands of Scotland.[71]
  2. ^ A portmanteau of "hacking" and "activism"

Citations

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Bibliography

  • Coleman, Gabriella (November 4, 2014). Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1781685846.
  • Firer-Blaess, Sylvain (2016). The Collective Identity of Anonymous: Web of Meanings in a Digitally Enabled Movement (PDF). Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. p. 220. ISBN 978-91-554-9602-9. Retrieved October 5, 2016.
  • Kelly, Brian (2012). "Investing in a Centralized Cybersecurity Infrastructure: Why 'Hacktivism' can and should influence cybersecurity reform" (PDF). Boston University Law Review. 92 (5): 1663–1710. Retrieved May 2, 2013.
  • Olson, Parmy (June 5, 2012). We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency. Hachette Digital, Inc. ISBN 978-0-316-21353-0. Retrieved May 2, 2013.

External links

February 16, 2024
anonymous, hacker, group, anonymous, decentralized, international, activist, hacktivist, collective, movement, primarily, known, various, cyberattacks, against, several, governments, government, institutions, government, agencies, corporations, church, sciento. Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments government institutions and government agencies corporations and the Church of Scientology AnonymousAn emblem that is commonly associated with Anonymous The man without a head represents anonymity and leaderless organization 1 Individuals appearing in public as Anonymous wearing Guy Fawkes masksFormationc 2003TypeMultiple use name avatar Virtual community Voluntary associationPurposeAnti cyber surveillance Anti cyber censorship Internet activism Internet vigilantismMembershipDecentralized affinity groupAnonymous originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic digitized global brain or hivemind 2 3 4 Anonymous members known as anons can sometimes be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta 5 Some anons also opt to mask their voices through voice changers or text to speech programs Dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks in countries including the United States the United Kingdom Australia the Netherlands South Africa 6 Spain India and Turkey Evaluations of the group s actions and effectiveness vary widely Supporters have called the group freedom fighters 7 and digital Robin Hoods 8 while critics have described them as a cyber lynch mob 9 or cyber terrorists 10 In 2012 Time called Anonymous one of the 100 most influential people in the world 11 Anonymous media profile diminished by 2018 12 13 but the group re emerged in 2020 to support the George Floyd protests and other causes 14 15 Contents 1 Philosophy 2 Arrests and trials 2 1 Operation Avenge Assange 3 Analysis 4 Media portrayal 5 History 5 1 4chan raids 2003 2007 5 2 Encyclopedia Dramatica 2004 present 5 3 Project Chanology 2008 5 4 Operation Payback 2010 5 5 2011 2012 5 6 2013 5 7 2014 5 8 2015 5 9 2016 5 10 2020 5 11 2021 5 12 2022 5 12 1 Operation Russia 5 12 2 Iranian Protests 5 12 3 Chinese Protests 6 Related groups 6 1 LulzSec 6 2 AntiSec 7 See also 8 References 8 1 Notes 8 2 Citations 8 3 Bibliography 9 External linksPhilosophyThe philosophy of Anonymous offers insight into a long standing political question that has gone unanswered with often tragic consequences for social movements what does a new form of collective politics look like that wishes to go beyond the identity of the individual subject in late capitalism 16 Internal dissent is also a regular feature of the group 17 A website associated with the group describes it as an Internet gathering with a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives 17 Gabriella Coleman writes of the group In some ways it may be impossible to gauge the intent and motive of thousands of participants many of who don t even bother to leave a trace of their thoughts motivations and reactions Among those that do opinions vary considerably 18 Broadly speaking Anons oppose Internet censorship and control and the majority of their actions target governments organizations and corporations that they accuse of censorship Anons were early supporters of the global Occupy movement and the Arab Spring 19 Since 2008 a frequent subject of disagreement within Anonymous is whether members should focus on pranking and entertainment or more serious and in some cases political activism 20 21 We Anonymous just happen to be a group of people on the Internet who need just kind of an outlet to do as we wish that we wouldn t be able to do in regular society That s more or less the point of it Do as you wish There s a common phrase we are doing it for the lulz Trent Peacock Search Engine The Face of Anonymous February 7 2008 22 Because Anonymous has no leadership no action can be attributed to the membership as a whole Parmy Olson and others have criticized media coverage that presents the group as well organized or homogeneous Olson writes There was no single leader pulling the levers but a few organizational minds that sometimes pooled together to start planning a stunt 23 Some members protest using legal means while others employ illegal measures such as DDoS attacks and hacking 24 Membership is open to anyone who wishes to state they are a member of the collective 25 British journalist Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer compared the group s decentralized structure to that of al Qaeda If you believe in Anonymous and call yourself Anonymous you are Anonymous 26 Olson who formerly described Anonymous as a brand stated in 2012 that she now characterized it as a movement rather than a group anyone can be part of it It is a crowd of people a nebulous crowd of people working together and doing things together for various purposes 27 The group s few rules include not disclosing one s identity not talking about the group and not attacking media 28 Members commonly use the tagline We are Anonymous We are Legion We do not forgive We do not forget Expect us 29 Brian Kelly writes that three of the group s key characteristics are 1 an unrelenting moral stance on issues and rights regardless of direct provocation 2 a physical presence that accompanies online hacking activity and 3 a distinctive brand 30 Journalists have commented that Anonymous secrecy fabrications and media awareness pose an unusual challenge for reporting on the group s actions and motivations 31 32 Quinn Norton of Wired writes that Anons lie when they have no reason to lie They weave vast fabrications as a form of performance Then they tell the truth at unexpected and unfortunate times sometimes destroying themselves in the process They are unpredictable 31 Norton states that the difficulties in reporting on the group cause most writers including herself to focus on the small groups of hackers who stole the limelight from a legion defied their values and crashed violently into the law rather than Anonymous s sea of voices all experimenting with new ways of being in the world 31 Arrests and trialsSince 2009 dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks in countries including the U S UK Australia the Netherlands Spain and Turkey 33 Anons generally protest these prosecutions and describe these individuals as martyrs to the movement 34 The July 2011 arrest of LulzSec member Topiary became a particular rallying point leading to a widespread Free Topiary movement 35 The first person to be sent to jail for participation in an Anonymous DDoS attack was Dmitriy Guzner an American 19 year old He pleaded guilty to unauthorized impairment of a protected computer in November 2009 and was sentenced to 366 days in U S federal prison 36 37 On June 13 2011 officials in Turkey arrested 32 individuals that were allegedly involved in DDoS attacks on Turkish government websites These members of Anonymous were captured in different cities of Turkey including Istanbul and Ankara According to PC Magazine these individuals were arrested after they attacked websites as a response to the Turkish government demand to ISPs to implement a system of filters that many have perceived as censorship 38 39 Chris Doyon alias Commander X a self described leader of Anonymous was arrested in September 2011 for a cyberattack on the website of Santa Cruz County California 40 41 He jumped bail in February 2012 and fled across the border into Canada 41 In September 2012 journalist and Anonymous associate Barrett Brown known for speaking to media on behalf of the group was arrested hours after posting a video that appeared to threaten FBI agents with physical violence Brown was subsequently charged with 17 offenses including publishing personal credit card information from the Stratfor hack 42 Operation Avenge Assange Several law enforcement agencies took action after Anonymous Operation Avenge Assange 43 In January 2011 British police arrested five male suspects between the ages of 15 and 26 with suspicion of participating in Anonymous DDoS attacks 44 During July 19 20 2011 as many as 20 or more arrests were made of suspected Anonymous hackers in the US UK and Netherlands According to the statements of U S officials suspects homes were raided and suspects were arrested in Alabama Arizona California Colorado Washington DC Florida Massachusetts Nevada New Mexico and Ohio Additionally a 16 year old boy was held by the police in south London on suspicion of breaching the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and four were held in the Netherlands 45 46 47 48 AnonOps admin Christopher Weatherhead alias Nerdo a 22 year old who had reportedly been intimately involved in organizing DDoS attacks during Operation Payback 49 was convicted by a UK court on one count of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers in December 2012 He was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment Ashley Rhodes Peter Gibson and another male had already pleaded guilty to the same charge for actions between August 2010 and January 2011 49 50 AnalysisEvaluations of Anonymous actions and effectiveness vary widely In a widely shared post blogger Patrick Gray wrote that private security firms secretly love the group for the way in which it publicizes cyber security threats 51 Anonymous is sometimes stated to have changed the nature of protesting 8 9 and in 2012 Time called it one of the 100 most influential people in the world 11 In 2012 Public Radio International reported that the U S National Security Agency considered Anonymous a potential national security threat and had warned the president that it could develop the capability to disable parts of the U S power grid 52 In contrast CNN reported in the same year that security industry experts generally don t consider Anonymous a major player in the world of cybercrime due to the group s reliance on DDoS attacks that briefly disabled websites rather than the more serious damage possible through hacking One security consultant compared the group to a jewelry thief that drives through a window steal jewels and rather than keep them waves them around and tosses them out to a crowd They re very noisy low grade crimes 53 In its 2013 Threats Predictions report McAfee wrote that the technical sophistication of Anonymous was in decline and that it was losing supporters due to too many uncoordinated and unclear operations 54 Graham Cluley a security expert for Sophos argued that Anonymous actions against child porn websites hosted on a darknet could be counterproductive commenting that while their intentions may be good the removal of illegal websites and sharing networks should be performed by the authorities rather than Internet vigilantes 55 Some commentators also argued that the DDoS attacks by Anonymous following the January 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act protests had proved counterproductive Molly Wood of CNET wrote that i f the SOPA PIPA protests were the Web s moment of inspiring non violent hand holding civil disobedience OpMegaUpload feels like the unsettling wave of car burning hooligans that sweep in and incite the riot portion of the play 56 Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle concurred stating that Anonymous actions hurt the movement to kill SOPA PIPA by highlighting online lawlessness 57 The Oxford Internet Institute s Joss Wright wrote that In one sense the actions of Anonymous are themselves anonymously and unaccountably censoring websites in response to positions with which they disagree 58 Gabriella Coleman has compared the group to the trickster archetype 59 and said that they dramatize the importance of anonymity and privacy in an era when both are rapidly eroding Given that vast databases track us given the vast explosion of surveillance there s something enchanting mesmerizing and at a minimum thought provoking about Anonymous interventions 60 When asked what good Anonymous had done for the world Parmy Olson replied In some cases yes I think it has in terms of some of the stuff they did in the Middle East supporting the pro democracy demonstrators But a lot of bad things too unnecessarily harassing people I would class that as a bad thing DDOSing the CIA website stealing customer data and posting it online just for shits and giggles is not a good thing 27 Quinn Norton of Wired wrote of the group in 2011 I will confess up front that I love Anonymous but not because I think they re the heroes Like Alan Moore s character V who inspired Anonymous to adopt the Guy Fawkes mask as an icon and fashion item you re never quite sure if Anonymous is the hero or antihero The trickster is attracted to change and the need for change and that s where Anonymous goes But they are not your personal army that s Rule 44 yes there are rules And when they do something it never goes quite as planned The internet has no neat endings 59 Furthermore Landers assessed the following in 2008 Anonymous is the first internet based super consciousness Anonymous is a group in the sense that a flock of birds is a group How do you know they re a group Because they re travelling in the same direction At any given moment more birds could join leave peel off in another direction entirely 61 Media portrayalSam Esmail shared in an interview with Motherboard that he was inspired by Anonymous when creating the USA Network hacktivist drama Mr Robot 62 Furthermore Wired calls the Omegas a fictitious hacker group in the show a clear reference to the Anonymous offshoot known as LulzSec 63 In the TV series Elementary a hacktivist collective called Everyone plays a recurring role there are several hints and similarities to Anonymous 64 HistoryFor a chronological guide see Timeline of events associated with Anonymous 4chan raids 2003 2007 Main article 4chan nbsp KTTV Fox 11 investigative report on Anonymous The report focused on what were then contemporary instances of Internet bullying by Anonymous 65 The name Anonymous itself is inspired by the perceived anonymity under which users post images and comments on the Internet Usage of the term Anonymous in the sense of a shared identity began on imageboards particularly the b board of 4chan dedicated to random content and to raiding other websites 66 A tag of Anonymous is assigned to visitors who leave comments without identifying the originator of the posted content Users of imageboards sometimes jokingly acted as if Anonymous was a single individual The concept of the Anonymous entity advanced in 2004 when an administrator on the 4chan image board activated a Forced Anon protocol that signed all posts as Anonymous 67 As the popularity of imageboards increased the idea of Anonymous as a collective of unnamed individuals became an Internet meme 68 Users of 4chan s b board would occasionally join into mass pranks or raids 66 In a raid on July 12 2006 for example large numbers of 4chan readers invaded the Finnish social networking site Habbo Hotel with identical avatars the avatars blocked regular Habbo members from accessing the digital hotel s pool stating it was closed due to fail and AIDS 69 Future LulzSec member Topiary became involved with the site at this time inviting large audiences to listen to his prank phone calls via Skype 70 a Due to the growing traffic on 4chan s board users soon began to plot pranks off site using Internet Relay Chat IRC 72 These raids resulted in the first mainstream press story on Anonymous a report by Fox station KTTV in Los Angeles California in the U S The report called the group hackers on steroids domestic terrorists and an Internet hate machine 65 73 Encyclopedia Dramatica 2004 present Main article Encyclopedia Dramatica Encyclopedia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DeGrippo initially as a means of documenting gossip related to LiveJournal but it quickly was adopted as a major platform by Anonymous for parody and other purposes 74 The not safe for work site celebrates a subversive trolling culture and documents Internet memes culture and events such as mass pranks trolling events raids large scale failures of Internet security and criticism of Internet communities that are accused of self censorship to gain prestige or positive coverage from traditional and established media outlets Journalist Julian Dibbell described Encyclopedia Dramatica as the site where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in jokes catchphrases and obsessions is lovingly annotated and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout all of it calculated to offend 74 The site also played a role in the anti Scientology campaign of Project Chanology 75 On April 14 2011 the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website named Oh Internet that bore little resemblance to Encyclopedia Dramatica Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes 76 In response Anonymous launched Operation Save ED to rescue and restore the site s content 77 The Web Ecology Project made a downloadable archive of former Encyclopedia Dramatica content 78 79 The site s reincarnation was initially hosted at encyclopediadramatica ch on servers owned by Ryan Cleary who later was arrested in relation to attacks by LulzSec against Sony 80 Project Chanology 2008 Main article Project Chanology source source source source track track track track Message to Scientology January 21 2008Anonymous first became associated with hacktivism b in 2008 following a series of actions against the Church of Scientology known as Project Chanology On January 15 2008 the gossip blog Gawker posted a video in which celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise praised the religion 81 and the Church responded with a cease and desist letter for violation of copyright 82 4chan users organized a raid against the Church in retaliation prank calling its hotline sending black faxes designed to waste ink cartridges and launching DDoS attacks against its websites 83 84 The DDoS attacks were at first carried out with the Gigaloader and JMeter applications Within a few days these were supplanted by the Low Orbit Ion Cannon LOIC a network stress testing application allowing users to flood a server with TCP or UDP packets The LOIC soon became a signature weapon in the Anonymous arsenal however it would also lead to a number of arrests of less experienced Anons who failed to conceal their IP addresses 85 Some operators in Anonymous IRC channels incorrectly told or lied to new volunteers that using the LOIC carried no legal risk 86 87 nbsp Protesters outside a Scientology center on February 10 2008During the DDoS attacks a group of Anons uploaded a YouTube video in which a robotic voice speaks on behalf of Anonymous telling the leaders of Scientology that For the good of your followers for the good of mankind for the laughs we shall expel you from the Internet 88 89 Within ten days the video had attracted hundreds of thousands of views 89 With more than 10 thousand followers on their IRC server waiting for instructions they felt they had to come up with something and got the idea of a worldwide protest Because they both wanted to use a symbol or image to unify the protests and because all protesters were supposed to be anonymous it was decided to use a mask Due to shipment problems caused by the short amount of time to prepare they improvised and called all the costume and comic book shops in the major cities around the world and found that the only mask available in all the cities was the Guy Fawkes mask from the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta in which an anarchist revolutionary battles a totalitarian government The suggestion of the choice of mask was well received On February 10 thousands of Anonymous joined simultaneous protests at Church of Scientology facilities in 142 cities in 43 countries 90 91 92 The stylized Guy Fawkes masks soon became a popular symbol for Anonymous 93 In person protests against the Church continued throughout the year including Operation Party Hard on March 15 and Operation Reconnect on April 12 94 95 96 However by mid year they were drawing far fewer protesters and many of the organizers in IRC channels had begun to drift away from the project 97 Operation Payback 2010 Main article Operation Payback By the start of 2009 Scientologists had stopped engaging with protesters and had improved online security and actions against the group had largely ceased A period of infighting followed between the politically engaged members called moralfags in the parlance of 4chan and those seeking to provoke for entertainment trolls 98 By September 2010 the group had received little publicity for a year and faced a corresponding drop in member interest its raids diminished greatly in size and moved largely off of IRC channels organizing again from the chan boards particularly b 99 In September 2010 however Anons became aware of Aiplex Software an Indian software company that contracted with film studios to launch DDoS attacks on websites used by copyright infringers such as The Pirate Bay 100 99 Coordinating through IRC Anons launched a DDoS attack on September 17 that shut down Aiplex s website for a day Primarily using LOIC the group then targeted the Recording Industry Association of America RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America MPAA successfully bringing down both sites 101 On September 19 future LulzSec member Mustafa Al Bassam known as Tflow and other Anons hacked the website of Copyright Alliance an anti infringement group and posted the name of the operation Payback Is A Bitch or Operation Payback for short 102 Anons also issued a press release stating Anonymous is tired of corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people s rights to spread information but more importantly the right to SHARE with one another The RIAA and the MPAA feign to aid the artists and their cause yet they do no such thing In their eyes is not hope only dollar signs Anonymous will not stand this any longer 103 As IRC network operators were beginning to shut down networks involved in DDoS attacks Anons organized a group of servers to host an independent IRC network titled AnonOps 104 Operation Payback s targets rapidly expanded to include the British law firm ACS Law 105 the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft 106 the British nightclub Ministry of Sound 107 the Spanish copyright society Sociedad General de Autores y Editores 108 the U S Copyright Office 109 and the website of Gene Simmons of Kiss 110 By October 7 2010 total downtime for all websites attacked during Operation Payback was 537 55 hours 110 In November 2010 the organization WikiLeaks began releasing hundreds of thousands of leaked U S diplomatic cables In the face of legal threats against the organization by the U S government Amazon com booted WikiLeaks from its servers and PayPal MasterCard and Visa cut off service to the organization 111 Operation Payback then expanded to include Operation Avenge Assange and Anons issued a press release declaring PayPal a target 112 Launching DDoS attacks with the LOIC Anons quickly brought down the websites of the PayPal blog PostFinance a Swiss financial company denying service to WikiLeaks EveryDNS a web hosting company that had also denied service and the website of U S Senator Joe Lieberman who had supported the push to cut off services 113 On December 8 Anons launched an attack against PayPal s main site According to Topiary who was in the command channel during the attack the LOIC proved ineffective and Anons were forced to rely on the botnets of two hackers for the attack marshaling hijacked computers for a concentrated assault 114 Security researcher Sean Paul Correll also reported that the zombie computers of involuntary botnets had provided 90 of the attack 115 Topiary states that he and other Anons then lied a bit to the press to give it that sense of abundance exaggerating the role of the grassroots membership However this account was disputed 116 The attacks brought down PayPal com for an hour on December 8 and another brief period on December 9 117 Anonymous also disrupted the sites for Visa and MasterCard on December 8 118 Anons had announced an intention to bring down Amazon com as well but failed to do so allegedly because of infighting with the hackers who controlled the botnets 119 PayPal estimated the damage to have cost the company US 5 5 million It later provided the IP addresses of 1 000 of its attackers to the FBI leading to at least 14 arrests 120 On Thursday December 5 2013 13 of the PayPal 14 pleaded guilty to taking part in the attacks 121 2011 2012 nbsp A member holding an Anonymous flier at Occupy Wall Street a protest that the group actively supported September 17 2011In the years following Operation Payback targets of Anonymous protests hacks and DDoS attacks continued to diversify Beginning in January 2011 Anons took a number of actions known initially as Operation Tunisia in support of Arab Spring movements Tflow created a script that Tunisians could use to protect their web browsers from government surveillance while fellow future LulzSec member Hector Xavier Monsegur alias Sabu and others allegedly hijacked servers from a London web hosting company to launch a DDoS attack on Tunisian government websites taking them offline Sabu also used a Tunisian volunteer s computer to hack the website of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi replacing it with a message from Anonymous 122 Anons also helped Tunisian dissidents share videos online about the uprising 123 In Operation Egypt Anons collaborated with the activist group Telecomix to help dissidents access government censored websites 123 Sabu and Topiary went on to participate in attacks on government websites in Bahrain Egypt Libya Jordan and Zimbabwe 124 Tflow Sabu Topiary and Ryan Ackroyd known as Kayla collaborated in February 2011 on a cyber attack against Aaron Barr CEO of the computer security firm HBGary Federal in retaliation for his research on Anonymous and his threat to expose members of the group Using a SQL injection weakness the four hacked the HBGary site used Barr s captured password to vandalize his Twitter feed with racist messages and released an enormous cache of HBGary s e mails in a torrent file on Pirate Bay 125 The e mails stated that Barr and HBGary had proposed to Bank of America a plan to discredit WikiLeaks in retaliation for a planned leak of Bank of America documents 126 and the leak caused substantial public relations harm to the firm as well as leading one U S congressman to call for a congressional investigation 127 Barr resigned as CEO before the end of the month 128 Several attacks by Anons have targeted organizations accused of homophobia In February 2011 an open letter was published on AnonNews org threatening the Westboro Baptist Church an organization based in Kansas in the U S known for picketing funerals with signs reading God Hates Fags 129 During a live radio current affairs program in which Topiary debated church member Shirley Phelps Roper CosmoTheGod hacked one of the organization s websites 130 131 After the church announced its intentions in December 2012 to picket the funerals of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims CosmoTheGod published the names phone numbers and e mail and home addresses of church members and brought down GodHatesFags com with a DDoS attack 132 In August 2012 Anons hacked the site of Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi in retaliation for the Parliament of Uganda s consideration of an anti homosexuality law permitting capital punishment 133 In April 2011 Anons launched a series of attacks against Sony in retaliation for trying to stop hacks of the PlayStation 3 game console More than 100 million Sony accounts were compromised and the Sony services Qriocity and PlayStation Network were taken down for a month apiece by cyberattacks 134 In July 2011 Anonymous announced the launch of its social media platform Anonplus 135 This came after Anonymous presence was removed from Google 136 The site was later hacked by a Turkish hackers group who placed a message on the front page and replaced its logo with a picture of a dog 137 In August 2011 Anons launched an attack against BART in San Francisco which they dubbed OpBart The attack made in response to the killing of Charles Hill a month prior resulted in customers personal information leaked onto the group s website 138 nbsp Anonymous protestors at the Brussels Stock Exchange Belgium January 2012When the Occupy Wall Street protests began in New York City in September 2011 Anons were early participants and helped spread the movement to other cities such as Boston 19 In October some Anons attacked the website of the New York Stock Exchange while other Anons publicly opposed the action via Twitter 53 Some Anons also helped organize an Occupy protest outside the London Stock Exchange on May 1 2012 139 Anons launched Operation Darknet in October 2011 targeting websites hosting child pornography In particular the group hacked a child pornography site called Lolita City hosted by Freedom Hosting releasing 1 589 usernames from the site Anons also said that they had disabled forty image swapping pedophile websites that employed the anonymity network Tor 140 In 2012 Anons leaked the names of users of a suspected child porn site in OpDarknetV2 141 Anonymous launched the OpPedoChat campaign on Twitter in 2012 as a continuation of Operation Darknet In attempt to eliminate child pornography from the internet the group posted the emails and IP addresses of suspected pedophiles on the online forum PasteBin 142 143 In 2011 the Koch Industries website was attacked following their attack upon union members resulting in their website being made inaccessible for 15 minutes In 2013 one member a 38 year old truck driver pleaded guilty when accused of participating in the attack for a period of one minute and received a sentence of two years federal probation and ordered to pay 183 000 restitution the amount Koch stated they paid a consultancy organization despite this being only a denial of service attack 144 On January 19 2012 the U S Department of Justice shut down the file sharing site Megaupload on allegations of copyright infringement Anons responded with a wave of DDoS attacks on U S government and copyright organizations shutting down the sites for the RIAA MPAA Broadcast Music Inc and the FBI 145 In April 2012 Anonymous hacked 485 Chinese government websites some more than once to protest the treatment of their citizens They urged people to fight for justice fight for freedom and fight for democracy 146 147 148 In 2012 Anonymous launched Operation Anti Bully Operation Hunt Hunter in retaliation to Hunter Moore s revenge porn site Is Anyone Up Anonymous crashed Moore s servers and publicized much of his personal information online including his social security number The organization also published the personal information of Andrew Myers the proprietor of Is Anyone Back a copycat site of Moore s Is Anyone Up 149 In response to Operation Pillar of Defense a November 2012 Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip Anons took down hundreds of Israeli websites with DDoS attacks 150 Anons pledged another massive cyberassault against Israel in April 2013 in retaliation for its actions in Gaza promising to wipe Israel off the map of the Internet 151 However its DDoS attacks caused only temporary disruptions leading cyberwarfare experts to suggest that the group had been unable to recruit or hire botnet operators for the attack 152 153 2013 See also Million Mask March On November 5 2013 Anonymous protesters gathered around the world for the Million Mask March Demonstrations were held in 400 cities around the world to coincide with Guy Fawkes Night 154 Operation Safe Winter was an effort to raise awareness about homelessness through the collection collation and redistribution of resources This program began on November 7 2013 155 after an online call to action from Anonymous UK Three missions using a charity framework were suggested in the original global spawning a variety of direct actions from used clothing drives to pitch in community potlucks feeding events in the UK US and Turkey 156 The OpSafeWinter call to action quickly spread through the mutual aid communities like Occupy Wall Street 157 and its offshoot groups like the open source based OccuWeather 158 With the addition of the long term mutual aid communities of New York City and online hacktivists in the US it took on an additional three suggested missions 159 Encouraging participation from the general public this operation has raised questions of privacy and the changing nature of the Anonymous community s use of monikers The project to support those living on the streets while causing division in its own online network has been able to partner with many efforts and organizations not traditionally associated with Anonymous or online activists 2014 In the wake of the fatal police shooting of unarmed African American Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri Operation Ferguson a hacktivist organization that claimed to be associated with Anonymous organized cyberprotests against police setting up a website and a Twitter account to do so 160 The group promised that if any protesters were harassed or harmed they would attack the city s servers and computers taking them offline 160 City officials said that e mail systems were targeted and phones died while the Internet crashed at the City Hall 160 161 Prior to August 15 members of Anonymous corresponding with Mother Jones said that they were working on confirming the identity of the undisclosed police officer who shot Brown and would release his name as soon as they did 162 On August 14 Anonymous posted on its Twitter feed what it claimed was the name of the officer involved in the shooting 163 164 However police said the identity released by Anonymous was incorrect 165 Twitter subsequently suspended the Anonymous account from its service 166 It was reported on November 19 2014 that Anonymous had declared cyber war on the Ku Klux Klan KKK the previous week after the KKK had made death threats following the Ferguson riots They hacked the KKK s Twitter account attacked servers hosting KKK sites and started to release the personal details of members 167 On November 24 2014 Anonymous shut down the Cleveland city website and posted a video after Tamir Rice a twelve year old boy armed only with a BB gun was shot to death by a police officer in a Cleveland park 168 Anonymous also used BeenVerified to uncover the phone number and address of a police officer involved in the shooting 169 2015 In January 2015 Anonymous released a video and a statement via Twitter condemning the attack on Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people including eight journalists were fatally shot The video claiming that it is a message for al Qaeda the Islamic State and other terrorists was uploaded to the group s Belgian account 170 The announcement stated that We Anonymous around the world have decided to declare war on you the terrorists and promises to avenge the killings by shut ting down your accounts on all social networks 171 On January 12 they brought down a website that was suspected to belong to one of these groups 172 Critics of the action warned that taking down extremists websites would make them harder to monitor 173 On June 17 2015 Anonymous claimed responsibility for a Denial of Service attack against Canadian government websites in protest of the passage of bill C 51 an anti terror legislation that grants additional powers to Canadian intelligence agencies 174 The attack temporarily affected the websites of several federal agencies On October 28 2015 Anonymous announced that it would reveal the names of up to 1 000 members of the Ku Klux Klan and other affiliated groups stating in a press release You are terrorists that hide your identities beneath sheets and infiltrate society on every level The privacy of the Ku Klux Klan no longer exists in cyberspace 175 On November 2 a list of 57 phone numbers and 23 email addresses that allegedly belong to KKK members was reportedly published and received media attention 176 However a tweet from the Operation KKK Twitter account the same day denied it had released that information 177 178 179 The group stated it planned to and later did reveal the names on November 5 180 Since 2013 Saudi Arabian hacktivists have been targeting government websites protesting the actions of the regime 181 These actions have seen attacks supported by the possibly Iranian backed Yemen Cyber Army 182 An offshoot of Anonymous self described as Ghost Security or GhostSec started targeting Islamic State affiliated websites and social media handles 183 184 In November 2015 Anonymous announced a major sustained operation against ISIS following the November 2015 Paris attacks 185 declaring Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go 186 187 ISIS responded on Telegram by calling them idiots and asking What they gonna to sic hack 188 189 By the next day however Anonymous claimed to have taken down 3 824 pro ISIS Twitter accounts and by the third day more than 5 000 190 and to have doxxed ISIS recruiters 191 A week later Anonymous increased their claim to 20 000 pro ISIS accounts and released a list of the accounts 192 193 The list included the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama Hillary Clinton The New York Times and BBC News The BBC reported that most of the accounts on the list appeared to be still active 194 A spokesman for Twitter told The Daily Dot that the company is not using the lists of accounts being reported by Anonymous as they have been found to be wildly inaccurate and include accounts used by academics and journalists 195 In 2015 a group that claimed to be affiliated with Anonymous calling themselves as AnonSec claimed to have hacked and gathered almost 276 GB of data from NASA servers including NASA flight and radar logs and videos and also multiple documents related to ongoing research 196 AnonSec group also claimed gaining access of a Global Hawk Drone of NASA and released some video footage purportedly from the drone s cameras A part of the data was released by AnonSec on Pastebin service as an Anon Zine 197 NASA has denied the hack asserting that the control of the drones were never compromised but has acknowledged that the photos released along with the content are real photographs of its employees but that most of these data are already available in the public domain 198 2016 The Blink Hacker Group associating themselves with the Anonymous group claimed to have hacked the Thailand prison websites and servers 199 The compromised data has been shared online with the group claiming that they give the data back to Thailand Justice and the citizens of Thailand as well The hack was done in response to news from Thailand about the mistreatment of prisoners in Thailand 200 In late 2017 the QAnon conspiracy theory first emerged on 4chan and adherents used similar terminology and branding as Anonymous In response anti Trump members of Anonymous warned that QAnon was stealing the collective s branding and vowed to oppose the theory 201 202 13 A group calling themselves Anonymous Africa launched a number of DDoS attacks on websites associated with the controversial South African Gupta family in mid June 2016 Gupta owned companies targeted included the websites of Oakbay Investments The New Age and ANN7 The websites of the South African Broadcasting Corporation and a political parties Economic Freedom Fighters and Zimbabwe s Zanu PF were also attacked for nationalist socialist Nazi rhetoric and politicising racism 203 2020 See also BlueLeaks In February 2020 Anonymous hacked the United Nations website and created a page for Taiwan a country which has not had a seat at the UN since 1971 204 205 The hacked page featured the Flag of Taiwan the KMT emblem a Taiwan Independence flag and the Anonymous logo along with a caption 204 206 The hacked server belonged to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 204 In the wake of protests across the U S following the murder of George Floyd Anonymous released a video on Facebook as well as sending it out to the Minneapolis Police Department on May 28 2020 titled Anonymous Message To The Minneapolis Police Department in which they state that they are going to seek revenge on the Minneapolis Police Department and expose their crimes to the world 207 non primary source needed 208 According to Bloomberg the video was initially posted on an unconfirmed Anonymous Facebook page on May 28 209 According to BBC News that same Facebook page had no notoriety and published videos of dubious content linked to UFOs and China s plan to take over the world It gained repercussions after the video about George Floyd was published 210 and the Minneapolis police website which is responsible for the police officer was down 211 Later Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that every computer in the region suffered a sophisticated attack 212 According to BBC News the attack on the police website using DDoS Distributed Denial of Service was unsophisticated 210 According to researcher Troy Hunt these breaches of the site may have happened from old credentials Regarding unverified Twitter posts that also went viral where radio stations of police officers playing music and preventing communication are shown experts point out that this is unlikely to be due to a hack attack if they are real 210 Later it was confirmed by CNET that the leaks made from the police website are false and that someone is taking advantage of the repercussions of George Floyd s murder to spread misinformation 213 On June 19 2020 Anonymous published BlueLeaks sometimes referred to by the Twitter hashtag BlueLeaks 269 21 gigabytes of internal U S law enforcement data through the activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets which called it the largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies 214 The data internal intelligence bulletins emails and reports was produced between August 1996 and June 2020 215 by more than 200 law enforcement agencies which provided it to fusion centers It was obtained through a security breach of Netsential a web developer that works with fusion centers and law enforcement 216 In Maine legislators took interest in BlueLeaks thanks to details about the Maine Information and Analysis Center which is under investigation The leaks showed the fusion center was spying on and keeping records on people who had been legally protesting or had been suspicious but committed no crime 217 In 2020 Anonymous started cyber attacks against the Nigerian government They started the operation to support the EndSARS movement in Nigeria The group s attacks were tweeted by a member of Anonymous called LiteMods The websites of EFCC INEC and various other Nigerian government websites were taken down with DDoS attacks The websites of some banks were compromised 218 219 220 221 2021 See also Texas Heartbeat Act and 2021 Epik data breach The Texas Heartbeat Act a law which bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy came into effect in Texas on September 1 2021 The law relies on private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who performs or induces an abortion or aids and abets one once cardiac activity in an embryo can be detected via transvaginal ultrasound which is usually possible beginning at around six weeks of pregnancy 222 Shortly after the law came into effect anti abortion organizations set up websites to collect whistleblower reports of suspected violators of the bill 223 On September 3 Anonymous announced Operation Jane a campaign focused on stymying those who attempted to enforce the law by exhaust ing the investigational resources of bounty hunters their snitch sites and online gathering spaces until no one is able to maintain data integrity 223 On September 11 the group hacked the website of the Republican Party of Texas replacing it with text about Anonymous an invitation to join Operation Jane and a Planned Parenthood donation link 224 On September 13 Anonymous released a large quantity of private data belonging to Epik a domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to websites that host far right neo Nazi and other extremist content 225 Epik had briefly provided services to an abortion whistleblower website run by the anti abortion Texas Right to Life organization but the reporting form went offline on September 4 after Epik told the group they had violated their terms of service by collecting private information about third parties 226 The data included domain purchase and transfer details account credentials and logins payment history employee emails and unidentified private keys 227 The hackers claimed they had obtained a decade s worth of data which included all customers and all domains ever hosted or registered through the company and which included poorly encrypted passwords and other sensitive data stored in plaintext 227 228 Later on September 13 the Distributed Denial of Secrets DDoSecrets organization said they were working to curate the allegedly leaked data for more accessible download and said that it consisted of 180 gigabytes of user registration forwarding and other information 229 Publications including The Daily Dot and The Record by Recorded Future subsequently confirmed the veracity of the hack and the types of data that had been exposed 230 228 Anonymous released another leak on September 29 this time publishing bootable disk images of Epik s servers 231 232 more disk images as well as some leaked documents from the Republican Party of Texas appeared on October 4 233 2022 See also Russo Ukrainian War 2022 Ukraine cyberattacks 2021 2022 Russo Ukrainian crisis and Operation Samantha Smith On February 25 2022 Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous declared that they had launched a cyber operations against the Russian Federation in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin The group later temporarily disabled websites such as RT com and the website of the Defence Ministry along with other state owned websites 234 235 236 237 238 Anonymous also leaked 200 GB worth of emails from the Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr which provided logistical support for Russia in the Russian invasion of Ukraine 239 Anonymous also hacked into Russian TV channels and played Ukrainian music 240 through them and showed uncensored news of events in Ukraine 241 Operation Russia Main article Anonymous and the 2022 Russian invasion of UkraineOn March 7 2022 Anonymous actors DepaixPorteur and TheWarriorPoetz declared on Twitter 242 that they hacked 400 Russian surveillance cameras and broadcast them on a website 243 They call this operation Russian Camera Dump 242 Between March 25 2022 and June 1 2022 DDoSecrets collected hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes and millions of emails allegedly from the Central Bank of Russia 244 Capital Legal Services 245 All Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company VGTRK 246 Aerogas 247 Blagoveshchensk City Administration 245 Continent Express 248 Gazregion 249 GUOV i GS General Dept of Troops and Civil Construction 250 Accent Capital 251 ALET ALET CorpMSP 252 Nikolai M Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography PINRO 253 the Achinsk City Government 253 254 SOCAR Energoresource 253 255 Metprom Group LLC 256 and the Vyberi Radio Vyberi Radio group 257 all of which were allegedly hacked by Anonymous and Anonymous aligned NB65 245 Iranian Protests On September 18 2022 YourAnonSpider hacked the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran s official webpage that belonging to Ali Khamenei in retaliation to the death of Mahsa Amini 258 Anonymous launched a cyber operation against the Iranian government for the alleged murder of Mahsa Amini Anonymous launched distributed denial of service DDOS attacks against Iran s government and state owned websites 259 On September 23 2022 a hacktivist named Edaalate Ali hacked Iran s state tv government channel during the middle of broadcast and released CCTV footage of Iran s prison facilities 260 261 On Sunday October 23 2022 that an Iranian hacker group known as Black Reward published confidential files and documents email system belonging to Iran s nuclear program 262 263 Black Reward announced on their Telegram channel that they have hacked into 324 emails which that contained more than a hundred thousand messages and over 50 gigabytes of files 264 A hacktivist group by the name Lab Dookhtegan published the Microsoft Excel macros PowerShell exploits APT34 reportedly used to target organizations across the world 265 266 267 Chinese Protests In response to the 2022 COVID 19 protests in China Anonymous OpIran launched Operation White Paper attacked and took down Chinese government controlled websites and leaked some Chinese government officials personal information 268 Related groupsLulzSec Main article LulzSec In May 2011 the small group of Anons behind the HBGary Federal hack including Tflow Topiary Sabu and Kayla formed the hacker group Lulz Security commonly abbreviated LulzSec The group s first attack was against Fox com leaking several passwords LinkedIn profiles and the names of 73 000 X Factor contestants In May 2011 members of Lulz Security gained international attention for hacking into the American Public Broadcasting Service PBS website They stole user data and posted a fake story on the site that claimed that rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were still alive and living in New Zealand 269 LulzSec stated that some of its hacks including its attack on PBS were motivated by a desire to defend WikiLeaks and its informant Chelsea Manning 270 In June 2011 members of the group claimed responsibility for an attack against Sony Pictures that took data that included names passwords e mail addresses home addresses and dates of birth for thousands of people 271 In early June LulzSec hacked into and stole user information from the pornography website www pron com They obtained and published around 26 000 e mail addresses and passwords 272 On June 14 2011 LulzSec took down four websites by request of fans as part of their Titanic Take down Tuesday These websites were Minecraft League of Legends The Escapist and IT security company FinFisher 273 They also attacked the login servers of the multiplayer online game EVE Online which also disabled the game s front facing website and the League of Legends login servers Most of the takedowns were performed with DDoS attacks 274 LulzSec also hacked a variety of government affiliated sites such as chapter sites of InfraGard a non profit organization affiliated with the FBI 275 The group leaked some of InfraGard member e mails and a database of local users 276 On June 13 LulzSec released the e mails and passwords of a number of users of senate gov the website of the U S Senate 277 On June 15 LulzSec launched an attack on cia gov the public website of the U S Central Intelligence Agency taking the website offline for several hours with a distributed denial of service attack 278 On December 2 an offshoot of LulzSec calling itself LulzSec Portugal attacked several sites related to the government of Portugal The websites for the Bank of Portugal the Assembly of the Republic and the Ministry of Economy Innovation and Development all became unavailable for a few hours 279 On June 26 2011 the core LulzSec group announced it had reached the end of its 50 days of lulz and was ceasing operations 280 Sabu however had already been secretly arrested on June 7 and then released to work as an FBI informant His cooperation led to the arrests of Ryan Cleary James Jeffery and others 281 Tflow was arrested on July 19 2011 282 Topiary was arrested on July 27 283 and Kayla was arrested on March 6 2012 284 Topiary Kayla Tflow and Cleary pleaded guilty in April 2013 and were scheduled to be sentenced in May 2013 285 In April 2013 Australian police arrested the alleged LulzSec leader Aush0k but subsequent prosecutions failed to establish police claims 286 287 AntiSec Main article Operation AntiSec Beginning in June 2011 hackers from Anonymous and LulzSec collaborated on a series of cyber attacks known as Operation AntiSec On June 23 in retaliation for the passage of the immigration enforcement bill Arizona SB 1070 LulzSec released a cache of documents from the Arizona Department of Public Safety including the personal information and home addresses of many law enforcement officers 288 On June 22 LulzSec Brazil took down the websites of the Government of Brazil and the President of Brazil 289 290 Later data dumps included the names addresses phone numbers Internet passwords and Social Security numbers of police officers in Arizona 291 Missouri 292 and Alabama 293 AntiSec members also stole police officer credit card information to make donations to various causes 294 On July 18 LulzSec hacked into and vandalized the website of British newspaper The Sun in response to a phone hacking scandal 295 296 Other targets of AntiSec actions have included FBI contractor ManTech International 297 computer security firm Vanguard Defense Industries 298 and defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton releasing 90 000 military e mail accounts and their passwords from the latter 299 In December 2011 AntiSec member sup g alleged by the U S government to be Jeremy Hammond and others hacked Stratfor a U S based intelligence company vandalizing its web page and publishing 30 000 credit card numbers from its databases 300 AntiSec later released millions of the company s e mails to Wikileaks 301 See alsoMemetic persona Luther Blissett nom de plume Crowd psychology John Doe Proteus effectComposition Emergent organization Fourth generation warfare Self organization Spontaneous order Adhocracy nbsp Internet portal nbsp Politics portal nbsp Society portalActivism Electronic civil disobedience Leaderless resistance Streisand effectOther related articles Anti mask laws Derp hacker group LulzRaft Securax RedHack We Are Legion The Story of the HacktivistsReferencesNotes Topiary was later revealed to be Jake Davis a teenager living in the Shetland Islands of Scotland 71 A portmanteau of hacking and activism Citations Gabriella Coleman on Anonymous Brian Lehrer Live February 9 2011 Archived from the original on January 28 2012 Retrieved March 24 2011 via Vimeo Landers Chris April 2 2008 Serious Business Anonymous Takes On Scientology and Doesn t Afraid of Anything Baltimore City Paper Archived from the original on June 8 2008 Retrieved July 3 2008 Oltsik Jon December 3 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Wichita Eagle Kansas com Archived from the original on December 17 2013 Retrieved January 7 2014 Norton Quinn Anonymous Tricks Bystanders Into Attacking Justice Department Wired ISSN 1059 1028 Archived from the original on January 24 2022 Retrieved February 27 2022 Sottek T C April 5 2012 Anonymous hacks Chinese government sites in protest some still compromised The Verge Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved June 1 2020 BBC News Chinese websites defaced in Anonymous attack BBC April 5 2012 Archived from the original on June 1 2020 Retrieved January 13 2013 Protalinski Emil Anonymous hacks hundreds of Chinese government sites ZDNet Archived from the original on June 1 2020 Retrieved June 1 2020 Roy Jessica December 4 2012 Anonymous Hunts Revenge Porn Purveyor Hunter Moore Betabeat Archived from the original on December 12 2012 Retrieved January 7 2014 Chan Casey November 16 2012 Anonymous Targets Israel by Taking Down Hundreds of Websites and Leaking Emails and Passwords Gizmodo Archived from the original on May 13 2013 Retrieved May 5 2013 Kershner Isabel April 7 2013 Israel Says It Repelled Most Attacks on Its Web Sites by Pro Palestinian Hackers The New York Times Archived from the original on June 16 2013 Retrieved May 5 2013 Gonsalves Antone May 3 2013 Experts hope for another failure in next Anonymous attack CSO Online Archived from the original on March 12 2014 Retrieved May 5 2013 Messmer Ellen May 5 2013 Anonymous cyberattack on Israel finds disputed impact Computerworld Archived from the original on July 3 2013 Retrieved May 5 2013 Protesters gather around the world for Million Mask March The Guardian November 5 2013 Archived from the original on June 1 2020 Retrieved November 6 2013 OpSafeWinter Anonymous fights homelessness worldwide The Daily Dot January 4 2014 Archived from the original on November 21 2015 Retrieved January 10 2014 OSW Flyer 1 OpSafeWinter Archived from the original on January 10 2014 Retrieved January 10 2014 Forum Post Anon OpSafeWinter Call to Action amp New York D26 Assembly OccupyWallSt org Occupy Solidarity Network Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved January 10 2014 T is the Reason for the Season OpSafeWinter Archived from the original on January 10 2014 Retrieved January 10 2014 OpSafeWinter Generosity Goes Viral The Interdependence Project Archived from the original on June 13 2017 Retrieved January 10 2014 a b c Bever Lindsey August 13 2014 Amid Ferguson protests hacker collective Anonymous wages cyberwar The Washington Post Archived from the original on August 13 2014 Retrieved August 13 2014 Hunn David August 13 2014 How computer hackers changed the Ferguson protests St Louis Post Dispatch Archived from the original on May 31 2020 Retrieved August 13 2014 Harkinson Josh August 13 2014 Anonymous Op Ferguson Says It Will ID the Officer Who Killed Michael Brown Mother Jones Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved August 13 2014 Bosman Julie Shear Michael D Williams Timothy August 14 2014 Obama Calls for Open Inquiry Into Police Shooting of Teenager in Ferguson Mo The New York Times Archived from the original on June 19 2020 Retrieved August 14 2014 Anonymous Releases Alleged Name Of Officer They Say Fatally Shot Michael Brown KMOX News Radio 1120 August 14 2014 Archived from the original on August 15 2014 Retrieved August 14 2014 Pagliery Jose August 14 2014 Ferguson police deny Anonymous ID of alleged shooter CNN Money Archived from the original on August 14 2014 Retrieved August 14 2014 Hunn David Twitter suspends Anonymous account News St Louis Post Dispatch Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved August 15 2014 Jamie Bartlett November 19 2014 Hacker Hoaxer Whistleblower Spy The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman review The Guardian Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved December 11 2016 Boroff David November 24 2014 Grieving dad Anonymous lash out at Cleveland cops following shooting death of boy 12 armed with BB gun Daily News New York Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 24 2014 Danylko Ryllie November 26 2014 Anonymous begins looking into past of Timothy Loehmann cop who fatally shot Tamir Rice The Plain Dealer Archived from the original on December 5 2018 Retrieved February 15 2014 Hacktivist group Anonymous says it would avenge Charlie Hebdo attacks by shutting down jihadist websites The Telegraph January 9 2015 Archived from the original on January 9 2015 Anonymous declares war over Charlie Hebdo attack CNN Money January 9 2015 Archived from the original on August 8 2020 Retrieved August 2 2020 Newsbeat January 12 2015 Hackers Anonymous disable extremist website BBC Archived from the original on January 21 2015 Retrieved January 16 2015 Newsbeat January 9 2015 Anonymous hackers declare war on jihadists after France attacks BBC News BBC Archived from the original on February 27 2015 Retrieved January 16 2015 Fekete Jason June 17 2015 Government of Canada websites under attack hacker groupAnonymous claims responsibility National Post Archived from the original on July 21 2016 Retrieved June 18 2015 Anonymous intends to unveil names of up to 1 000 Ku Klux Klan members Fox News Channel October 29 2015 Archived from the original on June 30 2017 Retrieved October 29 2015 Grenoble Ryan Anonymous Begins Revealing Information About Alleged Ku Klux Klan Members HuffPost Archived from the original on November 2 2015 Retrieved November 3 2015 The Short List Anonymous goes after KKK VW in another emissions stink Brangelina open up USA Today November 2 2015 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 2 2015 Operation KKK November 2 2015 ICYMI OpKKK was in no way involved with today s release of information that incorrectly outed several politicians Tweet via Twitter Operation KKK November 2 2015 This account has NOT YET released any information We believe in due diligence and will NOT recklessly involve innocent individuals OpKKK Tweet via Twitter Operation KKK November 5 2015 OFFICIAL OpKKK HoodsOff 2015 Data Release http pastebin com wbvP95wg With Love Anonymous Tweet Archived from the original on January 15 2020 via Twitter OpSaudi Anonymous launched cyber attack on Saudi Government site May 16 2013 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved August 22 2015 Frenkel Sheera June 24 2015 Meet The Mysterious New Hacker Army Freaking Out The Middle East Archived from the original on June 17 2018 Retrieved August 22 2015 Can Cyber Activists Chase ISIS off Twitter The Atlantic October 8 2015 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 15 2015 Anonymous vs the Islamic State Foreign Policy Archived from the original on June 12 2020 Retrieved November 15 2015 McCrow Young Ally Mortensen Mette August 2021 Countering spectacles of fear Anonymous meme war against ISIS European Journal of Cultural Studies SAGE Publications 24 4 832 849 doi 10 1177 13675494211005060 ISSN 1460 3551 S2CID 233603431 Anonymous hackers group declares war on ISIS CBS News November 16 2015 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved April 15 2020 Anonymous declares war on Islamic State BBC News November 16 2015 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 17 2015 ISIS Calls Anonymous Idiots As Cyber War Heats Up Fortune Fortune Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 18 2015 ISIS calls Anonymous idiots offers tips to evade hackers The Hill November 17 2015 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 18 2015 Catalin Cimpanu November 16 2015 One Day Later Anonymous Already Takes Down 3 824 Pro ISIS Twitter Accounts UPDATE softpedia Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 18 2015 Andrew Griffin November 19 2015 Operation Isis Anonymous activists begin leaking suspected extremist Twitter account information The Independent Archived from the original on May 7 2022 Anonymous Has Now Taken Down 20 000 ISIS Twitter Accounts Promises to Go On softpedia November 20 2015 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 21 2015 ISIS 20 000 Twitter Accounts Down Pastebin Archived from the original on November 19 2015 Retrieved November 11 2015 Anonymous anti Islamic State list features Obama and BBC News BBC News November 26 2015 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved November 26 2015 Twitter Anonymous s lists of alleged ISIS accounts are wildly inaccurate The Daily Dot November 20 2015 Archived from the original on November 21 2015 Retrieved November 22 2015 Anonymous release leaked NASA information Anonews Archived from the original on February 2 2016 Retrieved November 6 2015 OpNasaDrones Zine AnonSec none Archived from the original on December 26 2017 Retrieved January 11 2016 NASA Brushes Off Claims One Of Its Drones Was Hacked Forbes February 2016 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved February 18 2016 Anonymous Leaks Databases for 100 Thai Prison Websites Softpedia News February 2016 Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved February 21 2016 Koh Tao Murders Lawyer Alleges Prison Mistreatment Khaosod English January 26 2016 Archived from the original on April 11 2016 Retrieved February 20 2016 Violet Blue October 8 2018 Anonymous deals with its QAnon branding problem Engadget Archived from the original on July 11 2019 Retrieved May 17 2019 John Biggs August 7 2018 Anonymous vows to take down Q TechCrunch Archived from the original on September 9 2019 Retrieved May 17 2019 EXCLUSIVE Why Anonymous hacked the SABC Gupta websites Fin24 Archived from the original on October 27 2019 Retrieved June 19 2016 a b c Rainer R Kelly Prince Brad 2022 Introduction to Information Systems Supporting and Transforming Business John Wiley amp Sons pp 101 102 ISBN 978 1 119 85993 2 Westbrook Caroline June 2 2020 What campaigns have hacker group Anonymous run in the past Metro Retrieved November 23 2023 Everington Keoni February 5 2020 Anonymous creates pro Taiwan page inside UN website Taiwan News Archived from the original on June 18 2020 Retrieved February 5 2020 Anonymous Message To The Minneapolis Police Department Archived from the original on April 14 2021 Retrieved June 11 2020 via Facebook Griffin Andrew June 1 2020 Anonymous is back and is supporting the Black Lives Matter protests The Independent Archived from the original on June 15 2020 Retrieved June 1 2020 Kartikay Mehrotra and Jamie Tarabay May 31 2020 Anonymous Vows to Expose Minneapolis Police Site Attacked Bloomberg Retrieved June 3 2020 a b c David Molloy amp Joe Tidy June 1 2020 George Floyd Anonymous hackers re emerge amid US unrest BBC Archived from the original on June 1 2020 Retrieved June 3 2020 Hacker Anonymous cita Bolsonaro e sugere investigacao da relacao do presidente com Trump Hacker Anonymous cites Bolsonaro and suggests investigation of the president s relationship with Trump A Tarde May 31 2020 Archived from the original on April 13 2021 Retrieved June 3 2020 Rafael Monteiro June 1 2020 5 vezes em que o mundo anonimo escolhe o mundo com invasoes na internet 5 times that the anonymous world has seen the world with invasions on the internet GQ Brazil Archived from the original on June 3 2020 Retrieved June 3 2020 Alfred Ng June 1 2020 The Anonymous Minneapolis hack comes from old breaches repackaged in misinformation CNET Archived from the original on June 3 2020 Retrieved June 3 2020 Karlis Nicole June 22 2020 Inside Blue Leaks a trove of hacked police documents released by Anonymous Salon Archived from the original on June 23 2020 Retrieved June 24 2020 BlueLeaks Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments Krebs on Security Krebs on Security June 22 2020 Archived from the original on June 22 2020 Retrieved June 22 2020 Greenberg Andy Anonymous Stole and Leaked a Megatrove of Police Documents Wired ISSN 1059 1028 Retrieved November 18 2023 Neumann Dan June 30 2020 Lawmakers call to defund Maine s secretive police intelligence agency Beacon Archived from the original on September 24 2022 Retrieved July 11 2020 80naija EndSARS Anonymous Hacker Shut Down First Bank Website 80naija October 17 2020 Archived from the original on December 15 2020 Retrieved February 19 2021 Hacker takes down websites of EFCC Amuwo Odofin LG in support of EndSARS October 16 2020 Archived from the original on November 1 2020 Retrieved November 11 2020 See websites Anonymous don claim to hack for Nigeria BBC News Pidgin Archived from the original on April 14 2021 Retrieved February 19 2021 EndSARS Nigerians react as Anonymous hacks LASG NNPC INEC EFCC NCDC others The Nation The Nation Newspaper October 17 2020 Archived from the original on April 10 2021 Retrieved February 19 2021 Kaye Julia Hearron Marc July 19 2021 Even people who oppose abortion should fear Texas s new ban The Washington Post ISSN 2641 9599 Archived from the original on July 26 2021 Retrieved September 1 2021 a b Goforth Claire September 8 2021 Anonymous hackers have a message for Texas abortion snitch sites We re coming for you The Daily Dot Archived from the original on September 8 2021 Retrieved September 15 2021 Novell Carly September 11 2021 Anonymous hacks Texas GOP website floods it with memes The Daily Dot Archived from the original on September 11 2021 Retrieved September 15 2021 Meaker Morgan January 18 2021 Epik The domain registrar keeping extremist websites online The Daily Telegraph ISSN 0307 1235 Archived from the original on January 19 2021 Retrieved January 19 2021 Kornfield Meryl September 6 2021 A website for whistleblowers to expose Texas abortion providers was taken down again The Washington Post Archived from the original on September 7 2021 Retrieved September 15 2021 a b Goforth Claire September 14 2021 Anonymous to release massive data set of the far right s preferred web hosting company The Daily Dot Archived from the original on September 14 2021 Retrieved September 14 2021 a b Cimpanu Catalin September 15 2021 Anonymous hacks and leaks data from domain registrar Epik The Record by Recorded Future Archived from the original on September 16 2021 Retrieved September 16 2021 Ropek Lucas September 14 2021 Anonymous Claims to Have Stolen Huge Trove of Data From Epik the Right Wing s Favorite Web Host Gizmodo Archived from the original on September 14 2021 Retrieved September 14 2021 Thalen Mikael September 16 2021 Worst I ve seen in 20 years How the Epik hack reveals every secret the far right tried to hide The Daily Dot Archived from the original on September 16 2021 Retrieved September 16 2021 New leak of Epik data exposes company s entire server The Daily Dot September 29 2021 Archived from the original on September 29 2021 Retrieved September 30 2021 Anonymous reportedly leaks more stolen Epik data The Register Archived from the original on September 30 2021 Retrieved September 30 2021 Anonymous releases data on Texas GOP in latest Epik hack dump The Daily Dot October 4 2021 Archived from the original on October 4 2021 Retrieved October 16 2021 YourAnonNews February 24 2022 Anonymous is currently involved in operations against the Russian Federation Our operations are targeting the Russian government There is an inevitability that the private sector will most likely be affected too While this account cannot claim to speak for the whole con Tweet via Twitter YourAnonTV February 24 2022 JUST IN Hacking group Anonymous launches full scale cyberattacks on Russian government websites in retaliation for Russia s invasion of Ukraine OpRussia StandwithUkraine Tweet via Twitter Anonymous Hackers Launch Cyber Ops Against Russia Claim Government Site Takedowns HS Today February 25 2022 Archived from the original on February 25 2022 Retrieved February 25 2022 Superadmin Anonymous group declares cyberwar on Russia www uniindia com Archived from the original on February 25 2022 Retrieved February 25 2022 Russia Ukraine war Anonymous hackers launch cyberwar against Russia taking down government websites Business Insider Archived from the original on February 27 2022 Retrieved February 27 2022 Anonymous hacked the Russian Defense Ministry and is targeting Russian companies Security Affairs February 26 2022 Archived from the original on February 27 2022 Retrieved February 27 2022 Russian media channels broadcast Ukrainian songs after hacker group Anonymous declare cyber war inews co uk February 27 2022 Archived from the original on February 27 2022 Retrieved February 27 2022 Milmo Dan February 27 2022 Anonymous the hacker collective that has declared cyberwar on Russia The Guardian Archived from the original on March 6 2022 Retrieved March 2 2022 the group had hacked Russian state TV channels posting pro Ukraine content including patriotic songs and images from the invasion a b Anonymous on Twitter Behind Enemy Lines Russian camera dump Twitter Archived from the original on June 3 2022 Retrieved March 18 2022 Anonymous sent 7 million texts to Russians plus hacked 400 of their security cams HackRead March 12 2022 Archived from the original on June 3 2022 Retrieved March 12 2022 Confirmed Anonymous Hacks Central Bank of Russia Leaks 28GB of Data HackRead March 26 2022 Archived from the original on June 5 2022 Retrieved March 26 2022 a b c Anonymous Hits Russian Ministry of Culture Leaks 446GB of Data HackRead April 12 2022 Archived from the original on February 7 2023 Retrieved April 12 2022 Hackers steal 900K emails from Russia s largest state owned media corporation The Daily Dot April 4 2022 Archived from the original on April 5 2022 Retrieved April 4 2022 Three Russian firms have over 400 GB worth of emails leaked CyberNews April 8 2022 Retrieved April 8 2022 Anonymous collective NB65 hacks 400 GB of files and databases from Continent Express Russia s largest independent travel agency The Tech Outlook April 16 2022 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved April 16 2022 The Anonymous collective has leaked 222 GB of emails and files from Gazregion The Tech Outlook April 18 2022 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved April 18 2022 Anonymous leaks 15 600 new emails from GUOV I GS via DDoSecrets The Tech Outlook April 19 2022 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved April 19 2022 Anonymous leaks 365 000 emails from Accent Capital via DDoSecrets Security Affairs April 22 2022 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved April 22 2022 Anonymous collective NB65 hacks Over 480 GB emails from CorpMSP a Russian government organization The Tech Outlook May 6 2022 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved May 6 2022 a b c OpRussia update Anonymous breached other organizations Security Affairs May 14 2022 Archived from the original on May 18 2022 Retrieved May 14 2022 Anonymous breached Achinsk City government email database with 7000 emails leaked The Tech Outlook May 12 2022 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved May 12 2022 Russian SOCAR Energoresource company became victim of cyber attack by Anonymous Collective The Tech Outlook May 13 2022 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved May 13 2022 Anonymous Collective hacked and released emails data of Metprom Group that has worked on dozens of projects with companies like ArcelorMittal The Tech Outlook May 31 2022 Archived from the original on June 2 2022 Retrieved May 31 2022 Hackers leaked millions of emails of the Russian Vyberi Radio The Tech Outlook June 1 2022 Archived from the original on June 3 2022 Retrieved June 1 2022 Anonymous Knocks Out Ali Khamenei s Official Website web archive org December 15 2023 Retrieved December 15 2023 Turak Natasha October 5 2022 Hacktivists seek to aid Iran protests with cyberattacks and tips on how to bypass internet censorship CNBC Retrieved May 18 2023 Protests in Iran State run live TV hacked by protesters BBC News October 8 2022 Retrieved May 18 2023 Cuthbertson Anthony September 23 2022 Anonymous hacks thousands of Iranian CCTV cameras as part of OpIran Yahoo News Retrieved May 18 2023 Lakshmanan Ravie Iranian Hackers Target High Value Targets in Nuclear Security and Genomic Research The Hacker News Retrieved May 18 2023 Iran s atomic energy organization says e mail was hacked Reuters October 23 2022 Retrieved May 18 2023 Iran s atomic energy agency confirms hack after stolen data leaked online BleepingComputer Retrieved August 19 2023 Greenberg Andy A Mystery Agent Is Doxing Iran s Hackers and Dumping Their Code Wired ISSN 1059 1028 Retrieved August 19 2023 Doug Olenick April 18 2019 APT34 hacked back by Lab Dookhtegan SC Media Exclusive Photos Of Some Iranian Cyber Warfare Officials Iran International Retrieved August 19 2023 黑客组织攻击中国政府网站 声援白纸运动 Hacker group attacks Chinese government website to support White Paper movement Radio Free Asia in Chinese China Archived from the original on December 2 2022 Retrieved December 2 2022 Hackers pirate PBS website post fake story about Tupac still alive CNN Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved June 3 2011 Olson Parmy May 31 2011 Interview With PBS Hackers We Did It For Lulz And Justice Forbes Archived from the original on August 8 2011 Retrieved June 3 2011 Pepitone Julianne June 2 2011 Group claims fresh hack of 1 million Sony accounts Money CNN Archived from the original on August 18 2011 Retrieved June 3 2012 Thomas Keir June 11 2012 Porn Site Users Beware Hacker Group LulzSec May Have Posted Your Email Address PC World Archived from the original on September 7 2012 Retrieved June 11 2012 Bright Peter June 14 2011 Titanic Takeover Tuesday LulzSec s busy day of hacking escapades Ars Technica Archived from the original on June 17 2011 Retrieved June 14 2011 Peckham Matt June 14 2011 LulzSec Knocks Minecraft EVE Online League Of Legends and The Escapist Offline Time New York City Archived from the original on June 16 2011 Retrieved June 14 2011 Morse Andrew Sherr Ian June 6 2011 For Some Hackers The Goal Is Just To Play A Prank The Wall Street Journal p B1 Archived from the original on June 9 2011 Retrieved June 6 2011 LulzSec claims to have hacked FBI affiliated website Los Angeles Times Retrieved June 4 2012 dead link Ogg Erica June 13 2012 LulzSec targets videogame maker ZeniMax Media CNET com CBS Interactive Archived from the original on July 15 2012 Retrieved June 13 2011 CIA website hacked LulzSec takes credit again Consumer Reports June 16 2012 Archived from the original on June 18 2011 Retrieved June 16 2011 Hackers voltam a atacar sites portugueses Hackers return to attack Portuguese sites TVI 24 in Portuguese Televisao Independente December 2 2012 Archived from the original on December 3 2011 Retrieved December 3 2012 Weisenthal Joe June 25 2011 Notorious Hacker Group LulzSec Just Announced That It s Finished Business Insider Silicon Alley Insider Archived from the original on June 27 2011 Retrieved June 25 2011 Thomson Iain LulzSec sneak Sabu buys six more months of freedom Archived May 27 2020 at the Wayback Machine The Register August 23 2012 Kaplan Jeremy July 19 2011 Leading Member of LulzSec Hacker Squad Arrested in London New York City Fox News Channel Archived from the original on July 20 2011 Retrieved July 20 2011 Man arrested over computer hacking claims BBC News London BBC July 27 2011 Archived from the original on July 27 2011 Retrieved July 27 2011 Winter Jana March 6 2012 Infamous international hacking group LulzSec brought down by own leader New York City Fox News Channel Archived from the original on March 6 2012 Retrieved March 13 2012 Kretsinger Sony hacker Recursion jailed for year BBC News April 19 2013 Archived from the original on May 9 2013 Retrieved May 5 2013 Siegel Matt April 24 2013 Australia Arrests the Professed Head of LulzSec Which Claims a C I A Hacking The New York Times Archived from the original on June 30 2013 Retrieved May 6 2013 Duffy Conor McGregor Jeanavive November 1 2014 LulzSec hacker says police claims based on Facebook joke ABC News Archived from the original on September 17 2018 Retrieved April 17 2020 Tsotsis Alexia June 23 2011 LulzSec Releases Arizona Law Enforcement Data In Retaliation For Immigration Law TechCrunch Archived from the original on June 17 2020 Retrieved June 23 2011 Emery Daniel June 22 2011 LulzSec hits Brazilian websites BBC Archived from the original on July 10 2019 Retrieved June 22 2011 Clark Jack June 22 2011 LulzSec takes down Brazil government sites CNET Archived from the original on October 17 2013 Retrieved June 22 2011 Albanesius Chloe June 29 2011 LulzBoat Sails On Anonymous Dumps More Arizona Data PC Magazine Ziff Davis Archived from the original on December 14 2011 Retrieved July 5 2011 Usigan Ysolt August 3 2011 Online security breach Hackers leak social security numbers of cops in Missouri CBS News New York City CBS Archived from the original on August 4 2011 Retrieved August 5 2011 Kelly Meghan October 21 2011 Anonymous releases private police information in name of Occupy Wall Street VentureBeat Archived from the original on October 22 2011 Retrieved October 22 2011 Mills Elinor August 6 2011 AntiSec hackers post stolen police data as revenge for arrests CNET CBS Interactive Archived from the original on August 10 2011 Retrieved August 6 2011 Gayomail Chris July 18 2011 LulzSec Hacks News of the World and The Sun Plants Fake Murdoch Death Story Time New York City Time Inc Archived from the original on July 20 2011 Retrieved July 18 2011 Rovzar Chris July 18 2011 Website of Murdoch s Sun Hacked New York New York City New York Media Holdings Archived from the original on July 21 2011 Retrieved July 18 2011 Hachman Mark July 29 2011 Anonymous Publishes Internal Documents from Govt Contractor ManTech PC Magazine Ziff Davis Archived from the original on October 14 2012 Retrieved July 29 2011 Ragan Steve August 16 2011 Vanguard Defense Industries compromised by AntiSec The Tech Herald p 1 Archived from the original on August 21 2011 Retrieved August 18 2011 Gerwirtz David July 11 2011 Military Meltdown Monday 90 000 military email profiles released by AntiSec ZDNet CBS Interactive Archived from the original on July 15 2011 Retrieved July 12 2011 Gallagher Sean March 6 2012 Inside the hacking of Stratfor the FBI s case against Antisec member Anarchaos Ars technica Archived from the original on June 6 2020 Retrieved May 5 2013 Ronson Jon May 3 2013 Security alert notes from the frontline of the war in cyberspace The Guardian Archived from the original on May 5 2013 Retrieved May 5 2013 Bibliography Coleman Gabriella November 4 2014 Hacker Hoaxer Whistleblower Spy The Many Faces of Anonymous Verso Books ISBN 978 1781685846 Firer Blaess Sylvain 2016 The Collective Identity of Anonymous Web of Meanings in a Digitally Enabled Movement PDF Uppsala Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis p 220 ISBN 978 91 554 9602 9 Retrieved October 5 2016 Kelly Brian 2012 Investing in a Centralized Cybersecurity Infrastructure Why Hacktivism can and should influence cybersecurity reform PDF Boston University Law Review 92 5 1663 1710 Retrieved May 2 2013 Olson Parmy June 5 2012 We Are Anonymous Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec Anonymous and the Global Cyber Insurgency Hachette Digital Inc ISBN 978 0 316 21353 0 Retrieved May 2 2013 External linksAnonymous at Wikipedia s sister projects nbsp Media from Commons nbsp News from Wikinews nbsp Quotations from Wikiquote nbsp Texts from Wikisource Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Anonymous hacker group amp oldid 1196197259, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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