Pinboard (guardiantech)

Anonymous' leaked NSA documents aren't new (or secret) >> The Daily Dot

guardiantech — 2013-06-07T22:16:36+00:00

The documents Anonymous claims to have leaked do not include the names any of the companies working on PRISM, nor do they explicitly mention PRISM at all. Instead, they contain a bunch of technical jargon, run-on sentences, acronyms, and details on the Global Information Grid (GIG) network. This network enables "the secure, agile, robust, dependable, interoperable, data sharing environment for the department", states one of the documents provided by Anonymous.
While this network has caught the interest of news organizations like TechCrunch, a mountain of seemingly identical documents on GIG can be found directly on the NSA's website.

Oh, Anonymous, you and your documents that you find on servers and claim you hacked.

The InternetFeds: Inside hacker Sabu’s war room >> Reuters.com

guardiantech — 2013-03-16T19:41:52+00:00

Matthew Keys, writing in March 2012:

On December 20, 2010, a report by the PBS NewsHour exposed a document that contained dozens of government usernames and passwords. The document, which was published on the NewsHour website, was only known to InternetFeds. It became clear that someone among the ranks was a mole.
Paranoia swept through the room [of elite Anonymous hackers]. There were discussions of who the mole might be. A hacker named Switch was a popular guess. Some people thought it was me. (I later said I gave the documents to NewsHour.) Several other incidents took place that added to the paranoia. The website of New York’s Green Party, which InternetFeds planned to attack in an “epic owning,” was defaced without the approval of the room’s members. An article on the Los Angeles Times’ website was defaced by a hacker, again without collective approval.

What's significant about this is that Keys, who seems to have had access to the chatroom, is accused of being the person who gave login details to the hacker who defaced the LA Times.

Anonymous helps researchers link hackers to Chinese army >> Huffington Post

guardiantech — 2013-02-21T17:11:26+00:00

In February 2011, Anonymous gained access to the website rootkit.com - an online forum where hackers and researchers share information about hacking techniques - and published personal data of more than 40,000 registered users online. The data included email and IP addresses.
The breach was one of dozens by Anonymous over the past two years and gained relatively little media attention. But now, two years later, security researchers say the data was valuable in helping them find links between hackers and the Chinese military.
"We are fortunate to have access to the accounts disclosed from rootkit.com," the Mandiant report said.
Anonymous' disclosure of the rookit.com information included an email and IP address for the username "uglygorilla." The IP information, which identifies the location from which the user is accessing the Internet, pinned the hacker to a place close to a 12-story office tower in Shanghai that researchers believe is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398 -- cyber warriors for the Chinese military.

What's the phrase for collateral damage when it's collateral but isn't damage?

Anonymous threatens Justice Department over hacktivist death >> CNN.com

guardiantech — 2013-01-26T14:57:46+00:00

In anger over the recent death of an Internet activist who faced federal charges, hackers claiming to be from the group Anonymous threatened early Saturday to release sensitive information about the U.S. Department of Justice.
They claimed to have one such file on multiple servers ready for immediate release. The hackers apparently hijacked the website of the U.S. government agency responsible for federal sentencing guidelines, where they posted a message demanding the United States reform its justice system or face incriminating leaks to select news outlets.

We're watching our inboxes, though not with bated breath.

How Anonymous got Westboro to back off Aaron Swartz's funeral >> The Atlantic Wire

guardiantech — 2013-01-16T22:13:15+00:00

The story doesn't really explain how it did, or why Westboro backed off; only that it did. But the conclusion makes a good point:

As we've seen with the ongoing impact of their involvement in the Steubenville rape case, Anonymous in 2013 is transforming from notorious to notable, and more than just the hacker community or close watchers of online controversies are starting to take notice on a wider scale. Perhaps Westboro didn't want to deal with that, especially after their plans to picket the death of some of the children murdered in Newtown, led to the hacking of Westboro spokesperson Shirley Phelps Roper's Twitter feed the leaking of personal information of its members. When Anonymous wins, it seems, their enemies just keep losing.

The lawyer who defends Anonymous >> Radio Free Europe

guardiantech — 2012-10-03T21:20:52+00:00

As a lawyer not particularly immersed in the technology world, Jay Leiderman first became interested in the hacker collective Anonymous around December 2010. That was when Anonymous activists launched distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) against Mastercard and PayPal, who stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks.
Since then, he has represented a number of high-profile hackers, including Commander X, who is on the run from the FBI for a DDoS attack on a county website in Santa Cruz, California, to protest a ban on public sleeping, and Raynaldo Rivera, a suspected hacker from LulzSec who is accused of stealing information from Sony computer systems.

Fugitive hacker Christopher Doyon, or Commander X, tells why Anonymous ‘might well be the most powerful organization on Earth’ >> National Post

guardiantech — 2012-05-21T22:12:05+00:00

Q: As strictly an online army of hackers, how powerful is Anonymous?
A: Anonymous is kind of like the big buff kid in school who had really bad self-esteem then all of a sudden one day he punched someone in the face and went, “Holy s— I’m really strong!”

Summer's coming. (Doyon's in Canada; he's not stronger than the police.)

Soca website attack: Norway arrests two youths >> BBC News

guardiantech — 2012-05-09T20:35:22+00:00

[A Norwegian prosecutor said:] "We know Soca was recently attacked, as well as Norwegian and American sites, and that is one of the things that we are looking into."
Norway's National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) said the sites had been hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, in which large amounts of data were sent to the owner's servers in an attempt to overwhelm them.
It added that the 18- and 19-year-olds were charged at the end of last week following electronic attacks over a period lasting "several weeks". The offence carries a maximum sentence of six years in jail.

Opinion: Why we need Anonymous 2.0 >> Naked Security

guardiantech — 2012-04-24T21:59:11+00:00

Lisa Vaas:

Nobody in technology, nor in business, for that matter, can get away from fighting Anonymous or other similar groups, whether the fight transpires in media or anywhere else, [hacker "Jericho"] said.
So that's why they care, and why we must. Beyond our own, personal involvement, a broader concern is that much of what we lay at the Anonymous doorstep may be branded as such merely as a smokescreen.
As Corman noted, this amorphous thing we call "Anonymous" has become the perfect scape goat. Anonymous members continually drop in and out of affiliation with, or actions taken on behalf of, the group.

On the FBI Raid >> Barrett Brown

guardiantech — 2012-03-08T22:52:06+00:00

On Pastebin, where everyone writes their best work. He got a knock on the door the day that Sabu (of LulzSec) was formally fully charged; Brown's involvement has always been a mystery.

As to the various stunts [Sabu] pulled in the months since his arrest - including but not limited to the unnecessary release of credit card information for Stratfor customers - we may never know to what extent such things were encouraged by his "Justice Department" handlers in an effort to discredit this movement. But I digress, lol. At any rate, the Feds came back a couple of hours later with a search warrant for my mom's place - they fully intended to take a certain laptop, and did.

We look forward to knowing what was on that laptop. As you may expect, he really doesn't like Sabu. At all.

Inside the mind of a hacker >> Fox News

guardiantech — 2012-03-08T06:46:29+00:00

Fox had the scoop on Sabu. This however reads a bit like A Doctor Writes in Private Eye:

There has been no indication thus far that Monsegur is a methodical criminal who has amassed a great fortune. Nor has anyone suggested that he is a cyber-terrorist attacking entities that oppose his political or religious ideology (though time will tell). Instead, the data at hand would suggest that chaos, in and of itself, is the reward he seeks—busting things up, bringing them down, causing people to suffer as the structure they rely upon to organize their thoughts and intentions dissolves.

Note that it also hits Godwin's Law a few paragraphs later.

Was Anonymous' hacker-informant Sabu a tool of FBI entrapment? >> Forbes

guardiantech — 2012-03-08T06:44:16+00:00

Obvious question:

criminal defense lawyers for those accused hackers are no doubt poring over [Sabu's] communications with their clients, and looking for evidence of entrapment: the defense that the U.S. government, with an influential member of Anonymous as their pawn, pushed hackers into the same illegal acts for which they’re now prosecuting them. Months after Monsegur [Sabu's real name] began cooperating with law enforcement, his Twitter feed (with 45,000 followers) continued to rally his hacktivist “brothers” to attack governments and private corporate targets. A message he wrote in late December asked for fellow hackers to give him stolen documents so that they could be published under the banner of “Antisec,” the sub-movement against the security industry in which he was a vocal organizer. “Leakers, security researchers or hackers who have vulnerabilities or leaked docs contact us,” Monsegur wrote.

One would hope the FBI had that figured out already, given it was monitoring his communication 24/7.

How LulzSec kept itself safe during the summer of 'lulz' >> New Scientist

guardiantech — 2012-02-28T22:58:57+00:00

Last year, a group of hackers calling themselves Lulz Security (LulzSec for short) caught the internet's attention with a series of high-profile data breaches and website takedowns targeting the likes of Fox News, Sony and the US government, before apparently disbanding after 50 days of "lulz". Throughout that period, the group's own website proved impervious to rival hacking attempts, thanks to an online security service called CloudFlare. Speaking to New Scientist in advance of his talks at the RSA conference and SXSW festival next month, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince explains why he kept the hackers online, and how attacks on their site have helped protect the internet.

Intriguing interview.

U.S. Official Warns About 'Anonymous' Power Play >> WSJ.com

guardiantech — 2012-02-21T07:34:13+00:00

The director of the National Security Agency has warned that the hacking group Anonymous could have the ability within the next year or two to bring about a limited power outage through a cyberattack.

Hacker says porn site users compromised, claims Anonymous affiliation >> USATODAY.com

guardiantech — 2012-02-14T06:31:46+00:00

Up to 350,000 users' names leaked:

The breach is a potential embarrassment for Luxembourg-based Manwin, which runs some of the world's best-known pornography websites. A small sample of the hundreds of thousands of pieces of user data allegedly compromised were posted to the Internet earlier this week. E-mails, user names, and encrypted passwords were divulged, and in some cases it was possible to infer porn users' full names and country of origin. The hacker claiming responsibility for the breach told the Associated Press that he carried out the attack to draw attention to the site's vulnerability.

Sure, sure.

The academics of Anonymous >> The Washington Post

guardiantech — 2011-12-14T23:03:59+00:00

"[Professor Gabriella] Coleman has spent the past decade studying hackers, meeting with members of the hacking community and using formal academic tools to understand this emerging sector of society. She joined Richard Forno, director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Cybersecurity Program, and Paul Rosenzweig, the founder of Red Branch Law and Consulting and former assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security, at Brookings. The group was convened by Brookings’s Director of the Center for Technology Innovation, Allan Friedman. “I tend to say they’re geeks — they’re geeks and they’re hackers,” said Coleman when asked about the demographics of the hacking populace, “and yet, when you say geeks, often times the problem with using the term like that is that it kind of conjures one image, and one image alone: basement, pimples, and psychological pathology. That is wrong.” Coleman has met with a “remarkably diverse group,” with people who “are near royalty” in Europe and others who are “below working class” and “at the bottom of the barrel at some level.”

How your bullshit Anonymous hacking threats get made >> Gwker

guardiantech — 2011-11-07T22:44:50+00:00

"Apparently all it takes these days to spark a media hacking frenzy is a copy of iMovie, a voice synthesizer and a painfully overblown prose style. Slap up the Anonymous logo (or better yet, one of the pre-made videos of a masked Anonymous figure speaking) select a dramatic soundtrack—that creepy song from Requiem from a Dream is a favorite—and spout off something about how a hot issue of the day has "angered" Anonymous so prepare to meet your doom, We are Legion, Tunisia, Egypt blah, blah, blah."

Hacktivist "The Jester" draws crowd at Hacker Halted >> Infosec Island

guardiantech — 2011-11-01T23:28:08+00:00

Turns up - sort of - at hacker conference and explains his motivations, his opinion of Anonymous, and more.

Anonymous Takes Down NYSE.com - For A Minute >> KCRA Sacramento

guardiantech — 2011-10-11T10:38:33+00:00

Trading not affected. "At least a few people claiming to be part of Anonymous didn't think the attack on NYSE.com was a risk worth taking. One site used to coordinate Anonymous operations, AnonNews.org, posted a statement saying that it was 'sincerely worried' about the plan, due to the bad press it could give to the Occupy Wall Street movement. "A back-and-forth debate raged across Twitter Monday afternoon, with various factions of Anonymous alternately cheering and decrying the planned attack. "But in the end, the chatter drew more attention than the actual effects of the cyberprotest. NYSE.com barely blipped, and the markets finished the day with a rally: The Dow Jones industrial average finished Monday up nearly 3%."

The hackers are watching. And they can bring you down >> FT.com

guardiantech — 2011-09-25T10:03:57+00:00

Joseph Menn on the tensions inside and outside Anonymous, and why it may have done more good for corporate security than any government "initiative".

Anonymous: Insidiae, Psychologia, Et Liber Pericula >> Infosec Island

guardiantech — 2011-09-21T16:33:39+00:00

"A distinct feature of group think is that it is exacerbated by a lack of clear rules on decision making. It is my contention that the diaspora of Anonymous inherently has the lack of decision making rules, as well as a large amount of group think dynamics within its younger set. The group as a whole though may not mean the total “group” (i.e. Anonymous rank and file) but whatever group has collected to decide on an “op”
"Also, given the nature of the Anonymous collective as seen online, they tend to not be very forgiving toward those they do not like or disagree with. This fractiousness and tendencies toward berating behaviour tend to re-enforce the group think model."

Thoughtful piece, which also points to other elements - particularly the love of conspiracy theories and the idea that actions won't have consequences because, well, they're virtual, aren't they?

One on One: Cole Stryker, author of 'Epic Win for Anonymous' >> NYTimes.com

guardiantech — 2011-09-06T10:30:53+00:00

Interesting interview with a longtime Anonymous watcher: "I think [Anonymous] will have a lasting effect. The power of Anonymous to generate media attention to a certain idea is way more powerful than their actual attacks. I think people will look back on the Anonymous era and see it more than just a way to generate interest and outrage around a certain social phenomenon or social injustice than the hacks that they are currently known for."

Anonymous's hackers are hypocrites, not hacktivists >> TechWeb

guardiantech — 2011-09-05T16:38:02+00:00

The headline is over the top, but the article makes good points: "Ask yourself this: If Anonymous were to single out your organization for attack, what would you do? Would you search your soul for the source of whatever transgression might have elicited the group's animosity? Or would you spend a little extra on IT security and hunker down to weather the storm, while mobilizing your legal department to track down and prosecute the offenders? For anyone charged with running a business, the obvious answer is the practical one. Anonymous's tactics force an organization into IT defense mode, while doing little, if anything, to engage the organization's leadership in a meaningful dialog about the issues."

Arguably, hackers with a cause are casting around for the best way to advance that cause. They've tried aggression and they've tried lulzing. Seems aggression is back. But it's not quite right.

Life after Anonymous – Interview with a former hacker >> Cisco Blog

guardiantech — 2011-08-30T21:08:56+00:00

Interview with @SparkyBlaze, who is in his 20s and from Manchester (but wants to keep the rest under his to-be-white hat).

"Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you see out there?
"SparkyBlaze: In my mind social engineering is the biggest issue today. We have the software/hardware to defend buffer overflows, malware, DDoS and code execution. But what good is that if you can get someone to give you their password or turn off the firewall because you say you are Greg from computer maintenance just doing testing. It all comes down to lies, everyone does it and some people get good at it."

Youth cybercrime linked to friends’ influence >> Michigan State University

guardiantech — 2011-08-25T20:56:27+00:00

Linked by Oxblood Ruffin (see link lower): "Peer influence and low self-control appear to be the major factors fueling juvenile cybercrime such as computer hacking and online bullying, according to a new study led by a Michigan State University criminologist.
"Thomas Holt, assistant professor of criminal justice, said the findings reinforce the need for parents to be more aware of their children’s friends and Internet activities."

Oxblood Ruffin: The changing landscape of hacktivism >> TechRadar UK

guardiantech — 2011-08-25T20:44:32+00:00

"Data theft is arguably the game changer.
"DDoSing or web defacements are one thing. Breaking into government and commercial networks is another. Already the clouds are forming. The Danish police wish to ban all anonymous use of the internet. The Indian Government wants real-time monitoring of Twitter, Facebook, and Skype. The OECD is seeking tighter regulatory control of the internet. And the United Kingdom is seeking stricter laws to deal with cybercrime.
"While it would be unfair to say that Anonymous is completely responsible for these reactions, it's certainly part of the problem. And when the whip comes down - and come down it will - Anonymous will have to accept part of the blame when online privacy rights are scaled back even further.
"Hacktivism, real hacktivism, has always managed to get things done without upsetting the apple cart. And even though Anonymous is more decentralised than traditional hacktivist models there's no reason why it can't muster more discipline."

When hackers become The Man >> CNET News

guardiantech — 2011-08-24T16:05:35+00:00

Interesting take from the DefCon conference about how hacking has been forced to grow up - sort of - and the troubles around Anonymous.

@TeaMp0isoN_ gets his A level Computing Science grade

guardiantech — 2011-08-18T20:49:36+00:00

All you need to know about many Anonymous members in a single tweet: age, attitude, achievement.

Anonymous does not support killing Facebook on November 5 >> ZDNet

guardiantech — 2011-08-11T06:27:41+00:00

Surely it's the (hardcore) few that are the influencers? Of course the group en masse doesn't agree – where would they go inbetween bouts of crippling state websites? – but that doesn't matter.

Hacker Group Anonymous Vows To Destroy Facebook On November 5 >> Business Insider

guardiantech — 2011-08-10T06:31:19+00:00

'Citing privacy concerns and the difficulty involved in deleting a Facebook account, Anonymous hopes to "kill Facebook," the "medium of communication [we] all so dearly adore."'

Anonymous attacks US sheriffs' websites >> The Guardian

guardiantech — 2011-08-08T06:30:05+00:00

"The group of hackers known as Anonymous says it has hacked into about 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the US, a data breach that at least one local police chief said leaked sensitive information about an ongoing investigation."

Old-school hacker Oxblood Ruffin discusses Anonymous and the future of hacktivism >> Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

guardiantech — 2011-08-01T21:11:35+00:00

"[RFL] spoke by email with Oxblood Ruffin, a Canadian hacker who is a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a hackers' group that coined the word "hacktivist." He is also the founder and director of Hacktivismo. I asked him about Anonymous's recent operations and the ethics and rules of engagement of hacktivism.
RFE/RL: How would you define "hacktivism"?
Ruffin: "Hacktivism uses technology to improve human rights. It also employs nonviolent tactics and is aligned with the original intent of the Internet, which is to keep things up and running.
"With regard to tactics, things like DDoS attacks, Web defacements, malware, and network breaches are off limits. These generally limit speech and are a violation of the First Amendment and contradict Articles 19 of the UNDHR [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] and ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]."

Oxblood Ruffin. Make room, Game Of Thrones.

Jake Davis named as suspected hacker Topiary by UK police >> Naked Security

guardiantech — 2011-08-01T06:30:29+00:00

Appears in court on Monday.

In ‘Anonymous’ raids, Feds work from list of top 1,000 protesters >> Wired.com

guardiantech — 2011-07-27T14:40:18+00:00

"It turns out there’s a method behind the FBI’s raids of suspected Anonymous members around the country. The bureau is working from a list, provided by PayPal, of the 1,000 internet IP addresses responsible for the most protest traffic during Anonymous’ DDoS attacks against PayPal last December.
"FBI agents served 40 search warrants in January on people suspected of hosing down PayPal during ”Operation Payback” — Anonymous’ retaliatory attack against companies who blacklisted WikiLeaks. On July 19, the feds charged the first 14 defendants under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and raided an additional 35 suspects for evidence."

So just 960 to go. Also: "It was easy to distinguish the packets coming from the’ “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” — Anonymous’ fire-and-forget DDoS tool — because they contained strings like “wikileaks,” “goof,” and “goodnight,” the affidavit notes."

Oh dear.

Anonymous' new social site hacked, defaced >> MSNBC

guardiantech — 2011-07-25T22:05:06+00:00

"Anonymous, the hacking group that saw some of its alleged members arrested last Tuesday, had another blow to deal with on Wednesday, albeit a lesser one: Its own social network page was hacked and defaced.
"The group had announced earlier this week that it was just starting AnonPlus after its "Your Anon News" account was rejected by Google's new social network, Google+, for violating the site's standards."

Syrian hackers apparently to blame. Ironic?

Indictment: alleged members of Anonymous >> Scribd

guardiantech — 2011-07-20T06:14:47+00:00

Court documents unsealed.

Quick n Dirty – Just for clarification >> The Jester

guardiantech — 2011-06-21T20:59:47+00:00

The Jester, a US ex-military hacker of some repute who has tangled with Anonymous over Wikileaks, on how he played around with some of the Lulzsec team Halls of mirrors have nothing on this lot..

AnonOps Announcement >> Opanonymous

guardiantech — 2011-05-09T12:19:50+00:00

"We regret to inform you today that our network has been compromised by a former IRC-operator and fellow helper named 'Ryan'. He decided that he didn't like the leaderless command structure that AnonOps Network Admins use. So he organised a coup d'etat, with his 'friends' at skidsr.us . Using the networks service bot 'Zalgo' he scavenged the IP's and passwords of all the network servers (including the hub) and then systematically aimed denial of service attacks at them (which is why the network has been unstable for the past week)."

We are Legion. And divided.