The basic rundown, with some logs: (Virtually) face to face: how Aaron Barr revealed himself to Anonymous Aaron Barr, CEO of security company HBGary Federal, spent the month of January trying to uncover the real identities of the hacker collective Anonymous—only to end with his company website knocked offline, his e-mails stolen, 1TB of backups deleted, and his personal iPad wiped when Anonymous found out. Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany And the full article, with all of it, as far as I know: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price Aaron Barr believed he had penetrated Anonymous. The loose hacker collective had been responsible for everything from anti-Scientology protests to pro-Wikileaks attacks on MasterCard and Visa, and the FBI was now after them. But matching their online identities to real-world names and locations proved daunting. Barr found a way to crack the code. In a private e-mail to a colleague at his security firm HBGary Federal, which sells digital tools to the US government, the CEO bragged about his research project. "They think I have nothing but a heirarchy based on IRC [Internet Relay Chat] aliases!" he wrote. "As 1337 as these guys are suppsed to be they don't get it. I have pwned them! :)" But had he? Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...tracked-anonymousand-paid-a-heavy-price.ars/2 I have to say that listening to the Serial Experiments Lain soundtrack while reading this added a lot to the experience. Immersion is always a great thing, whatever the price.
Hahaha, wow. What a read. I'll have to bookmark this. Honestly, people keep talking about Anonymous like it's a thing. Like it can be nailed down. Anonymous is everyone who enters into and exits out of it; you can't pin it, you can't identify it, and you definitely can't call it out. Half of it is benign--neighborly, even. The other half is spiteful, resourceful, and determined. Not knowing the difference can lead to tragedy. And honestly, some people are just asking for it. Whether you agree with them or not, you should know not to antagonize them. It's like poking a pit bull in the snout because it has a sour attitude; you're not going to change its mind, you're just gonna get your hand bitten off.
Yeah, he came at this in completely the wrong way. Networks will always beat hierarchies because you cannot pin down a network by getting to its 'leaders'. What most of society fails to understand is that life is easier without hierarchies, and that you can live without them, particularly as a collective group like this. Solidarity beats loyalty, and so on. This might teach them something about it, but it will take more than this to get it into peoples' heads that the way that they do things is inefficient when compared to this group.
I've never heard of anonymous before, not a group like this anayway, but to me they sound like a secret society akin to the Freemasons. Then again I'm probably over simplifying things. I don't doubt that this group could be trouble. The greatest of allies and the worst of foes. Those are the type of groups I like. Still they're an interesting bunch, power driven and well-hidden, all add up to something dangerous. Hope it's used relatively in responsibility.
