Over the last year, hacking has come to the forefront of public knowledge as Anonymous, Lulzsec and other groups began to publicize their hacking endeavors. Though Anonymous has been active for quite a while, the effect of hacktivism started becoming press-worthy and apparent when members of Anonymous launched ddos attacks against Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and the Swiss bank PostFinance, for various anti-wikileaks actions (such as closing down Wikileaks' accounts with various banks, freezing assets and disallowing payments/donations to be made to such accounts.) This marked the beginning of a plethora of widely publicized hacking attacks.
Since then, Anonymous has launched various initiatives against different organizations that they believe are immoral or unethical. The group Lulzsec spun off from Anonymous earlier this year, and started releasing various payload containing data they obtained in attacks on a number of corpoations and organizations. Together, the two groups have unleashed various attacks against a plethora of high-ranking corporations, including AOL, ATAT, the Arizona Police Department, FOX, a number of affiliates to the FBI, various components of the CIA, multiple subsidiaries of SONY, The Sun, News of The World, and many more.
They have unearthed information revealing that HBGary, a technology security company, has been working with US Justice Department and influential companies such as Bank of America on various projects to remove to cause damage to Wikileaks. It was revealed that they working on a rootkit (malware) for windows computers that would have been nearly impossible to detect or remove. It was also revealed that HBGary was contracted by the US Government to develop astroturfing software which, according to wikipedia, "would create an "army" of multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues [such as Wikileaks". This software could also scan for people with points of view the powers-that-be didn't like and then have the "fake" profiles attempt to discredit those "real" people." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBGary)''
Recently, the US government released an official statement dictating that cyber attacks against the US (and their affiliated organizations) would be observed as a declaration of war against the US and that they would respond accordingly. (both the decentralized Anonymous group and Lulzsec have hacked various government web components in order to call the US's bluff).
Recently, Lulzsec and Anonymous joined forces again to create operation #AntiSec, an initiative against corrupt organizations and governments. Read their Press Release below. The latest attack for #AntiSec has been against NATO, apparently they were able to obtain a gb of information. Lulzsec also recently attacked sites belonging to News of the World and claim to have obtained a number of emails that they say would have a profound impact on the judicial hearings going on right now about the Murdoch scandal.
The US Government and NATO have both made statements declaring these groups to be public threats or terrorists.
There is too much information to really cover in this post, so I suggest that you read further on your own:
Wikipedia pages: Anonymous, Lulzsec, Operation AntiSec
Press Releases: Joint Statement by LulzSec and Anonymous, Operation AntiSec, Lulzsec Manifesto, Anonymous's response to NATO
Twitter Accounts: @AnonymousIRC, @Lulzsec
Other:
LulSecurity's official website. Shows every release they made so far including information on each hack they've committed.
(There is still much more information out there, if anyone has more sites and webpages I can put here that provides information on the various hacking collectives in a succinct and unbiased manner, please post them and I will update the front page)
It is clear that cyber attacks and hacktivism has become a large part of today's society and have real world effects. Public opinion on the actions of Anonymous and Lulzsec and other hacker collectives have been divided.
Some say that these groups consist of 'script kiddies' or ignorant young people who don't understand the consequences of their actions and will just find themselves in jail. They argue that the actions perpetuated by such groups will result in giving the US reasons to further censor the internet and can only have a negative impact. Others complain that such hacks are only hurting the people as a whole, making our country more susceptible to foreign threats.
Others believe differently. They argue that such hacktivism is shedding light on corrupt government and corporation practices. By getting media coverage, these hacker collectives bring various discussions and issues to the public knowledge. They believe that something needs to be done to stop corruption in influential organizations. Some people in the cyber-security field applaud Lulzsec/Anonymous for showing how insecure many cyber institutions are and in result will force people to start to care about securing their websites in order to protect users' data.
What do you think?
Since then, Anonymous has launched various initiatives against different organizations that they believe are immoral or unethical. The group Lulzsec spun off from Anonymous earlier this year, and started releasing various payload containing data they obtained in attacks on a number of corpoations and organizations. Together, the two groups have unleashed various attacks against a plethora of high-ranking corporations, including AOL, ATAT, the Arizona Police Department, FOX, a number of affiliates to the FBI, various components of the CIA, multiple subsidiaries of SONY, The Sun, News of The World, and many more.
They have unearthed information revealing that HBGary, a technology security company, has been working with US Justice Department and influential companies such as Bank of America on various projects to remove to cause damage to Wikileaks. It was revealed that they working on a rootkit (malware) for windows computers that would have been nearly impossible to detect or remove. It was also revealed that HBGary was contracted by the US Government to develop astroturfing software which, according to wikipedia, "would create an "army" of multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues [such as Wikileaks". This software could also scan for people with points of view the powers-that-be didn't like and then have the "fake" profiles attempt to discredit those "real" people." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBGary)''
Recently, the US government released an official statement dictating that cyber attacks against the US (and their affiliated organizations) would be observed as a declaration of war against the US and that they would respond accordingly. (both the decentralized Anonymous group and Lulzsec have hacked various government web components in order to call the US's bluff).
Recently, Lulzsec and Anonymous joined forces again to create operation #AntiSec, an initiative against corrupt organizations and governments. Read their Press Release below. The latest attack for #AntiSec has been against NATO, apparently they were able to obtain a gb of information. Lulzsec also recently attacked sites belonging to News of the World and claim to have obtained a number of emails that they say would have a profound impact on the judicial hearings going on right now about the Murdoch scandal.
The US Government and NATO have both made statements declaring these groups to be public threats or terrorists.
There is too much information to really cover in this post, so I suggest that you read further on your own:
Wikipedia pages: Anonymous, Lulzsec, Operation AntiSec
Press Releases: Joint Statement by LulzSec and Anonymous, Operation AntiSec, Lulzsec Manifesto, Anonymous's response to NATO
Twitter Accounts: @AnonymousIRC, @Lulzsec
Other:
LulSecurity's official website. Shows every release they made so far including information on each hack they've committed.
(There is still much more information out there, if anyone has more sites and webpages I can put here that provides information on the various hacking collectives in a succinct and unbiased manner, please post them and I will update the front page)
It is clear that cyber attacks and hacktivism has become a large part of today's society and have real world effects. Public opinion on the actions of Anonymous and Lulzsec and other hacker collectives have been divided.
Some say that these groups consist of 'script kiddies' or ignorant young people who don't understand the consequences of their actions and will just find themselves in jail. They argue that the actions perpetuated by such groups will result in giving the US reasons to further censor the internet and can only have a negative impact. Others complain that such hacks are only hurting the people as a whole, making our country more susceptible to foreign threats.
Others believe differently. They argue that such hacktivism is shedding light on corrupt government and corporation practices. By getting media coverage, these hacker collectives bring various discussions and issues to the public knowledge. They believe that something needs to be done to stop corruption in influential organizations. Some people in the cyber-security field applaud Lulzsec/Anonymous for showing how insecure many cyber institutions are and in result will force people to start to care about securing their websites in order to protect users' data.
What do you think?