Anonymous Claims Possession of Stuxnet Worm 234
An anonymous reader writes "Last night, a member of hacker group Anonymous announced on Twitter that the group was in possession of the Stuxnet worm. Recently, Anonymous has been in the news for its high profile attacks on software security firm HBGary, after Aaron Barr, the CEO of HBGary's sister firm HBGary Federal, claimed to have acquired the names of senior Anonymous members and threatened to release them to the public. This is where the possibility for Anonymous getting its hands on Stuxnet increases."
So? I have a copy of Code Red (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, so? I have a copy of the Code Red and Nimda somewhere in my office. Am I dangerous? No. Because they are known viruses and the holes the exploits used have been patched shut now.
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I'd have thought the real danger would be of Anonymous using the virus to discover-- or perhaps to claim to have discovered-- the origin of the Stuxnet virus, or information about what was being planned with Stuxnet by those Anonymous obtained it from.
Re:So? I have a copy of Code Red (Score:4, Informative)
The San Bruno explosion and reports of Stuxnet affecting operations in Iran occurred around the same time.
And the same time Mubarak resigned, I drove past Washington DC with no traffic delays.
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Not to mention just having the virus doesn't mean much of anything. Stuxnet was all o
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i know a guy in the mining industry in a position of quite a bit of control over what goes on in a major operation.
first time i met him i caught him using a meme.
i am now scared.
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Allow me to present to you a fundamental fact of the internet: Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com]
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I seriously doubt they'll be able to modify it in any meaningful way. The thing seems to have been designed specifically to hit Siemens centrifuges, which would imply that the creators had some very, very good knowledge of the software used in those centrifuges. I doubt there are too many Anons out there with enough knowledge of how natural gas systems or other dedicated industrial hardware works to do much with Stuxnet.
I would not be so certain of that. It doesn't require that the person working on the devices decides to write a virus for them; consider the extended family. Someone comes along and grabs a few of the specialist's books, maybe reference manuals, and passes those to another activist with a bit of knowledge. Suddenly, the activist has the insider knowledge necessary to target those specific plants. One would hope that a specialist worker in a nuke or gas plant would keep a tighter rein on their plant document
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. . . though it was seamless pipe having no welds to fail.
Seamless pipe may have no longitudinal weld, but (in most cases, like this case) still has welds at joints and fittings connecting pipe segments together.
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I'm not suggesting that "anonymous" was responsible, only that an attack using similar software could cause lines to burst. The national NBC reporting that just aired Saturday February 12th failed to mention ANY of the issues that were raised locally.
The welds were of variable quality and of course pressure-induced failure will be at weak spots. Report say there were multiple failures at once. I've been unable to find any explanation as to why the pressure shot up right before the explosion.
The line was
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Are you kidding, Anonymous did nothing, it does not exist, it is an activism meme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group) [wikipedia.org]. People do things using the Anonymous name, nothing more.
To say Anonymous has possession of the stuxnet virus, is meaningless nonsense. Anyone at any time can say they are and are not a member of Anonymous, as there is no membership, no leadership, just temporary causes. In fact any false flag event can be named as Anonymous activity if the government professionally paranoid ch
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I didn't mean to suggest that I thought "Anonymous" had anything to do with the San Bruno event. I don't know very much about them and am not making judgement of them.
That said, Stuxnet really scares me and I hope it isn't used.
I did see a news site posting elsewhere minutes ago to the effect that they were backing something new. I hope they don't get carried away in the emotions of the moment and do anything they might regret.
May people everywhere be free and not live in fear.
And? (Score:2)
It's a sad day for the authorities (Score:2)
They thought those centrifuges they've gathered were finally going to take down WikiLeaks and spin Assange into prison, but Anon will now put an end to such dreams.
at this point who hasn't got a copy of stuxnet (Score:2, Informative)
it's been available for ages.
It's a great PR move by Anon in that it's garners a stack of press due to the combinations of:
"shadowy hackers"
"stuxnet"
Well played anon.
What is actually more significant is the upcoming http://anonleaks.ru
The potential for them to claim the popular mindshare that wikileaks has had is very real.
None of the other groups have managed (openleaks, crowdleaks, abcleaks, xyzleaks, 123leaks, etc etc etc).
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Really? I'd have thought that, given your last sentence, it's less so. To your average person anon is a bunch of kids DDoSing websites, and I'm not sure they're viewed in any better light in techy circles. I really don't see what anon has done to build up confidence in the sort of trust you'd need to be a successful *leaks.
To over-stretch the military analogy, they're much more the light infantry than the intell
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To over-stretch the military analogy, they're much more the light infantry than the intelligence corps.
I would have thought 'the crazed LSD freak tossing live frag grenades into the barracks at random between shooting own toes with shotgun' would have been a more appropriate analogy. Has Anonymous ever actually done *anything* constructive and useful, or do they just create mayhem?
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Re:at this point who hasn't got a copy of stuxnet (Score:5, Funny)
"shadowy hackers"
With each passing year of hacking I've become so increasingly shadowy that by now I'm not just *shadowy*, I'm positively *shady*. On summer days people position themselves so that I'm between them and the sun.
I prefer to think of myself as "attractive". When my daughter entered the science fair, I used my attractiveness to help her win. Her rival was explaining the Cavendish experiment, but I sabotaged his demonstration by standing next to the apparatus.
Some people say I'm self centered. They say I've lost touch with the outside world. But look at it from my point of view: I've been hacking so many years that my arms are now shorter than my Schwartzchild radius. I'm not fat, though. They say if you're not fat if you can see your feet. Thank $deity for gravitational lensing.
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it's been available for ages.
Even HBGary has had one. I'm surprised that everybody concentrates on "What Anons would be able to do with it" rather than "How the Anons got their copy".
The article quoted by TFA [forbes.com]:
A source from Anonymous says that most of the new e-mails from Hoglund are still unchecked and it is unclear who will be most liable when the information is made public, but added that briefly skimming the emails had revealed “three different malware archives, two bots, an offer to sell a botnet, a genuine stuxnet copy, and various malware lists.” Not entirely surprising given that HBGary is a security firm, but the source speculates that botnets aren’t typically rented out for “research.”
So basically, (Score:2)
Same Anonymous? (Score:2, Insightful)
This can't be the same Anonymous (off-shoot of 4chan) that thinks writing an aggressive Windows GUI ping program is "hacking"
Some proper organised crime group has usurped the name, surely.
"Hey, we announce ourselves as Anonymous, then all these script kiddies, who just DOS websites and leave blazingly obvious trails for authorities to follow, get sent down for our criminal deeds"
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This can't be the same Anonymous (off-shoot of 4chan) that thinks writing an aggressive Windows GUI ping program is "hacking"
I always thought it was the media who came up with that in order to try to explain to Neanderthals what a DDOS is.
Now I wonder who came up with "Hacktivism"
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... that thinks writing an aggressive Windows GUI ping program is "hacking"
Well, I thought that was brilliant.
A non-anonymizing DoS program flooding big names with identifiable aggressor information;
lamer magnet
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Aren't all criminals anonymous? At least the ones who get away with it.
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my guess is that the anonymous folks try to perpetuate the myth about kids using scripts to hack websites. So they are considered no threat and can operate as they wish. It's a decoy of some sort.
That's like... (Score:2)
That's like having possession of the ultimate supervirus, which will KILL ALL HUMANS who have blond hair, brown eyes, a beard, and a vagina.
The thing is so damned specific it's useless.
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
In other news: Iran claims posession of the Stuxnet virus as well
What is the target of the announcement? (Score:2)
They could have the source or not, the vulnerabilities that it used to spread could have been patched already (starting with the disabled autorun). Was safe to spread it at the very start because the specific hardware for that payload wasnt very used afaik, and all the techniques that it used to hide itself should now known by security products vendors.
So, it will should be able to damage only the windows users without updates nor running antivirus? Is the target of this announcement people that can't tel
From a IT security perspective. (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone can get a copy of the Stuxnet worm, just create an account on the right security forums and download a copy.
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The quality of the articles really has been in the toilet lately, and Slashdot's editorializing is more sensational than ever. Just look at another one of today's headlines: "Two Huge Holes In the Sun Spotted".
This nonsense is ridiculous, immature, and intellectually insulting. It's getting to the point where I only check the site out of habit, and because it has a decent rank on my awesomebar. This can't last.
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AftanGustur (7715) --- (7715)
So, no, not very new.
Whoosh
Senior members of Anonymous? (Score:2)
That's the most hilarious thing I've read in a while!
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That's the most hilarious thing I've read in a while!
I read your comment and immediately looked below the text for the "LIKE" button.
There is no anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are talking about the Anonymous from 4chan, then there isn't any group like that. That implies to much organisation, a hierachy, an organization.
The idea originally was related but NOT the same to "I am Spartacus". And many people don't even understand that statement.
The "I am Spartacus" statement is this: "I hereby declare that I am the person you are seeking and accept all responsibility for my actions." If you state this, you BECOME Spartacus, you are it and LOOSE yourself with it. You can't say, "I smallfurrycreature represent Spartacus", you surrender yourself to the cause and become it. In the movie, the people all nailed up, are ALL Spartacus and by doing so the idea of Spartacus if not the person becomes invincible. No matter how many Spartacusses you nail to a cross, there is always one more just around the corner. It is the undying hero, the person dies but the idea goes on.
This doesn't sit well with our individual culture.
Anonymous takes this even further, if people understood it. You cannot state "I am Anonymous" for this is silly. The moment you tie yourself to this concept, you are no longer anonymous. You can speak with a thousand voices, you can at best be one voice representing a thousand but never a thousand. You cannot be anonymous only be a non-significant part of it.
The real idea behind it all on 4chan was to give a name to the movements/actions that were observed. It is like watching the migration patterns of animals and calling them Bob. Just because it now sounds like a person doesn't mean that a wildebeast migrating represents Bob or is controlled by the motives of Bob.
Does any of this rant matter
Yes. The Muslim brotherhood, are they the protesters in Egypt? Some western "news" stations would have you believe this. BUT this has NOT been an Islamic revolution. It might or might not become one but the protests where NOT guiden or orchastrated by them... some PROTESTERS might have been but not the "protest". It can be hard to grasp the difference. It is the difference between the resentment of the masses and individual grievances. Same as the protests in Tunesia were not about a closed vegetable stand or in Egypt about the beating of a youth or in France about cake or in the USA about tea.
Anonymous is not a group that exists on 4chan in /b/. If anything it is the behavior of individual but unknown people who use the web to do something in a minimally organised way to have a far reaching effect. It is the mob effect on the internet.
That means that there is no point in ousting its leaders. You can get the leaders of one mob and might even be cheered for that by the mob next to it. Anonymous cheers cat killers and hunts them down. It is not a singleton, it is a class. You can spawn things from it but almost by its nature, the moment you do that is ceases to be the idea and it becomes Anonymous XYZ the group.
Anonymous doesn't have its hands on anything and has its hands on everything because we can all be Anonymous and we all aren't.
But media doesn't grasp that since they need to put a face to the name. But ultimately this means that Anonymous will just get more legenday. Strike one group down and another will take its place. Just as killing a few hundreds protestors, and arresting/torturing far more, did NOTHING to stop the protest in Egypt. Or killing all the buffalo stopped Bob.
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In reality, there are multiple independent groups acting under the banner of Anonymous, along with a much larger group of passive participants who identify themselves with the cause. One of the most prominent and active groups runs the anonops.ru IRC server and these are the ones who are/were at war with HBGary Federal. Sure, they are not that structured or organized, but they clearly exist as an independent sub-group of the "Anonymous" movement. Aaron Barr tried to identify them and supposedly almost came
There is no Cabal! (Score:2)
PS. I think saying "This doesn't sit well with our illusory individual culture." would be somewhat more accurate, BTW.
And I can't help but wonder how similar all those revolutions ultimately might be... in past examples - whatever ideologically-guided people like to believe (and would like you to believe) - economic reasons were the major motivation for uprisings behind the Iron Curtain, for movements of the 80s. Ordinary people simply wanted better pays in relation to rising
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That means that there is no point in ousting its leaders
I don't think that's necessarily accurate. It may prove to be the case, but it's certainly not a foregone conclusion.
It's a risk/reward structure. People participate in Anonymous, they get some sort of ideological or social reward for it, and they view their risk as being fairly minimal. (WE ARE ANONYMOUS. YOU CAN'T CATCH US. BLAH DEE FUCKING BLAH.) It's entirely reasonable to posit that there is a relatively small group of die-hard Anonymous types, who are ideologically driven to...mayhem, for whatever rea
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That means that there is no point in ousting its leaders
I don't think that's necessarily accurate. It may prove to be the case, but it's certainly not a foregone conclusion.
Foregone in so much as we'll never be free of computer viruses. Too many people got a taste of the power they have, and like the idea of being "anonymous".
The anarcho-lunatics will keep doing what they're doing, which is more or less okay, because without massive participation Anonymous is toothless.
It doesn't sound like the HBGary attack took all that massive of participation. DDOSSing did, but the point was that helped people stay anonymous by using a mob. Reminds me of what they used to do in my hometown. 2-3- poeple would all walk out of Walmart at the same time with their hands full at the "right" time. Then they'd all get on the bus. They figu
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The lesson they learn won't be about the consequences of 'restricting free speech', it will be about the consequences of operating their business on a network that is exposed to the internet at large.
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No. It's pretty much lame sophomoric 'philosophical' twaddle where it isn't crappy sophomoric 'philosophical' twaddle.
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Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, so they have a copy of something that was designed to replicate itself and is known to have spread to literally hundreds of thousands of unsecured machines? And they have a binary copy of it? I'm going to write the rest of this post from my bomb shelter.
The media talk about Anonymous like it's some shadowy terrorist super-villain collective, but that's really missing the point. Anonymous is, at its core, the world's most prolific troll. Look at the sites they attacked in the whole WikiLeaks affair. Visa.com and MasterCard.com? It's obvious to anyone with a clue that these are symbolic targets. If they'd had the desire (and arguably the capability) to inflict real damage, they'd have gone after the payment processing infrastructure instead. But their goal isn't to break stuff. It's to do something relatively inconsequential, and see how many media organizations they can get to shit their pants over it.
This is (roughly) the same group whose crowning achievement was getting Oprah to say "over 9000 penises" on national TV. Even if they have the capability to inflict real damage—and some members clearly do—they seem to be more interested in getting attention and playing the media for complete fools. Which is way more entertaining than indiscriminately wreaking havoc on the world.
And that's the bottom line. Everything they do is for entertainment value. Because they're not terrorists; they're trolls.
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Everything they do is for entertainment value. Because they're not terrorists; they're trolls.
You're missing the point of "who anonymous is" just like all the media organization who call them an elite group of "hackers on steroids" or a domestic terrorist organization or any kind of organization. Anonymous is anyone who shows up on 4chan, or their IRC channels, or who DOESN'T show up there but participates in things that started there like trolling all their favorite tagets, posting flicker animations to epilepsy boards, Project Chanology, DDOSing the flame of the day, or whatever. Or anyone who doe
The whole world has Stuxnet (Score:2, Informative)
https://github.com/Laurelai/decompile-dump
Why is this an article? (Score:2, Interesting)
Who the fuck cares if they have copies of the code?
So do many other private analysts.
And HBGary is a joke of a company.
The Big Picture (Score:4, Interesting)
I think everyone is missing the biggest point of whether or not Anonymous has access to the Stuxnet source code and that is, with the source code the actual creator could possibly be identified. Imagine if HBGary in some way knows what organization created Stuxnet or perhaps they had a hand in helping create it? The repercussions could be quite severe especially if it was as many claimed created by Israel with US backing. The idea in the article of the ways Anonymous could possible modify Stuxnet are simply stupid.
The other thing that everyone seems to be missing is the fact that HBGary also had in their possession a botnet that they were wanting to sell. Who would a company specializing in federal security be trying to sell a botnet to? This totally seems to be their modus operandi. "Hey government! Why create your own botnet that could be traced back to you? We can sell you one for a cheap million dollars!" Sort of the same thing they did with the Wikileaks stuff if you ask me.
And the last thing is how if the release of this information does confirm that some federal/government group did in fact have a hand in Stuxnet or was interested in buying a botnet, how totally idiotic they are in utililizing such an inept company like HBGary to help them. It really says something about security companies that specialize in government security contracts.
1. Download Metasploit/OllyDbg
2. Get Top Secret clearance
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
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1. Download Metasploit/OllyDbg
2. Get Top Secret clearance
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
Sounds like a good plan, actually.
Over the last decade I've seen some really dumb people with some really stupid ideas become insanely rich. Just because I *knew* as an expert it couldn't work or wouldn't do what you would want it to do - and the idiots didn't have a clue about it but managed to sell the idea to people with even less knowledge but a great deal of money.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm not the one being utterly stupid for having ethics and being a professional. Or if everyone that I consider to be
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I don't think I'm looking for conspiracy theories. I'm just surprised that the media are missing the bigger picture than the simple (and stupid) reaction "ZOMG! They can make a better Stuxnet!"... whatever. I doubt that was even what Anonymous intended by their leak.
But you certainly brought up a good point about the emails being available to anyone to investigate further... I just might have to do that. The sample email you posted certainly shows how opportunistic HBGary is/was... and how ignorant their cu
Playing with fire (Score:2)
I don't really get the point of this article. As dozens of people have said above, who cares.
But if you accept the premise of the article as placing Anonymous somehow in control of something that was previously under the control of Israel, I would say, how stupid can you get? Mossad's most recently exposed assassination was fairly sloppy, but they did kill the guy. That's certainly not the kind of wrath I'd want to bring down on myself.
Hacker group? (Score:2)
*sigh*
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Last night, a member of cat macro group Anonymous
Better?
Stuxnet is no threat (Score:2)
Except to the truly incompetent. The media-hype was completely out of proportion with with reality. Stuxnet is a mediocre piece of malware at best, that was created by people that did not really understand what they were doing. The only impressive part of it is the exact intelligence on how the Iranian Uranium centrifuges were wired. Apart from that, Stuxnet is basically a second-rated knockoff of technologies well known and understood.
Translation (Score:2)
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I don't know why Slashdot is still tagging this 'wikileaks' when it's clearly no longer about wikileaks at all.
Where have you been? In 2011 everything is about WikiLeaks.
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There is no such thing as an "Anonymous Hacking Group". There are no senior members, or official members of any kind. You are only a member of anonymous while actively participating. The media has blown this way out of proportion. Most people don't actually understand what Anonymous is(or rather, what it isnt).
Yes, "Anonymous Hacking Group" is a bit stupid. And there may be no "senior members" or "officials", but in any group, no matter how egalitarian, there are natural leaders. I'm guessing a small number of people in Anonymous have a larger effect than the rest; they post the ideas, organize the attacks, provide the links. I've found this true in every group. Hell, being that Anonymous is pretty much a changing ad hoc group, some percentage will participate more than others, and by this they can be said
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It has totally lost the anarchistic feel it had and has become a group consisting of a handful of 'smart' guys giving out orders to the masses of zombie idiots who give up their connection voluntarily.
*Emphasis mine*
So the kiddies are doing this all voluntarily and they're free to stop whenever they want. Isn't that a workable definition of anarchy?
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So the kiddies are doing this all voluntarily and they're free to stop whenever they want. Isn't that a workable definition of anarchy?
I think the GPs point was that while the foot soldiers are free to come and go as they please, that the actual direction of the group is being controlled by a shadowy cabal of leaders with an agenda. So that these leaders are using the gullibility of the foot soldiers (ie belief that they are part of some altruistic group that is ridding the planet of evil) to achieve their desires. And I don't think that this falls under the auspices of anarchy.
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a shadowy cabal of leaders with an agenda.
Sources in the underworld tell me - and this is just an unsubstantiated rumour, so please don't freak out, but I think it's worth repeating as an advisory - that the Conspiracy may now have not just an agenda but minutes.
Please, try to remain calm. They don't yet have Daytimers. For now.
I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets look at the situation properly:
Anonymous is a group composed of [Members N], lead by [Leader L] of [belief X], who attempt to attack [Company Y] over [Reason Z].
Now, we know nothing about L or N. We don't know who took part in DDOSing mastercard (or who lead it), we don't know who hacked into the site (or who lead it), nor do we know their link to whoever DDOSed scientology, google bombed scientology, or protested in the streets. We don't know anything.
So assuming that N and L are variable. X changes with L.
So Anonymous isn't really a group. Its not a 'group of people which are now becoming a terrorist group'. Its an ever-changing grouping of different people by a different leader who chooses their target and their method. Do they have a master plan? Not really.
So viewing how anon changes is rather useless, since pretty much everything changes all the time.
This is the equivalent of looking at the human race at a whole and claiming that "The human race attacked Iraq, after attacking Poland in 1942, and Troy at some point in history" and trying to draw a conclusion.
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The term leader suggests some sort of authority. Anon has none. The only way direction is decided is by an anon suggesting something and other anons deciding to join in. The idea stands purely on its merits, not who suggested it.
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But the difference with Anonymous is that anyone can claim to be the the leader at any time, and none of the others can tell the difference because they're all -- wait for it -- anonymous!
Keep in mind, this is not the same thing as a group keeping the identities of its leaders secret from outsiders; Anonymous keeps the identities of its leaders secret from itself.
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Anonymous is not a group. It is a social movement, similar to grungers, hippies, and tea party members.
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Anonymous can officially be clasified as a terrorist group in my book with threats and attacks all over the world to defend their points of view.
In such case almost every big country can be classified as a terrorist group.
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Anonymous can officially be clasified as a terrorist group in my book with threats and attacks all over the world to defend their points of view.
In such case almost every big country can be classified as a terrorist group.
Well, yeah.
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How many people have they killed ? How much property damage have they caused ? How much data have they destroyed ?
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who was the last doctor shot by anonymous? or bomb placed?
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What is terrorism. It is through fear to change peoples behaviour or politics or whatever. If someone blows a bomb to kill plenty of people that is not terrorrism. If the another person blows a bomb to make people not buy windows, then that is terrorism.
If someone fears the tooth fairy and by showing pictures of the tooth fairy, that person can be averted from a certain tooth paste, then that is terrorism, no violence needed.
You seem to have a grossly-simplified take on the matter. While the definition of terrorism is (understandably) difficult to state [wikipedia.org], legally-accepted definitions range from straight-up "harming large amounts of people" to coercion. Your example suggests you see terrorism as identical to Coercion [wikipedia.org], which is one naive take on the matter. However, all of your examples fall under one legal definition of terrorism or another.
Here are a few definitions from the Wikipedia article:
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It is difficult to see how a DDoS, or even a website defacement, could be considered "violent". No person is harmed. No property is damaged. Even if you want to stretch it more than (IMHO) you should, no data is lost.
If you set the bar for "violence" so low, it is difficult to see how anyone, anywhere
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Yes, because that's how it works. When you "hack" someone it's a fight between the pure intellectual, the one who concentrates the hardest manages to infest the other persons computer through use of pixies and fairy dust.
The moment anonymous attacks slashdot will gain the great super brain power of all it's members and lash out and counterstrike against a distributed network of millions of individual nodes.
It's not like slashdot is a message board riddled with bugs. Hell even if the backend has ten times le
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Anonymity does not imply a flat hierarchy. It simply means that screen names cannot (in theory) be tied to real ones. For example, Spartacus may be notionally equal to everyone else in Anonymous, but if he/she is well-respected in the group you might well find other members happy to follow his/her lead in coordinated actions.
Similarly, anarchy does not automatically imply disorder, only a lack of rulers. There's nothing to stop people self-organising into whatever organisational structure they desire.
Re:Senior anons? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Anonymous" is not simply a group that uses anonymity.
Anonymous is an un-group. It is the collection, at any single moment in time, of people attempting to achieve a common goal loosely organized via anonymous internet communications. The anonymous people working on a common goal, can change from day to day or moment to moment. The goal(s) being worked on can change from day to day and moment to moment. A call for action is thrown out in various anonymous Internet places, and some people who frequent those places decide the goal sounds worthwhile to them for various reasons, different for each person. Others decide the goal is not worthwhile and ignores it or calls out the original poster for having selfish reasons for the call to action ("We're not your personal army").
To say there are "members" and a "hierarchy" or even an actual group called "Anonymous" in any normal sense of the word reveals a lack of understanding of the phenomena.
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It's probably easier to introduce Anonymous as a culture. Saying "Anonymous DDoS'd a website and the FBI is now trying to identify them" is like saying "Punks spray-painted a wall and now the FBi is trying to identify all punks" (you can replace 'Punks' by 'Rappers', 'Goths', 'Bikers' and whatever else).
Once you think of Anonymous that way, you can then try to understand what they really are. Comparing them to an organization or an open, drop-in/drop-out group is much less accurate.
There's lots of 'Anonymou
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substitute "anonymous" with "the USA", and "the rest of the world" with the rest of the world.
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It's like calling someone who treats others in a particularly cruel and
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one could safely say that there are now two anonymouses. the one that wants to keep it on 4chan, and the one that has become an organised (albeit extremely decentralised) legitimate group with a real structure and points of command (which are transient and relatively anonymous). it's quite clever really.
of course, "oldfags" are irked greatly by the politically active group that has sprung out of them (and goes by the same name).
and anonymous at it's very core is trolls trolling trolls, pissing in an ocean
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Actually, we call it a "Flash mob [wikipedia.org]". Which also means that outside of arresting the occasional person and trying to make an example out of them (something that, to be honest, will only piss them off or amuse them immensely), they can't really do much about it. What are they going to do, make anonymous internet discussion boards illegal?
Good luck with that, guys. [wikipedia.org]
You have a army of a few thousand (at least) bored computer professionals of questionable ethics and high integrity, alongside a vastly higher numb
Re:Senior anons? (Score:4, Interesting)
To say there are "members" and a "hierarchy" or even an actual group called "Anonymous" in any normal sense of the word reveals a lack of understanding of the phenomena.
To say that there are NOT members and a hierarchy or an actual group called Anonymous reveals a lack of understanding of human social dynamics. There most certainly IS a group called Anonymous, composed of members (some more active than others), and organized in a hierarchy.
Someone who just posts random ideas to IRC and is never listened to by anyone is not a high ranking member of the hierarchy. Another guy whose many good ideas are listened to and followed is de facto a high ranking member of Anonymous. Some other guy who often works for the cause, and has carried out many successful attacks, also has status within the group. Just because nobody is able to view the whole system from the top down transparently and SEE who is who and who has status, and judge this based on concrete terms like facts and numbers, since the whole thing is based on anonymity, doesn't mean that said status/ranking does not exist. It is an inherent property of ANY humans working together socially in groups of two or more.
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> reveals a lack of understanding of human social dynamics
Are you sure Anonymous is all humans? I have it on good authority that Dogbert is a high ranking official in Anonymous.
There may be some lizard-people in there as well.
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Are you sure Anonymous is all humans?
furries don't count.
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To say there are "members" and a "hierarchy" or even an actual group called "Anonymous" in any normal sense of the word reveals a lack of understanding of the phenomena.
Phenomena? It's just a bunch of groups (with or without interchanging members) that operate under the same name. Looking at 'Anonymous' in the context of any one operation clearly reveals a 'group'. If it were just a collection of people attempting to achieve a common goal then the operations would not be coordinated, you can't coordinate such an attack (time, target, and even the cancellation of an operation) without some organisational hierarchy.
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A hierarchy built on message can exhibit structure, yet be anonymous and without persistent leadership.
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except the senior anons thing is bunk.
there are certain people who have done more "anon" activities than others, people who want to be leaders, or just people who unwisely make themselves too visible.
they are only leaders if their ideas are popular.
let's call anonymous "cloud activism". we don't know where it all is, and it's not relevant.
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Those who would fit the label of "senior member" would be ones who make the greatest contributions in its high profile exploits (and I'm not talking about wearing Guy Fawkes masks in public) or those who are given the greatest trust, for instance the handful who possessed HBG's email archives before it was put up as a torrent. We can call it a confederacy of individuals if it makes you happier, but you choosing to buy into their mythology does not make such a distinction any less valid.
There clearly are sec
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Yes and no. He claimed that he wasn't going to release names [pastebin.com], and Ars Technica seems to confirm [arstechnica.com] that from publicly [arstechnica.com] released information related to this incident.
However, this tidbit would probably explain why Anonymous retaliated:
RTFA (Score:2)
Here's a synopsis.
Olson quotes a source from Anonymous who briefly rattles off the contents of a slew of emails uncovered during the HBGary takedown. “Three different malware archives, two bots, an offer to sell a botnet, a genuine stuxnet copy, and various malware lists,” are supposedly among the contents.
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Grinman is grinning at you.