Articles about Anonymous

Anonymous has joined forces with GhostSquad to launch successful cyberattacks on eight international banks that were forced to shut down their websites.

The hacktivist collective alongside the hacker group GhostSquad have launched a new operation called Op Icarus which aims to punish corrupt banks and individuals in the financial sector.

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Shortly after hacking into Donald Trump's voicemails and leaking messages, Anonymous declared all-out war on the presidential candidate. Earlier this week, the hacktivist group launched #OpWhiteRose and doxxed the republican candidate.

Personal information about Trump -- his cell phone number, social security number and other details -- were released last week, with the group saying they were provided on the understanding that "you alone are responsible for your actions, as always". But rather than being the fruit of an elaborate hacking operation, anyone with the nous to use Google and Wikipedia could have gathered exactly the same information for themselves.

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Anonymous recently declared total war on Donald Trump (again), and is encouraging people to join in the fight against the Republican front-runner it compares to Hitler.

#OpWhiteRose is a new operation named after the White Rose Society. This non-violent group was originally set up in Nazi Germany to actively oppose Adolf Hitler, but has now been resurrected to combat the "menace" of Trump and his "new era of Brownshirt terrorists".

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Hacker collective Anonymous mostly gets press for its big campaigns, including fighting Islamic State, and tackling pedophiles and Scientologists, but it also has smaller campaigns that just exist for the greater good.

#OpSafeWinter was launched back in 2013 to help care for the invisible community, providing the homeless with clothing, blankets, food and clean water. Although a global campaign, it is most active in the UK, with teams in all of the major cities.

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In the run-up to the presidential election, few days go by when Donald Trump isn't hitting the headlines for something he's said or done. The bombastic billionaire looks set to become the republican candidate, and his journey towards the White House is littered with offense and controversy, and back in December Anonymous declared war on him.

The loose collective of hackers and activist made its declaration after Trump announced plans to ban Muslims from entering the US. One of the alleged first strikes in Anonymous' war sees the group hacking the businessman's voicemail and leaking the messages. The messages appear to show that Trump had a surprisingly cosy relationship with the more left-leaning section of the media than one might imagine.

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Recently Anonymous has mostly been in the news for targeting Islamic State on the web, playing its part in helping to shut down thousands of ISIS-supporting accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

But the hacktivist collective, which has been active since 2003, has initiated a lot of campaigns over the years, targeting a variety of people and organizations, some more successfully than others. The group’s list of achievements is quite impressive -- ranging from getting an internet predator arrested, to taking on the Church of Scientology.

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While there is greater interest than ever before in online privacy there are also calls from some quarters for people who use the web to be fully accountable. This is part of the thinking behind Facebook's real names policy, and it's also what's driven Tim Berners-Lee -- no less than the inventor of the web -- to call for the identities of cyberbullies to be exposed.

In the wake of gamergate and countless other examples of women being abused online for little more than being women, bullying of school children by their contemporaries, and endless racist, sexist, and politically motivated attacks online, the suggestion might seem -- on the face of it -- to make sense. But it fails to stand up to scrutiny and is likely -- ultimately, if anyone were insane enough to follow his advice -- to be completely counterproductive.

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I've written recently about the dangers of online vigilantes infringing on the free speech of others. Anonymous is one of the biggest offenders in this department, but there are numerous hacking groups that -- under the banner of fighting one evil or another -- take the law of the web into their own hands without a thought for the consequences.

Online vigilantes stir up populist support by throwing around the keywords associated with the enemy of the moment -- terrorists, ISIS, racists, fascists, communists, socialists, pedophiles. All very emotive issues, but vigilantism can all too easily get out of hand. This has just been demonstrated perfectly by YouTube star Keemstar who took it upon himself to expose a 62-year-old pedophile online through his DramaAlert podcast. The only problem is that he and his team got the wrong man.

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My colleague Brian Fagioli has referred to the web being rather like the Wild West. I'm inclined to agree, but that's not to say that we have reached the same conclusion for the same reasons. For me, the web -- like the Wild West -- is not a world filled with danger, but one occupied by vigilantes. As a proponent of free speech, I find this concerning. One of the most highly-lauded of vigilantes is the disparate group marching under the ragged banner of Anonymous.

One of its taglines is 'We Are Anonymous', a phrase that can be uttered by anyone as there is no membership process -- if you say you are part of Anonymous, you are part of Anonymous. The group is not, for the most part, organized. Individuals and factions can fight for or against whatever cause they want, just like real-world vigilante groups. But Anonymous is not alone. There are hacking collectives and other online crusaders who see fit to take the law into their own hands. This might sound wonderful, but it's not necessarily a good thing. As New World Hackers demonstrate, attacks can target the wrong people and restrict free speech.

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A huge DDoS attack took the BBC's websites offline on Thursday, as well as the broadcaster's iPlayer streaming service. The disruption lasted for several hours, and now a US-based group of 'cyber hackers' that usually targets ISIS has claimed responsibility.

The New World Hacking group is a self-proclaimed hacktivist group that supports Anonymous. It says that despite effectively knocking the BBC from the face of the web, it was only meant to be a test of server power rather than a targeted attack on the corporation.

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ISIS has been in the news for some time now, and events like the recent terror attacks in Paris keep pushing the group into the public consciousness. Governments may be waging war on ISIS on the ground, but on the web it is the likes of Anonymous and vigilante hackers who have taken it upon themselves to curtail terrorist propaganda.

In the latest twist in the tail, hacker group VandaSec traced the IP addresses relating to some ISIS Twitter accounts to the UK government -- the Department of Work and Pensions specifically. Given that the accounts have been used not only to spread ISIS propaganda, but also to recruit members, does the UK government have a dirty little secret? As you might expect, it's not quite that simple.

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The European Space Agency (ESA) has been hacked by Anonymous, and the names and login credentials of some of its employees have been posted online, the media reported on Monday.

The data released into the wild includes full names, email contact details, clear text passwords, office addresses, phone and fax contact details of those registered on the ESA database. The information contains 52 names, email addresses and passwords of 52 internal ESA users.

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Hacktivist group Anonymous, which has recently declared "war" on ISIS, has released a guide on how to find and take out ISIS-related websites and social media accounts.

The group posted three different guides, to be used within #OpParis, the online campaign against the Middle-Eastern militants.

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As you might have seen on other news sites over the past few days, hacktivist collective Anonymous has declared war against Islamic State following the massacre in Paris last Friday. The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones has an interesting interview with one of the members which is worth reading here.

While Operation Paris -- which has the aim of tracking down members of IS -- is a new venture, Anonymous has actually been engaged in a cyberwar with the terrorist organization since February through its continuing #OpISIS campaign. A new video, posted today by the group behind that operation, Anonymous Red Cult, reiterates its aims, and reveals how you can join the fight.

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Tor has long been thought of as offering a level of privacy, security and anonymity that enables people to do whatever they want online; it also facilitates access to the so-called Dark Web. Despite this, law enforcement agencies were able to crack Tor and identify a Silk Road 2.0 user. Now it seems that the FBI was helped out by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

It was previously known that the FBI tracked down Brian Richard Farrrell using information from a "university-based research institute". The Tor Project itself believes that the FBI paid researchers at the university at least $1 million to attack the network and gather data from Tor relays that could be analyzed and used to identify users' IP addresses.

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