Unmasking the "Anonymous" Hackers

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/unmasking-the-anonymous-hackers

by kapilkaisare • 16 years ago

7 8 16 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

sigzero• 16 years ago

I like the second comment:

"Anonymous is an internet-era gang, plain and simple."

Indeed they are.

keiferski2• 16 years ago

Not quite sure I agree. Anonymous has zero financial incentive to do any of this, which may or may not be a requisite to gang-status. Either way, it's still a point worth considering.

frisco• 16 years ago

I don't think gang members do it for the money, but rather for the social status. By definition you don't have that here; as soon as someone proclaims herself a "leader" they get raided just as hard as any of Anon's targets. Moot has a love-hate relationship with Anon and certainly isn't a leader figure in a sense that he isn't directing raids.

So to your point Anon is something very different than traditional gangs, but I think that's because there's no hierarchy to aspire to, rather than lack of money.

ryoshu2• 16 years ago

It's amazing how a writer can get so many things wrong in such a short article.

ryoshu2• 16 years ago

I guess I should expound: The title of the article is silly. Anonymous is a concept and perhaps the first large scale stand alone complex (SAC) (http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/01/28/scientology-sac/) we have seen emerge. Trying to unmask an SAC is a sisyphean effort because it acts as a scale free network. This is very important to white hats who need to protect against attacks. We aren't dealing with your garden variety skiddies or black hats. As evidenced by the attacks in Operation Payback, Anonymous has created a voluntary botnet with LOIC's new hivemind feature. Anonymous is something different.

The author states: "Whenever a thread is particularly weak, discussants mark it with an image of Guy Fawkes." This is wrong. The author is attempting to show knowledge of chan culture, but he can't even get basic facts straight. Another example: "Once, hackers in the group busted into an online children’s game, flooding an animated swimming pool with their own characters." Also wrong. Five minutes on Google will tell you about the raid on Habbo (http://encyclopediadramatica.com/The_Great_Habbo_Raid_of_Jul...). Not only is Habbo not a children's game -- its target market is teenagers -- the raid shut down numerous aspects of the game. Sloppy research and/or writing on the author's part. And then there is his use of the word "hacker" and the phrase "busted into" to describe the act of registering an account. The author seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what he is writing about.

All of these details are important to anyone that wants to understand Anonymous, which should include any white hat, and especially those of us who work on multi-player web based games. It's amazing how a writer can get so many things wrong in such a short article.

Unmasking the "Anonymous" Hackers

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