How Aaron Barr revealed himself to Anonymous

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/virtually-face-to-face-when-aaron-barr-met-anonymous.ars

by ibejoeb • 15 years ago

126 77 15 years ago

arstechnica.com

fleitz4• 15 years ago

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

- Thomas Jefferson

jerf8• 15 years ago

“There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob” - Ayn Rand

fleitz4• 15 years ago

Definitely agree with you I'd hate to see Anonymous individuals restricted from actions that HBGary, its subsidiaries, its employees, and clients take.

cagenut• 15 years ago

"the opposite of anything ayn rand says" -me

Charuru• 15 years ago

Define mob? It's ok for the government to imprison people. But when I do it it's called kidnapping.

Edit: Just to clarify, I agree if you mean mob as in an actual mob. However you're replying to a parent who's talking about government, so that led me to think you're implying government is some form of a mob.

A representative government with powers endowed to them by the people and working within the limits of a codified legal system is very different from a mob.

heed• 15 years ago

What about 'being a mob'?

pyre6• 15 years ago

If a mob overthrows the government that means that there were a lot of people upset with the government and it can be taken as the 'will of the people.' If a single person overthrows a government it could be seen as a dictatorship. I think that the Rand-ian sound byte fails here.

gwern• 15 years ago

> "What is the government? nothing, unless supported by opinion."

--Napoleon Bonaparte

Xurinos• 15 years ago

"Don't live your life according to quotes." -- Keith Malley

amadiver2• 15 years ago

I'm curious as to why you don't see Anon's actions as mob justice? Or if you do, why that's okay?

fleitz4• 15 years ago

From where should a justice system derive its just powers?

Why is mob justice any worse than a justice system that allows people to be held indefinitely with out charge?

Why is mob justice any worse than a system that allows secret evidence which cannot be questioned or examined by the accused?

Would altering or abolishing a system that allows people to be held indefinitely with out charge be a good thing?

Either the justice system approves of this, or the rules of the system prevent it from taking action, either way it's broken.

sigzero• 15 years ago

What they didn't isn't "okay" not in any way shape or form.

pyre6• 15 years ago

Throwing around the term 'mob justice' is as meaningless as calling someone a 'freedom fighter.' Your freedom fighter is someone else's traitor/rebel/terrorist. I'm sure that Mubarak things that the Egyptians in the streets are trying to apply 'mob justice.'

jdp23• 15 years ago

"The next day, February 6, the attacks turned serious, and Barr realized the extent of what Anonymous had done to him and to his company, which was currently in negotiations to sell itself to a pair of interested buyers."

Oops.

ajays• 15 years ago

My guess is (and I haven't read the emails, or any non-public information), Barr was hoping for a massive amount of (positive) publicity, followed by the inevitable rich rewards of a much higher buying price. What better way to get this publicity than to take on the current Public CyberEnemy #1, aka Anonymous?

philthy3• 15 years ago

Makes you wonder what kind of security company has such a sophomoric SQL exploit on their website + someone in a power position who claims to be able to locate and identify the actual owners of a social network profile solely by guess.

pyre6• 15 years ago

The only thing that irks me is: If his methods were so off, then how did he have the Facebook profile of 'CommanderX' to be able to have the conversation in the logs? Did he determine that through his methods, or was that a proxy profile that CommanderX uses that is not hidden (i.e. freely given)? Just something that doesn't seem to fit with the idea that his methods were not able to identify anyone associated w/ Anonymous.

bmelton• 15 years ago

From my reading, there were multiple efforts in play -- he was 'infiltrating' Anonymous with multiple personas, and (if my reading is correct) trying to correlate that information with Facebook data.

Otherwise, none of it really makes sense. You can't investigate the friends of somebody on Facebook without knowing WHO the somebody you're investigating is. So, he had to at least have ideas for leads for people to start stalking.

I think we can all agree that correlating random activities across all Facebook users (whose profiles are public, which is of course another catch) would be really close to impossible with one reluctant developer and an 'analyst'.

stoney2• 15 years ago

Who says it really was CommanderX behind the facebook profile?

missinlnk• 15 years ago

His methods were flawed in that he thought he had pinned CommanderX as a leader of Anonymous, not that he couldn't figure out who these people were. He was trying to make Anonymous this centralized group when it isn't.

For a parallel example, look at Al Qaeda. People keep trying to make all of these Al Qaeda in X groups as one giant organization when in fact the only thing they have in common is the name and idea. 50 years ago there'd almost always have to be a personal connection for a group's idea to spread to another group. Now with the internet and other means of cheap and easy communication, it's easy for these ideas to spread anonymously. Anyone who identifies with these groups can take the ideas and run with them without the original group even knowing.

Law enforcement and governments are going to have a hard time figuring out how to deal with this, as their old tactics of decapitating the group's head doesn't work when there is no head.

bandushrew4• 15 years ago

You are assuming that 'CommanderX' had a clue what he was talking about. A perfectly reasonable interpretation of those logs simply assumes that 'CommanderX' rather liked the idea that Aaron thought he was some kind of super criminal, and didn't see any reason to deny it. A second perfectly reasonable interpretation of that conversation is simply that 'CommanderX' thought Aaron was a twat and pretended to be some kind of leader for the 'lulz'

If you are inclined to believe that CommanderX is a criminal mastermind, then the conversation could certainly be interpreted that way. Personally I struggle with the idea that a criminal mastermind would simply reveal himself to anybody who asked him about it.

My own interpretation of that conversation is that CommanderX said what he thought Aaron wanted to hear, and implied things that flattered his own ego.

Which speaks not at all to the actual level of involvement CommanderX may have had in the events that transpired, or his knowledge of them.

hysterix• 15 years ago

You would be surprised how some huge companies and government organizations have such poor computer security.

adrianwaj6• 15 years ago

Anonymous could provide a lot of red meat for Wikileaks if they tried, I think. Or would that not be a leak anymore but a theft? Anonbreaks - Wikileaks in overdrive.

marshray• 15 years ago

I think Wikileaks' policy is not to accept intentionally haxored info, although it's claimed that they've let some through in the past.

parfe• 15 years ago

There's a lot of misunderstanding of what Anonymous is.

adrianwaj is Anonymous if you so chose. You could release a Word Document with "Aaron Barr" in the author field declaring a war on Egg McMuffins and sign it Anonymous. You probably would get no traction and be ignored...

Or a week later you might read about a bunch of 16 year olds throwing Egg McMuffins to the Elephant at the Bronx Zoo wearing woody wood pecker masks while singing Christina Aguilera's version of the national anthem.

There is no "Anonymous" in the sense of a coherent group. There are only specific acts that received enough interest to garner outside attention.

When you say "If they tried" you are missing the point. You could try.

adrianwaj6• 15 years ago

Sort of like Jihad? Except here only for otherwise clearly unsavory responses to perceived threats against freedom vs otherwise clearly unsavory responses to perceived threats against Islam?

The argument lies whether the acts are actually unsavory, otherwise unsavory, if the perception of being a threat is correct and whether that threat is valid enough to justify a response. So when if ever does Jihadism/Anonymous go to far?

So Anonymous is really just a mask that can be put on. There is nothing that can keep either group in check except for how aligned each one is with the core values that it seeks to defend, and how that tension resolves. Why doesn't Anonymous rail against Jihad? Where people that might otherwise be labelled racist, however accurately or not, could then proceed with their actions without having that inhibition.

steveklabnik2• 15 years ago

http://twitter.com/AnonymousIRC/status/35861584349892608#

> While #Wikileaks seem to have some problems: #Anonleaks will be launching very soon. To start it will release 27000 mails of greg@hbgary.com

- @anonymousirc

adrianwaj6• 15 years ago

Wow, anonleaks.com just got created today. http://whois.domaintools.com/anonleaks.com its name server anonleaks.ru 2 days ago http://whois.domaintools.com/anonleaks.ru

ddkrone• 15 years ago

The interesting bit is that these "security" companies actually work with various government agencies and get tons of taxpayer money. Most politicians are clueless about what computer security means and have even less of a clue about cyber terrorism so companies like HBGary continue to proliferate even though they offer absolutely nothing for public well being.

mmaunder• 15 years ago

[23:56:51] <n0pants> Moral of the Story: Don't drum up business by banging on a hornet's nest.

..especially if you're not above them in the food chain.

bandushrew4• 15 years ago

I am sympathetic to the side of 'Anonymous' because the only way to stop them is to destroy the freedom of the internet.

To me the statement 'Information wants to be free' isn't the statement it appears to be. It is a statement of policy and intent, not of literal fact.

It is not a true statement because I actually believe that every piece of data in the world literally should be available in the public domain, it is a true statement because the only way to achieve the alternative is to lock down and destroy a world of freedom and information that I have come to love with an abiding passion.

Successfully solving the problem of securing private government data from anonymous release over the internet requires that the internet as it exists now be destroyed.

Stopping me from freely copying music that exists on my computer requires that full control of my computer be unavailable to me.

Successfully solving the problem of ensuring centralised and secure online identification of individuals to stop online libel destroys the freedom of anonymous political dissent and organization.

I am deeply sympathetic to the political ideals of 'Anonymous' not because they are always right but because the nobody else in any position of authority or power appears to even recognise the problem.

Effectively, I am sympathetic to 'Anonymous' because there is no way for me not to be without also being against the freedoms that make them possible.

DanielBMarkham• 15 years ago

I know some commenters support Anonymous because they would rather have that kind of chaos than government clamping down even further on the internet, and I agree.

But I think it's a false choice. Certainly we can acknowledge the mob that's Anonymous is a phenomenon that is not in our best interests. Surely we can acknowledge that having to choose between censorship and crime is a false choice, right? I don't have to choose between supporting the government in buying a new fire truck and letting my house burn down, do I?

bandushrew4• 15 years ago

Im very sorry, I have no idea what you are trying to say.

bandushrew4• 15 years ago

I may have got it.

The problem is that there is no gradient with computers.

I either control my computer, or I dont. There is no middle ground.

I can either surf the internet and post anonymously, or I cannot.

Nobody in power is fighting for my right to do those things.

Everybody is more concerned about their own petty little secrets than about the freedom that I care about.

'Mob Rule' has a bad name, but the simple truth is that democracy and freedom is based around it. Warlords and Dictators, oppressive governments and totalitarian states dont exist because of 'Mob Rule', they exist because of the absence of it.

Eqypt is just now fighting for 'Mob Rule', and it is doing so with a mob.

'Mob Rule' is just another name for democracy.

Sometimes the mob can be ugly, when they hang witches or crucify innocent people, but it can also be awesomely constructive.

Freedom is like that.

lhnz• 15 years ago

He's opposing a viewpoint that assumes that you can only have extremes which strengthens the belief that there are only two choices (two-valued orientation). Perhaps take a read of http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_1.html ("The Edge of the Circle")? Do we really need to have complete anarchy or for the government to have complete authority? Seems like a bit of a slippery-slope fallacy to me.

markkat• 15 years ago

>I don't have to choose between supporting the government in buying a new fire truck and letting my house burn down, do I?

I don't see how this choice is analogous. Anon has yet to threaten my interests, at least to any degree that would concern me. However, they have been a thorn in the side of those who have threatened my interest to a greater degree. This kind of battle is part of a healthy society.

I think democracy is rooted in the ability for a group of citizens to bring significant and disruptive challenges to institutionalized powers. Democracy is a social agreement in which all remains well as long as fairness more or less prevails. Currently, Anon seems a reasonable check.

Also, IMO crime is not something that shouldn't happen. It is just something that should carry risk and consequence. At times, crime should be committed. The protesters in Egypt are committing a crime. In some real ways, economic for one, their actions are disruptive and hurtful. But, they had to weigh the consequences and come to a decision.

CWuestefeld• 15 years ago

Democracy is a social agreement in which all remains well as long as fairness more or less prevails.

"Democracy" doesn't have a darned thing to do with "fairness". Democracy means exactly one thing: the strength of the majority to force their will upon the minority. There's no reason to believe that the result will be fair in any known moral system, and plenty of historical examples where it hasn't been fair.

How Aaron Barr revealed himself to Anonymous

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