Anonymous

[Ixtellor]

Thesis: Anonymous is the closest thing we have to a potential 'superhero' in our society and instead of being heroic they are selfish d-bags.

What would qualify a person or group as a superhero/ic?
I think you need 4 things:
1) Unique set of powerful skills
2) Be outside the normal justice system
3) The willingness to be a vigilante.
4) Doing "good" for society, particularly those who can't fight for themselves.

I think Anonymous meets all of the criteria except number 4, and actually does harm to society.

Anonymous does have a unique skill set that the vast majority of humans do not possess. They are clearly operate outside the government and law. And they engage in vigilantism.

I was thrilled to learn that Anonymous was setting their sights on the Zetas. A murderous group of thugs who routinely chop up humans with machettes to dominate the drug trade.
47,000 murders in Mexico and they were responsible for a large portion.

I was horrified to learn that Anonymous very quickly not only didn't go after the Zetas and their murder/drug dealing operations, but actually issued a statement effectively saying "we are going to leave you alone".

Then, a short time later Anonymous shuts down the Department of Justice website.

This is the department that investigates and builds cases against people who:
1) Violate civil rights
2) Break Environmental laws
3) Commit Kidnappings
4) Engage in murder for the distribution of Drugs. ie The Zetas.

So basically, a group that murders innocent people with machettes gets a PASS and "sorry to bother you" , but the group that protects civil rights, the environment, kidnap victims, and people who 'get chopped up with machettes' gets "shut the fuck down and fully in their sights".

When I heard that Zetas story the first time, my heart soared. I thought of all the good that would come from Anonymous taking down murderers... and then I had a pipe dream about all the other criminal enterprises that destroy lives and the good that Anonymous could do. Russian Mafia, chinese child labor and prostitution smugglers, child pedophile rings...

Nope, they are focused on the organization that FIGHTS against all those things.

Yes I am confident that they are not targeting the DOJ because they prevent slavery, civil rights abuses, and murder... but what a huge waste of potential to make the world better from those with the capacity to actually do something.

[Izawwlgood]

Anonymous is the modern equivalent of hysterical mob justice. I thought that was pretty obvious. Sometimes they throw rocks at assholes who deserve it, sometimes they throw rocks at people who got caught kicking a kitty and don't deserve to be stoned.

[c_programmer]

Anonymous has lost any of its original purpose. They started as a group against being censored now they censor anyone they don't like. I attended a speech on the subject at Defcon, I think you'll find it very interesting. Go to "Anonymous Cyber War" and '"Whoever Fights Monsters..." Aaron Barr, Anonymous, and Ourselves' at http://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-arc ... chive.html

Defcon is a hacker convention, a lot of members there are part of Anonymous.

[Роберт]

I was thrilled to learn that Anonymous was setting their sights on the Zetas. A murderous group of thugs who routinely chop up humans with machettes to dominate the drug trade.
47,000 murders in Mexico and they were responsible for a large portion.

I was horrified to learn that Anonymous very quickly not only didn't go after the Zetas and their murder/drug dealing operations, but actually issued a statement effectively saying "we are going to leave you alone".

For one, talking about Anonymous and what they are and what there motivations are is kind of like talking about anonymous authors collectively, what they are and what their motivations are.

2. Anon said one of their memebers(sic) had been kidnapped and Zetas had better bloody let zir go... OR ELSE! Zetas freed the little Anon memeber, and so Anon backed off. What is surprising here?

[oops]

I'm going to disagree with #1. I don't think too many people outside of internet nerds really know about anon. My mom doesn't know, her friends don't know, and my friends who aren't on sites like reddit and 4chan don't know. And if Anonymous is going to fight the system or for mob justice or whatever, it needs to be able to speak outside of the people who already know.They've never brought down a site that anyone really used. Wikileaks has been far more effective by being able to release high-profile documents to the press, rather than dumping it all on the interblag and hoping crowdsourcing will accomplish stuff. Occupy Wall Street has gotten their message across through protests. The tea party had a mouthpiece through Fox News. Anonymous has done some big and small things, but nothing really to get rid of the stereotype of impotent 14-year-olds, and nothing to reach a larger audience.

[Save Point]

Dude, Stratfor did an analysis of what might happen if Anon went after the Zetas, and it was essentially a stream of retaliatory violence against innocent people. That's when Anon (rightfully) decided to backed off. I'd say good for them for doing so, but then they hacked Stratfor, so.

Anon isn't interested in doing good. They're interested in attention.

[cookiemobsta]

To be a proper superhero, you also need a goofy outfit--and it just so happens that they've got the Guy Fawkes mask. QED?

[yurell]

Because Catholic dictatorships are the ideal to live up to.

[Radical_Initiator]

Are we still talking about Anon as if it has ever had a purpose? It's only real purpose is as an outlet for the rage or boredom of whatever large enough percentage of people who feel like carving out a Guy Fawkes mask for a day. Sure, some of the targets have been unsympathetic jerks or government stepping out of bounds, but don't romanticize what was never nearly coherent enough to be considered a "they". There's no allegiance beyond the task at hand, and no structure beyond 4chan. If Anon were a superhero, it'd be a 14-year-old with daddy issues and ADHD so severe, it would make cocaine-addict squirrels seem slow.

[aoeu]

Anonymous is a meme the media took seriously.

[Kick]

The idea of a group of individuals banding together under anonymity to do good sounds good. That is not what Anonymous is though. Anonymous is a bad, unorganized, collection of script kiddies wanting to do some damage as a form of protest. I was disgusted by their response to the Zetas, people died and they seemed to ignore it. Early Anons had some good in them, but then the hulking beast that is the media talked about them, and the script kiddies came in droves.

[Ixtellor]

Anonymous is a meme the media took seriously.

They shut down the Department of Justice website. That is serious. (I realize its not real damage and more of an annoyance)
If not for their motives then the fact that a bunch of kids can apparently take on the US government which spends billions on network security and get away with it.

What could 20 million Chinese hackers working in coordination do?

Also, apparently there is a consious within the Anon community "moralfags". Would be nice to see them break away from the dicks who torture people for lulz and use their 'power' for good.

I assume that Anon has the capacity, if so motivated, to at the least crack down on internet child ______ . Since they can't all be 15 year old kids I think its almost a moral duty for the more mature members to start using their vigilante talents for positive... er things.

[Scyrus]

The media have given the majority of the people who know about the existence of Anonymous that it is some sort of internet rebel group. This is false.

Anonymous is not a well defined, organized group. No one is "part" of Anonymous. No one leads Anonymous and they have no goals or purpose. They are the collective whole of the internet. It's an immortal concept forged from the darkest desires of man of being able to act and get away with anything, it's nothing more and nothing less than a shared mind that acts on impulse. Many members of anonymous are immature adults, script kiddies and confused teens. However many of them are also respectable members of society. As a collective, Anonymous reaches farther than any secret organization and is more untouchable because the very concept of anonymity prevents anyone from being blamed for the entirety of Anonymous' actions.
Also, they are the living proof that a society without reprecussions, as they use anonymity to act while remaining unscathed, is inherently childish and devoid of mercy. It shows that a mass of faceless humans is as empathetic as an iceberg. You cannot arrest Anonymous, anyone and potentially everyone are part of it. The only way of stopping anonymous is by killing mankind. If someday it gets violent and leaders decide to, say, shut down the WWW, people would find another way to interact anonimously, and again would something like this would come along. If somehow anonymous is bothering you, the only way of turning the tables is joining in and attempt to gain control over the masses of stupidity.

[c_programmer]

Anonymous is a meme the media took seriously.

They shut down the Department of Justice website. That is serious. (I realize its not real damage and more of an annoyance)
If not for their motives then the fact that a bunch of kids can apparently take on the US government which spends billions on network security and get away with it.

What could 20 million Chinese hackers working in coordination do?

Also, apparently there is a consious within the Anon community "moralfags". Would be nice to see them break away from the dicks who torture people for lulz and use their 'power' for good.

I assume that Anon has the capacity, if so motivated, to at the least crack down on internet child ______ . Since they can't all be 15 year old kids I think its almost a moral duty for the more mature members to start using their vigilante talents for positive... er things.

As they point out in the videos I linked to, a lot of what Annonymous says is a group effort is really a few large botnets.

And they do go after pedophiles, they claim to have exploited a darnket child porn ring and they gave out a lot of personal information about members. Further analysis revealed that they just combed the site for every username on it and saw which ones they could correlate to other normal internet accounts. There were quite a few, but I don't know how many convictions they were able to get because LE is also on those darknets waiting to pounce. I'm specifically referring to .onion sites when I say darknet.

ps. I know all this because I'm studying computer security and darknets are a part of it.

[jimsfriend]

Further analysis revealed that they just combed the site for every username on it and saw which ones they could correlate to other normal internet accounts.

Nope. They did do that, but they weren't satisfied and did more. This pastebin (spoilered below) explains. They wrote a tor-button like firefox extension and linked to it on the front page of one of the darknet pedo sites as a security update. All traffic through the fake tor button to the pedo site got IP logged.

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

_        __        ___                 __               _               
  | |     / /__     /   |  ________     / /   ___  ____  (_)___  ____     
  | | /| / / _ \   / /| | / ___/ _ \   / /   / _ \/ __ `/ / __ \/ __ \   
  | |/ |/ /  __/  / ___ |/ /  /  __/  / /___/  __/ /_/ / / /_/ / / / / _ _ _
  |__/|__/\___/  /_/  |_/_/   \___/  /_____/\___/\__, /_/\____/_/ /_(_|_|_)_)
                                              /\_/ /
                                              \ _ / 
 
#OpDarknet Official and Last Release -- 11/2/2011
 
In the last three weeks of #OpDarknet, we gained much support from The World with our Operation Darknet.  We would like to thank our supporters, in #OpDarknet's cause.  There also was a large amount of resistance from the pedophile community claiming that Tor was their safe haven with messages such as:
 
        Hidden Wiki 'Hard Candy' section - October 20:
        "To the vandals, you vandalize the page 1,000,000 times, we will correct it 1,000,001. It will just go back and forth. We are here to stay. People want to run DDoS attacks over tor and think it hurts us, it does. It is our GOD given right that we can choose to have our sexual preferences for youth. It is the same for the any other porn community. It is not what we choose to become, it is who we are. You Anonymous aka #OpDarknet do not have the right to censor us."
       
Operation Darknet was never intended to bring down Tor or the "darknets".  The only purpose of Operation Darknet was to reveal that a service like the "Tor Project" has been ruined by the 1% using it for Child Pornography.  The rest, 99% consists of Chinese/Iran journalists, Government intelligence fighting a secret war with Al-Qaeda, and us Anons who believe in the right to Free Speech.
 
However, Child Pornography is NOT FREE SPEECH.  We proved beyond doubt, that 70% of users to The Hidden Wiki access the HARD CANDY section, "a secret directory" used by the pedophiles to access sites like Lolita City and The Hurt Site, a site dedicated to trade of child rape.
 
In that, We Anonymous planned and successfully executed an complex "Social Engineering" operation dubbed "Paw Printing".  This consisted of the following things:
 
        1) One week prior to October 27th, 2011, We Anonymous performed OpSec, "Operations Security" against the developers of Tor.  We quietly listened on irc.oftc.net channels #tor and #tor-dev to find when the next major release of Tor would be.
        2) Form our OpSec, we determined that on October 27th 2011, a new Tor version would be released to recent "security" publications about Tor
        3) We secretly contacted our friends at The Mozilla Foundation™, Developers of Firefox™, for them to authorize a developer signer certificate for "The Honey Pawt", a TorButton that we Anon created to funnel all ORIGINATING traffic to our forensic logger.
        4) On October 26th, 2011 we passed certification of a modified TorButton for Firefox™ called "The Honey Pawt" which would be used for the forensic logging of users accessing The "HARD CANDY" and "Lolita City" Tor Hidden Onion sites.  Our TorButton aka "The Honey Pawt" did not contain any malware or virus.  It was developed according to the Firefox/Mozilla Foundation guidelines.
        5) We built a forensic data logger dubbed "Whiny da Pedo" that would capture the IP traffic, log that IP packet, and re-route it through our local Tor Bridge.
        6) On October 27th, 2011 we launched Operation "Paw Printing".  What we did was stopped our #occupy Denial-of-Service on The Hidden Wiki and placed a Tor "security update" message on the "HARD CANDY" section of The Hidden Wiki. 
        7) No where else did we place that message except for the HARD CANDY page on The Hidden Wiki.  The message contained a download link to our "The Honey Pawt".  To ensure no conflicts with the existing, TorButton our "The Honey Pawt" replaced the old TorButton Firefox extension.
        8) The pedo who was on the "HARD CANDY" section would then restart Firefox™ and turn our TorButton and attempt to access websites such as The Hidden Wiki and Lolita City. 
        9) That traffic would then be forwarded to our special forensics server and log the incoming IP and destination.  If an Tor Onion site matched a known Child Pornography Tor site, we would block the request.  Otherwise, the traffic would then be redirected through the Tor network.
        10) For only 24 hours, we ran Operation "Paw Printing".  On October 28th, 2011.  We shut down the forensics and resumed #occupy The Hidden Wiki to prevent access to the Tor Hidden Wiki Site
 
Below are mirrors to "whiny_da_pedo_ip_honey_pot.zip", the forensics archive to our operation.  A total of 190 unique IP's and users were identified in the 24HR time frame.  The README.txt contains the method of IP capture and forensics used to determine the individuals accessing the HARD CANDY and Lolita City.
 
        IP Log Backup 1:
        http://www.mediafire.com/?5291xw8fd76npdj
 
        IP Log Backup 2:
        http://www.mediafire.com/?xriuv723wbx466c
 
        IP Log Backup 3:
        http://www.mediafire.com/?6p7ph67gb4pyg82
 
An unique location mapping of these home IP addresses on Google Maps can be displayed here: http://i.imgur.com/ggfVG.png
 
Also in addition to Operation "Paw Printing", we had an concurrent operation called "Media Storm".  We reconfigured our previous cluster used for timing analysis against Freedom Hosting, to run multiple instances of "Chris Hansen". 
 
During our gathering of evidence against FORMLESS NETWORKING LLC (see: http://pastebin.com/qWHDWCre).  We ran multiple Denial-Of-Service attacks against the Tor services Freedom Hosting and Lolita City.  As for a control to test our suspicions, we separately ran the high bandwidth Distributed Denial-Of-Service attacks against the Tor exit nodes owned by FORMLESS NETWORKING LLC a company affiliated with Mike Perry, the developer of the TorButton.
 
Each and every time, we were able to verify outages to Freedom Hosting.  Those from our Tor network Denial-of-Service attacks directly against Lolita City / Freedom Host (See: http://pastebin.com/VsWnRM70);  And those with clearnet/WWW Distributed Denial-Of-Service attacks against FORMLESS NETWORKING LLC Tor exit nodes (See: http://torstatus.blutmagie.de). 
 
One Anon contacted Mike Perry on the Tor developer's IRC server: irc.oftc.net, about Anonymous' accusations about his association with FORMLESS NETWORKING LLC.  His response is as follows:
 
        [17:24] <mikeperry> I helped create that model. my llc was the prototype for the 501c3
        [17:26] <mikeperry> you really have no idea what the fuck you're doing, do you?
        [17:26] <mikeperry> and you've damaged my name, and damaged the tor network
        [17:26] <mikeperry> which you use
        [17:26] <mikeperry> you know why I didn't reply to you for 2 days on irc?
        [17:26] <mikeperry> cause I was busting my ass working for a deadline today
        [17:26] <mikeperry> that you guys almost made me miss
        [17:27] <mikeperry> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/SponsorF/November2011
        [17:27] <mikeperry> improving the load balancing of the network you used to DDoS my website
        [17:28] <mikeperry> you see this: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1778#comment:22
        [17:28] <mikeperry> your DDoS probably caused that
 
To the pedophile community, based on the evidence and forensics, that We Anonymous gathered.  There is no need for you to troll anymore, mmmmkay?  We have already ID'ed you despite "the myth" of Tor "Anonymity".   We "pwned" and "hacked" Freedom Hosting and Lolita City.  If your names for your sick trade consist of "lolita" and "pedo bear", pedophiles are called "Britney" and "squealer" in jail.  If you still don't believe that we hacked Freedom Hosting?  Roger Dingledine, one of the original Tor developers said this on an irc chat, regarding our operations against Freedom Hosting:
 
        [01:09] <arma> even if you learn the secret key for a hidden service, that doesn't tell you who the hidden service is. it only allows you to impersonate the service.
        [01:09] <arma> if they broke the key, my guess is they broke into the server and then just took it.
 
The purpose of #OpDarknet was to collect evidence and prove that %1 of Tor users who use Tor for CP are the ones causing the problems for the rest of the Tor community, the 99%.  In celebration of November 5th 2011, #OpDarknet is officially sailing away for another Lulz.  Bye bye pedo bear.  We are Anonymous, a leaderless collective, fueled only by our ideas.  We give you a last and farewell gift:  http://i54.tinypic.com/120r1jc.jpg
 
Best, #occupywallstreet, #freeanons, #freetopiary, #antisec
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.
 
We "Anonymous are the hero The Internet deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt them because they can take it. Because they are not our heros.  Anonymous is a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight."
 
* Also pedos you may want to read: http://gawker.com/5851459
 
  ----------------
 < NYAN NYAN NYAN >
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   \    -......--""-....--... ___________
        -......--""-....--"""|::::::::/\:|__/\
        -......--""-....--""<|::::::::( o wo )
        -......--""-....--"""u'''''''''u''''u

[useddestilation]

I was thrilled to learn that Anonymous was setting their sights on the Zetas. A murderous group of thugs who routinely chop up humans with machettes to dominate the drug trade.
47,000 murders in Mexico and they were responsible for a large portion.

I was horrified to learn that Anonymous very quickly not only didn't go after the Zetas and their murder/drug dealing operations, but actually issued a statement effectively saying "we are going to leave you alone".

For one, talking about Anonymous and what they are and what there motivations are is kind of like talking about anonymous authors collectively, what they are and what their motivations are.

2. Anon said one of their memebers(sic) had been kidnapped and Zetas had better bloody let zir go... OR ELSE! Zetas freed the little Anon memeber, and so Anon backed off. What is surprising here?

Anonymous not only chickened out with the zetas, but they also attacked completely legal pedophile sites, just because they dont like people who have a different sexual orientation. Its easy to attack pedophiles, after all they are pretty much defenless, but when it comes to a real threat they just chicken out.

[Роберт]

Anonymous not only chickened out with the zetas, but they also attacked completely legal pedophile sites, just because they dont like people who have a different sexual orientation. Its easy to attack pedophiles, after all they are pretty much defenless, but when it comes to a real threat they just chicken out.

I'm attempting to refrain from commenting on the spelling issues. Oops.

Did you even read my post? Anon threatened "release our member that's been kidnapped or else". Zetas said "okay here you go" and released the Anon.

Zetas caved to their demands. Anon didn't "chicken out".

I'm not even going to argue against your "just because they dont[sic] like people who have a different sexual orientation" comment, except to say [citation needed].

[krogoth]

"legal pedophile sites" This doesn't make sense to me at all, unless you mean sites that help them resist their urges, support groups sort of thing.

[yurell]

"legal pedophile sites" This doesn't make sense to me at all, unless you mean sites that help them resist their urges, support groups sort of thing.

In some countries drawings of children (such as the Japanese Lolicon genre) are legal, as no real children are actually harmed, and the paedophiles aren't forced to go their entire lives without any form of sexual satisfaction, so they're a win-win.

[lutzj]

"legal pedophile sites" This doesn't make sense to me at all, unless you mean sites that help them resist their urges, support groups sort of thing.

In some countries drawings of children (such as the Japanese Lolicon genre) are legal, as no real children are actually harmed, and the paedophiles aren't forced to go their entire lives without any form of sexual satisfaction, so they're a win-win.

You could also theoretically have sites discussing paedophilia without actually doing anything illegal or even immoral. Free speech and all that.

[FrancisDrake]

I think the compiled works of Gabriella Coleman on Annoymous would be nice for this conversation.
http://gabriellacoleman.org/
http://canopycanopycanopy.com/

[thorgold]

I think that Anonymous, as a personification, is a good example of a Well Intentioned Extremist.

4) Doing "good" for society, particularly those who can't fight for themselves.
Define "good?" For me, "good" is a well defined, well enforced code of laws based in Judaic morality (don't murder, don't steal, etc). For anonymous, however, their "good" is total freedom. Freedom to speak, freedom to act. In pursuit of their goal of freedom, Anon will inevitably clash with any organization that claims that an individual cannot act as he or she desires - aka, every system of government in the world.

Government is, by definition, a system that removes freedom from individuals in order to provide safety in return. You don't have the freedom to shoot people you don't like, but you get the safety of not being shot! Whiel Anon may not go to the extreme of saying "We support the freedom to kill people," they're certainly on their way to jumping off the slippery slope.