Whether you applaud their Robin Hood-style ideology of championing free speech or detest their reckless disregard for the consequences of their actions, it’s undeniable that Anonymous has become a force to be reckoned with in recent years. From hacking politicians’ emails to taking down government websites, many of the group’s actions seem to straddle the line between good and evil. Maybe you can figure out which side of the fence they land on after reading these nine facts.
Contents
- It’s Not an Organization
- Anyone Can Join
- Most Members Aren’t Hackers
- How to Become an Active Participant
- Using the Low-Orbit Ion Cannon Can Put You at Risk
- They Can Use Malware to Create Massive Botnets
- They Gave Birth to LulzSec
- They Detest Any Form of Censorship
- They Help Solve Crimes
9. It’s Not an Organization
The website 4chan is an image message board where people can gather to discuss, gripe about, or confess anything they want. To facilitate the sharing of possibly incriminating matters, users on the /b/ discussion board generally used the screen name “anonymous.” From that, a subculture of similar-minded individuals with a strong sense of justice and desire to stir things up eventually became what we know today as Anonymous. But the group has no leader—a fact symbolized by their headless man logo—and they follow no legitimate guidelines or code of conduct. Members just come and go as they please and contribute as much or as little as they like. According to journalist and former member Barret Brown, the most influential people in Anonymous are those who can rally others to their cause and have proven their hacking skills.
8. Anyone Can Join
No authority is going to try and stop you from joining Anonymous. But if you’re seriously considering this, it might be a good idea to join an activism group that obeys the law. This way, you can get a feel for what’s involved without risking involvement in illicit behavior. After that, if you still wish to engage with Anonymous, there’s a website you can go to that explains how you can encrypt your computer so you can contact them privately over internet relay chats (IRCs). Be advised that it can take several years to build the relationship with the community required to gain access to the more severe hacktivist discussions, and likely, people are lurking in the forums who aren’t who they claim to be. However, Anonymous does have members who genuinely want to do good, the fact that anyone can join means that moral values likely vary wildly. There are some cases where naive members have ended up doing jail time because they trusted the wrong anons.
7. Most Members Aren’t Hackers
It’s a misconception that everyone in Anonymous is a supreme hacker who can crush multinational corporations with nothing more than a laptop and modem. In fact, due to the relative ease of entry, the average Anonymous member probably has very few skills that fall into the realm of hacking. However, that’s not to say that those members don’t contribute since many of the group’s infamous hacks consist of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that utilize the processing power of every computer. In a DDoS attack, networks are overloaded with an influx of information which causes them to crash and results in associated websites being taken offline. These attacks can be very frustrating for website administrators and users who cannot access affected websites until the web traffic returns to normal. In the real world, this would be the equivalent of going to work and being denied access to the job site by a group of angry protesters.
6. How to Become an Active Participant
After you’ve encrypted your computer and joined the Anonymous community, the next thing to consider, if you haven’t already, is finding a cause you support. For instance, if you want to get involved with the operation against the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS), you should first find the IRC chat room dedicated to that operation and pledge your support there.
When they need to flex their muscle, Anonymous uses a unique software known as a “low-orbit ion cannon” (LOIC) to launch DDoS attacks. The software enables a computer to make a large-scale attack on any website. Targets are chosen through a voting system. Establishing an attack is as simple as entering a URL and then inputting the number of hits you want to send (typically enough to overload the network). However, suppose you disagree with a selected target. In that case, you can withdraw your computer from the botnet, thereby decreasing your involvement and weakening the power of the ion cannon.
5. Using the Low-Orbit Ion Cannon Can Put You at Risk
It should be noted that no legal ramifications should result from you joining Anonymous or chatting with others who claim affiliation. Still, once you get involved with the deployment of the LOIC, there’s a chance you could be looking at jail time.
In 2008, Anonymous orchestrated several protests against the Church of Scientology. Some prank-like attacks included flooding the Scientology headquarters with prank calls, sending various departments all-black faxes to deplete their ink, and even a physical protest with participants dawning bandanas and Guy Fawkes masks to conceal their identities. But the real blow came when Anonymous used the LOIC to take the Scientology website offline. Unfortunately, many anon newcomers didn’t realize that the LOIC attacks were traceable. Consequently, some of them, like 18-year-old Brian Mettenbrink, ended up serving a year in prison and coughing up $20,000 in damages to the Church of Scientology.
4. They Can Use Malware to Create Massive Botnets
A botnet is several Internet-connected computers communicating with other similar machines to complete repetitive tasks and objectives. This makes them perfect for cyber attacks that involve spamming, flooding email inboxes, spreading viruses, and, of course, distributed-denial-of-service. The bots are any computers being controlled or programmed by an external source. The attacker typically gains access to the “zombie” network of computers through a virus or miscellaneous code.
In 2010, under heavy pressure from the government, PayPal cut off its services to WikiLinks after the document-leaking website began releasing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables. In response to the situation, Anonymous went after PayPal’s leading site, but the reinforced network withstood the LOIC attack. They didn’t have enough power to bring down PayPal until two hackers going by the aliases “Snitch” and “Civil” used a virus to bring a legion of computers under their control. With the new army of zombie computers at their disposal, Anonymous had the ion cannons it needed to take down PayPal’s leading transaction site. PayPal estimated that the damage cost them close to $6 million.
3. They Gave Birth to LulzSec
Now that Anonymous could control zombie botnets, a horde of members was no longer necessary to carry out DDoS attacks. This might have prompted a few of the most skilled hackers to break off and form an elite team. Calling themselves LulzSec, the new group was led by “Sabu,” who was largely considered the most skilled hacker in the Anonymous crowd.
Having grown tired of all the activism Anonymous was getting involved in, LulzSec was more interested in messing around and causing anarchy just for fun. Their first exploit came at the expense of Fox when the personal information of over 70,000 X Factor contestants was leaked online. PBS became the next target when a hacker posted a fake news story stating that the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac were still alive and living together in New Zealand. But it wasn’t long before LulzSec dispensed with the low-risk crimes and started going after government websites belonging to organizations like the CIA and FBI.
2. They Detest Any Form of Censorship
In 2010, several Bollywood companies hired a software company called Aiplex to launch DDoS attacks on sites that were pirating their movies. This immediately grabbed the attention of the hacktivists who hate censorship in all its forms. They responded by unleashing a wave of cyber-attacks on several anti-piracy and pro-copyright organizations.
1. They Help Solve Crimes
Following a 2011 party, an intoxicated female teen was sexually assaulted in Steubenville, Ohio. Soon after, pictures of the incident surfaced online and were circulated in her school. But when the case was reported to the local police, they dismissed it, claiming a lack of evidence. Well, it was enough evidence for a local group of anons who picked up the trail and soon gathered enough information to get the names and physical descriptions of those suspected of the crime. The attention they brought to the case forced police to conduct an investigation which led to the arrest of the culprit.
