The first global cyber war has begun

[Plutonia]

Remember this?

CIA-linked startup touts all-seeing eye for net spooks

By Chris Williams •

Posted in Government, 18th February 2010 12:02 GMT

A security startup with close links to the CIA is touting a system to the UK government that monitors every IP address on the internet for malware, as part of its declared aim of improving cyber war capabilities.

Endgame Systems helps US intelligence identify and hack into vulnerable networks, and is targeting a similar role in Britain's nascent national cyber security operations.

The firm, founded in June 2008 in Atlanta, has built a massive and constantly updated database of security breaches across the globe. It is currently monitoring about 250 million compromised machines.

As well as producing terabytes of geotagged malware tracking data, Endgame Systems also stores details of operating system configurations using Hadoop, the open source file system for very large datasets. Using the approach made famous by Google, this vast mine of "internet situational awareness", as Endgame Systems calls it, is maintained on a infrastructure of cheap, easily replaceable servers.

Internet situational awareness is essentially the brief given to the Cyber Security Operations Centre, the new unit located at GCHQ in Cheltenham, scheduled to begin work next month.

Intelligence and military customers are able to access Endgame Systems' database via a simple web page. They can type in terms such as a location or an organisation and moments later a map or a list of compromised systems appears, showing how long ago they were breached and how.

A search for "Nuclear Power Corporation of India", for example, brings up a list of computers still infected with Conficker, the Windows worm that spread around the world initially via a Microsoft vulnerability. The firm hand-curates its company records.

Such indications of poor basic network hygiene, so readily available, could be very valuable to digital espionage, or even cyber warfare efforts.

Endgame Systems makes no effort to contact those non-customers it observes are afflicted by malware, arguing the global scale of the problem would make it unfeasible and approaches would often be unwelcome.

The firm's team of 25 staff, cleared for classified work, track botnets, inserting themselves to monitor activity and disabling large parts of them. It hobbles them by uncovering the web addresses of control nodes - that infected machines are programmed to contact at some later date - and buying up the domains.

Similar work is part of the Conficker Working Group's remit.

Working in collaboration with law enforcement agencies such as the FBI, Endgame Systems typically does not completely shut down zombie networks, preferring to gather more intelligence to allow investigators to unpick criminal hierarchies. A low-ranking botmaster contacting his domain supplier to find out what is wrong with his control node might offer a lead to Mr Big.

The limited publicly information currently available on the firm hints at its further role assisting clandestine government cyber operations by identifying targets and developing exploits.

"Our focus also includes software vulnerability discovery and analysis, reliable exploitation on modern systems, and defeating exploit mitigation technologies," says a brief corporate biography on a defence industry association website.

An expired job ad maintained in an obscure web cache adds: "Endgame Systems leverages its world-class capabilities in the fields of leading edge computer vulnerability research and global IP analytics to enhance the overall cyber intelligence and cyber war fighting capability of the United States Government."

Company representatives told The Register recently it would only sell such services to the US and UK governments, whose intelligence agencies have a close working relationship. Endgame Systems' advisory board includes former CIA technology officials Alan Wade and Bob Flores.

Contacted via email, Endgame Systems CEO Chris Rouland declined to comment on his young firm's activities in the burgeoning national cyber security market, preferring to discuss forthcoming commercial ventures.

"Very soon, Endgame Systems will launch a beta of its new IP Confidence Service," he said.

"Reputation systems available today are one-dimensional, focusing primarily on measuring spam email to determine if an IP address is 'good' or 'bad'.

"The Endgame Systems Confidence System leverages internet-wide monitoring and sophisticated multivariate analysis to compute a rational metric for the overall trustworthiness of any given IP address. We believe our system represents the next-generation in IP reputation and will allow for a much deeper integration of IP reputation into all manner of internet transactions. This service will be made available to all, from the smallest blog to the largest online retail site."

Rouland, along with the most of Endgame Systems' senior management, is an alumnus of Internet Security Systems, acquired by IBM for $1.3bn in 2007. Its chief scientist is Dino Dai Zovi, previously known as a serial Steve Jobs irritant.

In the UK meanwhile, the firm hired Bruce Wynn OBE in November, to smooth its dealings with British agencies. He is a former senior military intelligence and communications official who now works as a secure government IT consultant.

"I like to call it 'very polite listening'," he said in a brief answer to questions about Endgame Systems' efforts on behalf of government agencies.

Well, there is more....

Editor's Eye on Atlanta: The Top 5 Venture Capital Deals in Georgia in Q4 2010
Posted February 17, 2011


By Brian Wolak

Who were the top five Georgia recipients of venture capital dollars in the fourth quarter 2010?

According to data available from CB Insights, they were:

- Endgame Systems with $29 million in series A funding
- Nexidia with $23 million in series F funding
- eVestment Alliance with $19 million in debt financing
- ClickFox with $18 million in series C funding
- Arbor Pharmaceuticals with $17.5 million in series B, and $17.3 million in debt financing

Those five accounted for almost 90 percent of the 15 venture capital deals with Georgia-headquartered companies during the period - in all, worth a combined $138.5 million.

How does that amount stack up against other east coast destinations?

For the same time period, it eclipses the $16.42 million that went to Florida-based companies; is relatively on par with $190 million that went to Maryland companies; and pales in comparison to the northeast giants: Massachusetts: $630 million, 78 deals; New York: $466 million, 66 deals.

It is worth noting that nearly all stages of financing are accounted for in those five Atlanta deals and that, with the exception of Arbor, all revolve around software and/or Internet-based products.

- Endgame Systems (Atlanta) provides software solutions for customer security.
- Nexidia (Atlanta) is the audio and video search company.
- eVestment Alliance (Marietta) is a Web-based provider of investment information and analytic technology.
- ClickFox (Atlanta) aggregates data from customer touch points.
- Arbor Pharmaceuticals (Atlanta) is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused exclusively on the pediatric market.

Taking a look at where some of the dollars are coming from, Endgame Systems drew investments from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (Menlo Park, Calif.), Bessemer Venture Partners (Menlo Park; Cambridge, Mass.; Larchmont, NY), Columbia Capital (Alexandria, Va.; Waltham, Mass.), and TechOperators (Atlanta).

Nexidia garnered investments from BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners (Chicago), Sandbox Industries (Chicago) and HarbourVest Partners (Boston), HIG Ventures (multiple cities), Paladin Capital Group (D.C.), Boston Millennia Partners (Boston), Morgan Stanley (New York) and Cordova Ventures (Alpharetta, Ga.), all of whom added to their equity stake in the company.

Translation: that's money that flowed in from all the hotbeds of venture capital dollars.

It is also good to see that local firms took part in two of the biggest deals of the last quarter. This - local VC dollars - will be a topic for a future Eye on Atlanta, as there has been some rhetoric exchanged about the topic in the not too distant past.

[justdrew]

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/24/anonymous-hacks-west.html

From The David Pakman Show: "A source from Anonymous confronts Shirley Phelps-Roper from the Westboro Baptist Church, calling the supposed letter sent to Westboro by Anonymous a hoax." While he is talking on the show, the Westboro Baptist Church website and other affiliated sites were hacked and replaced with Anonymous notices. < moments after she declares the sites 'unhackable' >

Anonymous defaces Westboro site during live interview

[Plutonia]

Chaos as Anonymous attacks toilet paper, Sweden, itself
By Nate Anderson

"Why in gods green earth are we attack [sic] a toilet paper company?" asked one Anonymous member this week on an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel devoted to planning the group's operations. The target in question was the website of Angel Soft toilet paper, owned by Georgia-Pacific, which is in turn owned by Koch Industries, which is controlled by the two Koch brothers, Charles and David, who have funneled their vast wealth into Tea Party and libertarian causes for years. The site stayed up.

Anonymous doesn't like the Kochs (the group is currently attempting to "Kochblock" them, without much success). Indeed, it doesn't like a lot of people. Anonymous "operations" have proliferated faster than a meme on 4chan, the imageboard from which Anonymous emerged years ago.

Consider the current (partial) list of targets:

* Wisconsin's governor (for trying to revoke some collective bargaining rights of public unions) #opwisconsin
* The Koch brothers, Koch Industries, and various holdings, especially if toilet-related (Quilted Northern was attacked over the weekend) #opkochblock
* Major copyright holders #operationpayback
* The Libyan government #oplibya
* Bank of America #operationBOA
* Egypt #opegypt
* Security firm Palantir (a continuation of the #ophbgary work)
* Westboro Baptist Church (hit hard after trolling Anonymous mercilessly)
* Glenn Beck (though the idea has yet to gain much traction)
* The government of Sweden (for prosecuting WikiLeaks' Julian Assange)

The list goes on… and on. But as the targets have spread, the effectiveness of the attacks on them appears to have diminished. Even when much of the Anonymous interest was on #opwisconsin over the weekend, the group's vaunted distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks could only take down right-wing strongholds like Americans for Prosperity, Koch Industries, and Club for Growth for short periods of time. Several targets, including the government of Sweden, appeared impervious.

A strength of Anonymous is the bottom-up nature of its targeting and planning; anyone who wants to start a new op simply starts one and tries to corral enough interest to execute it. But it also makes it hard to focus.

Last year, when unified behind Operation Payback (which targeted copyright holders, then WikiLeaks adversaries), Anonymous took down just about every site it targeted, including the RIAA, MPAA, US Copyright Office, MasterCard, Visa, and Swiss bank PostFinance. Even PayPal was affected enough that it called in the FBI.

This week, Angel Soft's double-ply comfort defeated the now-extremely-distributed denial of service attacks.

Even Anons are getting fed up. "We cannot afford to tackle every opponent that dares to confront us, or to corrupt our numerous societies," says one representative press release. (Such press releases can be authored by anyone and, as such, do not represent anything like an "official" Anonymous viewpoint.)

"Everyday, there are new operations," it continues. "Some even in the same exact topic. For the revolutions happening amongst our eastern brethren, there is an operation for each country. This does NOT help gain support. This does NOT make matters simpler. This will only cause more problems than solve them. Anonymous, we should work to consolidate our tactics."
Not so magnanimous

What is Anonymous up to? Anything and everything its various self-identified members propose. These ideas are often in conflict, with one of the most potent debates occurring between those who attack "for the lulz" versus those who act out of ethical and moral imperatives (the so-called "moralfags").

While many members want to promote democracy, stand up for free speech, and push transparency (on governments and corporations), others just want to stir the pot.

"We laugh in the face of tragedy," said one post on open-posting site AnonNews, "we mock those in pain, we ruin the lives of other people simply because we can, these things we do for the lolz [sic] and we do them with no remorse, no caring, no love, and no sense of morality, we attack all things in this way, we can, we will, and we have destroyed countless that stand to harm Anonymous."

Some of the "moralfags" have left the main "Anonymous" tent to set up small camps of their own nearby. This happened recently with the group calling itself "Magnanimous," which objected to some Anonymous tactics and targets. Magnanimous has worked with Anonymous on the "ToiletWars" over the weekend, however, saying that "some Koch related targets took a beating as well."

While Anonymous takes as its motto the tag:

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us - always.

Magnanimous adopted its own logo and altered the Anonymous motto:

We are Magnanimous.
We are Anyone.
We do not negotiate.
We do not compromise.
We are in your legislature fixing your liberties.

Not all Anons took kindly to this move. One Anon called them out, saying, "Anonymous cannot participate in joint operations; with anyone. We are everyone. You are a portion of Anonymous. We act as one. Cease using a separate title. The only possible implementation of a different title is in order to take claim for your actions; making you a disgusting little group that requires credit for the actions you take."

The end result was predictable. On Tuesday night, Magnanimous leader "antivigilante" entered the Anonymous chat rooms in spectacular style:

[9:43pm] antivigilante: hey fags!!!! WTF
[9:43pm] antivigilante: WHO got in my twitter
[9:43pm] antivigilante: Who torched my blog!
[9:43pm] antivigilante: Who torched my blog!
[9:43pm] antivigilante: Who torched my blog!
[9:43pm] antivigilante: Who torched my blog!
[9:43pm] antivigilante: Who torched my blog!
[9:43pm] antivigilante: WTF huh?
[9:43pm] antivigilante: Cu--s.
[9:44pm] antivigilante: WHO got in my twitter
[9:44pm] antivigilante: WHO got in my twitter
[9:44pm] antivigilante: Cu--s
[9:44pm] antivigilante: Cu--s
[9:44pm] antivigilante: Cu--s
[9:44pm] antivigilante: Cu--s
[9:44pm] antivigilante: Cu--s
[9:44pm] antivigilante left the chat room. (CU--S)



If antivigilante was looking for sympathy, he didn't get it.

[9:45pm] locust: !lol
[9:45pm] locust: f---ing lulz
[9:46pm] Slider: yeah
[9:47pm] locust: antivigilante go away fagnanimous don't tip your hat on the way out
[9:47pm] Trivette: glad someone dox'd him
[9:47pm] locust: #pwnonymous

The cause of antivigilante's anger was simple: someone had taken over the main Magnanimous blog, defacing it with an Anonymous image, and then moved on to his Twitter account, which was also defaced.



Containing plasma

Keeping track of Anonymous targets, priorities, and operations can be dizzying. In the last few days, various Anons have proposed a whole new set of operations, including:

* Operation Sockmonkey ("Use artificial debate between multiple personae to dominate online discussions through exaggeration, false consensus, etc.")
* Operation WakeUp ("Simply Wake Up on March 9th and know, the world is one—think about this on March 9th. We are together on this planet.")
* Operation Icarus ("Attention Brothers: The opportunity to create financial chaos and public unrest and from that, there will be a previously unachieved amount of lulz to be had. Charge your lasers and aim them at the the New York Stock Exchange.")
* Operation Blowback ("The American media has committed many crimes recently, all of them ignored by everyone except for us. We, the people, will not allow this to continue.")
* Operation Shutdown ("On March 4th the US government will shutdown and all nonessential government functions will be put on hold. This gives us a chance to show the world that we are a force to be listened to. This will give us a chance to gain leverage. This will give us an undeniable voice in the world. We must attack while they are weak or they will eventually land a crippling blow.")

That's in addition to #opemmaa, the plan to recruit female Anons, or #opnewblood, which seeks to explain the often confusing ways of Anonymous to new recruits.

Things have gotten so chaotic that even some members who thrive on chaos have had enough. One proposed the meta-op "Operation Operation," in which "the question now is not what Anonymous is or should be. The question now is what Anonymous should do to solve these increasing problems!"

Anons are trying to work out various systems for vetting press releases, holding votes on targets, etc, as a way of organizing the chaos a bit, but the moves run counter to the non-hierarchical tendencies of most Anons.

As one Anon put it in yet another press release, "We are plasma. We are given unique life through our lack of connection, we have no structure, and through drive and energy of our members we are given life beyond the controlling forces around us. We are the state which cannot be contained."

[Stephen Morgan]

"Why in gods green earth are we attack [sic] a toilet paper company?"

For teh lulz?

[wintler2]

With the many-ops problem, why don't they just have a table ranking the ops, every usrname gets a click as to which they'll participate in. Would reduce the futile-op losses.

Assuming that the sockpuppets of the institutional enemies of Anon are busy in IRC sowing division and confusion, i wonder if the rest of the i'net is getting a breather.

[Plutonia]

With the many-ops problem, why don't they just have a table ranking the ops, every usrname gets a click as to which they'll participate in. Would reduce the futile-op losses.

Assuming that the sockpuppets of the institutional enemies of Anon are busy in IRC sowing division and confusion, i wonder if the rest of the i'net is getting a breather.

It's crazy what's going on. From what I've seen on IRC, the spooks are there watching but not engaging - too much. Where they show up often is here http://anonnews.org/?p=press there's an on-going troll war there and that is where news agencies and non-anons get info. Read the comments for lulz.

Today, journo Barret Brown, a namefag-anon-true-believer decided to take on the US Military over it's treatment of Bradley Manning. He knows he's going to go to jail (or worse) so he's gone full raging rogue calling for a no holds barred #opeternalruin<---- go there now, he's scrapping with trolls in a side bar:

This is what he is working on:

Welcome to OpEternalRuin. As Robert Mugabe once said, "This is the final battle for complete control." As such, this will go on for as long as it takes, although we kick off tonight. We are out to destroy the lives of those execs who have won their prosperity in conjunction with the state and at the expense of liberty and decency. Remember that we remain an Internet Hate Machine because that Fox affiliate out Californy way called us that one time.

See this article for a bit more: http://www.thetechherald.com/article.ph ... -media-war

If you came here from elsewhere, consider checking in at irc.anonops.in #opeternalruin. If you are new to Anon, go to #opnewblood. We are also an Internet Love Machine and we will initiate into the mysteries of our god LOLki.

Note that I and others will be calling these execs and recording the conversations. Those of us doing so are located in single-party consent states, plus I'm going to prison anyway so fuck it, but anyway, yeah, single-party consent state. We will also be creating articles on Encyclopedia Dramatica and ensuring that they come up as the early results for names of our targets. We will need doxxers, trolls, shoop artists, and others who have honed their talents of ruin.

There is no god but LOLki and Anonymous is His prophet.

Remember who we are. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_85FwUVkvis


MASTERPAD (moar links coming soon! old and new alike!)

http://piratenpad.de/p4PyWlypl4 <---hella dox
http://piratenpad.de/OperationPayback <-----Other stuff

That first piratepad there ^^ has list of demands for Bradley Manning and reams of contact info for military brass.

Expect the Feds, SWAT, JTF2, Black Helicopters, Glen Beck and the Baby Jesus to shut him down pronto.

BarrettBrownLOL Barrett Brown
Oh, look, a sun. I shall fly close to it on these wings of wax.
3 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

[Plutonia]

US probes Anonymous plans for attack on marines

By Joseph Menn in San Francisco

Published: March 8 2011 00:45

US law enforcement authorities are investigating plans by members of the hacking collective Anonymous to disrupt activities at the Marine Corps base in Quantico to protest against the alleged rough treatment given suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning.

Anonymous gained wide attention last year with attacks on the websites of PayPal and other businesses that had stopped processing donations to anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks as it published thousands of secret US state department cables.

Recently, Anonymous members appear to have broadened their targets by suggesting attacks on the US military. On publicly accessible document-sharing sites, they have been discussing plans to target the brig in Quantico, Virginia, where Private Manning is being held under what his attorney said were unjustifiable conditions.

One collaborative document states the “purpose” of the contemplated operation is to “harass staff at MCB Quantico Brig to the point of frustration”. The “plan” is described as a “complete communications shutdown” of the facilities’ internet pages and phone links.

A Quantico spokesman, Lieutenant Agustin Solivan, said officials had referred the matter to law enforcement and counter-intelligence agencies. “We are aware of the threat and any threats to defence department information systems and networks are taken seriously,” he said. “The intent or stating that you are going to commit a crime is a crime in itself,” he added.

Barrett Brown, who has been helping with the plans under his real name, said he was not alarmed about the prospect of prosecution. “My feeling is I’m going down anyway so I may as well do it with gusto.”

Members of Anonymous identify with WikiLeaks and see themselves as crusaders for the free flow of information. But while WikiLeaks has merely published classified material, as have mainstream media organisations, Anonymous has become steadily more aggressive.

First it went after businesses with “denial-of-service” attacks, in which computers bombard websites until they can’t handle the load and become unavailable to the public. That brought some 40 law enforcement searches in the US and a handful or arrests in other countries.

Anonymous became more brazen last month, hacking into a US security firn that had boasted to the Financial Times of infiltrating the online group and identifying many of its leaders. Anonymous distributed thousands of internal e-mails from the company, HBGary Federal, among other things showing that HBGary Federal and two allied businesses had proposed planting fake documents on WikiLeaks to discredit that site.

[Plutonia]

Anony_Ops Anonymous Operations by AnonQC

RT @_x4o @T4RD1S Chinese Anons! This pic just came through the Chinese firewalls 1 hour ago http://yfrog.com/h4d1eahj #Anonymous #OpChina
6 Mar Favorite Retweet Reply

[8bitagent]

I just have to ask, where the heck were these guys during the Bush administration? Never the less, Anonymous seems to have gone from /b meme menace to establishing itself as the premiere rebel force in the 21st century. Aligned with Wikileaks, Anon says their impetus for all out cyberwarfare is in part due to a response to the treatment of Bradley Manning. (What's ironic about Mannings case, is that the Obama regime is treating him like a terrorist at Gitmo or worse, all for him simply exposing the US war crimes many people knew about)

Personally, I believe the sheer atrocities the US, Allied Forces and PMC's like Blackwater committed in Iraq alone should have been enough to warrant Anon's wrath(as well as every compassionate person in America taking to the streets)

But here's the story, which(along with Charlie Sheen meltdown and Libya) was one of the main stories for the day

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41972190/ns/technology_and_science-security/

A leader of the computer hackers group known as Anonymous is threatening new attacks on major U.S. corporations and government officials as part of at an escalating “cyberwar” against the citadels of American power.

“It’s a guerilla cyberwar — that’s what I call it,” said Barrett Brown, 29, who calls himself a senior strategist and “propagandist” for Anonymous. He added: “It’s sort of an unconventional, asymmetrical act of warfare that we’ve involved in. And we didn’t necessarily start it. I mean, this fire has been burning.”

A defiant and cocky 29-year-old college dropout, Brown was cavalier about accusations that the group is violating federal laws. He insisted that Anonymous members are only policing corporate and governmental wrongdoing — as its members define it.

Breaking laws, but 'ethically'
“Our people break laws, just like all people break laws,” he added. “When we break laws, we do it in the service of civil disobedience. We do so ethically. We do it against targets that have asked for it.”

And those targets are apparently only growing in number. Angered over the treatment of Bradley Manning, the Army private who is accused of leaking classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks and who is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military brig in Quantico, Va., Brown says the group is planning new computer attacks targeting government officials involved in his case.

Read more reporting by Michael Isikoff in 'The Isikoff Files'

Among the methods the group is vowing to use: posting personal information about the officials on the Internet, a method known as “doxing.” The group also this week issued a threat over the Internet to “harass” the staff at Quantico “to the point of frustration,” including a “complete communications shutdown” of its Internet and phone links.

In recent months, Anonymous — a loose collection of tech-savvy hackers or “hacktivists” — has threatened some of the biggest corporations in the country. The group is also the target of a major FBI investigation that has included dozens of subpoenas and raids on the homes of suspected members.

(In the interview, Brown, a sometimes freelance journalist, said he is not personally involved in hacking computers, stressing that he only advises the group, participates in its internal strategy sessions and serves as its spokesman. An FBI spokeswoman on Tuesday described the bureau’s investigation of Anonymous members as “ongoing,” but declined further comment.)

Anonymous has been blamed by senior U.S. government officials — including Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn — with mounting so-called “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks on major corporate and government targets. The group is believed to do this by mobilizing thousands of so-called “zombie” computers, which have been infected with viruses, and directing them to flood a targeted website simultaneously, creating such a huge demand for service that the site shuts down.

Champion of WikiLeaks, Mideast protesters
Anonymous is believed to have used this method in December, when it took credit for crashing the websites of MasterCard and Visa in retaliation for their decision to cut off service to WikiLeaks. It also claimed credit for shutting down government websites in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, which it thereby helping to stoke the uprising in those countries.

Last month, the hackers group launched what may have been its most audacious attack to date, aiming its guns on HBGary Federal, a major cybersecurity firm and government contractor. After HBGary Federal’s CEO threatened to expose members of Anonymous, the group struck back — breaking into the cybersecurity firm’s computers, hijacking the CEO’s Twitter account and swiping tens of thousands of embarrassing emails that it later posted on the Internet.

Related coverage: Do WikiLeaks imitators put your e-mail at risk?

The emails appeared to show that HBGary Federal and two other contractors were proposing a “disinformation campaign” aimed at discrediting political allies of WikiLeaks and critics of the Bank of American and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, prompting a group of House Democrats to call for a congressional investigation into the contractors.

Asked about Anonymous, Greg Hoglund, the CEO of HBGary, the founder of HBGary Federal, said Tuesday: “These are not hacktivists. They are criminals. They are breaking into computer systems and stealing information — and that violates multiple federal statutes.”

In the first network television interview he has given, Brown – who has been widely quoted as one of the group’s spokesmen — invited NBC to his walk up, one-room Dallas apartment and allowed a reporter to observe as he and what he said were other Anonymous members communicated in a secure chat room.

Their goal that day: drafting a threatening letter to PayPal, the online processing firm owned by eBay, in response to news that the firm had restricted service to Manning’s legal defense fund.

Threatening PayPal
“We politely ask you to finally stand up and show some backbone,” said Brown, reading from the letter on his small laptop. “Unfreeze the account, or release the funds, so Bradley Manning and his lawyers can access it. Otherwise you prove you are nothing but a puppet of a criminal government, which is violating the Geneva Convention and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

And then, said Brown: “As always, it ends…We are Anonymous. We do not forgive. We do not forget.”

“That’s our little motto,” he added.

There is still much about Anonymous that remains obscure -- and which Brown would not reveal. As he tells it, the group has thousands, if not tens of thousands, of participants, including, he claims, computer managers at major corporations and government agencies and journalists. But, he says, the group’s activities are governed, or at least shaped, by a much smaller group of a “couple dozen” people that reacts to the “ebb and flow” of events. Their overarching goal, he said, “information freedom.”

So pretty much, Anon(the hacktivist group):
Heroes of the 21st century, or cyber-terrorist criminals?

Personally, I'd love to see them and Wikileaks go all out to:

1. Expose how al Qaeda and Sunni extremism is nothing more than a controlled
proxy of the global elite, including the 9/11 attacks. As well expose how in bed the US and UK
have been with al Qaeda and Islamic jihadist state sponsors. ALSO, expose how there's
hardly been ANY major Islamic terror attack on a Western/European country or tourist spot that didnt involve informants, moles, and possible inside help.

2. Expose how much of the African genocide going on has largely been facilitated by corporations, France, China and other globalist players

3. Expose how the United Nations, Dyncorp and world leaders have been involved in
pedo rings and child sex slavery as well as kidnapping worldwide since the 1990's

4. Expose how most of the arms and drug sales worldwide trace back to globalist and big banking interests

5. Expose the depths at which the Pentagon and US government goes to coverup the high suicide/suicide attempt rape amongst active duty and vets, as well as covering up mass reports
of sex abuse(as well as all the horrific experiments the US army and CIA conducted in the 1940's through 1970's)

6. Expose how much the US, world powers and corporations have been involved in forced human slavery to make everything from construction, garments, food, and even missiles

7. Expose all the murder companies like Pfizer, Bayer, Bechtel, Chevron, Coca Cola, Shell, etc have been involved in worldwide

8. Expose the IMF and World Bank's decades long agenda to go into developing nations, force them into servitude and then enslave the populations(including the literal destruction of Albanian villages by the World Bak)

9. Expose just how much environmental damage has been intentionally done by corporations in the US and worldwide.

10. And finally, expose just how engineered the financial crisis has been by the corrupt banksters who are now firmly planted inside the Obama white house.

[wintler2]

..Personally, I'd love to see them and Wikileaks go all out to:..

Nice wishlist, which bit are you going to help with?

[wintler2]

DDoS attacks harmless: Anonymous user

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are harmless, according to Newcastle man Matthew George, who was charged for his role in the Anonymous group's bid to crash federal government websites last year.

George was one of possibly hundreds of Australians under the Anonymous banner who participated in DDoS protest attacks against the Australian Parliament House and Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy websites. Melbourne resident Steve Slayo was the only other user charged for participating in the attacks.

For his role, George faced 10 years imprisonment for "causing unauthorised impairment of electronic communication to or from a Commonwealth computer", but received a $550 fine with a recorded conviction. Federal police raided George's home in June last year and he faced court in October. ..

I wonder if the 'harmless' comment was part of his plea deal? DoS attacks do not harm the infrastructure, but they're kryptonite to business-as-usual and to corporate branding.

[JackRiddler]

..Personally, I'd love to see them and Wikileaks go all out to:..

Nice wishlist, which bit are you going to help with?

Come on! Anon and Wikileaks can, whenever the whim strikes them, effortlessly expose any documents concerning any secret on the planet, in each case showing conclusive proof of exactly what 8bitagent expects to see. They can also order up any level of detailed, accurate, fair and balanced mass-media coverage of said exposure. Therefore, when they release the State Department cables and the HB Gary e-mails, and when the New York Times shockingly spins these into a case for nuclear war with Iran and/or "old news," we can conclude that Wikileaks and Anon are just plots to cover up the truth of 9/11 and other crimes in which Wikileaks and Anon are no doubt collaborators!

.

[wintler2]

..Personally, I'd love to see them and Wikileaks go all out to:..

Nice wishlist, which bit are you going to help with?

Come on! Anon and Wikileaks can, whenever the whim strikes them, effortlessly expose any documents concerning any secret on the planet, in each case showing conclusive proof of exactly what 8bitagent expects to see. They can also order up any level of detailed, accurate, fair and balanced mass-media coverage of said exposure. Therefore, when they release the State Department cables and the HB Gary e-mails, and when the New York Times shockingly spins these into a case for nuclear war with Iran and/or "old news," we can conclude that Wikileaks and Anon are just plots to cover up the truth of 9/11 and other crimes in which Wikileaks and Anon are no doubt collaborators!
.

You're channelling Alex Jones, again.

/on edit: oops, thought i was parrying 8bit!

[Plutonia]

Threat of 'Anonymous' Cyberattack on Pentagon May Be Overblown
Mar 9, 2011 | 3:41 PM ET | By Paul Wagenseil, SecurityNewsDaily Managing Editor

The Pentagon asked for an investigation yesterday (March 8 ) into the online “hacktivist” group Anonymous after at least one member of the group threatened to harass military officials in charge of the imprisonment of Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, according to news reports.

Last night, that member, occasional Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown, gave an incendiary interview to NBC News, vowing a “guerrilla cyberwar” against the U.S. government, major corporations and other targets “that have asked for it.”

[video here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41972190/ns ... e-security]

And in a rehash of earlier exploits, Anonymous members claimed to have taken down BMI.com, the website of the music-licensing group Broadcast Music Inc.

Last week, Brown told a Scottish website that Pentagon officials were fair game for Anonymous harassment.

Yet Anonymous has no official spokesmen and no leaders, and it’s not clear — even to him — whether Brown has been speaking for anyone other than himself.

“The NBC segment was fine except that I was referred to as having status of a more official sort than I intended to convey,” Brown told SecurityNewsDaily in an e-mail Wednesday. “Let them call me whatever they like; I am now officially going by the title of F***ot in protest of the press' common failures.”

No harassment of any Pentagon official has been reported, and the busy Anonymous Twitter feeds, currently preoccupied with the rebellion in Libya, have been silent on the issue.

Manning mania

Department of Defense spokesman Col. David Lapan told Agence France-Presse Tuesday that the Pentagon had requested the probe after it learned of Anonymous’ plans to disrupt operations at the Quantico, Va., Marine Corps brig where Manning is being held.

Forbes blogger Andy Greenwald noted Monday that an Anonymous online posting had called on followers to dig up details on Pentagon officials in retaliation for a recent change in Manning’s living conditions and legal status.

Manning, who is widely suspected of being WikiLeaks’ source for secret military documents on Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a huge trove of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, was arrested in May 2010.

On March 2, new charges were added against him, one of which potentially carries the death penalty, and around the same time he was ordered to be kept naked while in his cell, purportedly to prevent him from committing suicide.

Two days later, Brown told the Scottish tech site The Tech Herald that Anonymous was planning to strike out against Pentagon officials and Manning’s betrayers.

"The Internet is a weapon. It’s already weaponized, and those of us who know how to use this weapon have the advantage,” he told the website. “I know who else was involved in turning [Manning] in. I'm not sure what to do on that yet, but we're speaking among ourselves about that."

A powerful movement of one, all or none

Not all Anonymous members view Brown fondly, which Brown himself seems to be amused by. He tweeted one slam posted on the Anonymous-affiliated discussion site 4chan.org, which called him a “hipster-looking d******bag” and a “fake” who was deliberately trying to entrap the “hacktivist” group.

As readers of SecurityNewsDaily know, Anonymous is a group that’s hard to define. Anyone can join by hopping into one of its several online chat rooms, and anyone can take part in “operations” against specific targets, which seem to be added almost daily.

Participants in “operations” come and go as they please, and despite NBC News’ characterization of Brown as a “leader” and “senior strategist” of Anonymous, most of the movement’s literature is adamant that it has no leaders, hierarchy, official spokesmen or even a set agenda.

Recent Anonymous “operations” have mostly taken the form of distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites operated by MasterCard, Visa and PayPal (in response to their temporary shutdowns of WikiLeaks donation channels), against websites owned by the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Zimbabwe (in response to WikiLeaks censorship), against websites of organizations affiliated with the music industry, including BMI.com (in response to legal crackdowns on file-sharing) and, lastly, against websites run by the universally offensive Westboro Baptist Church (after the church dared Anonymous to do it).

Anonymous' most spectacular operation, however, was the digital disembowelment of security firm HBGary Federal last month.

Following the publication of an ill-timed interview with the Financial Times in which HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr said he had figured out the identities of Anonymous “leaders” and would soon be speaking to the FBI, Barr arrived at work one Monday morning to find his company’s website down, his Twitter account hijacked, his cell phone and Social Security numbers posted online and his iPad remotely wiped.

Even worse, Anonymous members copied HBGary Federal’s entire e-mail database and posted it online, revealing that the company had been plotting with two other Beltway security firms to illegally hack WikiLeaks and labor union-backed liberal groups at the behest of a powerful law firm that counted Bank of America (a rumored future WikiLeaks target) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (opposed by organized labor) as its clients.

Barr resigned from his position as CEO of HBGary Federal on Feb. 28.

Bloomberg News, poking through the HBGary Federal e-mails, also found a lot of previously concealed details about the presumably Chinese-directed “Operation Aurora” and “Night Dragon” network intrusions of Western companies in 2009 and 2010.

The e-mails mentioned that more than 200 companies, among them Morgan Stanley, DuPont, Sony, Johnson & Johnson and Disney, had been the targets of Operation Aurora, and it named the multinational energy companies that fell victim to Night Dragon as BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Marathon and RoyalDutch Shell.

Has Barrett Brown Scammed NBC News?

Posted on | March 9, 2011 | View Comments

In-freaking-credible!

Barrett Brown is either, as Michael Isikoff reports, “an underground commander in a new kind of warfare” — a member of a criminal conspiracy who should be under arrest — or else he’s one of the most successful hoaxers in recent memory. What astonishes me is to realize that just two days ago I was exchanging e-mails with Brown after he threatened me via Twitter over a post I wrote Feb. 14:

Is the FBI Watching Barrett Brown? (And
If They’re Not Already, Shouldn’t They?)

Everything I know about Brown leads me to believe that his claim to be a leader of “Anonymous” is self-aggrandizing nonsense. But here’s the problem: Absent complete access to his computer records, how would you go about verifying or falsifying that claim?

Consider what bush-league crap Brown was up to less than three months ago: In late December, he was posting videos of himself arguing with his girlfriend’s roommate. Before that, he was getting himself banned from blogs. Before that, he had his lawyer threatening me for making jokes at his expense.

So here we have a guy who seems to have spent December trying to get himself noticed by somebody — anybody – and now in March he’s interviewed by Michael Isikoff on NBC Nightly News?

An ability to detect the aroma of bovine excrement is essential to a newsman’s trade and it is my considered judgment that NBC News has been bamboozled, hoodwinked and scammed by Barrett Brown.

There’s an old saying in this business: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” And unless the Justice Department announces that Barrett Brown is the focus of a federal investigation, I’m calling bullshit.

UPDATE: Let me explain further why I’m so dubious of Brown’s claim. Stars and Stripes reports:

The Financial Times reports this week that U.S. law enforcement agencies are investigating plans by members of a hacking collective known as Anonymous to disrupt [Marine Corps Base] Quantico’s operations in protest over the alleged rough treatment of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, a suspect in the Wikileaks data dump that has sent countries around the world into a tizzy with the disclosure of state secrets big and small.

OK, so “Anonymous” is threatening the U.S. Marine Corps, and meanwhile Barrett Brown — who has been publicly claiming since mid-February to be involved with “Anonymous” — is strolling down the street doing an interview with NBC News? Doesn’t basic common sense tell you that there’s something wrong with that picture?

UPDATE II: Linked by Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs — thanks!.

My impression of Barrett Brown is that he's sincere, enraged and operating outside recognizable parameters. He's like a berserker troll with journalist contacts who makes /b/ look like sissies. I observed him being confronted by a patriot troll with a military background over his #opeternalruin and admitting to have kicked smack "11 days ago" in preparation "for the Feds" as in, they are coming for him and he needed to lose that particular "handle." It's in the comments history here: http://piratenpad.de/master

BarrettBrownLOL Barrett Brown
Tired of living under a malicious state? E-mail transistor@hushmail.com #april7 #dayofresolve
4 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

BarrettBrownLOL Barrett Brown
Can someone tell the media that we're not gonna like break into #Quantico? We just want to make fun of people. #Anonmyous
23 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

BarrettBrownLOL Barrett Brown
The FBI should recuse itself from #anonymous investigation until we're done investigating the FBI to see if it's full of douchebags.
8 Mar Favorite Retweet Reply

BarrettBrownLOL Barrett Brown
Fuck #Quantico. http://oi53.tinypic.com/nzevev.jpg
8 Mar Favorite Retweet Reply

It may be a strategy to draw heat away from other Anons, as Assange has publicly said his role is in Wikileaks.

Edit: He has freelanced for Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/contributors/barrett-brown

[8bitagent]

It matters not really if Brown is pulling a hoax on the media, because it's pretty clear Anon has morphed from a goofy internet meme to a much more serious player alongside wikileaks in the new digital frontier against power players. However, I also believe in the power of comedy...the Yes Men, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, etc.