Scotland Yard Has Been After Anonymous For Months

jhernik writes "Scotland Yard has confirmed it has been investigating Anonymous since before the WikiLeaks wars broke out. The Metropolitan police has been investigating Internet vigilante group Anonymous, since well before its current online reprisals against companies not supporting WikiLeaks. 'Earlier this year, the Metropolitan police service received a number of allegations of denial of service cyber attacks againat several companies by a group calling itself Anonymous,' a police spokesman told eWEEK Europe UK. 'We are investigating these criminal allegations and our investigation is ongoing.'"

Comments

Obligatory

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.

Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...

There is, actually, more commonly known as "the entire human race".

I'd like to know what kind of budget Scotland Yard is working with that they can investigate everyone on the planet.

Re:Obligatory

[syousef]

If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.

Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...

You find anyone that's been involved and pin everything on them then use trumped up charges to lock them up for the rest of their lives. Have you not been paying attention?

Re:Obligatory

[Chrisq]

If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.

Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...

Knowing Scotland Yard their answer will be to track and investigate everyone.

Re:Obligatory

[Gerzel]

The thing is Anonymous isn't as random as they like to claim. It is basically a group of more or less the same individuals, a large pool if you will. Dis-organised, or unorganized if you prefer, but defiantly not random. It is basically an internet based multi-national political party by another name.

Much of the "You don't understand us. We are x, y and z." stuff is just tiresome hype.

Re:Obligatory

[bberens]

That may be true, but there's bound to be a relatively small core of people who are controlling the botnets. Those people might not be involved in every "Anonymous" attack, but they will likely participate semi-regularly in them. Those are the people they're after. Not joe idiot who downloaded the little flooding app.

Re:Obligatory

[nospam007]

Check your FTP server, they log in there all the time.

Re:Obligatory

[circletimessquare]

anonymous is a movement. as such, it follows certain sociological rules. #1: in any movement, there is a small group of core fanatics, and a large group of one-offs and on-and-offs. same with wikipedia, or al qaeda, or drug gangs

now you could take out a portion of the core competency, and nothing will change. but if you tracked and profiled the core competency over time, and took them all out at once, you really would cripple the movement

however, since the "cause" of anonymous is so simplistic, others would quickly fill the void and anonymous would be back in action in no time. again, same with wikipedia or al qaeda or drug gangs

so scotland yard is only partially absurd, not completely absurd

Re:Obligatory

[DrXym]

If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.

You start by collecting log files after each attack and correlating IP addresses. You log the 4chan groups & IRC chats and see if you can identify who is who. You sift through the attacker's IP addresses and see if identify some of the culprits and their ISPs. You install some of the remote control bots on some sample machines and analyse the traffic and its origins. Eventually you have info to go an execute some search warrants and take it from there depending on what you find.

"Anonymous" probably has an inner circle of ring leaders who mostly know what they're doing. A larger circle of volunteers who probably don't and act as proxies / bots for attacks, and then a large number of 1-time / wannabes who get involved on the periphery and then leave. I believe an investigation is bound to identify a lot of people in the outer rings and probably a couple in the centre too. People will rat on each other too for a lesser sentence or a warning.

Proving it is another matter of course, but people who think they're somehow immune from prosecution because they're in a large herd are deluding themselves. At the end of the day if you aided a DDOS attack and it can be proven, you're in deep shit.

Re:Obligatory

[Mongoose Disciple]

Press release done in MS WORD without even bothering to scrub it of basic metadata, anyone?

Jesus called this one 2000 years ago when he said: "Put your (M)S WORD in its place, for all who take the (M)S WORD will perish by the (M)S WORD."

If only Anonymous were proper God-fearing people they'd have heeded the warning!

Re:Obligatory

[DrXym]

You assume everyone is smart enough to do what you say and does it perfectly. Chances are that in that cloud of anonymous people there are plenty of chat logs and other evidence floating around on PCs that could lead from one person to another, or at least corroborate other evidence. Some people who own those machines might even provide assistance to the police for a lesser sentence.

Just look at what happened with Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo. Manning is smart enough to use Tor & SSL to upload his diplomatic docs, but then he goes and blabs to Lamo over IM who happens to be logging all of his chats. Highly incriminating chats that more or less make his conviction a slam dunk.

Re:Obligatory

[PPH]

I think you mean the New World Order. The established powers certainly aren't going to let us spawn a competing system of governance.

Re:Obligatory

[definate]

You think so? I've looked at a few of these, each time, and there's generally different people running it. While you might be passionate against Scientology, you might not be passionate about Iran, or Gene Simmons, or WikiLeaks, to name a few major ones.

If you're not extremely passionate in each instance, and also have a lot of time on your hands, then you sure as hell won't be "controlling the botnets" every time. Hell, even based on a DDoS by DDoS basis, I've known a few people who were controlling one Scientology DDoS who weren't controlling the ones before or after.

I think you think this group is far more cohesive than it is. Don't try to apply these old models of how groups/organizations work, for something like this, as these groups basically do permit you to come and go relatively as you please, and each new issue, allows for a new set of "group" "leaders". Your logic is akin to the United States treating "terrorists" as a cohesive group.

Re:Obligatory

[budgenator]

Log msgs -> /dev/null, there that wasn't so hard was it?

Breaking news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Police investigate crimes!

Good luck with that

[Hogwash McFly]

A source inside Scotland Yard has also confirmed that they are looking to bring Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2006 in for questioning.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Me!? Why would they want me?

Ohhh... my username.

Excuses

[DarkXale]

They're just using it as an excuse to browse 4chan.

Article has no content, move along

[RMH101]

"Police interested in Anonymous", is what it boils down to. Shows no sign of a clue that Anonymous isn't an organisation as opposed to the section of the geeky general public who are pissed off with current state of affairs/doing it for the lulz.
TL:DR - Scotland Yard can't Triforce.

Re:Article has no content, move along

[Richard_at_work]

"Citation needed!" is really becoming the modern version of "liar liar pants on fire"....

The very fact that there is an irc channel indicates organisation, and if you look deeper for long enough you can see the underlying control there as well - there are users who frequent the channel more often than others, and who get listened to more often than others.

If you want an example of how an uncouth mob can still have organisation and planning, take a look at any protest (the recent student protests in London are a prime example). Taken together, the mob is just that, a mob. Look deeper and there are people in the mob that incite the other members, take the first steps to violence and action, make suggestions - these are the ones that get stuck up on wanted posters and pursued by police.

"Anonymous" is no different.

Re:Article has no content, move along

[Richard_at_work]

The problem with that is the new definition of 'truth' that Wikipedia has created - that of there simply needing to be corroborating citations somewhere, regardless of how accurate those citations are. Citations prove nothing more than someone has made the same view or 'fact' public somehow.

Wanted

[gmuslera]

Scotland Yard is close to capture the leader of the Anonymous group, someone called John Doe.

Re:Wanted

[bersl2]

You fail it!

The leader of Anonymous is David Davidson. Clearly everyone knows that. I'm sure you think you're getting away with misleading everyone, but they know better.

SO fucking stupid.

[moxley]

Obviously they just don't get it.

If you say you are a member of "Anonymous," then at that moment you are a member of "Anonymous."

If, several minutes later, you say "I am not a member of "Anonymous," then you are not a member of "Anonymous."

Anybody can be a member, for any amount of time. There are no central lists, no membership rosters.....in many ways the organization doesn't exist, it;s a "dis-organization."

Re:SO fucking stupid.

[Magada]

Anybody can be a member, for any amount of time. There are no central lists, no membership rosters.....in many ways the organization doesn't exist, it;s a "dis-organization."

That never stopped the United States from chasing Al-Qaeda all over the globe. It makes good sport for the hounds, really.

Re:SO fucking stupid.

[Terrasque]

One of the better descriptions I've heard:

[Anonymous is] the first internet-based superconsciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely.

From the wikipedia page.

Re:SO fucking stupid.

[tmosley]

Not really. The Tea Party is more like an offshoot of the Republican party that is full of people who are pissed off at the leadership for abandoning conservatism in favor of "neo-conservatism", which is more like the bastard child of modern liberalism and the Sith than conservatism.

Of course, the Sith are all about corruption, and they are doing their damnedest to corrupt the Tea Party. It may or may not work.

Simply look to anyone who claims to be a leader of the Tea Party and you will find their influence. Happily, the "leadership" does not seem to have that much sway with the membership.

This is said as a libertarian who tried to reconcile with the Republican party of Texas, and failed.

Re:SO fucking stupid.

[moxley]

You're exactly right.

Al Qaeda was the example I was going to use, but a lot of people aren't aware that it is a fictional organization and seem to not like being told this, despite the fact that it is true and verifiable.

Just because some western polticians and corporate news networks refer to it incessantly like a bogeyman doesn't mean it exists; in fact, in this day and age it very likely means you really need to check into any purported bogeymen that are repeatedly mentioned by either.

"Anonymous"

[benjfowler]

So a bunch of Dunning-Kruger internet dumbshits download somebody else's half-arsed software to DDoS websites of powerful and well-connected people. And then wonder why they're getting rolled up by the police. Colour me surprised.

For sixteen year olds, this is understandable -- it seems to be the optimum age for thinking you know everything while not actually knowing anything at all. Anybody else, well, you'll be old enough to serve time, which is just as well, because you probably deserve it for being so stupid.

I do respect Anonymous for taking the fight to some very bad, otherwise-untouchable people, like the Scientologists, but at some point, if you don't use your brain and screw up, you have to accept the consequences. And I suspect that the only reason why half of Anonymous do what they do, is because they don't actually appreciate the danger of what they're doing.

England's been after Anonymous since Franlin&P

[ron_ivi]

Worth noting that Anonymous lost England the Colonies in North America, and they've probably been after them ever since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine
"Thomas Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution because of Common Sense, the pro-independence monograph pamphlet he anonymously published on January 10, 1776; signed "Written by an Englishman", the pamphlet became an immediate success."

http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html
"Benevolus — While in England, Franklin penned a number of letters under the name of Benevolus. These letters tried to answer some of the negative assertions made by the British press about the American colonists. These letters were published in London newspapers and journals. "

Perhaps those are the Anonymous guys that England's really still mad at.

Anonymous Isn't Anonymous

[Revotron]

Scotland Yard isn't investigating "Anonymous". They're investigating the people involved in the DDoS attacks. If you're a member of Anonymous but you don't participate in attacks, you're alright because nobody knows who you are, or that you're even a member of Anonymous.

However, the minute you start attacking, you are immediately identifiable.

"lulz yeah but we r anonymus. we r legionz!!!1 omg for the first time in my life i can actually identify with something. cool! are there any lonely girls here???/"
Protip: When you're on the internet, you are NOT anonymous. Most of Anonymous is just a bunch of teen-angst lemmings who will only join the DDoS effort if somebody puts up a Rapidshare link to the LOIC software. None of them have any kind of initiative to do it themselves.

"i'm not gonna get caught. lulz, i'll use a proxy"
Furthermore, because they're all just angsty, lonely, horny teenagers (and even some 20-somethings), they have no foresight. They have no clue that their IP address can and will identify them in most cases. If they use a proxy, they're just creating a bottleneck, slowing the DDoS effort and providing their target with a single IP to block for mitigation.

"hey man, ip address is just a number, man... i'm not a number!"
None of them realize that your IP address can and will be stripped from logs and submitted to RIRs and ISPs, and they will obtain your subscriber details (more likely your parent's details) through the legal system in your country of origin. An IP address is just a number when taken out of context, but when it's put IN context your IP is your identity on the internet, and it CAN be linked back to the real world.

"Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off of their servers because BUSH... i mean, OBAMA... sent an executive order to Amazon telling them that he would personally torture their mothers if they didn't! OMG! Attack Amazon because they're a business that chooses not to do business with certain people!!!"
The last thing humanity needs is a bunch of angsty teenagers throwing a fit because their favorite website has to change providers. WikiLeaks violated their contract with Amazon. It is a BUSINESS matter. Get the fuck over it, pick up your toys and go to school.

Don't like what I'm saying? Then suppress my freedom of speech and DDoS me. My IP is 127.0.0.1. And I'll even turn off my firewall for you.

Re:Anonymous Isn't Anonymous

[lee1026]

Play fair man. Anytime I send stuff to that ip, I get tons of stuff. Are you retaliating or something?

Re:Anonymous Isn't Anonymous

[L4t3r4lu5]

Wikileaks should go distributed. Everyone who would download LOIC should download Freenet instead and cache Wikileaks.

With ICANN hijacking domain names and Sweden going after the top guy, they should just decentralise the whole thing, because the next step is a government hack of Wikileaks servers to kill off the leaked material.

Re:Anonymous Isn't Anonymous

[Spy Handler]

well to use an internet cafe, you have to actually get up and leave the basement and walk out of your mom's house. This is not an palatable option for most Anonymous members. Stealing your neighbor's wifi is a possibility, but then when the p0lic3 come knocking on your neighbor's door and start asking questions, and the nice old lady tells them she doesn't know anything about interwebs hacking but the geeky kid next door with the Star Wars T-shirt might, it won't take them long too figure out who's the Anonymous member.

Re:Anonymous Isn't Anonymous

[discord5]

Most of Anonymous is just a bunch of teen-angst lemmings who will only join the DDoS effort if somebody puts up a Rapidshare link to the LOIC software.

I find it amazing that these kids would just blindly trust some "anonymous" person to upload a copy of LOIC to rapidshare without wondering if it includes some kind of spyware/backdoor/botnet. You'd think that the kids that I like to think of as the Internet generation would at least be wary of such issues, especially if they're going to partake in a DDoS voluntarily.

They have no clue that their IP address can and will identify them in most cases. If they use a proxy, they're just creating a bottleneck, slowing the DDoS effort and providing their target with a single IP to block for mitigation.

I came across one of their "call to arms" and the post specified not to use a proxy since it would DoS the proxy :-). It's not that most of them don't know about IP addresses, it's that a lot of them say "It's okay, I've got DHCP.".

they will obtain your subscriber details (more likely your parent's details) through the legal system in your country of origin

This! I'd really hate to be one of the parents that doesn't know about this and gets slapped with a serious fine. I think things like this are going to be a major problem in the near future. Kids are dumb and easily manipulated, and while any parent can try to do the right thing, it's not like you can watch a teenager 24/7.

My IP is 127.0.0.1

This might actually work :-)

Re:Anonymous Isn't Anonymous

[dasdrewid]

The last thing humanity needs is a bunch of angsty teenagers throwing a fit because their favorite website has to change providers. WikiLeaks violated their contract with Amazon. It is a BUSINESS matter. Get the fuck over it, pick up your toys and go to school.

I disagree. I don't think Wikileaks violated their contract. Amazon's response is here: http://aws.amazon.com/message/65348/ . Their arguments are

a) Wikileaks doesn't control the rights to the content. This is an interesting assertion. Wikileaks has as much control over the rights of the content as the New York Times did when it published the Pentagon Papers, i.e. they were publishing classified documents that were illegally obtained by a third party. However, the US Government couldn't stop the Times from publishing. This would lead to pretty strong case that they *do* have some control as to the rights of the content. The US Government certainly doesn't have a copyright over the diplomatic cables (they being produced by government officers or employees as part of their official duties are not eligible for copyright), and since Wikileaks was never under any agreement with the US Government regarding access to the cables, there is nothing stopping them from publishing, just like there was nothing stopping the Times from publishing. Yes, it was a crime for the documents to be exposed, but once exposed, there is nothing illegal about holding or distributing the documents. The documents are now public domain. To get technical, Amazon requires that you own or control all of the rights to the content you host. If they are arguing that Wikileaks doesn't own or control the content, it can only be because the content is public domain. Therefore, all public domain documents should be disallowed on Amazon AWS systems.

b) Wikileaks release of the documents could hurt people, because it is not possible for WIkileaks to have redacted the documents in such a way as to put people in jeopardy. They cite as evidence that some human rights organizations asked for Wikileaks to exercise caution in their releases. They ignore the fact that those same organizations also asked Wikileaks to continue doing what they are doing, regarding the documents. In neither of those cases are any actual specific cases where someone has been put in jeopardy cited. In fact, no cases have been reported where someone has been put in danger because of Wikileaks releases (excepting, of course, the death threats Julian Assange has received...). They are also making some pretty large leaps to say that people are being put in danger (remember, Wikileaks was booted because of the diplomatic cables, not the Afghanistan documents, which, by the way, are what those human rights organizations were referring to...Amazon is in fact using evidence from a completely separate situation and trying to pass it off as relevant...). The documents are government cables, meaning information like names and actions had to have been pretty well known to have made it as far as the people sending the cables. If they weren't known, then diplomats had to be in direct communication with the human rights activists, which leads to questions about whether they were activists or government operatives. Not that that changes much regarding whether they should be protected, but if they were operatives, it would seem that the government officials should have been protecting them even within the cables, so redaction shouldn't be that big of an issue.

Also if any content that could put people at risk should be banned, then do they ban chemistry books that explain explosives, or Dianetics (it's available on Amazon.com...)? Hell, Amazon.com sells "The Anarchist Cookbook" for goodness' sake! Search for it on Amazon and you get pages of books with bomb instructions, improvised weapon instructions, techniques to cause havoc, etc...

I simply can't take Amazon's argument seriously when it is so flimsy, if not downright fraudulent, and

Double Standards Anyone?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Scotland Yard has been chasing a bunch of tomfooling teenagers for months, but hasn't even bothered to investigate substantiated investigations of wire fraud by the editor of a national newspaper. It's pretty clear who plays the tunes Scotland Yard dance to.

The sad thing is that Scientology will win

[elrous0]

Scientology, in their typically thuggish fashion, has been urging governments and the press to declare this group "terrorists" for years. They will no doubt view this as a victory, and probably use it to threaten anyone else in the future who threatens to cross them.

Re:England's been after Anonymous since Franlin&am

[tmosley]

By that line of logic, that means there is no group called anonymous.

That is fair enough. There really isn't any point to trying to take down "Anonymous" because everyone is a member. Think about the ending sequence to V for Vendetta. That is really what anonymous is. It is fitting that they chose that mask as their symbol.

Re:Trust No One!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Group?

Anonymous is a Flash Mob, without geospatial coordinates.

Why don't they investigate Burning Man attendees? Or men who glance at the covers of Playboy, as they bustle by the newsagents?

Re:England's been after Anonymous since Franlin&am

[steveaustin1971]

But you see, that is the point. There is no group, no rules, no boundaries and no organisation. Everyone IS anonymous because all it takes is for ANYONE to decide they are behind any of the causes and they are anonymous. If you arrest a few people, the rest will more likely mock the arrested than actually care. Your "logic" does not have any bearing on this whatsoever. It is not supposed to be "logical" it is supposed to be chaotic and shapeless. That is, in fact the reason they won't stop it. It is like grasping at smoke.

Can't believe no one has posted this yet

[osgeek]

XKCD nails it once again.

Re:England's been after Anonymous since Franlin&am

[tmosley]

Anonymous does not have a single opinion, and often takes both sides of any argument. Yes, if you have ever interacted with anyone who didn't know you, then you were Anonymous. This does not make you a hacker, or an activist, or a troll, or ascribe to you any other characteristic.

But hey, feel free not to think, as you seem to want to cling to your ignorance so much. If you don't want to learn anything, or even discuss the topic at hand, then this is the wrong place for you.

Re:Trust No One!

[GameboyRMH]

Or more likely, they post funny photoshops of the arrested in a "v&" thread on 4chan and continue like nothing happened.

Re:England's been after Anonymous since Franlin&am

[GameboyRMH]

You're right, everyone is not a member of Anonymous. Anyone is a member of Anonymous.

live free, or something else!

[Thud457]

But that's the point of metagovernment. How can they stop a distributed, leaderless, international, net-based movement? By imprisoning everyone in the world?

They're busily working on that.

Re:Trust No One!

[spun]

Anonymous are bullies, not freedom fighters. Like all bullies, once they feel a little pain themselves, they will give up. They are not activists. They have no convictions. They just like to fuck shit up. Not "fuck shit up for a good cause." Just "fuck shit up, and if it happens to be for a cause, whatever."

Re:Trust No One!

[GameboyRMH]

They're definitely activists and they do have convictions, although they can change from one day to the next (maybe this is why they seem like a "fuck up their shit" group to you). Remember it's not one coherent group, it's basically a flash mob of whoever cares to act at the time.

Re:Trust No One!

[eriqk]

They just like to fuck shit up. Not "fuck shit up for a good cause." Just "fuck shit up, and if it happens to be for a cause, whatever."

Sometimes, that's all it takes.