Slashdot Mirror
HBGary Federal Hacked By Anonymous
An anonymous reader writes "As the coin was tossed to kick off Superbowl XLV, Anonymous unleashed their anger at a security firm who had been investigating their membership. HBGary Federal had been working on unmasking their identities in cooperation with an FBI investigation into the attacks against companies who were cutting off WikiLeaks access and financing. Unlike the DDoS attacks for which Anonymous has made headlines in recent months, this incident involved true hacking skills."
And the company Anonymous is going after probably helps stop real security threats that most of us would agree merit stopping; not just Cablegate-related stuff.
To help you out: HBGary is still running. HBGary Federal is a new spin-off company started in December 2009 to try and sell "cybersecurity" products to the Feds.
If they were cybersecurity experts, ones that were worth paying for with your tax dollars, then Anonymous would not have been able to pwn their website, twitter accounts, email, ....
According to some of those recently pwned emails, the spokesperson Aaron Barr admitted to his own staff that he was deliberately provoking Anonymous, because he knew that the press was interested in anything to do with Anonymous and they'd get good publicity and possibly sales.
The money quote from Aaron's company email: But it's not about them... it's about our audience having the right impression of our capability and the competency of our research. Anonymous will do what every they can to discredit that. and they have the mic to speak because they are on Al Jazeera, ABC, CNN, etc. I am going to keep up the debate because I think it's good business, but I will be smart about my public responses.
Does that help you swing one way or the other?
Does my bum look big in this?
source article
There was no FBI involved in this. It was some random company's attempt at PR (I'm sure they regret it now). The original article even says that the information would not be useful to police and that they planned to give it away at a conference in San Fransisco next week.
Not exactly "cooperation with an FBI investigation"
Seriously Slashdot... when are you going to hire editors who actually verify submissions before letting them onto the front page. No better than the national enquirer...
If the hackers were UK based then they just have to buy a wireless dongle. You just lie about the information on the registration screen and away you go untraceable. Granted they will be able to triangulate the signal but its easy enough to drive somewhere quiet with a laptop and do it. Failing that they could just hack some poor old ladys wireless and use that. Both of these options are simple to do and less hassle than proxys.