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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 by true hacking, we mean true cracking.
Another mature contribution from those grown-ups at Anonymous.
Ought to have been better prepared if you go kicking a nest full of hornets...
From the article,
HBGary was victimized by a combination of social engineering and a shared password between systems
Evidently, being a security firm means not having to following good security practices.
It's hard to know how to feel about someone waging war against your own society.
Anonymous is fighting partially on behalf of Wikileaks. Wikileaks' recent releases put some sunlight on goverment/industry malfeasance, but also pointlessly harmed some diplomatic efforts by publishing unflattering personal opinions about people the US probably needs to get along with.
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.
What a tangled mess of virtue and vice.
So, Americans decide to peacefully toss a few sacks of tea into Boston harbor and get the entire harbor shutdown.. so they counter with even more illegal activity and a revolution that will get them even further into the shit
great plan numbnuts
Point being... if everyone on Earth was afraid to break a few laws, we'd still be under the rule of British monarchs. Thank god some people don't tuck tail and run whenever Big Brother stares in their direction.
They deleted all the content on his iPad.
that's beyond hilarious
...don't jump into the deep end if you don't know how to swim.
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Federal pound you in the ass prison. Seriously... It may be a laugh riot for the mob of 15 year old script kiddies to thumb their pimply noses at the suits and squares, and hide behind a "we r legion, lutz!"... but with any criminal conspiracy, the actions of one of the members all are attributable to the rest. All it will take is a few supoenas, some jail time for a few members, and anonymous will go away. No, for reals, yo. It's real brave to participate in a ddos when they can't fathom any consequences for their acts, but once they see other members getting thrown in the hoosegow, the whole "you can't shut us down!" becomes "gee, i hope the community college down the street will admit convicted felons." petty vandals hiding behind anonymity, not a bunch of masked crusaders for great justice.
Civil Disobedience is, as far as I know, marked by breaking unjust laws, and then *accepting the consequences* by going to jail, or whatever, to show society the unjustness of the laws, and to win sympathy to your cause.
I believe Anonymous stepped way over the line of Civil Disobedience long ago, with retaliation upon retaliation and attempting to avoid being caught. I really just have to view Anonymous as largely a group of criminals who deserve to be in jail for engaging in openly criminal activity - I can't see that laws which make it illegal to perform DDoSes against legal businesses, or to make unauthorized access to other people's computers, are fundamentally unjust.
These guys are definitely not in the same class as the followers of Ghandi or MLK.
so they counter this with more illegal activity which is even more serious and will get them even further into the shit
great plan numbnuts
Hmmmm. Might be risky rather than stupid. Maybe by proving the incompetence of the security company, they can have evidence thrown out.
Troll? Really? What he said is a fair comparison, AND the situation is similar. The folks throwing the tea overboard were arguing against unfair taxation without representation. These guys, however potentially misguided at times, are fighting for what they believe is the protection of free speech, which is one of the CORE ideals of the same people that threw the damned tea overboard.
Some people around here need to grow a damned backbone, and a set of common sense. Regardless of that however, -1 Troll is not a replacement for -1 disagree.
Yes I realize that I'm in the minority here on /. and that the same people that modded our AC here troll are going to attempt to mod me into oblivion. But go nuts, I've got Karma to burn.
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...
HBGary investigates and attempts to infiltrate Anonymous:Good guys just doin' their jobs.
Anonymous investigates and succeeds in infiltrating HBGary: Criminals... sick sick criminals.
If it's a label, not an entity, then how can it have "members"?
I don't know why people act as if "Anonymous" is a new thing. It's not. It's just a present-day version of something ancient - the lynch mob. The mob doesn't think, the mob doesn't consider, the mob just destroys. The mob is the barbarian horde burning down civilisation.
For a historical example of an earlier "Anonymous", think about the KKK. Just why did they wear those white hoods? The answer is easy. They did it to be "Anonymous", because if you are "Anonymous", you are released from the obligation to be a civilised human. You do what you like without consequence, so why not lynch a few negroes before they get uppity?
As XKCD says, "Anonymity + Audience = Asshole". Now, that's "Anonymous".
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.
That guy's a really well-known security author/researcher, mostly from his books and from the rootkit devel community rootkit.com, which now seems to be down as well. Take a look at http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/02/hbgary-federal-hacked-by-anonymous/
They managed to social engineer a site network admin into giving them SSH access. Hoglund has apparently given a phone interview of some sort, but I can't find a transcription if one exists.
Emotions! In your brain!
Good security is too inconvenient for the typical business person. Easy security is invariably bad security. "We want to work from home or the coffee shop and not have to remember stupid passwords!" Tough!
This is especially bad when this is supposed to be a cyber-security focused company! If I were in a decision-making position in the FBI, I would simply walk away from this company without another word. This company is clearly not up to the task of defending itself. How can they be trusted to do good research and deliver good information?
Why is it that when the government(s) refuse to listen to their people, the people get angry? Why is it that governments don't understand or appreciate that this is no small matter? And isn't it a terrible sign that when a people begin acting out against the government and parties involved that the government closes up even tighter refusing to hear anything at all? The result of this behavior is ALWAYS the same -- the angry people get even more angry and will push back even harder.
Wouldn't it be more responsible for the government to at least open up some talks before things get like this and worse? No... I know that won't happen. "We don't negotiate with terrorists!" Fine. Who WILL you negotiate? They wouldn't be "terrorists" if you didn't listen and respond!!
It's amazing how many people don't understand this. "Anonymous" is as smart or as dumb as whichever person wants to ascribe their current actions to anonymous. And the more you have a "fight against anonymous", the more you make it real. It's like a self-fulfilling fiction...someone makes it up, people hear about it, decide they want to be a part of it, and make it real, even though it was never real to begin with. Also.
But that's what makes it funny -- people have trouble even comprehending the idea of something that kinda functions as though it were an organization on the outside, but is instead a largely chaotic swarm people who enter and leave seemingly at random, with no real leadership or formal direction, beyond someone painting a target and inciting the great swarming mobs of the internet to attack it.
Hence the whole "We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget." It is an accurate description -- they are a largely nameless and faceless mob of uncountable number (because who is and is not part changes constantly at a whim), and so long as one of their number recalls something, it can be brought out as a "fresh" target again later.
but the government acting out is just an act of defiance to accept their ....so US gov. please accept that you did some wrong, and should maybe pull back
accountability in this....and that only leads to more
There's approximately a 0% chance that will happen. No, the government operates pretty much along the same lines that you described: screw with us, you get burned. Retaliation leads to more retaliation. The situation will escalate until the government makes participating in raids uncomfortably risky or the teenagers get bored.