Attacked By Anonymous, HBGary Pulls Out of RSA

itwbennett writes "HBGary Federal cancelled a talk the company's CEO Aaron Barr was planning to give at the BSides San Francisco conference on his investigation of WikiLeaks. 'I was receiving death threats,' Barr said in an interview Tuesday. 'There was lots of talk that was being made of in the Anonymous IRC channels of harassing us at our booth and sending people to heckle [HBGary speakers at the conference].' The company has also decided to pull its booth from the RSA Conference floor after it was vandalized on Sunday, said Jim Butterworth, HBGary's vice president of services. 'We... came back the next morning and it was very apparent that the group responsible for the activities in the news had decided to make another statement,' he said."

Comments

Anatomy of the Hack

[eldavojohn]

Ars has a really good summary of the attack that used really run-of-the-mill stuff from social engineering via e-mail to an SQL injection of HBGary's CMS using this URL: http://www.hbgaryfederal.com/pages.php?pageNav=2&page=27

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[cabjf]

I liked this article better. Not very technical, but it does show what kind of person Aaron Barr really is. The greatest part is that he tried to play Anonymous just to drum up government business and seemed to think there would be no repercussions.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree that it sounds like this guy Barr is quite an ass it doesn't excuse the criminal actions of the folks attacking him and his company. (Not that I am claiming you are excusing them; you did not say that). I just have this feeling that there are folks out there cheering for the bad guys here just because Barr is a jerk. But the folks doing these attacks and vandalizing their booth are still criminals and there isn't an excuse for that.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[amicusNYCL]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that putting a "large paper poster" on their booth doesn't really count as "vandalism".

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because a lot of people are cheering on the "Bad guys". Sorry, but "bad guys" and "good guys" are perspectives, and history is written by the winner. Here in the US a lot of people consider our forefathers to be the "good guys" instead of "domestic terrorists".

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[DarkOx]

Right a few things are evident from what has happened so far.

1. HB Gary is run by people who are arrogant, fool hardy, and hope to seek a public rent scoring themsevels a government security contract or two when they clear have nothing of value to add.

2. HB Gary as an organization is incompetent. When computer/network security is your business and you get hacked no matter how clever the hack is its a FAIL on your part. In this case while not exactly crude Anonymous ow3n4g3 of their site was not the most sophisticated crack ever seen either. HB Gary blew it big time.

3. Anonymous is in fact more than just a bunch of script kiddies, does have some organization, and does have some people of at least some sophistication. Dismissing them as a bunch of kids is worng just like dismissing the mob as a bunch of gang bangers is worng, yes there are alot of those in the organization but there betters are doing the thinking, They do represent threat if you become their adversary.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just like there wasn't an excuse when the colonial militia started behaving like criminals in the eyes of the British Crown, who was being a jerk....until of course, the revolution started and they became heroes to their fellow Americans...

Barr is much worse than just a jerk or an ass. He's a dishonest sleazeball who, if left alone, would sooner or later be guilty of far worse crimes than vandalism...

Now, I'm not saying it is OK for this group to do what they are doing, but I am reserving judgment for who in this case should be called a criminal until the dust settles...

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Azureflare]

Just read the article. Is this guy for real? He sounds like he stepped out of a webcomic about wannabe-hacker IRC lurkers.

It's very frightening that someone could get 3 (potential?) innocents arrested with little to no evidence.

I mean honestly, using badly thought out heuristics to analyze social networking data and guaranteeing "100% Success"? This guy obviously never attended a CS class.

P.S. I am not condoning the actions of Anonymous in any way, this guy just seems like he could use some more schooling. (and he got some schooling in the great college of Real Life!)

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[oliverthered]

criminal is relative to government.

Brainwashed is relative to belief.

If they passed a law against you, would you just hand yourself in and ask for the death penalty?
If so, the brainwashing must have worked.

What's the difference between the kind of DDOS they did, and a protest outside a building or store?
Why should that kind of protest be criminal behaviour where as more direct protest not be.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[GaryOlson]

Did Anonymous get a permit to protest the web site using a DDOS? Usually, police cannot break up a protest if the group has filed for a permit and does not protest on the actual property of the business. Was the DDOS on the actual property/webserver of the company; or was the DDOS on Internet public right of ways [assuming such a definition can be determined]. Where can I apply for a permit to protest a website such that all visitors must see my protest web content first?

Although the whole concept of getting a permit to protest is bizarre....

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Wyatt Earp]

Thats because the America Revolution wasn't "domestic terrorism".

From 1770 to 1776 the colonies had public conventions, meetings and publicly complained about their problems with the United Kingdom's rule. The colonies in today's Canada, Barbados, Bahamas and Florida (Florida wasn't part of the US until 1819, and not a state till 1845) were told and invited to send delegates.

While the colonies were complaining the United Kingdom kept turning up the heat by passing more laws and taxes designed to piss off the colonies.

It wasn't a bunch of men sitting around in a basement deciding what building to blow up, it turned into a civil war in North America and spawned European wars between the powers there.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Bassman59]

Thats because the America Revolution wasn't "domestic terrorism".

From 1770 to 1776 the colonies had public conventions, meetings and publicly complained about their problems with the United Kingdom's rule. The colonies in today's Canada, Barbados, Bahamas and Florida (Florida wasn't part of the US until 1819, and not a state till 1845) were told and invited to send delegates.

While the colonies were complaining the United Kingdom kept turning up the heat by passing more laws and taxes designed to piss off the colonies.

It wasn't a bunch of men sitting around in a basement deciding what building to blow up, it turned into a civil war in North America and spawned European wars between the powers there.

I think the parent poster's point had nothing to do with British rule, and everything to do with how the native people were treated.

OK, so it's probably not entirely correct to call them "domestic terrorists." I suppose "foreign invaders" is a better description.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Will.Woodhull]

While I generally agree that taking the law into your own hands is inexcusable criminal activity, I also understand that under certain circumstances, vigilante actions may be excusable. This is as true today as it was in the American Far West back in the days following the Civil War, when roaming bands of outlaws with cavalry training and deadly-crazy cases of PTSD were preying on isolated farms and ranches a day's hard ride or more from the nearest lawman.

Vigilante activity may be excusable when

1. The processes of law cannot be brought to bear quickly enough to prevent a major escalation of the problem;
2. The core integrity of a nascent and tenuous social structure is directly threatened.

There is a widely held belief that these conditions exist on today's Internet. Something new in the way people relate to each other is definitely happening there, and the law is definitely too far behind the technological advances to be able to do anything useful. The people who are spending time forging things like Tunisia and Egypt on these new and lawless fringes of society have to protect themselves and what they are trying to build, because the law is not yet capable of doing that.

Now whether this argument holds in the specific case of Anonymous' attack on HBGary Federal is something that historians will argue over after the dust is settled. I certainly won't venture a guess. The thing is unfolding now, and there is no way to judge who is right and who is wrong, under laws that do not yet even exist.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[PraiseBob]

"[HBGary] proposed services to clients like a law firm working with Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that included cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns, phishing emails and fake social networking profiles, pressuring journalists and intimidating the financial donors to clients’ enemies including WikiLeaks, unions and non-profits that opposed the Chamber."

"HBGary Federal’s Barr offered tactics like mining Classmates.com for information about a target individual’s friends, then building fake Facebook pages to gain access to subject’s personal details. He and Hoglund also discussed using spear phishing, a technique that typically plants malicious software on a user’s machine with a carefully spoofed email message."

Barr's company regularly engaged in criminal hacking behavior, working for the highest bidder and fighting against freedom. The hackers who broke into their systems and exposed this did in fact break the law also. But, they were targeting criminals. HBGary seemingly targets innocent people who have ideals about the freedom of information, journalists, and people in charities and non-profits who challenge the authority of big business. Their business is built on intimidating the weak & suppressing information.

So you think there are folks cheering for the anonymous "bad guys" who exposed all of this? You are damn right there are.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Anonymous Coward]

The show was run by a couple of admins he identified as "Q," "Owen," and "CommanderX"

Wait...Q....the Quakenet bot?

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Anonymous Coward]

Just read the article. Is this guy for real? He sounds like he stepped out of a webcomic about wannabe-hacker IRC lurkers.

Actually, if I didn't know it was for real I would have sworn that the author had just watched Hackers and changed the names.

Barr == Eugene / Mr. "The Plague"
Leavy == Margo (ok, so this one's a stretch)
Anonymous == Crash Overide/Acid Burn/Cereal Killer/Lord Nikon/Joey

"Hack the Planet!!!" L0L

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Black Parrot]

I liked this article better. Not very technical, but it does show what kind of person Aaron Barr really is. The greatest part is that he tried to play Anonymous just to drum up government business and seemed to think there would be no repercussions.

He also got caught managing a dirty tricks campaign to smear Wikileaks and critics of the US Chamber of Commerce. He was disseminating personal information about the people he wanted smeared, but threw a crybaby fit when his name came out in connection with it.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[mangu]

Wait...Q....the Quakenet bot?

No, this Q

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this Q.

http://www.qthaibistrony.com/

Which had a picture of the other Q on the wall.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[sootman]

You're right. It's terrorism!!!!!11

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[GooberToo]

HB Gary as an organization is incompetent. When computer/network security is your business and you get hacked no matter how clever the hack is its a FAIL on your part. In this case while not exactly crude Anonymous ow3n4g3 of their site was not the most sophisticated crack ever seen either. HB Gary blew it big time

This clearly indicates you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Say it with me so you can understand. There is no such thing as a completely secure system which is turned on and connected to the internet. Period. Unless you have proof he vetted every single line of code and then stated in absolute terms the code is invulnerable, you're delusional at best. Besides, no matter how secure the code base, social engineering always looms. Anyone and everyone who has any security credibility knows this - which says a lot about you.

To attempt to paint a horribly distorted view of reality over what the rest of the readership here is extremely disingenuous. Please stop it.

Anonymous is NOT a mega-cult of brainless people waiting in line to sacrifice themselves on the alter of your delusion. Period. These attacks exist because Anonymous feels, well, anonymous. When high profile participants are arrested and no longer anonymous, as has always happened in the past with these types of attacks, the rest disappear into the background. So please, stop presenting the world your altruistic delusion as fact. Aside from your delusion, there is absolutely nothing on which to base your fantasy.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Korin43]

Although the whole concept of getting a permit to protest is bizarre....

So why did you even bring it up? The fact that the law says you need a permit doesn't change the fact that getting a permit for a protest is stupid.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Thoreauly Nuts]

there is no way to judge who is right and who is wrong, under laws that do not yet even exist.

This is just an appeal to law fallacy. Laws don't determine right and wrong, and we don't need them to be able to make such a distinction.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Doomdark]

Thats because the America Revolution wasn't "domestic terrorism".

Many techniques used were in fact labelled as terrorism even back then. And if one uses current de-facto political definitions (as various governments, including some western ones, do), could be construed to be such: guerilla warfare, vandalism, theft, obstruction of legal system...This does not diminish value or righteousness of revolution, just points out dangers of using a label without context; and especially fallacy of equating current laws with moral.

So: given that american colonies were part of English rule, and many activities were criminal (thanks to malevolent laws etc), yes, much of it was technically domestic terrorism. And no, there was nothing wrong with that; due to corruptness of the (legal, political) system of the time.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Wyatt Earp]

You mean how the Indian Nations took sides in the war, some fighting along side the Colonies and some fighting for the British?

And then after the war the United States signed treaties with them all, leading to things like Treaty of Canandaigua? Which the United States still honors 215 years later?

Or do you mean the greater mythological idea that the White Man came to the New World, lying, cheating and stealing took the lands from an idyllic perfect and innocent native american paradise?

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Machtyn]

I agree with the parent AC. If Barr really didn't get the personal info of Anonymous members as Anonymous claims, why are they still continuing the attack on HBGary? Because their demands haven't been met? Their demands were fairly unreasonable, in my opinion.

In a related subject, why would Anonymous want to shout out Barr? His theories about social points revealing a person who is trying to remain anonymous is interesting, if off-base and unprovable (as his lead developer was trying to tell him). This really goes for most protestors - if you think a person is an idiot, let him speak and remove all doubt.

Now, there are some Anonymous protests that I agree with... I just don't agree with the method of some of their protests. There is a difference between criminal protests and civil disobediance. (The difference between a DDoS and front page grafitti could be an example.)

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Altus]

As long as that jackass is working for HBGary they are going to be targeted. If they get rid of him I suspect that, given a little time, things will cool off.

But its not an organized group, there is not command structure. This "vandal" might just be some guy at the conference who thought it would be funny, someone who would never actually engage in hacking under the name anonymous. It might even have been an employee at another security company looking to embarrass the competition. It will take time for the heat to come off HBGary, but its not going to come off at all if Barr is still employed by them (which, last I heard, he was)

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[gknoy]

It may not have been an idyllic paradise filled with innocent natives, but the US government has certainly done an extensive amount of lying, cheating, and stealing from the natives. Consider the treaties we broke with the Lakotah: http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_huey.html

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[yurtinus]

Curious what history books you read... Honest dealings between the Americans and natives were not exactly the norm during the US westward expansion. Taking a narrow view of history from any perspective doesn't do it any justice.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[euphemistic]

Large paper posters can be vandalism, I was imagining something massive and pasted to their booth sign or something... Then I saw the photo.

I can see why they're quaking in their boots.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, not just that. I mean yes, he never attended a statistics class (for myself, when I went to university, a CS prof. was married to another prof. I was taking statistics from.... dammit, every day I was getting pumped for answers... I liked CS, didn't care so much for statistics, passed it anyway), but not just that. I read some of what he typed. Its not just that he has no numeracy skills, he has no literacy skills either. Accept? Did he mean except? The one article tries to take him to task on the matter, although later he types 'to' when he should have typed 'too'. When I was in CS, 1) if your literacy was that bad, then you were a crap coder, since the computer is *SERIOUSLY* more pedantic about syntax than any school teacher I've ever met :COBOL wants an ENVIRONMENT DIVISION, and if you spell it any other way, BAM! 2) Not just that, but in AI you study natural language processing, and you have to understand and codify a noun phrase/verb phrase to get the computer to understand. The computer does not know, you have to tell it, CORRECTLY or things fail quite badly, and 3) I remember one semester (second semester of the third year) besides all of the papers I had to write for other classes, and all the software I had to turn in (it all amounted to about 25 10 page essays for the semester), one was for CS. Yes it all had to be technically correct, but the CS prof. was a lot harder than any English prof. I ever had when it came to punctuation/grammar. Arron Barr never studied. Anything. He pestered the 'coder' to get the source for the LOIC and compile it? He couldn't do this himself when the coder balked? What 'extra code' was he going to add? Was it him, or was it his 'coder'? Was it going to be real code, or was it going to be comments and buddy buck-wheat doesn't know the difference? How did old Arron get a job? Clearly the coder had more sense, and more smarts, and was a better coder than his half-cooked, half-cocked, garbage-head 'analysis'. Am I wrong?

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[PitaBred]

And here in the US we keep trying to change the actions of the government, swapping political parties by voting differently and still getting the same shit out of the process. And people are pissed. Obama's "change" has included taking away more rights of citizens and doing very little of what was promised. He sure as shit hasn't released any of the powers that Bush acquired after 9/11, even though there's no serious present threat that would necessitate those. Our country is not in a constant state of war, no matter what the government would want you to believe.

The planning of the Boston Tea Party wasn't done in public. The Federalist Papers were written with a pseudonym. Anonymous has it's place and a very important sort of power that being publicly known removes, and will continue to get support from people as long as they keep doing things that are morally "right". Not legally. Morally. They're not the same.

Read some history, kid.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[oliverthered]

well if their is disruption on the public right of way to the website then surly is that not seeing the content of the protest, in a similar way to physical bodies or objects. E=MC^2 after all.

Connection failures and ping times are the digital equivalent of down with whoever, or having to go around or between protesters.

I'd say it was a bit like chants or signs being visible from inside the place of business as the doors and windows where open etc....

They didn't actually 'hack' the servers [where the work is done], only disrupt access to the place of work. I don't think you could say the workers where intimidated, only made to think a bit more about the work they where doing.

Re:Anatomy of the Hack

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though there is no such thing as a completely secure system (and I agree that the concept of security is a completely made-up idea that cannot exist by absolute definition) I think YOU are the delusional one. How is it delusional to assume any half-assed IT 'security' company would never A) transmit plain text root passwords, or even user accounts or passwords of any kind B) transmit public Ip's, C) they dont encrypt anything D) they don't patch their local public network connected linux machines in case someone infiltrated their firewall somehow (or inadvertantly gave them access via email!!!!) E) their CMS had gaping holes for a public facing site ... If you know so much about security, how can such a basic as a social engineering attack slip past an expert? Jussi should have KNOWN that Gary would never ask for a plaintext root password and maybe would use a more secure channel than EMAIL to obtain a public facing ip??

Anonymous (from what I understand) has a few very talented and resourceful guys, and a ton of support skids and followers, but what sets them aside from all the blackhats selling CC lists on websites, insider trading, or stealing company R&D secrets and selling them to other companies, is the fact that what they're doing is not for material gain, purely for dissent. These attacks are almost political in nature and show a paradigm shift in the thinking and actions of certain talented people who are not immune to mob mentality.

That's War

[drinkypoo]

Tell lies about Wikileaks? That's War
Want to mess with Anonymous? That's War

It's an all-out war between the forces of good and evil that has never stopped and will never stop. The price of freedom? Constant vigilance.

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an all-out war between the forces of good and evil that has never stopped and will never stop.

Wait, is that part of the Green Lantern Corps creed or something from the Thundercats?

I could take stuff like this more seriously if people didn't have such cartoonish perceptions of what "good" and "evil" actually mean, and stopped trying to pretend they are some sort of freedom fighters when all they are is vandals and bullies who get off on what they are doing

If *real* fascists ever took control in this country, most of these people would shit themselves on a continuous basis before the secret police killed them, their families, their pets, burned down their houses and killed a few others standing around just to send a message.

Re:That's War

[LWATCDR]

Want to mess with the NSA, DOD, CIA, and FBI? People talk about when dealing with Anonymous that you shouldn't "poke the bear".
In this case if they want to go to war it would be wise to take a good look at the bears that Anonymous is poking. So this is war... The problem is they are starting a war with people that fight wars for a living and have real guns.
Across the world thousands of basements will soon be going dark.
 

Re:That's War

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If *real* fascists ever took control in this country, most of these people would shit themselves on a continuous basis before the secret police killed them, their families, their pets, burned down their houses and killed a few others standing around just to send a message.

Which is why attempting to foil incremental steps in that direction, before they reach fruition, is sort of a good idea, no?

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

Comical. It really looks like a war of Evil vs Evil. I could care less who wins, the law or the packet kiddies, I simply wish they would stop believing they are doing this for some vague sense of justice.

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

They fabricated facts and lied about everything else, most likely they vandalized their own booth.

Re:That's War

[Nethemas the Great]

Tell that to Anonymous in Egypt.

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the FBI that keeps being proven to have just plain MADE SHIT UP to go after people?

Re:That's War

[spun]

If *real* fascists ever took control in this country, most of these people would shit themselves on a continuous basis before the secret police killed them, their families, their pets, burned down their houses and killed a few others standing around just to send a message.

Which is why attempting to foil incremental steps in that direction, before they reach fruition, is sort of a good idea, no?

Yes, but there is the whole "boy who cried wolf" aspect to constantly calling everything you don't like "fascism." Not everything presages the immanent collapse of American civilization. And the AC has a good point about people's cartoonish perception of good and evil.

Re:That's War

[ISoldat53]

Who would believe anything he says?

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to consider the possibility of actively working in the opposite direction. The main reason modern "democracies" don't have crushing authoritarian regimes is because the people are such sheep that force isn't necessary. Just give them McDonalds and TV (the modern bread and circuses), and they will take whatever the elites want to dish out.

Re:That's War

[kevinNCSU]

You mean the FBI that keeps being proven to have just plain MADE SHIT UP to go after people?

I don't think you understand the whole poking a bear concept. Your response is akin to saying "You mean the same bear that ripped a dude's arm off and ate it for NO REASON?!?" Yes kind sir, that is indeed the bear you should think twice before poking.

Re:That's War

[NoSleepDemon]

Your post is confusing, you seem to imply that you couldn't care less, yet you say you could. Exactly how much less could you care?

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, for the love of... you just have ONE fucking successful social uprising — just ONE, ONE SINGLE ONE — that you can assign SOME PARTIAL credit to the internet for, and every goddamned group of vandals, bullies, and trolls are suddenly a bunch of infallible FREEDOM(tm) FIGHTERS OF FREEDOM(tm) AND FREE(tm) FREENESS(tm).

Grow the fuck up. We'll all be here laughing when the mob's power trip keeps going and they decide you're doing something they don't like. Or have a name that sounds similar to someone doing something they don't like.

It's people like you who make me think Mikey Kristopeit might have a point about Slashdot's readerbase going downhill.

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody who thinks Anonymous is doing shit to protect their freedoms is delusional. Their attack on HBGary has done exactly zero for the efforts to protect the rights of the US citizenry. In fact, the only thing it has done is proven they are childish attention whores who have no regard for what is actually right or wrong. They just want to break shit. Not that HBGary shouldn't be humiliated because they should. All the security breaches were the result of blatant stupidity and hubris.

Re:That's War

[jedidiah]

Humiliating a corporation is not "poking the bear". The FBI may or may not be interested in persuing this. This sort of problem is why there the likes of the RIAA and MPAA are running amok in the civil courts.

Sometimes, the G-Men just don't care. It's not glamorous enough or whatever.

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to spoil your wet dreams about government efficiency, but... NSA, DOD, CIA, FBI... on that list we have exactly 1 organization with experience in war. And exactly 1 organization that knows what "cyber-war" actually is. The CIA doesn't operate inside the USA, and the FBI is a glorified local police station. They have better resources, but they are still just cops.

So that leaves a serious threat from the DOD, which likely doesn't even know what Anon is, or much care, since there are real threats out there. And the NSA, whom, I can only assume, has better things to do than pursue a bunch of petty criminals over some flame war between a forum and a wanna be contractor. That leaves us back with the FBI being the only actual threatening agency, and while certainly an efficient law enforcement agency, they are far from prepared to fight this kind of war.

Now about that word... war. I don't think it means what you think it means. Because I can promise you, if Anon went to WAR, there would be home made bombs going off and infrastructure going down, and generally something approaching mayhem in the streets. Or... at least that would be the goal, the most likely reality is 1 or 2 bombs go off, a couple power grids go dark and pages and pages of /b/ get filled with images cropped from Fight Club.

In any case, the outcome here is the same as it has always been. A couple of dumb asses are going to take all the heat. 50% will martyr themselves, the other 50% will cry for their mommies. 5% random chance that any "caught" individual commits suicide. (1% chance that it will be live broadcast). The FBI and any one else working on this will hold up a couple of arrests as proof they found the leadership (ahahahahaha) and it will all fade away into the 24 hour news cycle.

Our legal system is woefully unable to deal with groups like Anon. We failed with the mafia. We failed with the next mafia (we call them corporations), and we will fail with "new age..." wait " NuAge" groups like Anon. Anon is worse than the rest, because there really isn't any leadership to speak of. You can't cut the head off (not that we've been terribly good at that sort of thing anyway).

   

Re:That's War

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Do you think that the acquisition of documentary evidence(that would never otherwise have come to light) of the sort of dirty-tricks tactics used by entities like the "Chamber of Commerce" is actually of zero value? Or the revelation that comparatively well respected US contractors would be putting out proposals to do the hatchet work?

I have no wish to claim that every member of anonymous(to the degree that there are "members") is some sort of heroic altruist. I strongly suspect that many of them are just pranksters, vandals, or dumb kids. Similarly, I would be wholly unsurprised to discover that Assuage is a creepy attention whore with serious grandiosity issues.

However, judgement-by-personality is only relevant for people I have to deal with personally. In this realm, I only care about results. I care what they are doing, not why they are doing it.

Re:That's War

[_Sprocket_]

Which sounds all nice and fine. Unless you start really looking at where the lines of "good" and "evil" are drawn and who's drawing them. I'm wary of anyone who wants to put the signs of "good" and "evil" above any of these actors.

Re:That's War

[LWATCDR]

Yep and they don't get it. You should see the post that anon if they went to war would start blowing up stuff and taking out infrastructure. They fans live in a fantasy world.

Re:That's War

[ego centrik]

... given, that they find the light switch.

Re:That's War

[uniquename72]

I'll put it a little less retardedly: Being as asshole isn't a crime, but it should be. And since the government/police can't do anything about it, it's always nice when someone else who can steps in.

It's how the world works, and it how the world *should* work. You're an asshole in a bar? Someone kicks your ass. You drive/park like an asshole? Someone keys your car or slashes your tires. Actions have consequences. Most of us learn that at a very young age, and therefore don't give in to our asshole urges. Then there are assholes like Aaron Barr, who desperately need a refresher course every now and then.

Unfortunately for him, he didn't just get his ass kicked or get his car fucked with. But kudos to Anon for putting an asshole in his place.

Re:That's War

[uniquename72]

The CIA doesn't operate inside the USA...

Hahahahaha!!!!

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

So you believe the ends justify the means? Interesting...

What about the fact that the release of the user registration database from rootkit.com was completely uncalled for. What exactly did that action accomplish? Jack shit. Their actions tell you they will betray your trust. They have absolutely no restraint or discipline. If you're really interested in protecting liberty, you will need moral restraint.

That's to say nothing of the idea that MasterCard et al. should have been attacked for not doing business with Wikileaks. That action right there is proof Anonymous does not actually believe in liberty. MasterCard is well within their rights to do business with who ever they damn well please. What's that? You don't like that? Tough shit, if you want liberty, those are the breaks.

Anonymous doesn't even understand their own philosophy enough to not be hypocrites.

Re:That's War

[moxley]

Totally agree - what does this guy think that everything is flowers and puppies and then one day all at once the fascism starts?

No, it happpens incrementally, just as it is happening here, just as it happened in the Weimar Republic transition to fascist Germany, just as it happened in Italy and Spain, (though in addition to economic crisises there was post war faction/partisan street violence at times which helped stoke a lot of public fear and a desire for strength and stability in government) - now days we have the ever present "terrorism," fear mongering, economic crisises, war, government corruption etc - we are still headed down the same path.

Hitler made gradual changes early on, and there were a lot of people worried and criticizing him, explaining where the country was headed. They were derided by national socialist press and others as being alarmist - guess where they ended up shortly there after? Among the first to be put in camps. As is oft quoted, Everything Hitler did was legal - he made it that way.

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, enlightened societies do not condone nor encourage vigilantism. You can't argue for government oversight and then turn around and argue for a system with no means of oversight.

Re:That's War

[ElectricTurtle]

To complete your analogy, bears like that get hunted and put down. I do not and will not advocate violence against the FBI, but the flip side of the coin of systemic, possibly criminal negligence in an agency empowered to enforce federal laws is not roll over and ignore it. That sort of cowardice will only encourage worse behavior from an organization that is supposed to be working for and accountable to the public.

Re:That's War

[kevinNCSU]

It really amazes me how we've survived as a species if this many people have trouble with the whole "don't poke the bear" concept. What you say is true, if you decide a bear needs to be dealt with you go hunt it with a gun. But can you guess what you DON'T walk up and do to it first? ;) But I jest, I think we're on the same page here.

Re:That's War

[LWATCDR]

But in this case the guys with the guns are the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DOD.
Maybe in this case we should say that bar shouldn't poke the hunting party.

Re:That's War

[LWATCDR]

ha ha ha. Anon the people that couldn't take down Amazon? They are a bunch of script kiddies people.

Re:That's War

[drinkypoo]

Want to mess with the NSA, DOD, CIA, and FBI? People talk about when dealing with Anonymous that you shouldn't "poke the bear".

yeah well, I'm certainly not downloading and running any DDoS tools, unless Windows XP or 7 says so... I have a couple 'doze machines on my network still. All with DEP but that's kleenex.

Re:That's War

[ColdWetDog]

Yes, but there is the whole "boy who cried wolf" aspect to constantly calling everything you don't like "fascism." Not everything presages the immanent collapse of American civilization. And the AC has a good point about people's cartoonish perception of good and evil.

Most of us don't have the tinfoil wrapped so tight as to worry about the immanent collapse of civilization but are nonetheless indeed worried about the downhill slide. Nothing new, America (and every other country, we aren't unique) has had runs of demagoguery throughout history. The proper reaction to that, IMHO, is to keep up the drumbeat and constantly point it out. Yes, it raises the volume but the very real danger of letting a civil society lapse into various levels of barbary is simply to great to ignore. You are of course, allowed to put on your goggles and just watch Disney, some of the rest of us are more than a little worried.

The black and white description of good and evil is something that has been a constant theme with humans since before Greek tragedies. I don't understand why many people want it to be such a diametric opposite since in the real world it is much more nuanced, but there you have it. It does serve to frame the argument and makes lovely sound bites. Hopefully enough people realize that it's a fiction, good for comic books, not so applicable to the real world.

Re:That's War

[jav1231]

Oh please. Wikileaks stepped off the high-horse of nobility when they started wielding their information as a weapon regardless of it's relevance. So yeah, it's war. But when you start talking about going after them, suddenly it's not war. It's conspiracy. You can't have it both ways. Anonymous exist due to vast numbers of minions and the anonymity of it's core. But in the grand scheme of things are they any better than terrorists with masks over their faces? I realize the ends-justify-the-means is popular among youth and geekdom, in some cases but there are costs. That said, while I may applaud some of what they do (Wikileaks and Anon) I'm not going to lower myself to the blind, juvenile stupidity of thinking everything they do is good. Neither are without serious flaws and Assange is no messiah. There seems to be no one willing to point out bad that may very well exist in the so-called good. For the acts that are illegal and clearly a violation of other's rights, both Wikileaks and Anonymous should be tried. For what good they may do, I have no problem giving a hats off.

Re:That's War

[spun]

There is a bit of middle ground between "American society is on the verge of collapse" and "put on your goggles and just watch Disney," but, you know, thanks for assuming that I must be some sort of human-sheep hybrid because I am trying to inject a little rationality into a conversation that started with the laughably over-the-top phrase "It's an all-out war between the forces of good and evil that has never stopped and will never stop."

Re:That's War

[ShakaUVM]

>>Yes, but there is the whole "boy who cried wolf" aspect to constantly calling everything you don't like "fascism."

Seriously. Some ravers I knew got together to sue to the police for shutting down one of their parties, crying the whole time about fascism.

If we were living in an actual fascist society that move would have been... unproductive.

People use the word "fascist" to mean, "Anything relating to authority that I don't like."

Re:That's War

[Zeinfeld]

Vigilantism is wrong

That is why anonymous should be behind bars and so should anyone from Themis who has broken the law as proposed in this document.

the attacks proposed were against wikileaks, not just anonymous. There is no evidence wikileaks has broken us law. So this is not even vigilantism, it is a criminal attack.

Re:That's War

[Phaedrus420]

He could, but it wouldn't be worth the effort.

Re:That's War

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You might want to get you reading comprehension checked. I said that Motives (not Means) are of no interest.

Results are of interest, as are means; but motives are irrelevant drivel that I leave to the hypothetical biographers.

As it happens, I find Anonymous' results to be largely positive. Their means are more mixed(as is not especially surprising in an "organization" that anybody can claim, at any time, to be acting in the name of); but I think that they've been quite useful and comparatively restrained. Not saints, certainly, but their collateral damage levels aren't exactly keeping me up at night.

Re:That's War

[mr_walrus]

kinda like calling everything you dont like "terrorism" ??

Re:That's War

[mr_walrus]

script kiddies capable of learning - fast.
pretty much every resistance movement *started* with misteps and 'amateur' methods,
then they develop into the level of skill and efficiency required for their particular mission.

Re:That's War

[LWATCDR]

resistance movement... Gang of thugs. Historically the resistance movements often tend to be as bad or worse than the government they replace. Not all mind you but a lot of them.

Re:That's War

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, my reading comprehension is far and away beyond yours. You are implicitly authorizing unacceptable means because you only care about the results.

In this realm, I only care about results.

Your words. You only care about results. That means you don't care about how those results are produced. "The ends justify the means." actually means you only care about the results. I would suggest you brush up on your reading and language skills.

And I have yet to see the positive results of them acting like children. They have absolutely zero concern for justice, just their own selfish desires.

Re:That's War

[tnk1]

That depends on whether your actions in supposedly foiling the fascists instead make people pine for the security and comfort that a fascist state might provide.

Consider Ronald Reagan. It has been pretty plainly laid out that the man who is now the Golden Calf of Conservatism was a New Deal liberal democrat (by his own admission) who was so offended by the actions of the people that supposedly held the same beliefs he did that he found himself doing a complete about-face. Whether or not you think that reflects well on him as a person, you can't ignore the fact that many, many other people may feel the same way.

Just because you say that you are fighting fascists, or even mean to be fighting fascists deep in your heart, does not mean that your actions won't put the fascists in power. If anything, doing stuff like that and mentioning the fascists tends to have the effect of reminding people that the fascists are an option.

Anonymous is not a group or organization, its barely a movement. It's a name that people have used to rally to because it represents the state that enables them to act: anonymity. Its sort of like the Anarchists who were carrying out the Propaganda of the Deed activities by blowing up things in the early 20th Century. They were unorganized individuals who acted independently blowing up reactionary aristocrats and plutocrats, but all they succeeded in doing was frightening the populace, scaring moderate leaders into becoming reactionary tyrants, and of course, provided a convenient excuse for starting World War I.

Consider other huge, faceless movements and the uses they have been put to in the past. The Red Scare comes to mind. Its easy to blame the Red Menace for everything. The only thing that even checked that tendency even a little bit was that Communists had a particular theory and goal. They had a base that could be guarded against (the Soviet Union). They were actual people who could be engaged in conversations and questioned to get their actual opinions, even if you started off by assuming that they were nefarious evil-doers.

Without organization, you don't even need agent provocateurs to infiltrate Anonymous, you just construct an outrageous act and say Anonymous did it. And Anonymous DID do it, because even Joe Fascist is Anonymous if he wants to be, right?

Vandalized?

[sureshot007]

Vandalized booth = a sign that says "Anon...In it 4 The LuLz..." http://yfrog.com/gzbvtllj I was expecting the booth to have been burned to the ground or something.

Re:Vandalized?

[TaoPhoenix]

Nice tidbit.

So a "security company" is afraid of a sign?

I'd sooner place my bets they're in the Long Con to paint "Anonymous" (there can be only one, right?) as a Threat. Then everyone in power profits when draconian measures come along.

Re:Vandalized?

[Kokuyo]

I think this is just another perfect example of just how full of himself AND how much of a crybaby Mr. Barr is.

Re:Vandalized?

[Sockatume]

They were in the long con. Now they're outed and everyone's so sceptical when they cry "threat!" that people investigate, find out things like the nature of the vandalism, and they come out looking even stupider than they did before.

Re:Vandalized?

[Sarten-X]

HBGary is not in the business of preventing or withstanding attacks. They're the guys who will investigate events after the fact, compiling nice piles of evidence to hand over to the FBI/police/whomever.

The sign on the booth is a threat. Note that "vandalized" was ITworld's chosen word. The message is clear: "Anonymous is here, and has the same utter lack of respect in real life as online." Given that there were many threats ranging from harassing the booth staff to heckling the speakers, and even up to death, the sign potentially serves as a last warning: Let Anonymous ravage whatever they want, or die.

It makes sense for HBGary to step out of the line of fire, just in case somebody's crazy enough to act on those death threats. Death is not their business. I expect that the sign is being checked for fingerprints, the conference attendee list is being subpoenaed, and security cameras are being reviewed.

I'd also expect that HBGary will use this incident to paint Anonymous as a group of people who constitute a real threat. They stalk and harass a target organization for as long as they're interested, with expenses and lost income costs rising daily. This dedication is as much a problem to Anonymous as to their targets, and HBGary is now playing a great game: they're trolling the trolls. With every public move HBGary makes, Anonymous is drawn into acting. That's another 4chan post, another analysis, another page in HBGary's final report on Anonymous, and another customer impressed by the company's thorough attention to detail.

Re:Vandalized?

[jovius]

)

Whew!

Re:Vandalized?

[_Sprocket_]

I'd sooner place my bets they're in the Long Con to paint "Anonymous" (there can be only one, right?) as a Threat. Then everyone in power profits when draconian measures come along.

Right - and some Machiavellian government bureaucrat is sitting back in his high-backed chair, petting a white cat, repeatedly saying "excellent."

I'd call it differently. Barr has an idea - using public information gleaned to expose relationships and additional information. It's not entirely a bad idea. However, plenty of good ideas have met a sudden end when implementing them effectively proves to be difficult. Barr ignores warnings that his implementation is lacking and generates publicity. As things ratchet up, he discovers that his implementation isn't as good as he thought. But by now too many people are watching to simply bow out. He invokes the Anonymous boogie man to provide himself a way out of the corner he's painted himself in to. Anonymous complies because being scary boogie men appeals to them.

Re:Vandalized?

[Spykk]

the sign potentially serves as a last warning: Let Anonymous ravage whatever they want, or die.

No, the sign means that some kid on 4-chan saw that he was coming to his area and decided it would be funny. People who portray anonymous as some sort of sinister agency just don't understand what it is. There is no anonymous. There are no leaders or plans. There is only an anonymous forum where random strangers occasionally post suggestions. If enough people think they are funny they happen.

Re:Vandalized?

[Kuukai]

HBGary is not in the business of preventing or withstanding attacks.

From their website title:

HBGary :: Detect. Diagnose. Respond.

Anonymous intruded on their network for several days without being detected, eventually just plain revealing themselves. Here's a totally-real testimonial on their front page from the esteemed research organization "Research Organization":

Greg Hoglund and the team at HBGary provide some of the most innovative products in cyberdefense. Our advantage in staying ahead of the evolving threat is HBGary's predictive knowledge of the entire malware culture and ecosystem. Their capability goes well beyond the usual, reactive response to individual exploits. We consider them one of our best partners.

Also from their front page:

HBGary, Inc., a leading provider of next-generation threat intelligence solutions for Fortune 500 and government organizations, announced Inoculator, a innovative, patent-pending enterprise agentless appliance solution designed to detect, remove, and, with its breakthrough Digital Antibody technology, PREVENT re-infection of known malware.

Anyone who hires them after this incident is an idiot who likes bright lights and noise. Amazon, a book store, was totally secure against Anonymous' attacks. There's no excuse for a security firm not to be.

Re:Vandalized?

[PraiseBob]

the sign potentially serves as a last warning: Let Anonymous ravage whatever they want, or die.

A sign that says, 'in it for the lulz' is a death threat? Do you really think that? If so, you must also think that Nelson on the Simpsons, going 'Ha Ha' is a death threat.

Re:Vandalized?

[JonySuede]

thank you !

Re:Vandalized?

[DaFallus]

Are you my 9th grade English teacher? She was also very good at inventing meaning in the most trivial of details.

Re:Vandalized?

[Belial6]

Huh, leaving note is vandalism? Apparently my wife vandalized my kitchen table just this morning.

Seriously, while that certainly could be called harassment, calling it 'vandalism' is an out and out lie.

Re:Vandalized?

[HBI]

That isn't going to stop some foolish people from paying the price for their really idiotic actions. Drawing the attention of the government to you as an individual is a surefire way to have a miserable, short life. History would teach that, if people would read it.

I'll be here with the popcorn, laughing.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

the sign potentially serves as a last warning: Let Anonymous ravage whatever they want, or die.

You're stretching it a bit thin.

Re:Vandalized?

[uniquename72]

The sign on the booth is a threat.

I can't for the life of my see how that could be construed as a threat. It was probably some random person with nothing to do with Anonymous, having a little laugh at HBGary's expense.

Is it a threat to say to someone, "Hey, you got pwned!"? Of course not.

Re:Vandalized?

[Pandrake]

It's the Laughing Man. (again/soon/was)

Re:Vandalized?

[OzPeter]

Anyone who hires them after this incident is an idiot who likes bright lights and noise.

In an article that a some on above posted a link to, there was a reference that HBGary was for sale. Who would buy them after this?

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

notice how the cowardly bullies also always pull out the "death threats" card? please produce said death threats and turn them over to the authorities.

Re:Vandalized?

[horza]

HBGary is not in the business of preventing or withstanding attacks. They're the guys who will investigate events after the fact, compiling nice piles of evidence to hand over to the FBI/police/whomever.

Did you not read the leaked emails? All the slides about pre-emptive attacks, infiltration, planting of fraudulent documents, etc. Interesting use of the word 'nice' to try and paint HBGary as one of the 'good' guys instead of a company planning criminal acts.

The sign on the booth is a threat. Note that "vandalized" was ITworld's chosen word. The message is clear: "Anonymous is here, and has the same utter lack of respect in real life as online." Given that there were many threats ranging from harassing the booth staff to heckling the speakers, and even up to death, the sign potentially serves as a last warning: Let Anonymous ravage whatever they want, or die.

Ok now we know you are astro-turfing for a snake oil security company. Some kid drops a note on a stand with the standard Anon catch-phrase, known by all apart from yourself, and you try and hype up some massive imaginary drama. Pathetic.

It makes sense for HBGary to step out of the line of fire, just in case somebody's crazy enough to act on those death threats. Death is not their business.

Or maybe they've been busted, and have the decency to leave out of shame?

I expect that the sign is being checked for fingerprints, the conference attendee list is being subpoenaed, and security cameras are being reviewed.

Again the melo-drama. I am sure the whole attendee list is quaking.

I'd also expect that HBGary will use this incident to paint Anonymous as a group of people who constitute a real threat

Did you miss the Anon arrests that have already happened?

They stalk and harass a target organization for as long as they're interested, with expenses and lost income costs rising daily.

Do you even read Slashdot? Try doing a search for 'scientology'

This dedication is as much a problem to Anonymous as to their targets, and HBGary is now playing a great game: they're trolling the trolls. With every public move HBGary makes, Anonymous is drawn into acting. That's another 4chan post, another analysis, another page in HBGary's final report on Anonymous, and another customer impressed by the company's thorough attention to detail.

No, HBGary are screwed.

Phillip.

Re:Vandalized?

[sesshomaru]

I wish that Anonymous could pool their money and buy them, at firesale prices.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks the information, HBGary lackey. What about HBGary conspiring to commit crimes?

Re:Vandalized?

[Charliemopps]

That's hillarious... and the sign is the size of a post card. Apparently every time my wife wants me to pick up milk she's vandalizing our refrigerator.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling Amazon a "book store" is a bit like calling IBM a "computer store" don't you think?

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it every time i come across the name Barr it is linked to a total tosser this Mr Barr my Ex landlord Miss L Barr (total slapper) they may even be brother and sister

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

So HBGary, an organization that hosts many ex-military service members who have been trained in self-defense, is so terrified by a death threat (similar to the threats countless other public figures receive daily), that they're completely justified in withdrawing from the conference? My life hasn't been threatened lately, or ever, so I'm not in a position to judge...but it seems incredulous that they would turn down the opportunity to drum up business for a company in such desperate need of it (especially now) over a likely spurious threat and a frickin' paper sign that could have been crumpled up and thrown in the garbage within the space of ten seconds.

Do you work for them or something? You're stretching your argument pretty thin in defense of them. If they're so thin skinned they really picked the wrong business anyway, and it makes their public machinations against Anonymous seem even stupider. I like your fairytale about how they're really trolling Anonymous instead of rapidly trying to salvage something out of the downward death spiral they've steered their company into.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It makes sense for HBGary to step out of the line of fire"

I wonder if their failure to secure federal contracts had something to do with their complete willingness to step out of the line of fire over something as trivial as a death threat and paper sign. Yeah, they probably don't have the cajones to handle acting in any kind of defense capacity for this country. If they want to secure the Feds against those scary cyberterrorists out there they should probably demonstrate a little more testicular fortitude.

Re:Vandalized?

[Obispus]

Anonymous had obviously gained physical access to the booth, so the canvases, table and aluminum sticks had probably been rootkitted and were no good any more. Barr made the right decision. He's such a Security God!

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Anonymous is totally innocent, right?

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

A fine list of activities. But do they take it up the Gary?

Re:Vandalized?

[Huckabees]

All the evidence indicates that the "analysis" performed by HBGary was primarily done by one man, Aaron Barr, and focused completely on scraping accessible online data. There has been no indication that the fallout and media attention (which was originally intentionally garnered, as of now it's hard to say if it's intentional anymore) is anything more than attempts to get PR.

Although a nice conspiracy theory there's nothing in the thousands of leaked emails and other data to support it.

Re:Vandalized?

[mace9984]

It does look like it may have been wrote on the back of one of their signs... Still, hardly a reason to feel as though they are in danger.

Re:Vandalized?

[Sarten-X]

Anonymous is all random people. What makes a guy with a sign any more random than a guy running LOIC, or a guy carrying a gun into a presentation?

Re:Vandalized?

[Idimmu Xul]

No, the sign means that some kid on 4-chan saw that he was coming to his area and decided it would be funny. People who portray anonymous as some sort of sinister agency just don't understand what it is. There is no anonymous. There are no leaders or plans. There is only an anonymous forum where random strangers occasionally post suggestions. If enough people think they are funny they happen.

No, the sign could mean that the booth next to them did it, or a competing company with a booth did it,or an attendee, or the conference organiser himself did it, or a cleaner or a janitor or anyone.

Reread the last part of what you wrote. Anonymous isn't just a collection of idiots on IRC, it's fucking anyone that attributes an action under that umbrella name. And that could have been anyone, even someone that just thinks HBGary are a bunch of idiots and was up for a laugh themselves but has no real implication in anything else and will never again.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Adam aren't you worried that when they check the security tapes, that they will see you leaving the sign. And all these threats coming into your company, are you having a tough time tracking down their origins? If you guys need some help I'm sure there are a few places some of the /. readers can suggest to help you resolve your security issues.

Re:Vandalized?

[Sarten-X]

Wow. Three posts in a row claiming I'm somehow in the employ of HBGary. Since yours is surprisingly the most complete, I'll respond to you.

I'm not connected to HBGary in any way (that I know of). I'm a software developer who's had projects sit on the receiving end of DDoS attacks, and has a bit of experience in the tactics used to investigate them.

After any initial threat comes investigation. In my case, I had a list of timestamps and IP addresses. A quick Perl script compiled a list of the most offensive ISPs, and we contacted them first. Some cooperated, some didn't. One of the nicest ISPs handed over a list of other places the DDoS participant had frequented. I set to work joining that community. It took several months, with little in the way of new leads, but with a few particular identifiers popping up repeatedly. Now and then, I'd drop in a reference to the DDoS against me, acting as though I had helped with it. I was soon introduced to the guy who called for the attack, and convinced him to go look at a website I had just set up, with the intent to attack it shortly. I had an admission of guilt and an IP address. He's not starting attacks anymore.

Mine was a trivially easy case, but it involved some misrepresentation, infiltration, and orchestrating another attack. Great security stuff, but I still wouldn't go speak in front of an audience of random people after getting a death threat.

HBGary is following sane procedures after a threat: they're playing it safe. Anonymous is indeed "in i 4 teh lulz", and nothing else. If a psychopath finds it funny to kill a speaker at a conference, he'll do it, and Anonymous will find it hilarious. Would you risk your life on Anonymous's real-life cowardice?

To most of the public, Anonymous is either an ill-defined group that connects with that Interweb thing, or they're a well-armed and well-organized militia that attacks online services. In truth, they're a bunch of people who merely act with no regard for consequences. As such, they are a threat. There is no central authority to broker peace with, and no predictable actions to defend against. In the case of the HBGary presenters, Anonymous simply may or may not kill them.

Anonymous does whatever the hive-mind feels like. If someone has a particular grudge against an organization, and can convince others that it'd be fun to attack, they do so. There is no regard for morality or consequences. Scientology and HBGary may both be horrible companies, but that does not excuse Anonymous's ridiculous ignorance of the consequences of their own actions.

If I promise to find it funny, do you mind if I burn down your house? Maybe your neighbors', too, because they called the fire department...

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vandalized? A Vandal would not stop until the who site had been burnt down, all the women carried off as slaves and the men put to the stake.

Vandalized - pah. Pandalized more like - you know those black and white bears who chew bamboo and never quite get round to the sex bit.

Re:Vandalized?

[sjames]

Given that there were many threats ranging from harassing the booth staff to heckling the speakers, and even up to death, the sign potentially serves as a last warning: Let Anonymous ravage whatever they want, or die.

For sufficiently small values of warning. It's a silly sign from silly people. A cap gun would be more of a threat, but only if the death threat reports are accurate. Given what passed for "vandalized", I question just how real the death threats are. Those of us with a sense of perspective saw the sign more as an elementary school level taunt itself put there for the lulz.

HBGary is now playing a great game: they're trolling the trolls. With every public move HBGary makes, Anonymous is drawn into acting. That's another 4chan post, another analysis, another page in HBGary's final report on Anonymous, and another customer impressed by the company's thorough attention to detail.

Unfortunately for them, this isn't a paying gig and it's not enhancing their image (so it won't get them a paying gig). Meanwhile, Anon isn't in it for pay in the first place. At the end of the year, neither group will have made a penny from all this. However, Anon didn't need to or expect to but HBGary will find that they have bills they can't pay. Perhaps Anon will prove to be their whale.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

With logic like this, I can see why the phrase 'death threat' is being thrown around so much lately. Caribou Barbie used the same excuse to cancel a speaking engagement. And NOM uses the same excuse to refuse to comply with election laws. Unless the "death threats" are turned over to the police, it's apparently just the speaker's interpretation of reality.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, so not only are you a gold-medal hyperbolist:

1. The sign on the booth is a threat.

   Text of the sign: "Anonymous: in it for the lulz." We don't even know if someone actually involved with Anonymous in fact made the sign. No chance that some prankster could have written a publicly-known tagline of a group on a piece of poster board and placed it on the booth, certainly not.

2. there were many threats. . .even up to death, the sign potentially serves as a last warning: Let Anonymous ravage whatever they want, or die.

   The only source we have for the death threat is a claim by Barr; we don't have any particular reason to believe him. He also only said that he was the target of the threat, not the people at the booth.

I was soon introduced to the guy who called for the attack, and convinced him to go look at a website I had just set up, with the intent to attack it shortly.

. . .you're also yourself a vigilante who takes the law into eir own hands. So you get a gold medal for hypocrisy, too. If you were a LEO or a licensed investigator, what you did could very well have been entrapment. Since (I assume) you're not, you have no business enforcing laws or investigating their violation.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous intruded on their network for several days without being detected, eventually just plain revealing themselves. Here's a totally-real testimonial on their front page from the esteemed research organization "Research Organization":

Where do you get several days? As near as I can tell they got a few hours of email server access and only managed to download 4 email spools... and to shutdown an anciliary ftp server of the company. They did mess with that Aaron Barr guy's personal stuff, but that's not really the company's job to protect. If they were "on their network for several days"... where is all the really internal stuff? Real source code? SSL Keys? all those goodies?

Seems more like Anonymous hacked some email more than anything...

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you not read the leaked emails? All the slides about pre-emptive attacks, infiltration, planting of fraudulent documents, etc. Interesting use of the word 'nice' to try and paint HBGary as one of the 'good' guys instead of a company planning criminal acts.

You are confusing HBGary with HBGary Federal... they look like separate companies, or at least the Federal one looks like a small 3 man spin off or something. I read some of the emails... there are way too many to review them all myself, I've got a real job thank you very much. I did notice that:

1) None of the emails are digitally signed

2) The only "proof" that these emails were not tampered with is the collective "word" of Anonymous

3) They waited more than a week to release some of the emails, more than enough time to forge or alter some of them.. hell, a few hours is enough to alter emails and push whatever agenda Anonymous desired...

I'm not saying HBGary Federal is clean and innocent... but emails are not exactly proof, especially if the emails are just a bunch of posturing about what they "could do"... and not evidence of anything that they actually did. It's not illegal to propose pre-emptive attacks, etc, but it would be to actually do it... so, where is the evidence that they actually did anything?

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL LOL LOL

This is the best laugh I've had in days, thanks.

Re:Vandalized?

[Sarten-X]

1. There's no membership for Anonymous. If someone thinks you're in it, you're in it. There's no way to be sure the sign wasn't meant as a threat, and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

2. Yes. Of course a death threat's sender will publicize the threat, and sign it with their public key, so we can be sure it's genuine.

Unnumbered 3. I believe my words were close to "Hey, Obscure Security Company says they have information on that Sarten'x Project DDoS. There's a blog post on their main page." and his response was close to "Yeah... I'll get the guys to nuke 'em like we did to Sarten's Project." That's not entrapment. That's merely using misleading statements to extract information. As for having no business enforcing laws, people can actually do so here. There is no restriction on gathering information, either, so long as laws are followed. If that information is turned over to law enforcement personnel, it gets corroborated and may result in a criminal prosecution. In the case of my project's DDoS, the FBI had a lovely time for a few weeks verifying our information, and Israeli police had a visit with the guy in question, who has now lost his network of DDoS-loving friends, and their collective botnets.

Sorry to offend your privacy-is-paramount sensibilities, AC, but victims can fight, too.

Re:Vandalized?

[Sarten-X]

Of course it's as sophisticated as an elementary-school threat. This is Anonymous, after all.

I'm not saying the various threats should be assumed to be real, but likewise they cannot be assumed false, either. The sign was potentially a last-warning threat, so it's reasonable that a company with vested interest in its security should treat it as such. If meant as a joke, I simply don't find knife-twisting to be "silly".

There is indeed an aspect that HBGary could exploit for profit, but it's a bit of a gamble: If HBGary is able to obtain enough information on Anonymous, they become a bigger player in the upcoming online security industry. Many big companies became so through a single/few significant move(s). Google built a better search engine. Microsoft pre-installed Windows on OEM computers.

Anonymous is the perfect target for a computer investigation firm. Anonymous is decentralized, capable of significant harm, and organized loosely through mostly legal channels. Anonymous is effectively immune to traditional law enforcement tactics. There are, however, enough low-hanging fruits for HBGary to reach for. The posters who initially called for the attacks can legitimately be classified as 'leaders' and identified. The IP addresses (and therefore, locations) of the most active DDoS participants can be identified, and compiled into a heuristic for rapid response to future attacks. Any autonomous botnets involved in the attacks suddenly become a much higher priority to shut down. The whole group, with their history of attacks, "not your personal army" refusals, and recurring opinions, can be condensed into an easy-to-read report for an unfamiliar politician.

There's realistically nothing HBGary can do against Anonymous, but I doubt that's their goal. Sure, it's fun to laugh at how utterly ineffective the investigation will be in the grand scheme of things, but for an upcoming government contractor, they're doing everything right. They're gathering information, becoming a well-known name, and making a big report to hand over to the FBI/NSA/CIA/IRS once the contract's signed. They're going for a reputation of being thorough and getting information, rather than one of taking bullets for hire. Perhaps they will sink, yet perhaps not.

Re:Vandalized?

[mywhitewolf]

the guy with a sign isn't actually doing anything wrong?

Re:Vandalized?

[sjames]

I'm not saying the various threats should be assumed to be real, but likewise they cannot be assumed false, either. The sign was potentially a last-warning threat, so it's reasonable that a company with vested interest in its security should treat it as such. If meant as a joke, I simply don't find knife-twisting to be "silly".

There are "potential" threats everywhere all the time. I can think of several "potentially" lethal things that could happen to me before I finish this post. There's no point in quivering in the corner like a coward over it though. The sign was clearly just a quick jab to rub it in, not a death threat.

HBGary thumped it's chest and crowed about how it's dad could beat up anon's dad and they got thoroughly trounced because of it. They've earned a bit of razzing. They are the classic high school bully that got beat up by a bunch of 3rd graders.

Their name is now mud. Their associates can't wait to disavow any connection with them or their dirty scheme against Salon and Wikileaks. They're a laughing stock. They got owned.

Re:Vandalized?

[PitaBred]

I'm with you until this part:

There is no regard for morality or consequences.

This is ENTIRELY about morality. The shit that Aaron Barr was pulling, saying and doing was abjectly wrong. It may not have been illegal, but it was wrong. So Anonymous did what they felt was right. It wasn't legal, it may have been more vengeance than justice, but they felt it was right.

Morality is the central point here. That you miss that gives me an indication that you're the type of person who will follow a law no matter whether it's right or wrong just because it's the law. Just following orders is not an excuse.

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Better making shit up to save face than be a laughing stock, as far as I can see. Like I said, the only evidence of a death threat is a claim by Barr. More importantly, what would make you think that Anonymous is even capable of carrying out a death threat? I can't find even the merest suggestion of a muckracking insinuation that they've been involved in physical violence.

Citizen's arrest is an extremely limited power, and only applies when you actually directly witness the commission of a felony. It has no bearing on the situation you described.

...victims can fight, too.

Victims like WikiLeaks?

Also, you do not actually have a legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

You haven't actually read any of the reports about HBGary's plans for WikiLeaks, have you?

Re:Vandalized?

[Anonymous Coward]

and no way to be sure a psychopath isn't going to try to attack the HBGary presenters. Better safe than sorry, eh?

Better making shit up to save face than be a laughing stock, as far as I can see. Like I said, the only evidence of a death threat is a claim by Barr, which there's no reason to take at face value. More importantly, what would make you think that Anonymous is even capable of carrying out a death threat? I can't find even the merest suggestion of a subtle hint of a muckracking insinuation of the slightest possibility that they've been involved in physical violence.

If the death threat is real, what would make you think that it would be retracted just because Barr decided not to speak? If you and he really think there's a psychopathic killer after him, it's hard to imagine that killer being dissuaded just by the cancellation of a little lecture.

As for having no business enforcing laws, people can actually do so...[link to citizen's arrest]

Citizen's arrest is an extremely limited power, and only applies when you actually directly witness the commission of a felony. It has no bearing on the situation you described.

...victims can fight, too.

Victims like Anonymous or WikiLeaks?

Also, you do not actually have a legal right to do absolutely anything you want.

You haven't actually read any of the reports about HBGary's plans for WikiLeaks, have you?

Let sleeping Agent Smiths lie.

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Let sleeping Agent Smiths lie. Even if they don't have cool matrix moves, there are a lot of them, they are functionally identical for most e-combat related purposes, and of course, they have a record of pulling this kind of stuff off.

Some_Group: Hey guys, let's attack Anonymous! It'll make us rich if we can hack them, an our security can stop their counterattack, right?
Anonymous: No it can't. I'm putting all your embarrassing/incriminating email messages onto the net.
Some_Group: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUU-

Re:Let sleeping Agent Smiths lie.

[Sigma 7]

Some_Group: Hey guys, let's attack Anonymous! It'll make us rich if we can hack them, an our security can stop their counterattack, right?

That's the wrong way to attack anonymous, since it's a direct threat.

A better way is to misdirect them, and thus make Anonymous look like those who harass innocent people. It may also reduce the number of "good" activists willing to join Anonymous, or encourage bad elements to continue doing that.

Re:Let sleeping Agent Smiths lie.

[PitaBred]

And yet, as soon as they find out the truth everything changes.

Let's see the government (or even HBGary) do an about-face like that.

I'd still rather have someone from Anonymous as a babysitter than someone from HBGary or any of the TLA's. At least Anonymous and Reddit know right from wrong and can admit a mistake.

Re:Let sleeping Agent Smiths lie.

[The Wild Norseman]

A better way is to misdirect them, and thus make Anonymous look like those who harass innocent people. It may also reduce the number of "good" activists willing to join Anonymous, or encourage bad elements to continue doing that.

Sure, that may work for a few anonymous ones. The ones with the axes to grind about Visa, US Fedgov, HBGary, whatever shan't be so easily deflected.

Anonymous booth visits/hecklers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why they were concerned. These guys are confident when they're behind a laptop, not when they're face-to-face at a booth. There's no way they'd have done anything in person.

Re:Anonymous booth visits/hecklers?

[pcgfx805]

You can't possibly label everyone in Anonymous as a coward in person.

Re:Anonymous booth visits/hecklers?

[Tr3vin]

That is why they never carried out protests against the scientologists, right? I'd fully expect them to show up, though many of them would wear those Guy Fawkes masks.

Re:Anonymous booth visits/hecklers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every anonymous I have ever seen here at slashdot has been a coward

Re:Anonymous booth visits/hecklers?

[1_brown_mouse]

Every anonymous I have ever seen here at slashdot has been a coward

I lol'd. +1 (if I had mod points or knew how to use them.) (Crap, now that I have commented, how can I mod you up?!)

Re:Anonymous booth visits/hecklers?

[yurtinus]

My kingdom for some mod points!!!!

Drama Queens

[Anonymous Coward]

For supposed 'security experts' they do seem pretty weak.

Also I suspect this might well be a publicity stunt to get more attention.

Right.....

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So, let's take a look at this:

Option 1: Members or associates of a loose-knit group of hackers who are likely subjects of federal interest after illegally penetrating and utterly humiliating a private-sector spook shop decide that it would be a great idea to show up, in person, at an event with some amount of security likely to be in the vicinity, just to heckle somebody they have already pwned good and hard. They think that this is a good idea because showing up in crowded areas and making a disturbance is an excellent way to remain anonymous.

Option 2: Aaron Barr and the rest of the losers at HBGary really don't want to show their faces at RSA, after having been ruthlessly punked by a bunch of amateurs; but decide to cry about "security threats" in an attempt to look less than totally pathetic.

Y'know, I don't think that this is a terribly difficult decision...

Re:Right.....

[L4t3r4lu5]

I'm in no way associated with Anonymous, 4Chan, or any of the stuff that's gone on, but I've read through this saga with keen interest, and think Barr got exactly what was coming to him. To use the vernacular, he got "served" good and proper.

The great thing about Anonymous is that, had I been at RSA and placed that sign, I would have been in Anonymous for that time, despite having never been associated with them in any other way. It's an ideal, not a club you apply to join.

If you still don't get that, you don't get Anonymous at all.

Re:Right.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Option 3: Sit back with popcorn and appropriate alcoholic beverage of choice and watch as this carnival continues!

On a serious note, and I loathe using this particular word, but is this whole scenario the new 'Cyber-warfare' that the Governments been spewing about for the past half decade?

Re:Right.....

[Revotron]

They think that this is a good idea because showing up in crowded areas and making a disturbance is an excellent way to remain anonymous.

Your post seems to suggest that Anonymous is smart enough to not show up in person, and that HBGary is only using this as a scapegoat. You seem to think that Anonymous is logical and believes that staying online is the best course of action to preserve their anonymity.

I think you have some reading to do.

Re:Right.....

[Kell Bengal]

Really, though, nobody has any illusions that any member of Anonymous is causally related to any other. "Anonymous" is just a name. A lot of the strength of anonymous as a concept comes from the vast majority of its members just being disaffected kids; which makes identifying the movers and shakers more difficult. It seems to me that the only way to 'stop' Anonymous would be to hold each and every member identified as such accountable for any/all of Anonymous' actions. Ie. make the cost of identifying as 'Anonymous' such that assuming the label is too expensive. You'd destroy 'anonymous' but they'd just choose other labels (and more of them) and you'd have to start again. Anonymous is a stable concept and anyone trying to stop them is playing whack-a-mole.

Re:Right.....

[Anonymous Coward]

. It's an ideal, not a club you apply to join. If you still don't get that, you don't get Anonymous at all.

Exactly, I was in Anonymous for the IRL Scientology protests, but now I'm not. I love the idea that he thought he'd found the ringleaders. What he found (well, he thought he'd found) was the people who ran one IRC channel. There are many anon IRC channels not just on anonnet.ru, but on rizon, irchighway, undernet, efnet etc.

Never Forgive, Never Forget.

Re:Right.....

[AmiMoJo]

*sigh* do people still not get anonymous?

Any action taken by people claiming to be anonymous is really just them acting alone. Maybe others inspired or encouraged but the simple fact is that no one represents anonymous and the actions of one individual do not represent anything other than themselves.

Re:Right.....

[smelch]

That's the good thing about Anonymous? That it is an empty meaningless word invoked by everybody to mean something vague? Talk about an ineffective, cowardly way to protest. I can't wait until this pointless fad dies out, or somebody starts doing things the main actors claiming to be 'in' Anonymous are ashamed of. Then we'll get to hear the shrill protests that "thats not really Anonymous", which is completely contradictory to the line we've been told over and over about the nature of the "group". And they think they're working for social change? They're generic vandals from the internet all using the same pseudonym trying to feel a modicum of power, with visions of grandeur and Fight Club in their heads.

Re:Right.....

[Duradin]

If no one represents Anonymous then everyone represents Anonymous. With no command and control structure to say "that wasn't us" anyone flying the Anonymous flag is (to use some tautology) acting under the Anonymous flag.

Not having a leader doesn't make the group as a whole immune from responsibility, in fact, it makes the group more vulnerable as it is entirely the members' actions that determine what the group is responsible for.

Don't agree with some action Anonymous has taken? Too bad. By being a member of the group you supported it. Once they pull something big enough to seriously annoy the feds RICO laws and their ilk are going to have a heyday.

Re:Right.....

[Zironic]

While there are horders of kids doing things for the lulz, it will probably stop being funny if there are real life consequences and the subset of people involved in these activities with real technical skills is probably vanishingly small although they should be a bit harder to get hold of (As they should be smart enough to use proxies and whatnot)

You don't really need to try to dismantle the movement called Anonymous as such, you just need to harshly go after anyone involved in illegal activities.

Re:Right.....

[PitaBred]

Almost certainly a sympathizer that happened to be at RSA. As long as Anonymous keeps doing things that are morally right as far as many (most?) people are concerned, they will keep getting this kind of support.

Re:Right.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh. Right. I get it!

Good one.

Re:Right.....

[Zironic]

I'd mod you up if I hadn't already posted in this discussion. +1!

Re:Right.....

[AmiMoJo]

The is no anonymous flag. The whole point of being anonymous is to not be associated with anyone or anything.

If I post here as an anonymous coward that does not make me responsible for others actions.

Re:Right.....

[Lehk228]

Anonymous isn't really a group even. There are no eligibility criteria or member lists, anyone can claim to be an Anon and have just as much of a right to the title as anyone else. The odds that the person or people posting the sign ever even chatting with the hackers who broke in to hbgary are very low.

Re:Right.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Anonymous is anyone who wants to be Anonymous, even if it's only for a few minutes.They are practically Discordian.

Re:Right.....

[anti-pop-frustration]

Aaron Barr and HBGary are the laughing stock of the industry. Why would they want to attend a public event right now? Makes no sense.

They probably wrote that note themselves in order to say their booth was "vandalized" so they could bail on the whole thing.

Their own leaked Powerpoint presentations recommend using to these kind of falsification tactics.

Re:Right.....

[bmajik]

I'd bother to post a rebuttal to this that had some kind of insightful analysis of what anonymous is, why "it" does what it does, and what it means, and what it's point is..

but then "they" would make fun of me and troll me, because, after all, its all for the lulz, and i sound like a moralfag.

So i'll give you a really short version of how i understand things to be.

there are people out there -- authorities in the "old world", the meat-space world.. who want very much to project their authority onto the internet.

the internet is not a hobby, not a business, not a "thing", but which is, for many people of my generation, and most people younger than me.. an internet that has certain essential qualities, like being free (as in freedom), which have infused themselves into the identities of who we are.

And so when self-righteous dipshits (like Co$, or HBGary, or the RIAA, or whomever) want to go ruin "our" internet, and when there are a group of non-affiliated people who share, at least on one general topic, the same ideology of what the internet should be and who it should be for... and when these same people can communicate with each other easily, and when they have a broad and deep toolbox of "capabilities",

well, why should they listen to the dipshits?

They OWN your websites, your identities, "your" internet. It's all theirs, if they feel like being assertive. And when you intrude on their electronic domain, after mocking you, they will happily intrude back into YOUR safe place -- the physical world -- where you _think_ your authority matters and holds water.

It doesn't.

You are naked, and you are powerless. You are guilty of taking yourself too seriously.

Re:Right.....

[Anonymous Coward]

You have confused the word "anonymous" with the group "Anonymous". One is a word that means not easily identified. The other is a group with a common dictum and a mark that sets them apart (the guy fawkes masks).

Re:Right.....

[Zeinfeld]

The group has published a manifsto that most of us here would consider to be very extreme.

they have gone beyond protecting wikileaks and some are looking to replace them and set all information and secrets free.

Both groups belong in jail in my view.

Re:Right.....

[smelch]

I think you just made my point.

Recipe for Anonymous:
Start with a healthy slathering of social awkwardness and a victim complex, sprinkle one year of high school Philosophy class on top, baste with V for Vendetta. Bake in a cubicle for 4 years, making sure to keep out all sexual activities, top with some computer skills that are not as impressive as they think.

Does this count as trolling? I'm not sure, I just hate these guys and wish they would become unified and accept the fact that if you're hiding behind a mask doing veiled actions with no real direction other than "I disagree with this, so I'm going to hack them and stamp the name of a movement on it" they could maybe do some good and change opinions and policies.

Re:Right.....

[ron_ivi]

"The group has published a manifsto"

This one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense_(pamphlet)

You're still not getting it.

Some individual published a manifesto and signed it as anonymous.

Is Thomas Paine's

Thomas Paine did that back in 1776. Some other kid did it a few weeks ago.

Neither one of those were involved in Scientology or HBGary in any way.

Re:Right.....

[rahvin112]

Another possibility:

Option 1: No members of any group (as there are no "members") attend any sessions but an innocent person who supports anonymous but has never participated in their activities decides on the day of attendance at a conference to take a little sign to stick to a booth and to follow a public request to heckle. Oh my goodness you've unraveled a plot by a bunch of dastardly evil people Dudley Doright, good job!

See that's exactly how silly their accusations are. The whole idea of anonymous is that there isn't an organization. It's a bunch of individuals who are barely even associated acting in concert after a discussion. This is no different than a group of unassociated individuals making a group decisions to heckle someone. As someone else said, trying to cut the head off anonymous is like trying to cut the head off the headless horseman.

Re:Right.....

[Alimony Pakhdan]

You give far too much credit to "Anonymous".

Re:Right.....

[The Wild Norseman]

you just need to harshly go after anyone involved in illegal activities.

Everyone excepting, of course, the CEO's, corporations, and governments who can perpetrate wrongs with impunity.

Re:Right.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah that counts as trolling. I don't see why you feel the need to generalize this group and look down on them as a disruption. I've found the whole mess very entertaining and informative into a sector I don't always get to hear about. Maybe their lack of sexual activities actually led to a level computer 'skills' that you are jealous of? How do you propose they 'do some good and change opinions and policies' lol? Hack the library of congress next and deface the constitution?

Sigh...

[maliamnon]

Backing down from your beliefs due to threats and attacks will only breed more attacks and threats. While I'm not necessary against Anon, their acts are that of terrorism in this case, and unfortunately, those tactics work.

Re:Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just.... just shut the fuck up, dude.

Re:Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope HBGary actually documented some of the real threats, beyond the simple vandalism.

Re:Sigh...

[Nethemas the Great]

Yup, this is definitely the work of hardcore terrorists. Time to extraordinarily rendition them and ship them to Git'mo.

Re:Sigh...

[ElectricTurtle]

I see what you did there, AC. That's actually pretty funny if you think about it.

Re:Sigh...

[mywhitewolf]

don't forget, terrorists are only a threat to you because of your beliefs. Terrorists aren't against you because you're in their land stealing their resources and shooting at them.. no... terrorists are against your "freedom".

Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[davidwr]

Protesting is one thing but wanton destruction of property is another. Death threats are well over the top.

These are not things responsible protests groups do in a situation like this. Next time, keep it to rhetoric and, if you are willing to be !Anonymous, picketing in person.

Re:Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[headhot]

The only evidence of an actual death threat comes from the "security expert" who had his ass handed to him by a bunch of amateurs. He needed some kind of excuse to keep his embarrassed ass at home.

Re:Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[GameboyRMH]

This doesn't look like destruction of property:

http://yfrog.com/gzbvtllj

Re:Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what the British told us a little over 200 years ago.

Re:Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[betterunixthanunix]

Are you sure any of these things actually happened? Let's remember which company is making these claims...

Re:Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boo-fucking-hoo!

When you have nitwits running around all over the place telling Anon that what they're doing with the DDoS and the occasional breaking into of sites is ultimately not going to get them what they want, of course they're going to step it up a notch or two.

The long and short of it is that if you don't want any kind of repercussions, then don't act like a douchebag, or work for a company that routinely engages in acts of douchebaggery. If you ignore this, then don't be surprised when you start getting death threats.

Personally it wouldn't hurt my feelings a goddamn bit if they started publicly lynching people like Barr. They are the cancer that's destroying this country. Obama made empty promises of CHANGE, and now things are going to change the hard way.

In short: Fuck you.

Re:Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[bberens]

I agree with you completely. Someone above posted a picture of the "vandalism" though, they added a sign to their booth that said "Anon.. in it for the Lulz" or something to that affect. From the looks of it, nothing was destroyed.

Additionally, it appears Anonymous at least believes they're fighting for freedom of speech and open democracy wrt the wikileaks stuff. It's not the first time Americans have threatened to kill people for those rights.

Re:Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[Hatta]

Turn about is fair play. Government pressure has cost Wikileaks donations and Assange has been the target of death threats by American officials for months. Let's not pretend Anonymous threw the first stone here.

Re:Death threats and vandalism = NOT okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, that's it? That's the magnitude and compass of this terrible threat?

HBPussies. Just sayin'.

You can't beat the crowd

[GoNINzo]

Anonymous is just the first of many future darknets that will be nearly impossible to destroy. You might take out a ringleader or two, but 4 others would stand up to take their place if they felt that it was unjust. And in the end, it's death by a thousand harmless cuts, or in this case, 1,000 users that don't like something running the their Ion cannons under central control. In this case, this dude is using social networking like facebook to figure out who are hackers. I doubt they have many connections to other hackers on facebook or twitter. It's most likely random unrelated acquaintances, so I think the guy's research is flawed anyway.

The best example of what one of these organized systems could do is a story by Bruce Sterling called Maneki Neko. It is what happens when people get organized but maintain some level of anonymity. We are not to this level yet, but I suspect it right around the corner. It will do strictly good at first, but eventually it will ruin someone's life. Just as Anonymous has ruined some people's lives, they've done a little good for some, like a great birthday. It doesn't justify the destruction, but it's bored kids on the internet, so what are you going to do?

The news media will make a big deal about future 'attacks', but some will be harmless kids having fun. But if you start to push that everyone involved in these groups must be destroyed, those people who are marginally involved will suddenly get VERY involved in your destruction. So be careful.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Zironic]

Personally I suspect that if a number of "Anonymous" "Ringleaders" got caught by the FBI and sentenced to pretty hefty sentences the overall membership of their activities will probably sharply decline.

Most of them are in it for the lulz after all and lulz are not worth several years in prison or higher fines then you can pay off in your lifetime.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[TheRealMindChild]

Anonymous is just the first of many future darknets that will be nearly impossible to destroy. You might take out a ringleader or two, but 4 others would stand up to take their place if they felt that it was unjust

The government folks never learn. We are still after "al-Qaeda"

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Zironic]

I was under the impression that Al-Qaeda was basically destroyed and currently used mostly as a scarecrow to wave around whenever someone questions military involvement.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably would have said the same thing about the RIAA and filesharers, but look how that turned out.

FYI, 'membership' in both 'groups' are roughly similar.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous is just the first of many future darknets that will be nearly impossible to destroy. You might take out a ringleader or two, but 4 others would stand up to take their place if they felt that it was unjust The government folks never learn. We are still after "al-Qaeda"

Good point. I think the "government folks" should be focusing tax-payer dollars on stopping a large collection of script-kiddies rather than actual terrorists.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm yeah whatever.. That worked great for mubar... ohhh

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I suspect that if a number of "Anonymous" "Ringleaders" got caught by the FBI and sentenced to pretty hefty sentences the overall membership of their activities will probably sharply decline.

Most of them are in it for the lulz after all and lulz are not worth several years in prison or higher fines then you can pay off in your lifetime.

because it worked so well in the warez scene?

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume that most of them even have forethought on their actions.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

ahhh, I see you follow the "jail them all and then there will be cake" crowd. I can understand that mentality when faced with the statistics. Why, just here in the good 'ol US of MF'n A we have more people per capita incarcerated than any country on Earth and I for one am thankful of that everyday! It's so nice to live in a country where everyone is happy and follows the rules. No graffiti, no drugs, no risk of violent crime. When will these 3rd world !Q$#@%holes learn that all you have to do is throw cruel and unusual punishments at people to discourage unwanted behavior?

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

You vastly underestimate the stupidity of decision making.
By your argument, we just need to punish a few teens for drinking, and the rest will decide it's not worth it ...

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[mangu]

Personally I suspect that if a number of "Anonymous" "Ringleaders" got caught by the FBI and sentenced to pretty hefty sentences the overall membership of their activities will probably sharply decline.

Most of them are in it for the lulz after all and lulz are not worth several years in prison or higher fines then you can pay off in your lifetime.

Yes, because the "war on drugs" worked so well its tactics must be adopted everywhere, right?

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[commandermonkey]

Not that I really disagree with you in the premise that

You might take out a ringleader or two, but 4 others would stand up to take their place if they felt that it was unjust

but wouldn't a better example be something like what is happening in Iraq or Afghanistan?

A large and powerful group targets a loose collection of people who have no unifying command structure and are only grouped together because the media is lazy and it’s much easier for them to tell a story about one group( "anon", "al Qaeda", etc) rather than "a pissed off group of people." The large organization picks off a few "leaders"/bombs a (school/wedding party), talks about how it is a great a win it is. But by their actions hurt the situation because a)there really aren't leaders so stopping a random guy doesn't really hurt a cause and b)just pissed off a whole new set of people by killing innocents or further demonstrating a lack of regard for what some see as essential liberties.

And I think you hit the nail on the head with:

The news media will make a big deal about future 'attacks'[...] But if you start to push that everyone involved in these groups must be destroyed, those people who are marginally involved will suddenly get VERY involved in your destruction.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

Tracking hackers via social networking is pretty absurd. I imagine the serious players in Anonymous don't even log in to social networking sites. Any tweets are probably posted via 100 or more reflectors and probably a few reflections via TOR along the way.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Intrinsic]

Its more likley that Al-Qaeda is a myth created by the CIA that allowed us to attack Afganastan and IRAQ
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7787

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

I think anonymous isn't the first, it's more like the Facebook of darknet.. you only need one, right? If i want to punk a my little pony forum, i am anonymous.. if i want to take down snow, i am again, anonymous.. it gets serious (and in my opinion, WAY more fun) when you decide you have an agenda, and it's in common with the people over in that corner of the group, to the point where people on the other side of my little country are placing signs to make me lulz (at the national media frenzy).

idk, maybe Fight Club's getting a little too crowded tho.. i liked it when they just hung out in 4chan's basement too.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[ShakaUVM]

>>because it worked so well in the warez scene?

It did. When they arrested the Drink or Die guys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Buccaneer), IIRC, piracy dropped significantly.

In any organization, the 90/10 rule applies - 90% of the work is done by 10% of the people. If they arrested those 10% of the Anonymous cowards, I'd expect to see their activities drop significantly.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

You really don't get it.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

When will these 3rd world !Q$#@%holes learn that all you have to do is throw cruel and unusual punishments at people to discourage unwanted behavior?

Right after we liberate the shit out of them.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[GoNINzo]

So is the person who placed that sign, are they guilty of any crimes? They most likely would try to prosecute them under certain gang laws that say if you're in the gang, and one person in your gang breaks the law, the entire gang can be prosecuted on the same offense. How soon till you are treated the same way for being someone's friend on facebook? It's a slippery slope until we're all criminals in some small way.

I'm also curious what computer crime someone might be accused of for loading a company's webpage several thousand times an hour. At what point does it go from 'minor annoyance' to 'criminal'? You can look at Anonymous' attack on Scientology in the same way, they are constantly under scrutiny to make sure they are following the laws, or they could be arrested. Many are normal people upset with a system, so they do what they can within the law. There are some people who take it too far I'm sure, but for the rest in the middle, what happens to them?

And apparently disclaimers have become popular in this thread.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Zironic]

I'm not sure what the specific laws look like to be honest but I wouldn't be surprised if there existed something along the lines of "Deliberate disruption of service".

It would probably take a lot before anyone would go after the people using the client though, however the people writing the software and voting on attack targets however will probably eventually get into the line of fire.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Perhaps. But that depends on whether or not these people think they have nothing to lose. A man with nothing to lose, or even the perception that he has nothing to lose can be a lot more dangerous than a man who already has what he wants and is afraid to lose it. In the former case, prison or fines might not be much of a deterrent. The most likely outcome is that they cool their heels as they have kids, buy a house, and prepare for retirement - but that would have to happen before they get caught in order for them to decide to stop.

Sort of reminds me of the Briar Rabbit story. It's not that they can't be touched. It's that they can't be touched without tar.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[GoNINzo]

Getting bored kids upset with people on the internet is easy. Some think of nothing of destroying someone's life, at least socially. Others are there just amuse themselves. There a lot of people in the middle, in both the giving and receiving end of these attacks.

Convincing someone to kill and be killed is much much harder and a completely different ball of wax.

So the differences between asking a Gamestop member about Battletoads and strapping a bomb to your chest are pretty vast. Arresting the person asking about Battletoads for harassment will just cause the Streisand effect, I think.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

Intimidation of innocent people to prove a point does work pretty well. Maybe we need to be more like Soviet Russia, which had very little crime.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[athmanb]

It's probably true that 90+% of the people that were in Al-Qaeda on 11/9/2001 are now either dead, in prison or have stopped working for the them.
But underground groups such as that are defined by their ideology and not membership cards, and as long as the ideology behind them has a compelling influence on people they will never die.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

The drug dealers are not in it for the lulz ...

Bad analogy guy strikes again!!!!!

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[staghorne]

Isn't the drug situation a bit different from Anonymous?

One reason the war on drugs is ineffective is because monetary rewards for key dealers tend to increase to offset the effects of harsh prosecution. Simple supply and demand.

There is not necessarily as much money to be gained from anonymous cyberactivist/vigilante actions as from drugs. While this is no problem when risks are perceived as low, some players may drop out if punishments are increased, unless some other reward mechanism can be strengthened to offset the deterrence.

As an example, many file sharers I'm familiar with re-evaluated the situation and decided to stop sharing when the activity was criminalized. The threat of punishment certainly didn't kill off file sharing as a whole, but was at least partially effective in making it decline.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been plenty of piracy related arrests, and yet pirated movies, music and software are more prevalent than ever...

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[rahvin112]

Yep, and after everyone but the filthy rich is in prison working for slave wages the ideal economy is born!

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that story is fiction, right?

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because the "war on drugs" worked so well its tactics must be adopted everywhere, right?

Oh ya, lulz and 5 million a year in tax free money are totally the same.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[PitaBred]

Not sure you understand the subtexts of "the lulz". People don't hack government databases and then release the data for shits and giggles. There's a bit of a larger purpose behind it, a moral principle that while itself may be illegal is still perceived as the right thing to do.

There's legal, and there's right. Just because something is right doesn't make it legal, and just because something is legal doesn't make it right. Our monkey brains are very good at figuring out what's fair and what's not and who is getting fucked by whom. We're in a pretty sorry state in America right now because too many people confuse those concepts. And it's pissing off a lot of the very smart people who would otherwise leave well enough alone and amuse themselves.

Re:You can't beat the crowd

[iainl]

If you get a hefty sentence for being a member of Anonymous, then those that don't want to risk one are going to have to spend several seconds thinking up a different name to operate under. It's not much of a deterrent.

But who is good and who is Evil?

[LWATCDR]

Anonymous good?
Is making death threats because you do not like someone is going to say at a conference good? Is heckling and yelling them down good? Funny but I have seen those actions in old news reels from the 30s and from old news stories from the 60s. The folks using those tactics where the ones in the brown shirts and the white sheets.
I don't think MLK or Gandhi ever made any death threats to people or hecked them when they presented papers at conferences. I could be wrong but I am pretty sure about that.

Since when is when someone says something you do agree with you make death threats been a sign of being good?
Anonymous is a gang of bullies. People often see bullies and thugs as heroes if they themselves do not ones being bullied. There are people that think the KKK are a bunch of brave freedom fighters.

Anonymous is no differn't right down to hiding their faces. And their fans do not like they people they are abusing.
Anonymous are those peoples brave Knights in white sheets.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[bdsesq]

Death threats sounds like a good way for him to try and save face.
I doubt if anyone actually threatened his life. That would be stupid and these people seem to be anything BUT stupid.
I can imagine a lot of heckling and embarrassment during the talk.
For someone with his ego that might seem worse than death!

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Kell Bengal]

Death threats seem incongruous when you consider that the clearly identifiable action Anonymous has taken here came in the form of 'vandalism', by which he means "A paper sign written with black sharpie."

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but people intend on actually doing you injury tend not to leave signs around saying they're in it for the fun of it.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

"... news reels from the 30s..."

Damn, great grampaw? Is that yooooooou???

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[bberens]

Wait, you think it was non-violent speeches that put an end to the actions of those folks in the brown shirts and white sheets? I hate to break it to you but all justice begins with force. We have a reasonably fair court system in this country because we fought for it violently. Egypt is attempting something similar right now. And the comment about hiding their faces? Ever heard of the Boston Tea Party? Yeah, they wore Indian costumes. Anonymous may or may not be a bunch of schmucks, but at least in the case of supporting wikileaks they ARE on the side of freedom of speech and open democracy which hopefully we can all agree is a good idea. We might differ on degrees and Anonymous may be the on the fringe radical side that we don't really like all that much, but they ARE on team *good*.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really care for him. He doesn't deserve to die, but deserves any shit he gets for being such an idiotic and smug asshole who is full of himself.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not really seem to be in the know. Also here is a lot moreinformation. To sum it all up for you. Mr Barr was planning on selling false information to the FBI in the name of "Research" which had wrong names connected to innocent people, and also wanted journalists of free press silenced.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the IRC chat logs. I didn't see any death threats. They just tried to get his supervisor to fire him so that he wouldn't do their company any more harm. Really reasonable tbh, since the guy seems thinks he's a genius but is really a tard.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[MasaMuneCyrus]

I'm pretty sure that anonymous does the things it does as retaliation for what it perceives as attacks on it and internet freedom.

The protesters in Egypt were peaceful, but when they were attacked they took up arms, attacked back, and set up neighborhood watches, detaining people that it deemed were "thugs" -- vigilante justice, in other words. Maybe you'll be on the moral high ground when you die as a martyr because you didn't defend yourself, but that doesn't mean that it's not incredibly stupid to just sit there and wait to get beaten to death.

The incremental and continuous aggressive actions taken not only against "piracy," but even against the possibility of piracy, the creation of thought-crimes (such as making the knowledge of breaking encryption illegal), and the whole notion of ending anonymity on the internet itself, as many of anon's "enemies" seem to want to do to -- these things are viewed as attacks on anon and its principles, and so they believe that it's acceptable to take up arms to defend themselves, their principles, and impose vigilante justice.

At least in my opinion, that's how this whole development of the anon underground is going, and the harder powerful entities try to stop them, the more angry and decentralized anon will become (unless the "powers that be" actually manage to find and detain the many multiples of leaders that anon has, some of which I have no doubt are in other countries with nicer laws than the US).

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[ElectricTurtle]

Oversimplification. Gandhi may have never made death threats etc., but I can guaranty you that some of his followers did (and don't even think of rebutting that with some variant of 'no true Scotsman'). That's the challenge of any movement's leadership, to keep people both motivated and controlled. Where a group has little to no leadership but is based on momentary consensus/buy-in like Anonymous, this issue can't even be solved.

The question becomes how does one judge a movement. Was the civil rights movement evil because groups like the Black Panthers advocated violence? Was Dr. King somehow negligent in being unable to stop the formation of the Black Panthers or control their (wholly separate) activities? (Granted MLK was assassinated two years after the Black Panthers formed.) The point is you should judge a movement by its core values, not its fringe actors. The civil rights movement was validated by the millions who worked for positive change, not the handful who sought to murder police officers. Anonymous, while by nature not unified by a standing cause or principle, should at least be judged by a majority of its actors and its primary effects. So unless HBGary is getting threats from thousands of different actors instead of one or two, I think it is disingenuous at a minimum to be comparing them to the KKK.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. And Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay should've signed their names to the federalist papers. Fucking pussies acting like bullies to that innocent British government.

Anonymity has it's place. Some people use it for bad, others for good, but that doesn't mean you should condemn one group because another you don't agree with used the same tactics. Are we fighting for Iraqi freedom? Do all Iraqi's see it that way?

You can't reason with someone who is unreasonable, so many times the only recourse is to take direct action. I note you completely gloss over the fact that all of this action by Anonymous is ENTIRELY in reaction to the initial attack by HBGary, and more specifically Aaron Barr. If you start a fight and you lose it, that doesn't make you a victim, or in the right. And sometimes an example needs to be made to encourage others to learn from the mistake. Or for the lulz. Whatever.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

"That would be stupid, and these people seem to be anything BUT stupid"

Do you have any fucking clue as to who "these people" are?

http://boards.4chan.org/b/ (NOT SAFE FOR ANYTHING(ESPECIALLY NOT WORK))

I think maybe this is an education a lot of people need about Anon. Anon = some portion of the /b/ population. (something awful is more than slightly involved also, under the name goons, but that's another story altogether. It's a good one though, see, an MMO allowed /b/ and SA peeps to ally, and created VOLTRON.... er....)

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[LWATCDR]

Yes the people in the brown shirts could have been stopped by peaceful action. The people in the white sheets have been pushed to the fringes and are for the most part despised and powerless because of peaceful speeches.
Thing is that anon are the guys in white sheets and brown shirts. They think they are above the law. You know that reasonably fair court system we fought for so hard. Anyone that for any reason thinks they are above the law is no longer on the side team good.
Please they are bullies and thugs. They attack those that they do not like. Maybe they will go after me because I dared to poke them and say what I think of them. In that case are they still team good?
No sir. Do not fall for that. Trust me a lot of good people supported the Nazis because the Nazis where on team good because they where fighting the communists and others that where trying to destroy Germany. I am sure that many said the same thing that while they didn't like them they where better than the communists and the anarchists.
And yes someone will claim Goodwin but in this case several parallels are clear and those that do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
As long as we have laws and a legal system that works reasonably well anyone that acts as a thug to shout people down and hides their face is not on team good.
Only laws that unfair should be broken and they need to be broken in public and in a way for the people to see they are wrong. Look at MLK and Gandhi as examples. Or in this case judge Anon by there tactics not by your dislike of who they are fighting.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[LWATCDR]

Where the Black Panthers good? Did MLK ever call them good or support them?

To go back to Nazi Germany the Nazis where often fighting the communists and anarchistics which where violent criminal groups that where out to destroy Germany's fledgling democracy. They where just as bad in a lot of ways as the Nazis where at the time.
The KKK got support and grew during reconstruction after the Civil War. After Lincolns death reconstruction took an ugly turn and some northern groups where bent on punishing the south. People in the South saw the KKK as a group that stood up for their rights and fought the carpet baggers. BTW thee was no need for the KKK to work to keep the African Americans down. Even after the war they where still treated unfairly in every state of the Union.
To not call out anon or even worse to call them good when they use evil tactics is to be on the side of Evil. Those tactics are not needed and should not be put up with much less called good!

I am all free speech but the actions of anon are anti free speech.
Think about the holocaust denying books and speakers. Is it better to allow the books to be published and the speakers speak and then legaly counter them with the the truth or calling a bomb threat to get their speaking engagements canceled or threated the companies that publish their books and or the stores that carry them?
That is the choice pick your side because it is good verses evil and that is my case that the tactics and actions of anon are evil.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[c6gunner]

Anonymous may or may not be a bunch of schmucks, but at least in the case of supporting wikileaks they ARE on the side of propaganda

FTFY.

and open democracy which hopefully we can all agree is a good idea

As soon as you post your CC number, address, phone number, and SIN, I'll stop thinking of you as a hypocriote.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[LWATCDR]

"'Im pretty sure that anonymous does the things it does as retaliation for what it perceives as attacks on it and internet freedom."
And the KKK lynched Black men that raped white women. The Nazi's attacked communist that where a threat to the German way of life and their freedom.
Every group is justified in their actions to themselves. Judge actions not motivations because you can never really know anyones real motivation.

And as far as nations with nicer laws than the US you are pretty clueless on that one. Most European nations have much less legal protection on freedom of speech than the US does when it comes to unpopular and even ugly political speech. Asia? You have got to be kidding. Africa? South America?
Yes in all of those you are free to be as critical as you want of the US. Just trying publishing stuff they don't like! Sure most are fine with porn but political speech and what they consider hate speech is strictly regulated.
Hey that is their choice and in many nations the restrictions I feel are completely understandable from a historical point of view. But do not fool yourself that they have more freedom of speech than the US does.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[ElectricTurtle]

You're in love with a false dichotomy born of a monochromatic view of reality. I doubt I have the capacity to disillusion you of what is obviously a vigorously held perspective. I will try, once:

Thought experiment: Of the thousands of people who call themselves Anonymous, one guy claiming to act in Anonymous' "name" assassinates a world leader. Does this act make all the others assassins, even though they had no knowledge, and the one acted with no conspiracy or direction? By your logic, it does. So, were all anarchists made evil assassins by the work of Leon Czolgosz?

It's really nothing more than bigotry at its core, attempting to assign blame by association to very large groups based on fringe actors. To return to the examples, it's like blaming the KKK on all white people or the Black Panthers on all black people. What made those organizations despicable was not simply that they killed innocents, but that was their organizations' stated mission. The KKK publicly called for innocent blacks to be lynched in the name of the defense of 'white American culture/society/values', and the Black Panthers publicly called for the murder of police in the name of black nationalist 'revolution'. That people then followed through with the mandates of these movements' platforms is then no surprise, and there is no grey area in denouncing both the actors and their organizations as a whole.

However, Anonymous is in the first place not a centralized organization and has neither leadership nor platform as such, but insofar as it is possible to assign analogs, Anonymous has no 'group mandate' to make death threats etc. and so transferring the culpability of a few people to a group of more than thousands is, quite frankly, an absurd stretch of ethics and logic beyond credibility. Anonymous must be judged on its majority principles and majority actions precisely because it is a (momentary) consensus driven movement.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[jack2000]

What are you 15? Anonymous is not a single entity. Your complaining about people bullying is akin to condemning all Indians because some random Indian bullied you in school.
Get your mind out of the gutter.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Falconhell]

"Anonymous may or may not be a bunch of schmucks, but at least in the case of supporting wikileaks they ARE on the side of propaganda"

No you didnt fix it Fixing would read:
Anonymous may or may not be a bunch of schmucks, but at least in the case of supporting wikileaks they ARE on the side of Truth"

For someone who claims not to be American you sure seem to always have an American point of view.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Red Flayer]

Since when is when someone says something you do agree with you make death threats been a sign of being good?

I doubt the veracity of his statement of receiving death threats. If he had received a credible death threat, I'm sure he would have gotten the police involved. Generally when that happens, you are advised to not talk about it. Publicity re: the death threat can escalate the perpetrator's actions. Or at least I was advised that way by the police when I had death threats made against me in the 90s, due to some protesting I'd done.

Funny but I have seen those actions in old news reels from the 30s and from old news stories from the 60s.

Funny but I've seen these tactics used in person in the 80s and 90s to good effect. I've seen videos of them being used to good effect in the 60s.

The purpose is publicity for what is going on, to make people aware of a problem. If heckling a presentation makes the news... then success.

Anonymous is a gang of bullies. People often see bullies and thugs as heroes if they themselves do not ones being bullied. There are people that think the KKK are a bunch of brave freedom fighters.

So what? HBGary is a bunch of bullies too. Even worse, they are a bunch of bullies acting on behest of a part of the legitimate government. You think one bully is better because they wear executive collars beneath their tailored suits? You side with one bully, someone else sides with a different bully. Get used to it, it's how power struggles work. Once it comes down to actual conflict, both sides are bullies, attempting to assert their will through force.

Anonymous is no differn't right down to hiding their faces. And their fans do not like they people they are abusing. Anonymous are those peoples brave Knights in white sheets.

Really? Anonymous is the same as the KKK? Fuck off, man, that's as bad as a invoking Godwin's law. While we're making inapt comparisons, let's compare you to a jack-booted Nazi. After all, you're just toeing the line of the fascist overlords.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Red Flayer]

something awful is more than slightly involved also, under the name goons, but that's another story altogether

Not only is it another story altogether, but it's not quite accurate.

It'd be more accurate to say that some of the people who self-describe as SA forum goons are also participants in anonymous (small-a on purpose) actions.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[c6gunner]

No you didnt fix it

Yes, I did.

For someone who claims not to be American you sure seem to always have a rational point of view.

FTFY

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[Falconhell]

                                                No you didnt fix it

                                                No really I did, your'e just a clueless moron, trying to put a spin on hiding the truth. You have a long history of this kind of bullshit.

                                                For someone who claims not to be American you sure seem to always have a irrrational point of view.

                                                FT properly FY

You do have my sympathy for your obvious delusional state though.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[c6gunner]

Heh. Considering how badly you fucked up that response, anything I add would just be redundant.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[mywhitewolf]

And the KKK lynched Black men that raped white women. The Nazi's attacked communist that where a threat to the German way of life and their freedom.

and the Americans are torturing terrorists for the good of the nation.

Re:But who is good and who is Evil?

[The Wild Norseman]

Yes the people in the brown shirts could have been stopped by peaceful action.

And you're basing this idea on what evidence, exactly?

The people in the white sheets have been pushed to the fringes and are for the most part despised and powerless because of peaceful speeches.

They were already a fringe group and not the head of a country.

They think they are above the law. You know that reasonably fair court system we fought for so hard. Anyone that for any reason thinks they are above the law is no longer on the side team good.

It's called civil disobedience. I doubt they think they're above the law. They are anonymous so that they have the freedom to protest without being thrown in jail/killed/whatever before they can try to influence or warn the general populace. Or I guess when many of the Founders of this country wrote anonymously or under pseudonyms, they were the equivalent of the brownshirts and whitesheets of their day?

Please they are bullies and thugs. They attack those that they do not like. Maybe they will go after me because I dared to poke them and say what I think of them. In that case are they still team good?

The cases under discussion have been involving people and organizations when it's commonly perceived that there's a huge social injustice going on and there is bound to be backlash. It's happened many times in the US's history, even before computers.

Only laws that unfair should be broken and they need to be broken in public and in a way for the people to see they are wrong.

You seriously don't think that these so-called attacks are not being done in a *very* public way to try and demonstrate the wrongs being done? You want to stop Anonymous from taking out Visa or Paypal in another DDoS? Start prosecuting some of the human beings who own and run these companies for their immoral, deceptive, predatory, illegal behaviors. Start parading some of these douchebags out in front as an example of what happens when you ruin thousands of families (for one simple example).

Look at MLK and Gandhi as examples. Or in this case judge Anon by there tactics not by your dislike of who they are fighting.

You seem to be forgetting that MLK was the head of the Black Panthers and look at what violence they did to fight for racial equality.

Oh, wait. You mean MLK wasn't the head of the Black Panthers? But they were fighting for the same thing, right? So they *must* be all on the same side.

Anonymous == hypocrites

[davev2.0]

Anonymous is trying to suppress information using death threats. That makes them no better than many governments and worse than the U.S. government.

I wonder what people would say if members of Anonymous were on the receiving end of death threats. Some how I bet it would be "Look! They are evil fascists!1!!!1!". Well, as soon as Anonymous used death threats, they became an oppressive, authoritarian group using terroristic tactics.

Re:Anonymous == hypocrites

[DinDaddy]

Anonymous is trying to suppress information using death threats.

And you know this because HBGary said so, no?

Re:Anonymous == hypocrites

[durrr]

There's no central Anonymous leader that approve what other anonymouses do. Any random troll from 4chan can mail in a death-threat under the name of anonymous. You could mail in a confession of your desire to make love to Aaron barr and a sheep smeared in fifty pounds of peanut butter under the name of anonymous and no one would care and claim your mail was from a different Anonymous source. The name anonymous, like the original meaning of it, is not a group tag, it's simply what you call yourself when you wish to not identify yourself yet still express yourself.

Re:Anonymous == hypocrites

[DavidTC]

Dude, they put a paper sign on a table at HBGary's booth saying that they were there. That's it. That is not even legally vandalism.

Only in HBGary's deluded universe is this a 'death threat'.

Meanwhile, HBGray actually planned a campaign of harassment against friends and family of the people it was trying to 'take down'.

Re:Anonymous == hypocrites

[Belial6]

And the authorities cannot can never identify Anonymous because as soon as they do, the individual is no longer anonymous.

Re:Anonymous == hypocrites

[Beerdood]

If I am to understand your logic correctly, then any suppression of information is technically bad (and no better than the governments of the world). I'd have to respectfully disagree - the information that anonymous is trying to "suppress" is their own personal information. It isn't of any value, and really isn't of any concern to the majority of the world. Really, the only people that would care would be the ones with some malicious intent among those people. The information wikileaks releases DOES indeed concern and affect most of the world. I wanna know if some company is secretly dumping toxic waste in my back yard, or if my tax dollars are going to an unjust war, or if that last election was rigged - because all that actually DOES concern me. Generally, if a corporation or government or collection of rich wealthy folks has some secrets they don't want people to know, then I'm probably getting fucked somehow without my knowledge.

I don't always agree with the things that anonymous does, but hey it's a group of rag-tag individuals with no organization. It's essentially mob justice - not the ideal enforcement agency around, but once in a while you'll see what they do to their victims and go "boy, did they ever deserve that".

Re:Anonymous == hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't even trying to suppress it. Anonymous released all of Aaron Barr's 'research' into the group, because it's all complete drivel. His lists of Anonymous 'ringleaders' include names like "Guy Fawkes," for example. The information he compiled to give (or sell, the story changes everytime I hear it) to the FBI is worthless, and Anonymous was simply trying to ruin his image and have some lulz along the way.

Re:Anonymous == hypocrites

[davev2.0]

The guy isn't hiding. He is standing behind his words. Anonymous is hiding.

So what about the US Gov vs WL?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what about the US Gov vs WL? You know, where they said that they had to kidnap (arrest) all the people and try them for treason (when not a USA citizen) and that Julian Asange should be executed are things that responsible governments don't do in situations like this.

How about Saddam? They actually killed him. Not just threatened. Killed. For torturing people and killing civilians. Later, the USA is torturing at abu graib and killing civilians in Iraq.

Dirty tricks for me, not for thee

[Anonymous Coward]

The gall of a company who just got caught planning a massive campaign of harassment and dirty tricks whining about people potentially harassing them is amazing.

Property = NOT destructed

[mangu]

Protesting is one thing but wanton destruction of property is another

Do you want to see how much property was "destroyed"? Look here

That's it, what they call "vandalism" was a piece of paper with something written. If someone could prove they are "Anonymous" they would have grounds to sue HBGary for libel.

Re:Property = NOT destructed

[DarkOx]

Yea, it looks like they vandalized HB Gary's booth about as much as Joe's lawn service vandalized my home by hanging their flier on my door knob.

Re:Property = NOT destructed

[IICV]

If someone could prove they are "Anonymous" they would have grounds to sue HBGary for libel.

I'm Anonymous, and so's my wife!

Re:Property = NOT destructed

[Anonymous Coward]

And I suppose that is a legit picture released by the police or something? Seriously? Your "proof" that there wasn't vandalism is a random picture taken by some random dude on the Internet who claims to be a part of an internet-vigilante-hackivist group?

Basically, you are like all the other idiots in Anonymous or posting crap on Slashdot. You believe the words of random strangers who hide behind Anonymity over the words of people who are willing to risk their name, livelihood, and safety to stand up for what they believe.

It's easy to be brave on the Internet. It's easy to tell lies and spread rumor and gossip.

 

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out." - THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

The measure of the character of Anonymous is rather low.

Re:Property = NOT destructed

[Anonymous Coward]

of course you are MR William J. Smith. of 3 Aspen Drive 0 Essex Junction, VT 05452.

Earth First!

[sycodon]

So Anonymous is kind of like Earth First folks. Loosely organized, with sociopathic tendencies.

Except instead of burning down construction sites and SUVs, they crash websites and break into systems.

They both apparently make death threats.

Re:Earth First!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone always says "death threats". You can't get on the internet without someone telling you to DIAF, and oh no that's now a death threat.

HBGary is the sort of sociopathic outfit that would actually hire someone to carry it out.

Re:Earth First!

[Scrameustache]

So Anonymous is kind of like Earth First folks.

Have you ever seen them in the same room? Maybe they're the same person!

Re:Earth First!

[Anonymous Coward]

wait.. they're sociopaths? what about the wealthy powerful organizations who do the same things on a grand scale to protect their interests? aren't they sociopathic as well? or does might make right? HB Gary is a shitty ass company putting up a front to steal public funds.

Re:Earth First!

[HungryHobo]

barely even that.

do something anonymously, congratualtions you are now part of "Anonymous".

there's going to be both psychos and saint doing things anonymously.

Re:Earth First!

[Anonymous Coward]

Death threats are run-of-the-mill for anyone in the public spotlight. Do you know how many death threats public officials and celebrities receive on a daily basis? Is Anonymous behind all of those too? Or could it possibly be an RL troll just trying to wind people up? Why would they threaten to kill someone they've already sufficiently embarrassed?

Sure, they (whoever "they" are) are like Earth First, in that they're activists that respect the causes they fight for more than the law. That makes them host to "sociopathic" tendencies? That's kind of weird, I'm looking at the list of symptoms for someone with Anti-social Personality Disorder and fail to see how you could even possess this knowledge without personally knowing the people you're referring to. Sociopathy involves a lifelong pattern of abusing the rights of others, not isolated incidents, and usually not in defense of causes or other unfairly maligned groups.

Re:Earth First!

[sycodon]

What's wierd is that you actually looked up Anti-social Personality Disorder so you could nit pick details instead of just going with the obvious meaning of the reference within the context of the comment.

You should look up Obsessive-Compulsive disorder next.

Re:Earth First!

[Zeinfeld]

We have absolutely no proof any death threats were made, let alone who made them

The group proposed using disinformation tactics. So why believe their word now? Doing so without question seems naive.

Re:Earth First!

[Beerdood]

Meh, not so sure if I agree with "sociopathic tendencies". Sociopaths generally do whatever they want for their personal gain, and have no regard for anyone's feeling. I think the anonymous members see themselves more as vigilantes and upholding justice when no one else comes to their claim (maybe pranking others is a form of justice to them). The things they do generally aren't for their own personal gain, it's for retribution

If Anon had a D & D Alignment I'd categorize them as Chaotic Good. "Chaotic Good is known as the "Beatific," "Rebel," or "Cynic" alignment. A Chaotic Good character favors change for a greater good, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well. They always intend to do the right thing, but their methods are generally disorganized and often out of alignment with the rest of society..."

I don't always agree with their methods, but I really liked this story. Also, note that there was only the claim of a death threat. Cancelling the seminar because of a death threat sounds better than "We're going to a computer security conference / seminar (or whatever it is), but we just got hacked and would rather not answer any embarassing questions about getting pwned"

Re:Earth First!

[The End Of Days]

Yeah, I guess when people who are attacking you tell you to die, it's easy to misinterpret that.

The problem with this whole thing is that both sides are retards. No matter who wins, we all lose.

Irony of Anonymous' position

[caseih]

I can't comment on what kind of snobs HBGary folks are, but the actions of Anonymous seem quite hypocritical to me in general. So "Anonymous" fights for wikileaks, which is expressly set up for the purpose of sharing secrets and revealing things. Then I read about how someone tried to expose who various members of Anonymous were, after which Anonymous got all upset and attacked him for doing the very things that wikileaks does, which they work to support. Seems like they value secrecy above everything else, kind of like the people that feel the most threatened by wikileaks. Ironic.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples and oranges much??? Your analogy is a bucket full of fail.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[caseih]

Funny. I made no analogy.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not ironic or hypocritcal.
Privacy for the powerful is a bad thing.
Privacy for the powerless is a good thing.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[TexVex]

It's not ironic or hypocritical at all!

When you are in a position of authority over other people, you must be held to a higher standard. With your greater authority comes greater responsibility. Responsibility requires transparency. Therefore, the more power you have, the less secrecy you should be allowed to have, because secrecy allows you to abuse your power.

All of the above applies to groups as well as individuals. Churches and their clergy, goverments and their bureaucrats, corporations and their executives, military and their officers, ALL have great power over people and therefore must be held accountable for their use of that power. However, private individuals who do not exercise power over others should have no requirement for higher transparency. If you aren't in a position to harm others, any exposition of your private affairs won't do anything to help anyone else. It can only be used to harm you, and is an abuse of power. Therefore, you in fact should have a right to privacy.

Consider the issue of gun ownership. If you choose to own a gun, you are taking some power. With that power comes responsibility. That gun's characteristics should be on file with law enforcement, so they can potentially match crime scene bullets fired from your gun. Make sense? More power = more transparency.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you did. If you can't comprehend what you are writing maybe you should just not?

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[uniquename72]

I don't see the hypocrisy. After all, Anon themselves released the information you claim they were trying to suppress.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not the first example of hypocrisy of Anonymous. Just google "Anonymous attacks jessi slaughter". They are hypocrites, bullies and pedophiles.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you perhaps think that the 'secrets' that Wikileaks publishes are equal to the personal information on some script kiddies?
I hope you realize that the information that Wikileaks puts out is actually vital for democracy to function. I don't know how you even compare that to HBGary trying to sell information about these hactivists to FBI.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[JrbuPTur]

You're full of nonsense. Try to read more and eat more fish.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Infiniti2000]

So, your claim is that Anonymous has no power at all? You know that's not true. They've proven otherwise that they not only have power, they have power over a lot of people and can wreck a lot of people's livelihoods and lives. In fact, the more power we allow such groups to have (e.g. Anonymous, Wikileaks), by your argument they must become fully transparent. That's why caseih's point is valid.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing what an individual or tiny group does to protest to what a huge corporation or government does to cover up their malfeasance ... are you a dupe or a plant?

There has been a lot of success using big money to label any kind of environmental action as "nut jobs", any kind of social justice or innovate thought as "raving liberals". This is just the next step, how can this be more obvious? It really doesn't matter if the sign and threats were legitimate or not, the rot is setting in. Historically, when there are no longer any legitimate targets, these groups disband, collapse or the populace eventually turns them in.

I wonder if the leadership of the so called "Western Democracies" are looking to the uprisings in the Middle East as a sign that they should start viscously cutting their own corruption out or as a sign that they should tighten the screws more ... The current choice seems to be to batten down the hatches. The funny part is that pruning your own tree is SO much cheaper and more effective in keeping control and maximizing profits. The rancher gets much more meat and wool from the sheep than the wolves ever do as the wolves will take the whole flock. A wise rancher treats his flock with the care and respect they deserve and is handsomely rewarded for it.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[anti-pop-frustration]

Nothing Ironic about it al all. I think this is the hundredth time have heard this false dichotomy.

Wikileaks is about exposing governments and corporations wrongdoings, not about ending privacy for individuals (this is facebook business model).

Corporations and governments should operate transparently, they have no *inherent* right to privacy, private individuals however do. As a private citizen, and as long as I don't break any law (and posting anonymously on the internet is definitely not a crime), I should have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

When you say Wikileaks is against privacy, you're either misinformed or spreading lies.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the idea is 'Privacy for people, publicity for corporations and governments.' Wikileaks publishes information about governments from individuals, and keeps their identities hidden. Aaron Barr does a lot of shady things involving individuals under the banner of HBGary, and the company's emails are leaked. If Barr was some lone wolf loony on the side of the street screaming about how he had 'hacked anonymous', do you think anybody would give him a shiny nickel?

Based on these news stories and media-mongering over this event, the only thing that seems certain is the Schadenfreude Reactor that powers the internet is getting a real boost from Aaron Barr.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[guspasho]

Anonymous is not an organization. They are the mob. As in pitchforks and torches, not as in Al Capone and tommy-guns. There are no "ringleaders". Anyone can do anything and attribute it to Anonymous. As such, your accusations of hypocrisy and secrecy are absurd. It's like calling the weather a hypocrite because it rains one day and it's sunny the next.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

No.. Anonymous reacted because the idiot posted supposed lists of Anonymous members that had no relation to reality. It would be like me claiming that caseih was a member of some militant group and shouting that I had the facts to support it. My facts? Well, you posted to Slashdot and many people on Slashdot are pro-wikileaks.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikileaks,in case you didnt know (and apparently you dont), reveals government secrets. You know, the government that i pay with my own money. they are not out there to reveal my SSN to the world. or my name , location, etc. Just the secrets that shouldn't be secrets, such as: what did you do with my tax dollars?
At the moment, all i can do to get a better government is to vote for the politician that promises to be more open. The problem is, once they get in power, all of them promptly forget what they promised. Wikileaks is there to make sure that what they do stays open.
Why do i want to know what they do with my taxes? Because those are my money. Because i want to tell my member of congress that i don't agree with them spending 50% of my money on a stupid war. That i don't agree with them giving only 2-3% to NASA. Until now, i had no idea.
"We have to spend on military, because there are a lot of bad guys out there". Yes they are, you put them there you fucker. And now you wanna spend my money to kill them? WTF?
You sold them weapons and now you wanna sell even more weapons (to our army) by declaring a war on the guys you sold weapons to in the first place.
Talking about eating your cake and having it too.

No, those things shouldn't stay secret.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[guspasho]

So, your claim is that Anonymous has no power at all?

He didn't say that at all. Shouldn't basic reading comprehension be a bare minimum for posting?

Anonymous is not the police. They have no authority over us. Nor are they the banks, we did not give them our money to hold in trust. Etc etc. They have no authority and they have no more power than any other private individual such as you or I. If your argument is that Anonymous should become fully transparent then so should you, because you have as much power as Anonymous. I await your revelation of all your personally identifiable information.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not ironic or hypocritical at all!

When you are in a position of authority over other people, you must be held to a higher standard. With your greater authority comes greater responsibility. Responsibility requires transparency. Therefore, the more power you have, the less secrecy you should be allowed to have, because secrecy allows you to abuse your power.

Yes actually it is. Hypocrisy is when you say "I don't have to follow this rule but you do". It doesn't suddenly become not hypocritical just because the hypocrite happens to be someone you agree with.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

No more hypocritical than a citizen wanting personal privacy but wanting a transparent government. Anonymous not being a government entity, I don't see any hypocrisy...

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

Individual privacy != government secrets

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[smugfunt]

So "Anonymous" fights for wikileaks, which is expressly set up for the purpose of sharing secrets and revealing things.

Government or corporate secrets and things.

Seems like they value secrecy above everything else

Personal secrets / privacy.

Ironic.

Only if you think governments and corporations are equivalent to people.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider the issue of gun ownership. If you choose to own a gun, you are taking some power. With that power comes responsibility. That gun's characteristics should be on file with law enforcement, so they can potentially match crime scene bullets fired from your gun. Make sense? More power = more transparency.

Just as a gun can give you power and can be used to commit a crime, a computer can do the same. I would actually say that a computer in the right hands and used to its full potential can give you a lot more power than a gun can. So by your logic, every computing device should be traceable and on file with law enforcement so that they can trace the crime back to the computer.

With a gun, you have physical limitations (IE. range/physical locality, number of bullets). But with a computer, you are not so constrained. You can reach anywhere the internet goes and you have the potential, for good or evil, to affect millions of people at once. With the anonymous nature of computers and the internet, people as a whole are more willing to do and say things that they would never do/say face to face.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Infiniti2000]

He didn't say that at all. ... Anonymous is not the police. They have no authority over us

No authority or no power? Didn't they try to get people to do certain things, and succeed? Right, they don't have authority (I never said they do) but they do hold some power. And that power (be it only reputation even) can cause people to act. I wouldn't call it authority, however, because they likely have no idea who could/will respond to the request.

So, anyway, let's make a bad analogy. A government organization uses both its power (in terms of affecting laws or enforcing them) and its authority (people have jobs and report to people who make the decisions to act) to take certain actions. The claim is therefore that because of this power/authority, this organization should operate transparently. Fair enough.

Anonymous (or any similar group) uses its power (in terms of influencing members' actions to write posters, heckle speakers, shut down websites, etc.) to take certain actions. It has no authority over those people, however, so it can't (or won't) fire Ricky Bobby from his day job if he doesn't comply. Because it doesn't have the authority, it's okay for this organization to be completely opaque.

Is that accurate? If not, please explain where my bad analogy or reading comprehension broke down. It certainly seems like hypocrisy there, though that amount of hypocrisy is likely palatable to most readers on /. because they tend to support one side and not the other.

Now, regarding whether I have as much power as Anonymous, you can't be serious. You really think that people give a fuck what "Infiniti2000" or "guspasho" says? Now, if I posted something as coming from Anonymous (not AC!), then you don't think that would have any more weight? You're daft if you think that.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[jdc18]

How can you link two things completely unrelated like that?? Wikileaks is not about sharing secrets and revealing things. That is an understatement. They do believe that people are allowed to privacy. They are whistler blowers, so when ever countries and corporations are hiding information to the public about wars, oil, secret bank accounts, etc, if there is an informant wikileaks can be a media to share secrets that major media like Washington post or NY Times are afraid to publish. Then HBGary comes and tries to pull a publicity stunt by saying they have information about Anonymous and pretending to sell that to the FBI. Not having any idea what they were facing, Anonymous bites back and rips their head off. And publishes all the information about important Anonymous members that HBGary had. (Plus several emails and secret plans to discredit wikileaks???) What do you expect from a group called Anonymous, by definition they will pretty much like to keep their anonymity. Besides they operate on the limits of the law, and have crossed that line many times, by no means they will like to be exposed, so DUH.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anonymous" does not have a hypocritical position, or any position at all.

It is a label for people who find trolling, harassing and provoking others amusing. There is no leadership, hierarchy, membership applications, goals or agendas - anybody who can get a few friends and strangers from IRC or 4chan to help them out on a prank and uses the name Anonymous while at it is a "member" for a short while.

Sometimes their targets seem to deserve it (for example Scientology, HBGary), sometimes completely innocent people, sometimes something in between (for example Mastercard after the Wikileaks scandal). Sometimes people trying to "recruit" others become targets themselves, because they are seen as the more emotionally invested and therefore more fun to troll.

It is a completely anarchist movement, and it's impossible to shut it down by going after the "leaders" - because any person from anywhere in the world can become a leader if he convinces a few other's to act out his idea to troll someone for personal amusement, and uses the Anonymous label. Like one previous poster said - if you write "Anon 4 lulz" on a sheet of paper, and place it on a conference desk, you become a "member" Anonymous for 3 minutes.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you can't see the hypocrisy is indicative of the failure of education to promote critical thinking. It doesn't make it any less real because your head is up your ass.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[the eric conspiracy]

Corporations are in fact private individuals under the law, and have many of the same rights as individuals.

There are a lot of reasons for this - the legal necessity for contracts to be enforceable, freedom of association and so forth.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[Anonymous Coward]

Has "anonymous" power over people? In some sense, it doesn't even exist... Even if a mob doesn't have a leader, its actions can have effects on people.

I am quite suspicious of this kind of thing. It will lead to some ugly stuff every now and then.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[PitaBred]

It's funny and kinda sad that you think Anonymous is even the same group of people from minute to minute.

Re:Irony of Anonymous' position

[mywhitewolf]

I think there is a failure here to recognize what aspects of the information should remain private and what should be public.

I would not expect the receptionist for company xyz to have her personal information shared like the location of her house or her political persuasion. why would you hold anon at a higher standard then you would hold the government?

the way anon operate is more public than any other company or collective known to man. Also, it was Anon that published the list that was compiled by Aaron Barr to the public as a whole. Mr. Barr had no intent on publishing the information publicly and instead wanted to use it to commit fraud.

Government fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

I just have this feeling that there are folks out there cheering for the bad guys here just because Barr is a jerk

My impression from all this is that HBGary were incompetent and as a Government contractor, they should be investigated for fraud. Selling their services as a Government security firm only to be broken into with SQL injections and rainbow tables?!?

Plah- ease!

Re:Government fraud

[Narcocide]

unfortunately the truth of this statement will be entirely missed by the greater public.

Re:Government fraud

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

My impression from all this is that HBGary were incompetent and as a Government contractor, they should be investigated for fraud.

Absolutely. Now how does that excuse attacks, stalking, or even "mere" vandalism ?

Why is this ridiculous sort of mob justice tolerated ? We've all been in the playground, we've all seen mob justice in action, and we all know what WILL happen. So why do these people get any support whatsoever ?

Are we truly such hypocrites ? Insist on rights, when it's about us ... And then demand and defend swift illegal and criminal action against anyone we don't like ? Is that what is meant by "internet protest" ? Because if it is, frankly, it must be squashed with any amount of violence necessary.

Re:Government fraud

[KhabaLox]

SQL injections and rainbow tables

unfortunately the truth of this statement will be entirely missed by the greater public.

The greater public probably think SQL injections and rainbow tables are some bizarre gay fetish activity.

Re:Government fraud

[AlamedaStone]

Why is this ridiculous sort of mob justice tolerated ? We've all been in the playground, we've all seen mob justice in action, and we all know what WILL happen. So why do these people get any support whatsoever ?

Are we truly such hypocrites ? Insist on rights, when it's about us ... And then demand and defend swift illegal and criminal action against anyone we don't like ? Is that what is meant by "internet protest" ? Because if it is, frankly, it must be squashed with any amount of violence necessary.

I can't say I'd participate, but I can certainly understand the frustration of seeing an incompetent government security firm in action. Think about the last 12 years for more than a second, and the word 'security'... well, a shiver runs down my spine. The *immediate* surrender of the country's principles and well-being following the bombings in 2001 while dissenters are booed from the spotlight and ostracized. All the things done in the name of security that made us less secure, all (all!) of the money spent on endless, fruitless military operations and grandma groping. Like many /.ers it troubles me deeply, and I see the country breathe a cheeto-stench sigh of disinterest while all but a handful of legislators jerk off on their bases while doing nothing to manage the cancerous meme of security uber alles, all out of cowardice and greed.

Maybe some people think mob justice is the closest they'll ever get to the real thing.

Huh. Guess I'm a little more pissed off than I thought... I'm going to go get some coff... eh, decaf.

Re:Government fraud

[Will.Woodhull]

Who are the bad guys in this situation?

Was Robin Hood a bad guy? Should he have submitted peacefully to the evil Sheriff?

In a place where there is no law, all actions are lawless. There is no way to judge who wears the white hats and who wears the black ones. These corners of the Internet (Twitter, Facebook, 4chan, WikiLeaks, etc) have come into existence so quickly, and are evolving so rapidly, that no established laws can be applied to them. And yet they are now becoming the dominant factors driving world politics (Egypt, Tunisia).

However the persons who are forging these new areas, the pioneers, are also forging codes of behavior, outlaw codes to guide outlaw actions in a region that is outside the law. We can see that these codes are enforced by bannings and blacklists, and now with the recent Anonymous activity we see vigilante actions. Which tend to be harsher than the sanctions of law, but in those areas where there are not yet laws, then only vigilante activity can protect the nascent societies from the predations of assholes who are out to grab whatever fortune they can wrest from the work of others.

I have no use for HBGary Federal. I believe that the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, or whatever above-the-law agency of the USA that is bankrolling them no longer has any use for them either. I hope the USA has not wasted a lot of money on this broken puppet that probably never worked right from the beginning. I hate to see my taxes wasted on such crap.

Re:Government fraud

[Mister Whirly]

But hopefully not from all the 3 letter agencies that were considering doing business with HBGary. That is what is going to hurt them the most. And I think that even the general public can realize that someone who runs a security company that can get owned that hard by Anonymous may need to re-think their security practices.

Re:Government fraud

[number11]

Why is this ridiculous sort of mob justice tolerated ?

Because, in cases like this, it's the only sort of justice that there is likely to be. It's not like a government that protects torturers will do anything, even if it wasn't that very government who recommended HBGary in the first place.

Now, that doesn't excuse "death threats". If there were in fact any (those might merely be a face-saving excuse for backing out of the conference).

Re:Government fraud

[TheRaven64]

Absolutely. Now how does that excuse attacks, stalking, or even "mere" vandalism ?

Who said it did? I know that the Republicans and Democrats try hard to pretend that it's not possible, but you can think both people in an argument are idiots.

Re:Government fraud

[Zeinfeld]

They are self confessed liars. So why accept the claims of vandalism at face value?

I am at RSA, I was part of a long conversation with Art Coviello last night and he did not mention it. It his his confernce and it is a security conference. If the ckaim was true and had been reported i would have expected it to be mentined.

I think it rather more likely that they did not have the courage to show their faces.

They have been punked for a start. That is an embarrassment. But what would make them pariahs was the proposal to engage in criminal attacks and political misinformation. Many of us are ex law enforcement or ex intelligence. Others work closely with them. You cant do that if you are committing criminal acts yourself.

If i thought there was a chance he might show his face i would have gone to his session earlier. But that was never likely.

Last year he was talking about hacking online games and club penguin.

Re:Government fraud

[conspirator57]

i will exhibit concern for HBGary as a victim the moment the jury in the criminal case against them is sequestered. Unfortunately, since DoJ connected BoA with the law firm that was soliciting these plans from HBGary and companies, I don't expect those crimes will ever be prosecuted, much less convicted on. So unless you're prepared to show some concern for the life and livelihoods of those targeted by HBGary for persecution (investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald for one) then I think you're just concern trolling for the powerful. They don't need your help. They have enough power already.

Re:Government fraud

[elrous0]

There is an old saying I heard somewhere once: "Everyone is the hero of their own story." That is, everyone thinks *they're* the good guy. Whether they are to an outside observer depends upon that observer's perspective.

I will say this much, Barr's actions clearly crossed an ethical line, especially considering this was a private corporation with no police authority, no warrants, and no oversight.

Re:Government fraud

[Thud457]

Barr's actions clearly crossed an ethical line, especially considering this was a private corporation with no police authority, no warrants, and no oversight.

Black propeganda, libel, smears and manufacturing of evidence isn't acceptable even if you are the police.

Re:Government fraud

[elrous0]

That's where the oversight comes in (or rather, it's *supposed* to).

Re:Government fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh don't fret, they are bizarre gay fetish activities too.

Re:Government fraud

[Therilith]

My impression from all this is that HBGary were incompetent and as a Government contractor, they should be investigated for fraud.

Absolutely. Now how does that excuse attacks, stalking, or even "mere" vandalism ?

Why is this ridiculous sort of mob justice tolerated ? We've all been in the playground, we've all seen mob justice in action, and we all know what WILL happen. So why do these people get any support whatsoever ?

Are we truly such hypocrites ? Insist on rights, when it's about us ... And then demand and defend swift illegal and criminal action against anyone we don't like ? Is that what is meant by "internet protest" ? Because if it is, frankly, it must be squashed with any amount of violence necessary.

"Illegal violence must be stopped using equally illegal amounts of violence."
Did you just condone and object to "swift illegal and criminal action" in the same paragraph?

Re:Government fraud

[The Archon V2.0]

The greater public probably think SQL injections and rainbow tables are some bizarre gay fetish activity.

Wow. I can just see Oprah terrorizing her watchers with talk of how their teenage kids are getting together to inject SQL and put together rainbow tables.

Re:Government fraud

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

No, actually I condoned swift legal police action, preferably nonviolent, but definitely violent if necessary.

You know, the same thing I'd like if I were attacked.

Re:Government fraud

[Samizdata]

The worst part is not that they WERE owned that hard, but WHY they were owned so hard. Cybersecurity is not the place for "Do as I say, not as I do." Now I wouldn't blame them too much for the SQL injection, but the following elements of the attack is nothing but a long list of cybersecurity worst practices originating from the top of the company. I am not a cybersecurity guru, but I doubt I would find myself falling victim to things like password sharing, because I realize the problems they engender.

Re:Government fraud

[Samizdata]

I have no use for HBGary Federal. I believe that the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, or whatever above-the-law agency of the USA that is bankrolling them no longer has any use for them either. I hope the USA has not wasted a lot of money on this broken puppet that probably never worked right from the beginning. I hate to see my taxes wasted on such crap.

The only sad thing is that I suspect that some people completely innocent of their employers' idiocy and hubris (which was the worst aspect, as that is what I think triggered Anon's attack) will most probably being losing jobs, when all of this could have been avoided by practicing the procedures the company was in place to advocate.

it doesnt excuse that, that doesnt excuse this ...

[unity100]

bleh and bleh.

we are not excusing ourselves as people, and not doing anything that the current law would shun as criminal, but those people whom you speak about are doing all the inexcusable criminal acts as government contractors, and getting away with it. this ranges from torture to censorship.

no. there is a certain point of assness at which things can be excused.

They are behaving like a corporation or gov't

[copponex]

What happened when Assange started releasing diplomatic cables? Oh, that's right: he received public death threats from US officials. What happens when an individual starts complaining about a corporation, or about scientology? Oh, that's right: they get bullied by a team of lawyers that cost more per hour than the individual makes in a month.

I don't support making death threats or using baser harassment to get a point across, but the only thing newsworthy about the tactics of Anonymous is that now it's regular citizens making the threats and engaging in bullying tactics instead of governments and corporations. If governments and corporations only respect the law when they aren't the ones in power anymore, fuck'em.

Re:They are behaving like a corporation or gov't

[KingMotley]

he received public death threats from US officials

You make me laugh. Thanks for that.

Re:They are behaving like a corporation or gov't

[LWATCDR]

What government official made a death threat? Remember that a to be an official they must be an official not a former one which makes them just so guy.
Plus let's us our brains. If the US government wanted him dead then they would say nothing. That is just dumb. They would even say positive things and then Mr Assange would have a tragic accident. Maybe food poisoning or a bad oyster.

I swear you people thing this US government is this all powerful evil entity that can do just about anything and at the same time make them as stupid as a Bond villain.
Yes Mr Assange I will kill you. But first I will make very public threats and then let you run around telling people that we threatened you....
Please at least cook up a good set of unreasonable fears.

Re:They are behaving like a corporation or gov't

[truk138]

Yes but thanks to the government being made up of many people and not one mighty blob of human flesh like from Akira. some of those individuals will say and do dumb ass things before the group comes to a consensus

No, still not getting it

[SmallFurryCreature]

You are still in Fox mode, trying to see the conspiracy behind events because your mind cannot grasp that shit just happens.

Anonymous has no organization, it cannot by its very nature. Some people who HAVE grouped together have used the name for themselves BUT by that they have seized to become Anonymous.

Is it really that hard to grasp? Just because you know the identity of ONE A. Nonymous author doesn't mean that every other book written under that name is linked to it in anyway. Anonymous, the concept to give a mystic to the random actions of people that sometimes seem to work together and groups calling themselves anonymous are NOT the same thing.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Zironic]

The distinction is meaningless. If you kill/imprison the people calling themselves Anonymous the attacks stop either way regardless if they're one group or many groups.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI - It's "ceased to", not "seized to"

Re:No, still not getting it

[ElectricTurtle]

It does matter, because if you kill/capture "people calling themselves Anonymous" and the attacks don't stop because somebody completely new/different steps in to do the same things, you're creating martyrs that create more Anons. Anonymous is a headless horseman. You can't cut off its head because it doesn't have one.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Scrameustache]

If you kill/imprison the people calling themselves Anonymous the attacks stop either way regardless if they're one group or many groups.

I am Spartacus!

Re:No, still not getting it

[Duradin]

The Appian Way needs a bit more decoration. Your contribution to the beautification of the Empire is appreciated.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Zironic]

The people calling themselves "Anonymous" isn't some rebel movement willing to die for the cause, most of them are kids doing it for the lulz, do you really think anyone of them wants to be a martyr?

Re:No, still not getting it

[ElectricTurtle]

Several have been imprisoned already. How much momentum has been lost? How much more momentum has been potentially gained by those acts fostering a vengeful sentiment? Unknowable, but it certainly hasn't stopped anything, that's for damn sure.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Kid Zero]

Which is what happened to the real Spartacus, if I recall. The Romans simply slaughtered everyone. End of Story.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? You mean every movie director that gets credited as Alan Smithee isn't a member of shadowy organization of directors hiding their identities? You mean that anyone can use that name, without having any connection to the other people who chose to use it?

Wow, you've just shattered my worldview.

Re:No, still not getting it

[scubamage]

Obviously you've never babysat a child. You do realize that there are these things called "spite" and "arrogance" which teenagers have in spades.

Re:No, still not getting it

[AlamedaStone]

If you kill/imprison the people calling themselves Anonymous the attacks stop either way regardless if they're one group or many groups.

I am Spartacus!

I'm Brian, and so's my wife!

Re:No, still not getting it

[KhabaLox]

most of them are kids doing it for the lulz,

Maybe the ones volunteering their connection to DDOS sites are kids in it for lulz. The ones who pulled off the HBGary hack were not.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Will.Woodhull]

Anonymous has all the markings of a vigilante group. Which means its "membership" changes each time it is called upon to act, and some effective number of persons responds to that call. Anonymous' capabilities change with its changing membership, just like the vigilante posses of the Old West changed, depending on whether only the farmers and cowboys were in the group, or some of the veterans of Civil War battles were riding along this time.

Vigilante groups have never been stopped by trying to eliminate the leaders.

The only sure way to stop vigilante groups is to bring law into the frontier area in which they are active. But Anonymous is active on the emerging frontier of new technologies, and it is going to be a long while before any law can be forged that could be applied to this area. Extensions of existing laws do not work. We found that when bicycles and then automobiles became common, the existing laws for horses and carriages where so inadequate that entirely new sets of traffic laws had to be developed. What is happening with the Internet is like that: our patent laws, copyright laws, and laws regarding secrecy and privacy have no more value today than the laws that said where you could tie up your horse were useful after everyone was pedaling or driving about town.

Re:No, still not getting it

[ShakaUVM]

>>Some people who HAVE grouped together have used the name for themselves BUT by that they have seized to become Anonymous.

Rather, some Anonymous have been seized. =)

>>Anonymous has no organization, it cannot by its very nature

TFA talked about Anonymous IRC channels, so there you go. There's no way to assemble flash mobs without some form of organization. It might not be a traditional organization, of course, but there must be a system in place. Otherwise it's just a guy talking to himself in his closet.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous is People.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Khyber]

Anonymous is worse than the hydra. You cut off one head, over 9000 more take its place, and you can't simply burn the head stump once the head is removed, it propagates too rapidly.

And all you do is piss it off even more.

Note that since the Palin e-mail crack, Anonymous has stepped up its game.

You clearly have no clue about Anonymous.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Zironic]

You're funny. Anonymous is a bunch of kids, they're many but they're not infinite and their leaders are probably pretty damn rare. (Where Leader is someone with the technical skills to organize any sort of serious effort).

Re:No, still not getting it

[Altus]

I heard about the arrests but does anyone have anymore info on that. How many people were arrested, has anyone actually been charged with a crime and if so, what crimes. This story seems to have gotten somewhat lost in the noise.

Re:No, still not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? And here I thought Anonymous Coward was just a single really prolific poster...

Re:No, still not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there's more than one poster not getting it:

seized != ceased
mystic != mystique

Re:No, still not getting it

[exomondo]

Some people who HAVE grouped together have used the name for themselves BUT by that they have seized to become Anonymous.

Huh? Because they seized the name?

Anonymous, the concept to give a mystic to the random actions of people that sometimes seem to work together and groups calling themselves anonymous are NOT the same thing.

How are they 'random actions'? A targeted DDOS doesn't happen by accident, nor is a targeted DDOS called off by accident.

Re:No, still not getting it

[PitaBred]

And if you kill/imprison enough drug dealers, there will cease to be any drugs dealt... oh, wait...

Re:No, still not getting it

[PitaBred]

Always look on the bright side of life!

Re:No, still not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous is pretty easy to sum up by watching "Ghost in the shell :Stand alone complex"

Re:No, still not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me I'm wrong.. Are you thinking the +o's on their IRC channel are possibly the people 'running the group'? I'm guessing that's the kind of 'evidence' that this genius Barr had against them, maybe some owners of colo or boxes running BNC w/ vhosts, etc..

Maybe its a few guys talking to themselves in a closet? Or maybe its a non-stop nerd/shut-in party? I don't really know myself, just speculation. I have to say that I've seen a LOT of chaos in my life that did seem self-organized in a way. When systems break down, you tend to try and find another way to make it work, as a kid, as a hacker, as the over- (or under-) privileged, etc. I believe a type of 'flash mob' could be self-assembled with just the right people at just the right time. In fact the first search result for flash mob on google describes one: (maybe this event was actually more organized than it was reported here, but you must grasp the essence of both of these stories: an action or realization can trigger actions by another party, which can have self-organization based on the principle!)

Cultural and political theorist Hans Magnus Enzensberger outlined an early gathering that took advantage of a glitch in the Swedish public telephone service.[19] In September 1982, several dozen school children dressed in bright-colored clothes met at the Fridhelmsplan in Stockholm, Sweden. The group did not gather in protest, but instead simply stood in loose groups talking to one another. After approximately one thousand people had gathered, they moved toward Rålambshovspark. Fifty members of the police intercepted the group with vans, truncheons, and dogs. While attempting to disperse the young people, police hit some with truncheons, the dogs became restless, there were bruises and torn clothes and stones were thrown. The next day, it was revealed that the group had assembled after several children had discovered an technical defect in the public-telephone network whereby anyone who dialed certain unallocated numbers could connect to anyone else who did the same thing. The numbers spread rapidly through the Stockholm school system, and an enormous, spontaneous conference circuit came into being, a new mass medium: the “hot line.”[19]

sounds like it might have been the 1st phreaking party in sweden!

Re:No, still not getting it

[ShakaUVM]

The ops? Not necessarily. But there's natural leaders in every group, whether explicit or implicit. It doesn't mean there has to be a formal structure, but whereas you might hear about a topless flash mob at Abercrombie and text a few of your friends about it, there's going to be some people that will text 100 or 1000. And when you get there, there's a guy with a bullhorn organizing the thing, or handing out Guy Fawkes masks or something. Those are the leaders.

let me put it in cartoon context :

[unity100]

me knowing what my government is doing with my money : good.

anyone trying to prevent me from knowing what my government is doing with my money, for ANY reason : evil

anyone helping me know what my government is doing : good.

anyone defending those who are helping me know what my government is doing : good.

at our time and age, with the point our societal corruption has hit, unfortunately things are as black & white as this.

...............

and talking about fascism and lack of freedom - dont worry. fascists already have taken over your country long ago - you are just being repressed willingly, living only in proportion to your material wealth, while the rich has cornered the economy before you and controlling you through their bigger wealth, and you think that as freedom. you have nothing to fear - you are already willingly participating in what you fear.

Re:let me put it in cartoon context :

[Anonymous Coward]

well said

Re:let me put it in cartoon context :

[kevinNCSU]

me knowing what my government is doing with my money : good.

anyone trying to prevent me from knowing what my government is doing with my money, for ANY reason : evil

anyone helping me know what my government is doing : good.

So if the government relocates a witness for their protection using your tax money you need the line-item details that could give their location away or can we abstract it to a budget for witness relocation used by the Marshals Service? At what level of abstraction does the flip immediately switch from Good [tm] to Evil [tm]? Do the motives for someone leaking what the government is doing with that witness (because they want the witness killed or because there's some sort of government scam) matter or is it just plain good either way?

Re:let me put it in cartoon context :

[unity100]

yeah yeah. you exaggerated it so nicely that all my points are void now ................ not. get a clue.

Re:let me put it in cartoon context :

[kevinNCSU]

I didn't exaggerate a single thing. I asked where you draw the line when it comes to real things that the government does every single day in your claim that everything is black and white, good and evil. I didn't even make any claim to invalidate your statements I merely asked you questions related to the application of your claims. It's a very difficult question to answer so I can understand your reluctance to try, but that is why no one reasonably believes things are so perfectly clear as black and white, good and evil when it comes to transparency, secrets and privacy. All of these issues are an immensely complex tangle of give and take, balance of freedom of information and protection of both innocents and national interests.

Re:let me put it in cartoon context :

[unity100]

it isnt difficult to answer. everything must be publicly available. even if a witness protection programme is in question, it can be exploited to do underhanded things due to the secrecy i provides. everything must be public.

Re:let me put it in cartoon context :

[kevinNCSU]

it isnt difficult to answer. everything must be publicly available. even if a witness protection programme is in question, it can be exploited to do underhanded things due to the secrecy i provides. everything must be public.

I disagree strongly with your view then. I think the risk of government corruption through a witness protection program is immeasurably smaller than the risks to a free and lawful society not being able to protect witnesses from retribution and intimidation when testifying against large criminal organizations, corporations, and even other branches of the government itself. I value the changes and justice brought about in society by such witnesses far more then I fear the risk that some small amount of tax dollars is somehow siphoned off from the witness security budget without any of the appointed officials or auditors noticing and blowing the whistle.

We're both entitled to our own opinion of course, but luckily for me there's enough people in this democracy that agree with me that I don't think those practices will get changed anytime soon.

Re:let me put it in cartoon context :

[sp0tter]

perhaps I am misunderstanding something, but it is possible to provide details of how much such a program costs, the number of participants, etc without divulging the names and locations of said participants.

Re:let me put it in cartoon context :

[rahvin112]

A such Moral absolutism. So anyone that does an action you deem good is automatically good no matter what else. So even if they torture puppies in their spare time they are good dammit because "they help you know what your government is doing".

How silly. Ah the folly of youth.

What. The. FUCK

[DavidTC]

...is wrong with editors here?

Having a sign put on your booth is not being 'attacked', you goddamn fucktards. Nor is it a 'threat'. I know the article claims that,but it's clearly insane nonsense.

What the fuck is wrong with you, CmdrTaco? Why are you repeating lies?

And what is wrong with the people who here repeat the 'vandalism' claim without actually look at what was done? Laying a poster on top of someone else's table is not even legally vandalism, and that's a crime with a pretty low bar.

Perhaps, you know, we shouldn't be repeating claims that HGBGray makes, an organization that has been demonstrated they will lie about people they are paid to lie about.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure what your problem is with the headline. Header says "Attacked by anonymous, HBGary Pulls out of RSA". I'm pretty sure that's referring to the company being attacked, specially the web site being attacked by a... SQL Injection Attack. Did you think that the 'attack' meant the sign being placed there, and not the attack on the website? Lulz

Also, not sure why you're fired up about the "vandalism" claim. The VP of HBGary claimed it was "vandalized", one other poster here claimed it was vandalized (with about 10 responses saying "wtf that's not vandalism". You have a pretty low slashdot ID, do you usually foam at the mouth when some asshat is obviously misinformed, without reading the insightful responses or before it's modded into oblivion?

Re:What. The. FUCK

[Huckabees]

It might not be vandalism but it's certainly could be called harassment considering the ongoing exploitation of HBGary resources that were compromised in the attack. At the very least Barr is being publicly harassed from his twitter page to this day.

Consider this example: If you had a bully pushing you around every day after school and then one day you go to your locker with a note from said bully stuck to it would you not also be bothered by it?

Regardless the note is likely written by anyone even loosely interested in the anonymous/4chan culture but that's kind of a foreign idea to most everyday people.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[DavidTC]

What, can you not read the article either? It clearly says that HBGary pulled out of RSA because of the 'vandalism and threats', not because of the hack.

So the headline was referring to the 'vandalism and threats' as 'an attack', presuming it was just simplifying and ignore 'threats'.

Remember, folks, on slashdot, placing a sign on a table is an 'attack'.

Or maybe those 'IRC threats' that only HBGary, an organization with a business plan to sell lying services, knows about, are the 'attacks' slashdot is talking about.

Can we please cover this in some sort of fucking objective manner, and stop repeating everything HBGary says as the the truth when they are demonstrable, blatant liars who have been hired to slander Anonymous? They actually admit this. That is their actual job, to lie about Wikileaks, Anonymous, Glenn Greenwald, and who knows else.

Can we perhaps at least have them 'Claiming to be attacked by Anonymous' or something? I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but it is utterly insane that their statements can appear as actual fact in headlines here.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[DavidTC]

Oh noes! Not harassment of HBGary!

Well, at least people are just harassing them at public events where they show up to give speeches. No one's harassing HBGary's family and friends yet.

You know, like HBGary planned to do to Wikileak supporters, or Chamber of Commerce protesters.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

...is wrong with editors here?

Having a sign put on your booth is not being 'attacked', you goddamn fucktards. Nor is it a 'threat'. I know the article claims that,but it's clearly insane nonsense.

What the fuck is wrong with you, CmdrTaco? Why are you repeating lies?

And what is wrong with the people who here repeat the 'vandalism' claim without actually look at what was done? Laying a poster on top of someone else's table is not even legally vandalism, and that's a crime with a pretty low bar.

Perhaps, you know, we shouldn't be repeating claims that HGBGray makes, an organization that has been demonstrated they will lie about people they are paid to lie about.

The threats were against Aaron Barr, and separate from the booth vandalization. I'm guessing you're so ready to be angry at someone that your critical dissection missed this.

As far as if it were vandalization.. That's probably a stretch, but for an employee who's job it was to show up and work the booth at RSA, it could easily be seen as 'threatening' or 'disconcerting'.

But, boy oh boy.. Are you angry! Take a walk, watch a movie.. relax buddy.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and if Slashdot continues to report "lies", then Anonymous will strike again, this time against /. Reminds me of some organization that calls itself a Church ...

Re:What. The. FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Or... you know... perhaps we shouldn't be encouraging or supporting an immoral, capricious, and shadowy collective of hackivists who have an unknown or ever-changing agenda, and are only willing to be in the fray because they assume there is low to zero risk to themselves.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[iammani]

Yeah, we should not. But we shouldnt post lies about them or take part in a smear campaign about them either.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, like HBGary planned to do to Wikileak supporters, or Chamber of Commerce protesters.

Man, you really are gullible aren't you? It must be true because you read it on the internet!

You are literally supporting the public harassment of a legitimate company based purely upon questionable information that you obtained from a website in Russia operated by an anonymous organization whose sole stated goal is to make 'lulz' and that admits to committing felony offenses during its daily operation and that clearly had motivation to attack and discredit said legitimate company.

Your standards of proof are somewhere between -1 and 0.

This apparently meets your standards:

DavidTC (10147) said "I love kiddie porn and wearing tutu's"

So, why do you believe the crap Anonymous posts?

Re:What. The. FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please cover this in some sort of fucking objective manner, and stop repeating everything Anonymous says or leaks as the truth when they are demonstrable, blatant liars who have been obvious intent to slander HBGary? They actually admit this.

FTFY.

Dude, you are the one spreading rumors and gossip. You apparently consider anything labeled "leaked emails" as 100% accurate and truthful. No way could someone have altered or added anything as complicated as an email....

For someone with such a low user-id, you certainly are not very smart and quite obviously gullible.

The vandalism was obviously the sign. We don't know about the threats, probably because the police are taking them seriously and not releasing the details yet.

And why are you getting so bent out of shape over this? It's between a (what? 10 person?) company and some random people on the internet... What is your involvement? You are certainly screaming and ranting, ready to blow a gasket.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[xororand]

Slashdot is about eyeballs first, content second. Who cares about TFA? Advertisement is where the money's at.

Re:What. The. FUCK

[DavidTC]

Hey, look, an ignorant idiot.

Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce believe the emails are true, and deny knowledge of any wrongdoing, and Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies believe the emails are true, and deny knowledge of any wrongdoing.

In fact, Palantir has thrown one of their own people under the bus with the excuse he was inexplicably working on this multimillion dollar project without supervision, which rather seems to imply his, and their, involvement was real.

HBGary has not even 'denied' them, although they've refused to state they're true, or comment at all.

Everyone already knows the emails are true, you fucking moron. Absolutely no one is denying them in any way, shape, or form., not even the parties involved.

Except you, you fucker, who has to come up with some reason that this is all a light and the heroic Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America couldn't do anything wrong.

it's always funny when morons show up during scandals and make excuses the people accused aren't making.

Yes, all those emails are made up, and none of the people involved in this made up email exchanges, after being asked by the press about them, thought 'Hey, wait a second, I didn't sent or receive any of those emails. This is all a fake! Maybe that should be my response. I could tell people that!'

...

'No, wait, instead I'll pretend it's all true, but that I didn't know what was going on. I'm sure that will make me look better than pointing out it's a fake, and I'm sure the forgers won't just make up new emails to better incriminate me. That's a better plan!'

Re:What. The. FUCK

[DavidTC]

Dude, you are the one spreading rumors and gossip. You apparently consider anything labeled "leaked emails" as 100% accurate and truthful. No way could someone have altered or added anything as complicated as an email....

Jesus Christ, more morons.

Do you people not pay any attention to this story? Are slashdot readers really that poorly informed?

So your theory is that of all the involved people, HBGray, Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, Hunton & Williams, John Woods, all of them...

You believe that none of them have actually looked at the leaked emails, (at least, the cited ones that make them look bad) and the actual emails on their servers and compared them? Or if they did, they just remained silent about the fact the emails were forged?

Okay, I'm going to tell you the most important goddamn rule of a scandal, period, and you can look abased and crawl back to wherever you came from:

Rule #1 of scandals: You do not invent your own disputed parts of scandals.

If people involved in a scandal dispute part of an accusation, you can sit there and argue who is telling the true.

If they do not dispute something that makes them look bad, if they do not make a claim that something is untrue, you do not get to walk in and make that claim yourself in a discussion. If the thing was not true, they would have said that.

None of the companies involved around the edge, or HBGray itself, have asserted that a single email from the leak is forged. In fact, they are acting as if they are not forged. So we cannot argue if that's true or not. That is simply not even a possible argument to be having, you idiot.

The vandalism was obviously the sign.

If Anonymous actually was a real person, they could sue HBGary for slander with that statement. Vandalism is a crime. Laying a sign on a table is not that crime. You cannot accuse people of criminal actions they have committed. (Granted, they have committed crimes...but not that one.)

Re:What. The. FUCK

[DavidTC]

The threats were against Aaron Barr, and separate from the booth vandalization.

And, here it is again.

The 'death threats' Aaron Burr got we via Facebook, which is not, you know, a very Anonymously forum. Some people may indeed be threatening his life....but it's not Anonymous.

Arron Burr, as part of his misinformation campaign, deliberately conflates the Facebook death threats with the Anonymous IRC channels, where they discussed harassing the booth and heckling the speakers, which is probably where the sign comes from. My God, heckling!

The news media refuses to cover this in any sane manner, and slashdot is going right along with it.

Just look at the headline itself. It implies that they're dropping out RSA because they were 'attacked' by Anonymous. Except the 'attack' there isn't the hack...it's apparently the damn piece of paper that Anonymous left. News flash: That ain't an 'attack'. It's not 'harassment'. It's barely a 'protest'.

Just keep playing into the narrative, slashdot. Go right along with the media, try to figure out some way that Anonymous is the real bad guy here.

Because stealing emails and protesting at a conference with signs? Totally worse than whatever the Bank of American is desperately trying to conceal and spin that Wikileaks is about to release, by going after journalists who are 'friends' of Wikileaks. And it's totally worse than the Chamber of Commerce's campaign to target progressive activists and their families.

Anonymous are often assholes, but in this instances they're gray hat hackers who broke in and stole evidence of two conspiracies and exposed an entire system of lawlessness, an entire group of companies that feels they can operate outside the law to 'silence' people with malicious lies and fraud.

And the goddamn 'Nerds for News' is just mindlessly repeating whatever the media says about them. These sort of people used to be our fucking heroes, or, at least, we used to pretend they were in movies.

We can argue about how much they 'really' are heroes, and if we want this level of vigilantism, but that's nowhere near what's going on here, where apparently they're one step away from terrorists attacking poor defenseless security companies who never hurt anyone a day in their life.

Allegedly

[Anonymous Coward]

Allegedly Attacked By Anonymous, HBGary Pulls Out of RSA
Fixed that for you.

mess with the bull

[Anonymous Coward]

Mess with the bull..... You wanted it now you have it. If you don't have the courage of your own convictions (Which these guys don't) then shut your mouth.

bla

[Anonymous Coward]

At least I would have expected some Fight Club Quote:

Hi. You're going to call off your rigorous investigation. You're going to publicly state that there is no underground group. Or... these guys are going to take your balls. They're going to send one to the New York Times, one to the LA Times press-release style. Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us.

Not because he was afraid

[Anonymous Coward]

But because he was ashamed. Think about going to hold a security talk, pretending to be an expert, while your company has just been rooted by the powers you claim to dominate.

This is just spin. He didn't do the presentation out of shame.

awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I never thought my heroes would be fat kids with Cheeto fingers

No Irony there!

[quadrox]

Wikileaks, as you mentioned, works to reveal secrets. As a part of that work they also have to keep some secrets however, for example about their sources.

This is not the great paradox you make it out to be.

There is a difference between trying to reveal crimes/unethical behavior/corrupt and all that stuff, and to reveal personal information just out of spite or to harm someone. Not all secrets are bad, but those that are must be exposed.

Re:No Irony there!

[Mr 44]

Wikileaks, as you mentioned, works to reveal secrets. As a part of that work they also have to keep some secrets however, for example about their sources.

The US Government works for openness and freedom. As a part of that work they also have to keep some secrets however, for example about their sources.

Re:No Irony there!

[cbhacking]

Much of what Anonymous does is, in fact, criminal. Therefore your distinction is largely irrelevant. I support what Anon is trying to do, but I completely disagree with their methods and would not be very sorry if some people, for example those making death threats, were caught and faced time for it. I also disagree with what the US government is doing, and I disagree with the motives for HBGary. That doesn't attacks upon them any less criminal, nor investigation into the attackers any less legitimate an activity (the handling of that investigation is another story).

Re:"Anonymous" is here

[TaoPhoenix]

Actually I'd like to call upon my betters at math, because I'm getting the sense that there are relations to set theory, game theory, etc. Places to look:
How do you know someone is in Anonymous? *How do you prove you are not?*

Arest everyone on 4chan

[Anonymous Coward]

Toss em in jail and forget about em. See how "anonymous" they are when they are all sitting in PMITA prison.

military-industrial-security complex snake oil

[Thud457]

Apparently, with today's abysmal science (or even critical thinking) teaching, it's quite common to sell magic beans to teh gubbemint.
Why should the cybersecurity market be any different?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GT200
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniffex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_6

tools.

[carpefishus]

All of them tools. Both sides. The attackers are terrorists. The parallels to Islam and Islamic terrorists are striking. In /. you have Islam as a whole and you have Islamic terrorists in the attackers. You may champion the terrorists now but you do not control them so be careful of what you wish.

hahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Barr is a fool. Don't poke the bear .. especially if the bear is smarter and more legit than you.

Hackers

[wikes82]

Mess with the best, die like the rest!

anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for the security video to be released and show a Guy Fawkes mask placing that sign.

They hit back

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really see too much wrong with what Anonymous did...

HBGary (regardless if they are assholes) hit them first by "hacking" and threatening to release personal information (for money) about various members. Anonymous hit back. HBGary were trying to bully them and I can't stand bullies.

language is a virus from outer space

[Thud457]

Anonymous does have leadership.
They're being manipulated, used as useful idiots.

Hoodoos. (they)Thought the matrix was full of mambos 'n' shit. Wanna know something, Moll?

What?

They're right.

Re:language is a virus from outer space

[L4t3r4lu5]

This "Hoodoo" thing... It reminds me of a man. A man with power.

give a medal

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't anyone think anonymous should get an anonymous medal of freedom for exposing a now obviously fraudulent company and potentially saving some taxpayer funds. It's not like any of those other bozos that got it yesterday deserved it any more than the people who exposed this potential fraud.

At some point the "mob justice" becomes

[Phizzle]

the Democratic Process - if the mob is organized enough to change the law to reflect its beliefs.

Anonymous does not give a ****

[Crouty]

The difference is that HBGary tried to dox random people. They dug up some names they believed to be "members" of Anonymous and then tried to gain the FBI's attention which they knew were on a crusade against Anonymous. And considering previous cases chances are the life of the people named by HBGary would have become quite miserable. BTW: Anonymous does not care much about consistency or reputation or what slashdotters might think of them.

Re:Anonymous does not give a ****

[Anonymous Coward]

They gathered information on members that are critical to the functioning of the organization. Sure, some were just adminned by their boyfriends or whatever, but the rest is what was found.

One you forgot:

[SniperJoe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration

Death Threats

[ThatsNotPudding]

Given this guy's 'tude and behavior, I'm gonna need real proof of said threats before I believe them. Anything less is just a Kabuki dance to drum up even more raids by the Federales.

You forgot one

[ThatsNotPudding]

3. The government and their handmaidens no longer believes in, or acts according to, the Rule of Law.

I'm Spartacus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous should have called themselves"I'm Spartacus"... maybe then these old farts would understand what's going on.

Re:I'm Spartacus!

[jack2000]

Clearly you have it all wrong.

After all, I am Spartacus!

Just ask a totalitarian government:

[Hartree]

It's amazing how dangerous thumb tacks and sharpie markers are.

Re:Just ask a totalitarian government:

[exomondo]

It's amazing how dangerous thumb tacks and sharpie markers are.

You ever tried to get that shit past TSA airport security?

Re:"Anonymous" is here

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I'd like to call upon my betters at math, because I'm getting the sense that there are relations to set theory, game theory, etc. Places to look: How do you know someone is in Anonymous? *How do you prove you are not?*

You dont

but you are

That is the nature of anonymous

it is everyone and no one

Perhaps a poor strategy against Roman Legions:

[Hartree]

Crassus simply had all of them crucified along the road back to Rome.

Redo: Death threats = NOT okay

[davidwr]

If I'd seen the lulz image before posting I would've laughed the vandalism charge right out of the court of public opinion instead of using it as an example of something that's not okay to do.

However, assuming the death threats were real they were way over the top.

Making fun of someone's idiotic actions with the intent of deservedly killing their reputation, that's what rhetoric is for.
Actually threatening someone's physical well-being, NOT okay in a case like this.

Oh, as for the remark about the British and 200 years ago: If your government is so corrupt that it's unjust and the normal means of petitioning and peaceful protest don't work, then holding a revolution may be the morally okay or even required thing to do. That's what happened in the mid/late 1770s in America and a recently in Cairo.

What are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

By the same logic, Assange is being hippocritical by not jumping on a plane to sweden/USA.

Organisation doesn't mean top-down organisation

[Anonymous Coward]

Organisation doesn't necessarily mean top-down organisation.

Anonymous is definitely organised, but along anarchist lines rather than a traditional hierarchy.

Don't worry, you'll get it eventually ;-)

Anonymous are NOT responsible.

[the_raptor]

Anonymous are the bored teenagers, twenty-somethings, and misanthropes of the Internet. They aren't "responsible protesters", individuals just do whatever they like because they feel like it. The core ideal of the "movement" is "do it for the lulz".

Which is why most events associated with "Anonymous" is full of racism, homophobia, child porn, etc. "Anonymous" will do pretty much anything to get a laugh. Telling them to act responsible will just cause some of them to go and act even more irresponsibly to annoy you.

Re:Anonymous are NOT responsible.

[davidwr]

>Which is why most events associated with "Anonymous" is full of racism, homophobia, child porn, etc. "Anonymous" will do pretty much anything to get a laugh.

I don't see how any sane, rational person can think child porn is funny. Someone was hurt in the making of it and the lack of "distribution veto power" of such images by the subjects in them only adds to the harm.

Now, a right-wing/anti-smut politician's or public figure's face on a totally-computer-generated or hand-drawn pornographic image of something that is supposed to be a child, that may be sick or at least in very poor taste but at least it arguably has satire and humor value. I wouldn't laugh but at least a few sane, rational people on this planet would.

Competitor maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, what about their competitors exhibiting at the show. Have one of your salesman make the sign up and slip on their booth and make them look like fools once again, might as well kick them while their down. Seems like the people with both motive and opportunity. Plus the consequences of being caught are pretty low, if someone saw your guy placing the sign he just says "so what, it was a joke, I didn't make a threat, we are just joking around with a competitor". And he is right, the sign is in no way a threat.

It wasn't death threats!

[MarkvW]

It was the threat of embarrassment that kept them away from the conference.

HIS NAME is MEATLOAF!

[Thud457]

If you're with Anonymous, you only regain your identity upon death or capture.

Vandalism now, cyber terrorism minus the cyber.

[Anonymous Coward]

So now they are vandalizing actual property. This guy is still a dick, Anonymous has now ceased to be a cyber-terrorist organization and turned into a real life one.

Yay!

[crhylove]

Go Anonymous!!! Now if only you were all armed and we could find out who REALLY shot JFK (from the front, and not through a tree from behind with an antiquated rifle).

This is democracy in action. I hope we can someday eliminate the corporate slavery our corrupt politicians and media have inflicted on this country.

SQL Injection

[DrVomact]

SQL injections and rainbow tables

unfortunately the truth of this statement will be entirely missed by the greater public.

The greater public probably think SQL injections and rainbow tables are some bizarre gay fetish activity.

Is that why the Wikipedia entry on "SQL Injection" is blank as of right now? It says last modified on 15 February 2011. Hmm. The page just looks blank in Firefox—View Source shows the text. I brought up IE, and the text is all there. Except...was SQL injection really "First discovered by hippies from Las Cruces, New Mexico."?

This is all very interesting, of course. Competitive urination between somebody I don't know and an unknown number of people I don't know. I don't dare say more than that; who knows what Anonymous would do to me if I did?

Dr. Vomact's true name is Hilda Bergenbanger, she lives at 1055 Matheson Road, Columbus Georgia. Call her at 706-433-6969 for a really good time at a very modest cost.

Bad parenting

[Alimony Pakhdan]

That is what is the cause of the whole Anonymous thing IMNSHO. If these kids had been instilled with the belt from time to time I doubt we would be talking about them.

DESU

[Anonymous Coward]

desu desu desu desu

context please...

[X0563511]

Who the hell is HBGary, why should I care, and what did he do to "piss off" "anonymous?"