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Anonymous Supporters Tricked Into Installing Trojan
dsinc sends this quote from a Symantec report:
"In 2011, dozens of Anonymous members who participated in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in support of Anonymous hacktivism causes were arrested. In these DDoS attacks, supporters using the Low Orbit Ion Cannon denial-of-service (DoS) tool would voluntarily include their computer in a botnet for attacks in support of Anonymous. In the wake Anonymous member arrests this week, it is worth highlighting how Anonymous supporters have been deceived into installing Zeus botnet clients purportedly for the purpose of DoS attacks. The Zeus client does perform DoS attacks, but it doesn’t stop there. It also steals the users' online banking credentials, webmail credentials, and cookies. The deception of Anonymous supporters began on January 20, 2012, the day of the FBI Megaupload raid."
Further proof the bulk of "anonymous" are just brainless sheep on image boards.
Sheep? Yeah, most of them are. Much like anything popular, what you're mainly going to attract are sheep.
Brainless? Some, sure. I saw one that had decorated her Guy Fawkes mask "to make it prettier". Um. Yeah, brainless. But I think you'll find some smart ones too, if you look hard.
Image boards? Nothing in TFA points to that. It's easy to think of Anonymous as a bunch of 4channers, but that's not really true anymore, if it ever was. IRC and Twitter are probably more popular than image boards for those who go beyond just sniffing at Anon. Probably Facebook too for the more careless ones. But there's very little Anonymous on image boards these days.
"My banking information was compromised, and all I wanted to do was help take down the website of some entity that displeased me today" isn't really a rallying cry many people can get behind.
Well, no. It's too long.
"Tits, for great justice!" is shorter.
Who said that a battle cry has to reflect all your causes? I don't see US marines crying "to protect the dollar being usurped as de facto currency for international oil trade" either. Instead they go with a slogan they don't know what means, don't know how to pronounce, but is short and goes well with beer.
The summary and TFA seem to hint that this is an FBI sting, but the details don't seem to support that.
Maybe more will come out about it later.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If I understood TFA correctly, the trojan was not distributed by Anonymous but by others who basically hijacked the distro, redirecting the wannabee DDOSers to another executable which contained the trojan.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial