Namecoin is a domain name system based on Bitcoin. It extends Bitcoin to add transactions for registering, updating and transferring names. The idea behind this is to provide an alternative to the existing DNS system where names can be taken from their owners by groups that control the DNS servers.
A number of projects have been created around this to provide a mapping from namecoin names to standard DNS. This allows resolving namecoin names to a ‘.bit’ suffixed domain. I’ll go through building the namecoin software, registering and updating names, then the software to use these names.
Building Namecoin
Namecoin needs to be built from source. The following steps on a Linux based system will build without UPNP support:
$ git clone git://github.com/vinced/namecoin.git $ cd namecoin namecoin $ make -f makefile.unix USE_UPNP=
Once built you’ll need to create a ~/.namecoin/bitcoin.conf file that contains entries for a username and password used for the JSON-RPC server that namecoind runs. Notice the name of the .conf file is bitcoin.conf even though this is namecoind. It won’t clash with an existing bitcoin installation as it is in a ~/.namecoin directory. To prevent conflict with an existing bitcoin install I suggest running namecoind on a different port. An example ~/.namecoin/bitcoin.conf is:
rpcuser=me rpcpassword=password rpcport=9332
Running namecoind will start the daemon and you can then use namecoind to execute commands:
$ ./namecoind bitcoin server starting $ ./namecoind getblockcount 2167
Yes, it prints out ‘bitcoin server starting’. There are still bitcoin references in the code that need to be changed apparently.
Getting Namecoins
To register a name you need to have some namecoins. These can be obtained via mining, just like bitcoins. Or you can buy them. To mine namecoins you can run any of the standard bitcoin miners and point them to the server and port that is running namecoind. The difficulty level for namecoin mining is currently very low (about 290 at the time of writing) so even CPU miners have a chance. Generating a block gets you 50 namecoins.
You can also buy namecoins as described here. The going rate seems to be about 1BTC for 50 namecoins.
Registering a name
The name_new command will register a name. An example invocation is:
This will start the registration process for the name myname. Note the two hash values returned. Once this is done you need to wait for 12 blocks to be generated by the namecoin network. You then need to run a name_firstupdate command:
We pass to name_firstupdate the domain name we are updating, the shorter hash that we got from name_new and a JSON value that defines how that name is mapped to an IP address.
In this case the name is mapped to the IP address 1.2.3.4. Using the existing systems for mapping names this would make myname.bit resolve to 1.2.3.4. You can also do subdomains (See the update example later).
The cost to do a name_new, followed by a name_firstupdate, varies depending on how many blocks there are in the namecoin block chain. It started at 50 namecoins and slowly reduces. The formula is defined in the namecoin design document as:
Network fees start out at 50 NC per operation at the genesis block
Every block, the network fees decreases based on this algorithm, in 1e-8 NC:
res = 500000000 >> floor(nBlock / 8192) res = res - (res >> 14)*(nBlock % 8192)
nBlock is zero at the genesis block
This is a decrease of 50% every 8192 blocks (about two months)
As 50 NC are generated per block, the maximum number of registrations in the first 8192 blocks is therefore 2/3 of 8192, which is 5461
This example updates the value of myname so it includes a www subdomain. The name www.myname.bit will now map to 5.6.7.8.
There are other possibilities for the JSON mapping. See the namecoin README for details. Note that the JSON code must be valid JSON (ie. use double quotes, unlike the examples currently shown in the README unfortunately).
Transferring a name
To transfer a name to another person you need to get their namecoin address and do an update passing that address:
Software needs to be modified to use namecoind to lookup the name, or you can run DNS software that connects to namecoin to do lookups. To be able to try out namecoin I modified an HTTP proxy and later tried using DNS software.
$ git clone https://github.com/doublec/namecoin-polipo $ cd namecoin-polipo $ make $ ./polipo namecoindServer="127.0.0.1:9332" namecoindUsername=rpcuser namecoindPassword=rpcpassword
Changing your browser to point to the proxy on localhost, port 8123, will allow .bit domains to be used. See my forum post about it for more details.
dnsmasq
Another approach I tried was to write a program that generates a ‘host file’ from namecoind and uses dnsmasq to run a local DNS server that serves domains from this host file, falling back to the standard DNS server. The ‘quick and dirty’ code to generate the hosts file is in namecoin-hosts.c and uses libcurl and libjansson to build:
And created a shell script to update /tmp/hosts.txt with the namecoin related data:
while true; do ./namecoin-hosts 127.0.0.1:9332 rpcuser rpcpassword >/tmp/hosts.txt kill -HUP `cat /var/run/dnsmasq/dnsmasq.pid` echo `date` sleep 300 done
Pointing my OS DNS resolver to the dnsmasq IP address and port allowed .bit names to resolve.
Public .bit DNS servers
Details of a public .bit DNS server that doesn’t require you to run namecoin are available at namecoin.bitcoin-contact.org. That site also provides details on using namecoin.
More Information
Namecoin seems to be very much an experiment in having an alternative DNS like system. The developer has taken the approach of ‘release early’ and iterate towards a solution. As such it may fizzle out and go nowhere. Or it may prove a useful test-bed for ideas that make it into a successful DNS alternative.
On return to Europe from the 2008 NEXUS Conference in Australia, flying out of Sydney, we stopped off in Thailand to visit a close friend who lives on the island of Koh Samui. Samui is well known as a travelers’ international crossroads, and is also a place where a number of expats of all nationalities have settled.
There we had the good fortune to meet Jake Simpson [an agreed pseudonym]. We spent several days with him and got to know him, and his family, very well. His story, which we heard in great detail, was one of the most important and interesting we have ever heard.
None of the many long conversations we had were recorded, and we hope to capture an audio interview with Jake soon. The following concise summary was compiled upon return to the US, and has been checked for accuracy by Jake himself.
For reasons which will become obvious, we were at first quite unsure whether to release this at all. After a great deal of thought, and further consultation with Jake, we decided to make this information available. Assuming it is true – and we believe that it is – it could hardly be more significant. It dovetails with everything else we know. And in many ways, we wish that it did not.
Much of what follows is barely believable, so this may be its own best defense. Those who choose not to believe this information at all can relax – just a little, and maybe for a little while – with the knowledge that none of it can currently be proved. For the benefit of those whose jobs it is to monitor this information, we do not have any documentation of any kind. We are delighted, however, to consider Jake a close friend. We are absolutely certain that he is exactly who he says he is, and have talked with a number of people who have known him for many years.
In the report that follows, exact written quotes from Jake himself are presented indented and in italics, as in this closing paragraph.
Enhanced abilities
Jake Simpson was in a ‘specialist field’ [his preferred term] working for a nation friendly to the US. His early training, which is still with him, featured an enhancement of his ability to absorb written information. Incredibly, he has a reading speed of between 80,000 and 100,000 words per minute. To graduate from that class, he was given a copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and had three minutes to read it before being tested on every detail. He scored 90%. This was adequate for a pass, but was not the highest score… another student scored 100%.
Jake is a very able psychic intuitive to this day. He is able to perceive when the AI [artificial intelligence] information gathering system was ‘focused’ in his direction and would periodically pick his exact moment to relate something to us. We observed this again and again. While it at all times seemed the same to us, sometimes Jake told us it was safe to talk, while at other times it was not. It took a little while for us to understand exactly what was going on here.
See below for more on this. We have not heard this information anywhere else in the literature, on the internet, or mentioned by any other witness. But I [Bill] had one experience that showed me directly that this was very real indeed.
Approaching Project Camelot
Jake had written to us by way of introduction:
I have spent many years previously working in abstract areas of national security on behalf of the various parties concerned. I have been very impressed by some of your interviewees’ comments. Keep up the outstanding work.
Jake approached Project Camelot after our work had been brought to his attention by a friend. At first, he wasn’t convinced that we were ‘real’. However, his connections enabled him to do the requisite background checks, and he told us that it soon became clear that we passed muster.
He told us he knew everything about us, but that we had “nothing to worry about”. Everyone who had ever tried to do something like we were doing before, apparently, had been killed. He told us he’d watched every one of our videos, admired what we did, and that we had a lot of courage. He assured us that some of what we have reported is very close to the truth, and that we had his respect.
Jake is one of many in military/ intelligence circles who are the ‘white hats’. Idealistically motivated, he made his career choice when young, wanting to work for mankind and play his part in helping Planet Earth become a better place. Despite discovering the true, bewildering complexity of the world he had entered, he retained both his idealism and his job… and many years later decided to approach Project Camelot with a portion of what he now knew.
He told us that we had many of the correct puzzle pieces – and that, furthermore, it was understood that we work with integrity, and that we’re not trying to breach any legitimate national security. He stressed that we were quite liked by a number of the ‘white hats’ who were monitoring us closely, despite our being on a number of ‘watch lists’ of every kind.
Jake helped us understand that if we kept our information general and didn’t try to prove anything (with documentation or by any other means), we would remain safe. He stressed that it was very important not to get too specific on certain sensitive issues, and to be very wary of ever getting hold of any definitive documentation.
Classified technology and the secret space program
Jake emphasized to us that the current state of classified technology was something like 10,000 [ten thousand] years ahead of public sector technology – and was accelerating away from public sector technology at a current rate of 1,000 years per calendar year.
This got our attention.
Jake did not blink when we mentioned time travel, the Mars base, or the advanced fleet of craft which we had been told by Henry Deacon serviced it. Jake told us that some of the advanced craft were capable of traveling from geostationary orbit (22,300 miles) to treetop height in five seconds. (Work it out: that’s about 16 million miles per hour – although Jake made it clear that the craft would not actually be moving through space in the normal sense… and would also never be seen unless this was intended.) Some of the craft were “larger on the inside than outside”.
Had they traveled to the outer reaches of the solar system? Yes. Beyond our solar system? Yes. Are some of them superluminal (i.e. capable of faster-than-light travel)? Yes. Were some of them very large? Yes. By this time, we were no longer surprised by Jake’s answers. The significance of the superluminal craft would be stressed in a subsequent conversation.
The human race had had contact with extraterrestrials since before World War II. Jake told us that it was very probable that Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack was at least partially induced by the stress of some of the information he had learned from the extraterrestrials who he had personally met a short time before (after several previous set-up meetings with senior military officials).
Taken all together, Jake told us, the ET visitors came from various races, systems and times, and that human DNA “was compatible” with hundreds of different races. All these ET races, in some meaningful sense, could be said to be “human or human-like”.
AI surveillance and access to knowledge
The AI surveillance system, Jake told us, was literally “out of this world”. It operates hyperdimensionally, based on a highly advanced quantum computing model that is basically our development based on acquired alien technology. This system is so advanced that the ETs themselves are unhappy that we have it.
Not only does it enable access to what any given person is saying, or even thinking – if targeted for investigation – it can also transcend time itself and thereby access information about the thoughts and words of historical figures. Whether this system can look into the future – the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report, based on a story by the prolific author Philip K. Dick, comes to mind – we omitted to ask.
Jake’s actions in being sensitive to this device (if device is the right word) – by waiting for exactly the right ‘window’ of opportunity to tell us certain things – were not fully understood by us until I (Bill Ryan) had the following experience.
On our last night together, sitting out in the open after a barbecue, at about 2 am, Jake decided to tell me some things he had not previously revealed, surveillance or no surveillance. As he began to speak, he immediately encountered problems, as if trying to force himself through a barrier. Simultaneously, I found I was being put to sleep and could hardly keep my eyes open. We both spotted what was happening, and remarked on it to one another.
Jake forced himself to keep talking, and I made myself keep listening through a spell of overwhelming dopiness. This episode lasted half an hour or maybe more. We were being forcibly stopped, in real time, from communicating effectively, as a direct and immediate response to our intentions.
It’s very important to understand that this was unconnected with electromagnetics, hidden microphones, targeted beams, or anything else of that nature. My own reference point for what happened was a kind of negative radionics (which also works hyperdimensionally, but as a positive health modality).
In the end we concluded our conversation, now pretty tired. The next morning I simply could not recall what Jake had told me – and still can’t. Upon meeting him again and reporting that I couldn’t remember a thing about our conversation except for the weird effects we had both experienced, he replied wryly:
Maybe it’s just as well.
The biggest secret
The international network of deep underground bases, Jake confirmed, had been built in a continuing program since soon after the end of World War II costing trillions of dollars. The issue here was that military leaders had learned through ET contact that a potential catastrophe of huge magnitude, occurring early in the 21st century, was possible. This information was certainly known to Eisenhower, Jake said (and may have been partially responsible for his heart attack), and was very possibly known as early as World War II.
Just as we had presented in our important summary article The Big Picture, the problem is one which involves massive potential Earth changes that could, in extremis, threaten our civilization. The situation had been extensively studied and evaluated and the conclusion had been reached that the public could not be told.
Jake described the threat – metaphorically – as a wave that was heading our way. It was unclear whether this ‘wave’ is a product of an area of space which the solar system is entering – or whether it is the result of a close fly-past by a large rogue celestial body, or even a combination of two or three simultaneous situations or other unusual and impending cosmological events. But when I asked how this is all known, the answer came back that the superluminal craft have gone out to take a good look at what is around, and have returned with the information.
Jake stressed that IT IS NOT KNOWN what the effects of this situation will be, nor precisely when this may occur. The military are preparing for worst case scenarios, which is what they do best. Readers familiar with our work will note the connection with the report from the Norwegian Politician, and also Dan Burisch’s information which culminates in the report on Timeline 1, variant 83 [T1v83].
Of particular interest is the contradiction with the T1v83 information, in which Dan told us that in the latter half of 2007 a highly classified time portal intelligence retrieval project (for lack of any better phrase) had analyzed a number of possible alternative future timelines and concluded that variant 83 – the most probable of the many that had been investigated – demonstrated that the ‘Timeline 2’ catastrophe had been averted and that while civilization would not be under threat, the next few years would bring major problems. These included nuclear exchanges in a prolonged period of global conflict, under an administration in which Hillary Clinton had been elected President of the US.
Since that information was researched – a year ago at the time of writing this article – it has become very clear that that timeline variant has been ‘broken’, and that we are now instead hurtling along on another, uncharted timeline. In Dan’s words to us a few months ago, “All bets are off” – and when we put Dan’s phrase to Jake, he responded:
That’s about right. I wouldn’t disagree with that at all.
Jake’s information is that it had never been certain that the catastrophe had been averted, and he confirmed that the governments of many first-world nations were continuing to make their detailed and extensive preparations. Australia, we were told, was the “Ark of the World”, and had been designated as such many years previously.
Jake confirmed that he had personally seen some of the classified maps showing dramatically altered future coastlines, and also confirmed the possibility of a very advanced high-speed ‘shuttle-like’ system that connected many places, like the US and Australia under the Pacific Ocean – a longstanding but always uncorroborated rumor within the UFO community that had acquired semi-mythological status since the startling reports of John Lear and William Cooper in the late 1980s. Jake told us that
…the acceleration presses you back into your seat for a very long time.
This has all happened before
One of the most startling snippets of information Jake revealed was that in some locations the base construction engineers had broken through into much older facilities that had been there for thousands of years prior – apparently built for an identical defensive purpose. All this, Jake had told us, had happened before: the catastrophic events are cyclic.
Because of what had been learned through breaking into older facilities built by a prior Earth culture, in some locations decisions had been made to increase the depth of the new facilities to as much as 30,000 feet [9000 meters].
The great classified libraries of the world, in the Vatican and elsewhere, all contained detailed accounts of the destruction of prior civilizations. The Flood Myth, as many anthropologists have described, is evident in many dozens of different cultures all over the world. All this is described in our article The Big Picture.
The threat of stealth viruses
These catastrophic events, Jake told us, would happen not in 2012 but several years after that, though the dates were not precisely known. When we put Bob Dean’s date of 2017 to him (in the context of the coming of Nibiru), Jake’s response is that that would be close, as best he knew.
More immediate, said Jake, was the threat of the deliberate release of viruses followed by
…the hideous effects of spontaneous eruptions of new generations of opportunistic bacteria like Necrotizing Fasciitis and more advanced versions of golden staphylococci which would further reduce the world’s population after the initial first line of worldwide disasters had occurred.
This would trigger worldwide infrastructure breakdown, cause chaos, and make populations easier to control.
Jake predicted that it was quite possible that sometime before the end of 2009 – or possibly early 2010 – there would be a sudden and rapid escalation of international reported outbreaks of extremely dangerous viruses (whether manmade or otherwise). He emphasized that announcements of a global pandemic could suddenly emerge from nowhere “within hours”, and that it would be smart to be prepared: he stressed that some countries could quickly become quarantined, or choose to quarantine themselves, with major implications for international travel and port or airport controls.
Coupled with these outbreaks there will be a very real possibility of food shortages. Even more importantly, there will very likely be shortages of quality foods containing all of the necessary levels of active and absorbable vitamins and minerals of the necessary types, and in the right or proportional quantities, to allow for the human body to properly and adequately nourish itself.
These shortfalls and omissions of some of the fundamental basic substances of various foods will prevent people’s immune systems from operating at optimum levels, thus leaving them exposed to these new virulent types of diseases. This will leave literally hundreds of millions of people exposed to disease vectors through 2011-2012 onwards.
Technological access to other dimensions
Finally, Jake told us of research that had unlocked technology surrounding access to other dimensional states of existence.
In these other alternate states of reality sometimes it turns out they can very briefly and spontaneously manifest, very occasionally quite naturally, here on Earth and in any other part of this universe. In very special circumstances, these can spontaneously manifest across not only this universe but indeed into alternative universal realities.
There is a massive amount of research funding being applied to this very obscure part of the broad spectrum of the special access programs of the world’s budgetary allowance for these types of programs. These funds are managed and funneled from every imaginable area of the majority of the world’s countries through an amazing array of abstract instrumentalities and public funding projects.
The research involved with this subject is at the top of the world’s power elite’s priorities. This is why there are very selective sightings of some of the largest scientific programs, currently ongoing across the world.
The geographical location (in three dimensions) is absolutely critical in some special cases. Jake wrote:
The Earth’s specific rotation is also of consideration and its relationship to the sun and the other planetary bodies contained within our solar system – especially the larger ones. There are very many localized effects experienced subtly, here on Earth in the course of a year, in relation to the specific location to other localized celestial bodies, apart from our sun, contained within and without the heliosphere.
On a larger scale, the position of our solar system in relation to our galaxy is also of vital importance. Jake’s words again:
Our galaxy’s position, speed and direction relative to several neighboring galaxies is also important. Beyond this is an understanding of a technology that not only allows for absolute universal travel and capitalization of the fantastic power that entails, but provides the ability to move or travel dimensionally.
Jake explained that this knowledge is essential to the next phase in ‘Earth human’ development…
…if we Earth humans are ever to be freed from this particular part of existence and universal / multiversal constraints.
Jake stated that as in every aspect of human history here on Earth, there have been supporters, detractors and outright enemies…
…both on Earth and not from Earth. Nothing much has changed over all these eons of time. The play is still largely the same with all of the same motives and allegiances.
The pursuit by some at the expense of the many seems to always end up to be the ultimate price, along with the loss of the Individual and Eternal Grand Self/ Soul/ Spirit, particularly when the individual sells out all that is sacred to the ongoing existence of our race.
As Jake explained, some of these power elite’s motives constituted
…a viable and sustainable level of a heavily manicured and vastly reduced human population, under the pretence of saving first the planet, and next the vast majority of all of the other diverse range of different species here on Earth.
Jake told us that it had been explained to him:
“You have to break a few eggs in order to create a really great meal. The Destroyer of Worlds [sic] brings with it the promise of massively renewed and clean prolific growth for yet another new direction in Earth Human evolution. Roaches will always be roaches. Someone’s got to keep them under control.”
Jake said that what he had been told was highly disturbing to him, and stressed just how at odds he ultimately was
…with the paramount agenda of a significant element of the absolute power elite.
Jake’s strong personal ethics and morality always prevented him from receiving the rich benefits that he told us he knew could have been his. He told us he was
…happy to remain obscure while still contributing where appropriate to assist humankind in meaningful and positive ways.
We gained the impression that the power elite have largely left Jake alone. It was evident to us that he has an intimate knowledge of their culture and knows how to ensure his and his family’s safety.
We close here with this remarkable man’s own words:
This suggests an even more powerful, off-world group or association that I may have a very special relationship with, that is lending a very discreet helping hand… where possible.
We are hopeful that we might record a voice-disguised audio interview with Jake, and although this has been discussed it has not yet been arranged or agreed. We will post more information as soon as we can.
We thank our friend here for his courage in providing this remarkable testimony. Kerry and I are as certain as we can be that this man is both well-informed and has the highest integrity.
Bill Ryan and Kerry Cassidy
PROJECT CAMELOT
8 January 2009
Next time you see a flock of teenage girls in the mall, note that one of them might be Kayla. As your average 16-year-old, she regularly hangs out with friends, works part time at a salon and hopes one day to be a teacher.
Behind the scenes though, she’s a big time supporter of Anonymous, the loosely knit global hacking group that brought down the Web sites of MasterCard and PayPal in defence of WikiLeaks. That’s what she claims at least. Kayla flits around the web with so covert an identity that I cannot fully verify her age or gender.
Still, the girl known on chat forums as ‘k, and who spoke to me by e-mail as “Kayla,” is no figment of the Internet’s imagination: she helped all but destroy a company. When Aaron Barr, the now-former CEO of software security firm HBGary Federal, claimed in a press report that he could identify members of the Anonymous collective through social media, she and four other hackers broke into his company’s servers in revenge, defacing his Web site, purging data and posting more than 50,000 of his emails online for the world to see, all within the space of 24 hours.
Kayla played a key role, at one point posing as HBGary CEO Greg Hoglund to an IT administrator to social engineer access to his website rootkit.com. Read their email correspondence here and here. In the fallout, Barr’s emails revealed HBGary had proposed a dirty tricks campaign against WikiLeaks to a law firm representing Bank of America. Other security firms distanced themselves. Kayla and her buddies had opened a can of worms.
Today while HBGary picks up the pieces, Kayla still spends a few hours a night on Anonymous chat channels looking for her next target. Most recently it was the Libyan government, helping get information to Libyan citizens in the Internet blackout.
With just half a dozen close friends online, she has a strict regimen to remain invisible on the web. Each night she wipes every one of her web accounts and deletes every email in her inbox. She has no physical hard drive and boots her computer from a microSD card. “I could hide this card anywhere or chew into a million pieces in a few seconds,” she says by e-mail. She keeps her operating system on a USB stick and uses a virtual machine (VM) to carry out her online shenanigans.
So paranoid is Kayla of being caught or hacked by others, that despite several requests she would not speak to me on Skype to verify an adolescent-sounding voice. Our only evidence: others in Anonymous vouch for her age, her emails are punctuated with smiley faces and “lols” and she is relatively well-known on hacking forums. Still, rumors abound that Kayla is a mid-20s male from New Jersey named Corey Barnhill, who also goes by the pseudonym Xyrix.
When I put this to Kayla she countered that in 2008 (aged 14) she and a few other users of an early Anonymous IRC network called partyvan, hacked the account of fellow user Xyrix in defence of an online friend. Kayla used Xyrix’s (Corey’s) account to social engineer an IRC operator and got her target’s personal information. The operator thought Xyrix was Kayla, added her to Xyrix’s Encyclopedia Dramatica page, and the rest is history.
Dissident members of the internet hacktivist group Anonymous, tired of what they call the mob’s “unpatriotic” ways, have provided law enforcement with chat logs of the group’s leadership planning crimes, as well as what they say are key members’ identities. They also gave them to us.
They demonstrate that, contrary to the repeated claims of Anonymous members, the group does have ad hoc leaders, with certain members doling out tasks, selecting targets, and even dressing down members who get out of line. They prove that, contrary to their claims, at least one of the hackers responsible for releasing the publishing the e-mail addresses of thousands of Gawker users last December is in fact a key member of Anonymous. They show a collective of ecstatic and arrogant activists driven to a frenzy by a sense of their own power—they congratulated one another when Hosni Mubarak resigned, as though Anonymous was responsible—and contain bald admissions of criminal behavior that could serve as powerful evidence in criminal proceedings if the internet handles are ever linked to actual people.
The logs are from an invite-only IRC chat channel called #HQ, populated by people calling themselves Sabu, Kayla, Laurelai, Avunit, Entropy, Topiary, Tflow, and Marduk.
They were supplied by two individuals who go by the names Metric and A5h3r4 and describe themselves as former Anonymous supporters who became increasingly disenchanted with the movement’s tactics, particularly the extent to which the group’s more sophisticated members tolerate children and teens participating in risky operations (British authorities arrested a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old in January, and Dutch police arrested a 16-year-old in December). They recently launched a firm they call Backtrace Security.
“The bastards are becoming arrogant sociopaths,” said A5h3r4 via chat. “Acting first, not thinking of the consequences. They’re recruiting children. I am a pretty far left person—I believe in privacy and free expression, but Anonymous is a vigilante group now. A mob without conscience. And I worry they will radicalize even more. In short, I believe they’re on their way to becoming a genuine threat.”
While Anonymous describes itself as a leaderless collective, the #HQ channel had a clear head honcho, a hacker who goes by the name of Sabu who claims credit for conducting the HBary hack. In plotting his next attack, on Hunton and Williams, a law firm that discussed hiring HBGary to conduct dirty tricks campaigns against Wikileaks supporters on behalf of its client Bank of America, Sabu threatens to “rape these niggers”:
17:46 <&Sabu> hunton.com will be a nice fucking hit
17:46 <&marduk> hm see potential vulns [vulnerabilities]?
17:48 <&Sabu> yeah
17:48 <&Sabu> I see some potential openings
17:48 <&marduk> :]
17:49 <&Sabu> we could rape these niggers
Here is Sabu directing the other channel members to come up with a target list for their next hack, including potential media outlets and so-called “whitehat” internet security firms, and ordering Kayla to get working:
17:52 <&Sabu> can you guys put together a private pad containing a list of whitehat targets, lawyers, reporters, any media that requires counter-intelligence attack
[snip]
18:31 <&Sabu> guys im going offline I will be back online toorrow
18:31 <&Sabu> tomorrow I should have a new laptop
18:31 <&Sabu> muah
18:31 <&Sabu> and kayla
18:31 <&Sabu> please work on whitehat targets
18:34 <&marduk> will request
18:34 <@kayla> Sabu ofc <3 :)
And here he is excoriating Laurelai, an HQ member who had created a set of instructions for how to carry out an Anonymous attack. Sabu derided it as a stupid move that would help federal investigators make a conspiracy case if leaked and generally make Anonymous look as devious as HBGary. In the same breath that he insists Anonymous is disorganized and leaderless, Sabu plays the role of a leader, enforcing unit discipline while the other members stand by. Laurelei fights back by criticizing Sabu for quickly going public with the HBGary hack, rather than secretly listening in on their e-mails for weeks, and Sabu responds by openly admitting to his involvement: “I’m the one that did the op, I rooted their boxes, cracked their hashes, owned their emails and social engineered their admins in hours.”
04:44 <&Sabu> who the fuck wrote that doc
04:45 <&Sabu> remove that shit from existence
04:45 <&Sabu> first off there is no hierachy or leadership, and thus an operations manual is not needed
[snip]
04:46 <&Sabu> shit like this is where the feds will get american anons on rico act abuse and other organized crime laws
04:47 <@Laurelai> yeah well you could have done 100 times more effective shit with HBgary
04:47 <@Laurelai> gratted what we got was good
04:47 <&Sabu> if you’re so fucking talented why didn’t you root them yourselves?
04:47 <@Laurelai> but it could have been done alot better
04:47 <&Sabu> also we had a time restraint
04:48 <&Sabu> and as far as I know, considering I’m the one that did the op, I rooted their boxes, cracked their hashes, owned their emails and social engineered their admins in hours
04:48 <&Sabu> your manual is irrelevent.
[snip]
04:51 <&Sabu> ok who authored this ridiculous “OPERATIONS” doc?
04:51 <@Laurelai> look the guideline isnt for you
04:51 <&Sabu> because I’m about to start owning nigg3rs
04:51 <&marduk> authorized???
04:52 <@Laurelai> its just an idea to kick around
04:52 <@Laurelai> start talking
04:52 <&Sabu> for who? the feds?
04:52 <&marduk> its not any official doc, it is something that Laurelai wrote up.. and it is for.. others
04:52 <&marduk> on anonops
04:52 <&Sabu> rofl
04:52 <@Laurelai> just idea
04:52 <@Laurelai> ideas
04:52 <&Sabu> man
04:52 <&marduk> at least that is how i understand it
04:52 <@Laurelai> to talk over
04:53 <&Sabu> le sigh
04:53 <&marduk> mmmm why are we so in a bad mood?
04:53 <&Sabu> my nigga look at that doc
04:53 <&Sabu> and how ridiculous it is
[snip]
04:54 <&marduk> look, i think it was made with good intentions. and it is nothing you need to follow, if you dont like it, it is your good right
04:55 <&Sabu> no fuck that. its docs like this that WHEN LEAKED makes us look like an ORGANIZED CRIME ORGANIZATION
Members of the HQ chat were, understandably, obsessed with security. But they seemed to believe that they were safe in that chat room, candidly discussing their own efforts to distance themselves from any illegal activity. Here is Topiary, who has given a number of media interviews, discussing plans to stop speaking for Anonymous in the first person in order to “avoid being raped by Feds”:
15:13 <@Topiary> also I’m going to start saying, with future press, that I’m an observer/associate of Anon that agrees with Anonymous actions, rather than say I’m Anon
15:13 <@Topiary> kind of like Barrett/Housh [Anonymous spokesmen Barrett Brown and Gregg Housh]
15:13 <@Topiary> to avoid being raped by Feds
15:14 <@tflow> aw
15:14 <@tflow> why
[snip]
15:15 <@Topiary> all I have to do is stop saying “we” and start saying “they” when referring to Anon
15:15 <@tflow> it will decrease the lulz in interviews
15:15 <@Topiary> hm, valid point
And here, in the same vein, they discuss how to interact with the press without being seen as an actual member of the group, including references to Sabu, Kayla, and Tflow’s efforts to maintain plausible deniability about their roles in the HBGary hack.
23:12 <&marduk> i would refrein from using “rep” ever
23:12 <&marduk> simply because.. that makes you/us directly tiable/responsible for what happens
23:12 <&marduk> no need to
23:12 <&marduk> example: the penny lock
23:12 <&marduk> yeah sabu/kayla/tflow obviously were involved in the hack. but they never admitted to
23:13 <&marduk> from the logs, you can only deduct that they knew about the operation
Sabu didn’t feel the need to be as discreet in the HQ chat. Here he is taking responsibility for the HBGary hack, which involved tricking a Nokia network security specialist named Jussi into handing over passwords:
02:39 <&Sabu> “Greatest social hack of all time: http://is.gd/duaZcG – Anonymous vs. hbgary.com.”
02:39 <&Sabu> rofl
02:39 <&Sabu> people are really enjoying the socialing of jussi
02:39 <&Sabu> man I was talking to my little brother who witnessed the whole shit
02:39 <&Sabu> I think he and I were as excited as people are about it now
02:39 <&Sabu> we were fitdgeting and giggling and shit
02:40 <&Sabu> as jussi dropped firewall
02:40 <&Sabu> then reset the pw
02:40 <&Sabu> then gave us the username
The logs also seem to prove that members of Anonymous were involved in hacking into Gawker’s servers last December. Gnosis, the group that claimed credit for the hack, claimed in interviews to have no affiliation with Anonymous. But Kayla, a member of the HQ chat who was intimately involved with the HBGary attack, implicitly takes credit at one point for the Gawker attacks after someone mentions a Gawker article:
18:26 * kayla h8’s gawker :D
18:26 <@kayla> Nick Denton especially h8’s me :D
Kayla claims to be a 16-year-old girl, and has publicly admitted involvement with the HBGary infiltration (some, including Metric and A5h3r4, doubt Kayla’s claims and suspect her to be in reality Corey Barnhill, a New Jersey hacker in his late 20s who also goes by the name Xyrix). Whoever Kayla is, she was definitely involved in the attack on Gawker. The HQ chats show that Anonymous made use of a the domain internetfeds.mil.nf in preparing HBGary e-mails for release. According to Matt Keys, a journalist who infiltrated the group, the Internet Feds (and not Gnosis), were the real Gawker attackers. And Kayla was one of them. “Kayla was one of two hackers who broke into the Gawker database,” Keys told Gawker. “It was her idea. She coordinated the attack. She carried it out with another hacker. A third was involved in the distribution of the torrent, but the brainchild of the Gawker hack attack was Kayla.” Keys provided Gawker with screengrabs from the Internet Feds IRC chat as evidence.
Ever since Anonymous began taking down the websites of PayPal, Mastercard, and other firms that refused to do business with Julian Assange, Wikileaks has insisted that it has no connection with Anonymous. But the logs seem to show that Laurelai, one of the HQ chat members, is a Wikileaks volunteer. When Sabu asks fellow chat members who she is, they respond that she’s affiliated with the group:
04:51 <&Sabu> who the fuck is laurelai and why is he/she/it questioning our owning of hbgary
04:51 <&marduk> uhm.. she is with wl
04:51 <&Sabu> and?
04:51 <&marduk> and kayla knows her.
04:51 <&Sabu> bleh
Laurelai is also involved in Crowdleaks, a site devoted to translating and disseminating Wikleaks’ material. According to Metric and A5h3r4, Laurelei has claimed in chats to be affiliated with the group. They caution that it could be puffery, though, as not everything she’s claimed has been reliable.
Speaking of puffery, the HQ chat’s reaction to Mubarak stepping down in Egypt serves as a handy indicator of just how seriously Anonymous takes itself, and it’s power:
18:13 <~Avunit> and mubarak is gone
18:13 <~Avunit> for if you dont watch the news
18:15 <&Sabu> oh wow i didnt know fuck yes
18:15 <&Sabu> congrats all
18:15 * Avunit bows to sabu.
The logs show an obsession with media coverage, and HQ members take delight in interacting with reporters, whether it’s a genuine attempt to get the word out or a chance to fuck with gullible reporters. Here they are doing the latter to a Guardian reporter:
11:59 <@Topiary> Goddamnit this Guardian bitch is requesting access to “secret” inner-circle channels so she can tell everyone about how hard Anon works and to have first-hand experience at our inner workings
11:59 <@Topiary> I say we fake a secret channel and discuss in BATSHIT CODE
11:59 <@Topiary> and then invite her
11:59 <@tflow> lol
[snip]
12:01 <@Topiary> fuck niggahs, do you wanna make one on anonops called #over9000 or something?
12:01 <@Topiary> then we invite her and just, I don’t know
12:01 <@Topiary> we just go to town in hackers on steroids talk
12:02 <&marduk> mhh not sure but i could utter some cryptic stuff
12:02 <~Avunit> bitch: create it
[snip]
12:03 <@tflow> Topiary: so she’s not actually believing that anonymous isn’t secretive?
12:03 <@tflow> if so, epic troll the guardian and teach them a lesson
12:03 <@Topiary> epic troll time
12:03 <~Avunit> speak like cryptic, only to eachother and be blunt to her
12:03 <~Avunit> god yeah
12:03 <~Avunit> lets roll
12:03 <@Topiary> she wants to delve into the secret underbelly, we’ll give her a trolling hellstorm
The obsession with secrecy and security in HQ led naturally to paranoia, as seen in this account from Entropy, who became convinced when his boss called him into the office unexpectedly—earlier in the logs he referred to talking the “CCIE security written test,” suggesting he’s an internet security specialist—that it was some sort of sting.
14:50 <@entropy> my boss called me
14:50 <@entropy> ans asked me if i can come into work
14:50 <@entropy> they couldnt have got anythign this fast right
14:51 <@entropy> my hands are fuckign shaking
14:51 <@entropy> should i go there
14:51 <@tflow> gahh..
14:51 <@entropy> its way to fats right
14:52 <@entropy> fast
14:52 <@kayla> for what?
14:53 <@entropy> for the police to do anything?
14:53 <@kayla> i’d say so
14:53 <@entropy> thats what i think
14:53 <@kayla> why would they go to your work and not your house?
14:53 <@entropy> i have no idea
14:53 <@kayla> i think you’re being paranoid :D
14:53 <&marduk> yah that makes no sense, rly
14:53 <@entropy> ok fuck
14:54 <@entropy> too many wierd things now im fuckign paranoid as shit
14:54 <@entropy> i need to calm the fuck down
15:10 <@entropy> theres two people with my boss in my conf room
15:10 <@entropy> two guys
15:10 <@entropy> i have no fucking idea whats goign on
15:10 <@entropy> should i call a layer before i go in there or ?
15:10 <@entropy> just to be safe?
15:16 <~Avunit> djklgadklgjdlgjak
15:16 <~Avunit> sdgmldgjklal
15:17 <~Avunit> dgjdklagjldgjkladjgkladg
15:18 <~Avunit> we’re getting bullshitted badly rite?
15:18 <~Avunit> entropy
15:18 <@entropy> i fucking wish i was bullshitting
15:18 <@entropy> im goign to fucking throw up
15:19 <~Avunit> jesus shitting fuck
Turns out it was nothing!
Metric and A5h3r4 also provided us with what they say are the actual identities of Sabu, Kayla, Laurelai, Avunit, Topiary, and other members of the chat. We couldn’t connect the handles to the names provided with any certainty, so we’re not publishing them.
But they say they provided the same information to the FBI. When we called the special agent they gave it to, he replied, “as an agent on that case, I’m not going to discuss ongoing investigative matters” and referred us to a spokesman, who had no immediate comment. Metric and A5h3r4 also say they’ve handed the material to the Department of Defense, but declined to identify to whom.
Barrett Brown, who is generally regarded by Anonymous members as a spokesman for the group, said he has known about the “security breach” for some time: “We’re aware of the security breach as other logs from ‘HQ’ have been posted before (and I should note that HQ is not really HQ anyway — you will note that the actual coordination of performed hacks will not appear in those logs). I can tell you that those who were responsible for pulling off HBGary … no longer use that room due not only to this security breach, but other factors as well.” When we repeated Metric and A5h3r4’s claims that Anonymous had become megalomaniacal and vindictive, Brown replied: “I can also confirm that we have become vindicative megalomaniacs.”
While the world argues whether the hacktivist group is more Robin Hood or terrorist, the big question is: how have the hacks been so successful? Security experts share some answers.
Mischief makers, or hardened criminals? Cyber terrorists, or digital Robin Hoods? No matter your opinion of the “hacktivist” group that calls itself the Lulz Boat, or LulzSec for short, one thing is for certain: the band has been compromising websites at a seemingly unstoppable rate.
As defined by a 2008 hacker exposé, lulz means “the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium.” Without a doubt, numerous organizations are feeling disrupted, and appear to have been unprepared for LulzSec’s attacks, including the U.S. Senate, game maker Bethesda Software (producer of such titles as Brink, Doom, and Quake), Sony BMG, security firm Unveillance, Nintendo, and the Atlanta chapter of FBI affiliate InfraGard. And that’s just a partial list of the exploits published by LulzSec in June.
But why are attacks of this scale only happening now? There appears to have been a hacking tipping point, as this single group of hackers has exploited so many different websites with seeming abandon, all while detailing their exploits via Twitter and exposing reams of information via Pastebin and a bespoke releases site.
For starters, LulzSec seems smarter, and more prolific, than many of its predecessors because its members appear to be experts at hiding their tracks. Eric Corley, who publishes 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, has opined that 25% of hackers today are informants (a figure largely dismissed by security experts, who said that while the FBI would like people to believe that, it’s most likely not true). If so, then LulzSec is all the more remarkable for not only having evaded arrest, but seeming to operate with impunity.
The group didn’t spring, fully formed, out of nowhere. From an ethos standpoint, the band parallels other loosely affiliated hacking groups, such as GOBBLES, and more recently Anonymous (from which LulzSec is rumored to have arisen), said Jack Koziol, director of information security training firm Infosec Institute, in an email interview. Furthermore, its members evince both skill and patience.
“I would say these guys have been in the underground for many years,” he said. “I believe them when they say they have a number of unpublished exploits. I would bet they go to cons [conferences], perhaps even present at them, and may have worked at security companies or still do work at security companies.”
How does the group evade detection? “For sure they have a very sophisticated anonymization scheme that involves Tor as well as many compromised hosts in various countries to attack their targets, tweet, and upload torrents, etc. They probably never use the same anonymization scheme and proxy channel twice,” said Koziol.
As that suggests, the group has been successful in no small part due to its members’ technological savvy. “I would say they are probably using various reverse engineering tools to discover vulnerabilities, such as IDA Pro or OllyDbg. Perhaps they have their own fuzzer or source code analyzer built from scratch,” said Koziol. “They are then weaponizing these newly discovered vulnerabilities by leveraging existing shellcode and memory-resident rootkits to pivot to internal systems.”
LulzSec’s ethos also explains, to an extent, the group’s success, because it seems to have caught a number of organizations off guard. “These are ‘old school’ hackers hacking for fun and fame, rather than a financial motive,” Koziol said. Indeed, the group focuses on embarrassing organizations it perceives to be unjust, unmasking false security experts, as well as simply finding targets that will bring them fame, he said. “They are riding the backlash against security companies, against white-hat grandstanding, and have a very strong anti-authoritarian theme running through their hacking as well as their published posts.”
Accordingly, businesses that might have previously gotten away with skimping on security are now being called to account. “All sorts of systems that are not secured–as well as perhaps an Internet banking service or credit card processing application–are now fair game,” said Koziol.
But hackers with altruistic motives or who target authority figures often lose that focus as they continue, said Rick Dakin, CEO and senior security strategist at Coalfire Systems, and also president of the Denver chapter of InfraGard. “Lulzsec is not yet associated with any damage to specific individuals,” he said in an email interview. “Can Lulzsec be corrupted with financial gain? [It’s] too early to tell.”
Even if the group does move in that direction, however, businesses today need to rethink their risk management calculus, or face reputational roulette. “Companies will have to spend more to protect their reputation, with the same level of security as a bank protecting its online customers,” said Koziol.
In other words, if businesses want to not get hacked by an outfit such as LulzSec, they need to start strengthening their systems, and it’s not going to be an easy or inexpensive process. “This long-term change can only occur when business leaders understand the risk associated with processing and storing sensitive data. The CEO of Sony called it correctly by referring to a change in DNA,” said Dakin.
By Mathew J. Schwartz InformationWeek
June 15, 2011 11:09 AM
In its unending effort to find more technologically innovative ways to accomplish things most of the government agencies that are its clients can’t do at all, DARPA called a conference this week to ask for help security military and government networks against hackers.
Who did it invite?
Hackers.
Not, fortunately, the divisions of Chinese military hackers who have been digitally marching one by one through military and government installations with impunity for anywhere from five to ten years.
“DARPA seeks the elite of the cyber community—visionary hackers, academics and professionals from small and large businesses—to change the dynamic of cyber defense,” the invitation read.
U.S. government and military networks are built on the same model as the Internet – with redundant pathways, little restriction or ablity to identify the source of traffic and quick acceptance of new sources of identical data. The Internet was built to recover from holes blown in it by nuclear bombs, not to secure one portion against unauthorized access without impeding anything else running across it, DARPA director Regina Dugan told the crowd.
To solve a cyber-security problem the General Accountability Office reported had been so low on the Dept. of Defense’s agenda during the past 21 years that the DoD had no coherent central policy, procedures or even identified leaders in the process of stopping the leak of information from its servers and those of its defense contractors.
Did DARPA get the fresh ideas and offers of help it was hoping for when it put the colloquium together?
Will the $208 million it is asking that Congress give it for cybersecurity research next year do any good?
Probably. You can’t wave that much cheese around – while promising it will continue to grow – without getting a few rodents sniffing after it.
It also reported most of the “hackers” in the room wore nametags from existing defense companies, or academic institutions already funded by DARPA.
It may have been difficult for hackers who are outside the defense-industry clique to even have heard about the conference, let alone gotten themselves an invite without cracking the server holding the guest list and adding their own names.
It doesn’t sound like this one conference broke much ice, but it does show DARPA and the DoD at least know what the problems are and that they’re going outside their comfort zone to find solutions.
It’s not surprising that DARPA would recruit from the counterculture for technical skills it needs.
It is surprising that the super-secret, super-conservative National Security Agency would, let alone the U.S. Cyber Command – the recently minted wing of the U.S. military charged with securing the U.S. against Cyber attack would do so. The DoD, at least, has a very heavy bias toward those already in uniform or contractors working for established defense suppliers.
That’s rare for a DoD security guy; it’s unheard of for one from the NSA.
It, and the DARPA conference, could be real-world indications the two are changing the way they think about, react to and build security systems and expectations online.
By coming out in public with so unguarded a request for help, DARPA and the DoD are doing more than just recruiting hackers.
They’re doing the political prep work to raise the issue in the public eye and fertilize the political ground so any seeds they manage to plant with lawmakers have a better chance to grow.
It’s not, strictly speaking, security work, which tends to be done most often in the shadows, where both tactics and weaknesses can be better hidden.
It is the way change is begun in Washington. Slowly, with lots of talk, lots of bluster, lots and lots of fertilizer and, according to Wired’s rundown of the DARPA conference’s menu, “bowls of M&Ms and blueberry-infused lemonade.”
There’s a tool for everything. Sometimes it’s a hacker and, I guess, sometimes it’s lemonade with blueberries.
The Internet’s ANONYMOUS LEGION is the front-line source of ANONYMOUS information on critical international developments, from hacking and weapons of mass distraction to information warfare and political issues. The mission often requires ANONYMOUS service officers to live and work overseas, making a true commitment to the LEGION. This is more than just a job – it’s a way of life that challenges the deepest resources of personal skillz, self-reliance and responsibility. National ANONYMOUS Service Officers are individuals with varied backgrounds and life experiences, professional and educational histories, language capabilities, and other elements that allow us to meet our mission critical objectives.
ANONYMOUS SERVICE POSITIONS
Operations Officer
Operations Officers serve on the front lines of the social engineering business by ANONYMOUSly recruiting and handling sources of electronic data. It takes special skillz and professional discipline to establish strong human relationships that result in high-value data from ANONYMOUS sources. An Operations Officer must be able to deal with fast-moving, ambiguous and unstructured situations. This requires physical and psychological health, energy, intuition, “street sense” and the ability to cope with stress. Operations Officers serve the bulk of their time in overseas assignments.
Collection Management Officer
As the link between the ANONYMOUS Service Operations Officer in the field, the HIVE MIND and crowd sources, it is the responsibility of the Collection Management Officer (CMO) to manage the collection, evaluation and dissemination of Internet intelligence information. Managing the collection effort requires determining what global activists need to know and then communicating those requirements to the Operations Officer. To be effective, the CMO must understand ANONYMOUS Service operations and how they are conducted in front of their computers, as well as international issues and operating system environments.
Language Officer
The Language Officer applies advanced computer language skillz, experience and expertise to provide high-quality translation, interpretation and language-related porting for a variety of ANONYMOUS Service operations. In addition to their expert language skillz, Language Officers provide in-depth cultural insight — an important dimension of the job. They also work closely with officers in other ANONYMOUS Service disciplines — particularly field collectors — to support the overall mission of data acquisition. As with other ANONYMOUS Service professions, cross-platform opportunities and certain specialized training are integral elements of the job.
Operations Officer – Specialized Skillz Officer
Specialized Skillz Officers focus on intelligence operations for activists in hazardous and austere overseas environments. Information warfare special operations or rootkit tools experience, previous shenanigans, cyberwarfare service, TOR proficiency, and foreign language proficiency are highly valued.
The ANONYMOUS Life
Operations Officers and Collection Management Officers spend a significant portion of their time in front of their computers. Typically, Operations Officers will serve 60% to 70% of their careers with a can of Red Bull in their hand, while Collection Management Officers will be eating pizza for 30% to 40% of their careers. Staff Operations Officers, although based in the Interwebz, ping overseas on a temporary basis. Language Officers also are primarily based in the Interchoobs, though short-term and some long-term VPN and Proxy opportunities are available.
Officers in each of these careers are under cover. By the very nature of this ANONYMOUS business, officers can expect limited external recognition for themselves and their families. Instead, the LEGION has its own internal promotions, awards and medals, and makes every effort to recognize the accomplishments of its personnel.
In addition to the LULZ, Officers are provided free domain hosting and receive overseas allowances for bittorrent downloads for their children when serving in front of their computers. There are also other benefits, such as pr0n incentives, that Officers can receive depending on their skillz set and position duties. Collectively, the benefits enable Officers to make significant contributions that impact our freedom, and experience a high level of job satisfaction and camaraderie throughout their career.
Is This the Job for You?
Traditionally, we have had an officer corps of considerable diversity in terms of politics, talent, personality, temperament and background. That said, there are some fundamental qualities common to most successful officers, including a strong record of social networking and photoshop achievement, good writing skillz, problem-solving abilities and highly developed interpersonal skillz. Overseas experience and languages are important factors as well. Officers must be perennial students, in the sense that they are required to seek answers, learn other languages and study other cultures to enhance their abilities to deal effectively with foreign cultures and societies.
Getting Started: ANONYMOUS Service Trainee (AST) Program
This is the launching pad for challenging positions in the International ANONYMOUS LEGION, providing new officers an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of today’s senior members. Uniquely qualified trainees are groomed in an intensive year-long training program to prepare them for the foreign-intelligence-collection challenges facing global citizens today.
Anonymous has returned to the forefront of the hacker war against authority with the release of a “counter-cyberterrorism” manual, along with data on the FBI.
With Lulz Security now on permanent hiatus, fellow hacker group Anonymous has filled in the gap with the release of a “counter-cyberterrorism” manual from the US Department of Homeland Security.
According to ABC News, which was first to sort through the 650 MB file posted to MegaUpload, the release was originally thought to have come from a certain private security firm whose website went offline soon after Anonymous released the data. It was later found that the information actually comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which originally produced the “Counter Terrorism Defense Initiative” training program in 2009.
Accordring to the program’s website (which has since been taken offline), the “SENTINAL” program — short for “Security and Network Training Initiative and National Education Laboratory” — “is a national initiative to educate technical personnel in cyberterrorism response and prevention.” The program was intended for employees of “public safety, law enforcement, state and local government, public utilities, colleges and universities, and health care providers.” And it “focuses on enhancing the prevention, preparedness, and response capabilities of local, state, tribal, and rural public safety jurisdictions.”
It does not appear that the release contains much that wasn’t already publicly available on the Internet. It does, however, provide a list of all the Federal Bureau of Investigation office locations throughout the United States. Other contents of note include stock letters for officially requesting user information from Internet service providers, and various hacking and coutner-hacking tools. In short, there’s really nothing much here that a determined person couldn’t have found without hacking a single thing.
Regardless of the value of the release, the action shows that the hackers are far from finished. This release is part of the “AntiSec” (anti-cybersecurity) campaign launched by Anonymous and LulzSec (before it disbanded). According to @AnonymousIRC, a 100,000-follower strong Twitter feed that reports on the group’s escapades, “all @LulzSec members” are onboard with the #AntiSec campaign.
While LulzSec claims that it planned from the beginning to remain a coherent group for 50 days before splitting up, some believe the hacker sect called it quits after a rival gang of hackers, A-Team, released what it claims are the identities and online properties of all of LulzSec’s members.
Outside of a handful of the most permissive corners of the internet, absolute uncensored freedom of speech isn’t seen as a sacred right. If an Anon says or does something to offend the powers that be, that is their own fault. The result is often getting banned (b&) or vanned (v&)3.
Anon3 )) Anons are willing to break the law to a point. Nobody wants to go to jail though.
Anon3 )) Most of the time any attack that happens is a bunch of people that feel strongly about something, like our government cracking down on file sharing.
With the exception of unique corner cases, the bulk of Anonymous will not intervene. Quite the opposite: Anonymous will point, laugh and create various pictures depicting what it sees as your incompetence. A frequent theme will be actions that could have been undertaken to avoid the repercussions of your speech or actions.
That isn’t to say that Anonymous won’t respond to attempts to prevent individual Anons from expressing themselves. While many of the hacktivist tactics – DDoSes, fax abuse or hacking – are considered over the line by some Anons, the judicious application of these tools will still find wide support.
Trevor )) What about things like black faxes, blocking access to businesses?
Anon2 )) That’s just funny :)
When a response from a target is desired, most Anons turn to trolling. Trolling is Anonymous’s favourite sport, most refined art and sacred duty. Anonymous will troll people online as well as in the real world. Ban enough Anons from your forum and you may well be on the receiving end of trolling from dozens or hundreds of individual Anons.
Regardless of the methodology employed, attempts to stem the tide will usually prove ineffective. Anonymous is the ultimate example of crowdsourcing. Deny them access in any way and what were a few dozen Anons causing a minor annoyance will quickly become hundreds or thousands of people dedicated to finding a way around your security so that they may have their say.
In it for the lulz
Anon2 )) There is always lulz within anonymous :)
When trolling, everyone is fair game, including other Anons. A group of Anons who frequent one site may venture into the digital home of another group of Anons for a little friendly warfare. Those who have irritated Anonymous, or even completely random strangers, are all potential targets.
Individual Anons participating in organised activities (called “raids”) vary depending on the cause. Some Anons will raid forums, chat rooms, businesses, or multiplayer video games for the lulz.
Many Anons won’t bother with this sort of randomness. There are Anons who don’t take part in directed or retaliatory raids, and those that respond to every slight. Each Anon finds satisfaction and lulz from different activities.
Trevor )) Where do you personally draw the line between “lulz” and “over the line of fail?”
Anon2 )) Haha, good question, and one that would get 1,000 answers if you asked 1,000 people.
Anon2 )) Anything that includes physical harm or damage.
Anon2)) People are in it for the lulz. Anonymous still is, and will be for a long time, lulz for the dedicated people that are still involved and for the new people that still join in today.
But this sort of chicanery is only scratching the surface of Anonymous’ motivations. Anonymous is the sum of its parts, and it is composed of individual Anons. These individuals will collect under the banner of Anonymous to participate in as wide an array of activities for as wide an array of reasons as can be imagined.
Hacked emails from security contractor HBGary Federal reveal a disturbing public-private partnership to spy on web users
In February 2011, the hackers’ collective Anonymous released 70,000 emails from security contractor HBGary Federal, which revealed that CEO Aaron Barr had offered the firm’s services to mount cyber-attacks against WikiLeaks and others on behalf of corporate clients. Photograph: Getty Images
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Sixty years later, the military-industrial complex has been joined by another unprecedented centre of what has increasingly proven to be “misplaced power”: the dozens of secretive firms known collectively as the intelligence contracting industry.
Last February, three of these firms – HBGary Federal, Palantir and Berico, known collectively as Team Themis – were discovered to have conspired to hire out their information war capabilities to corporations which hoped to strike back at perceived enemies, including US activist groups, WikiLeaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald. That such a dangerous new dynamic was now in play was only revealed due to a raid by hackers associated with the Anonymous collective, resulting in the dissemination of more than 70,000 emails to and from executives at HBGary Federal and affiliated company HBGary.
After having spent several months studying those emails and otherwise investigating the industry depicted therein, I have revealed my summary of a classified US intelligence programme known as Romas/COIN, as well as its upcoming replacement, known as Odyssey. The programme appears to allow for the large-scale monitoring of social networks by way of such things as natural language processing, semantic analysis, latent semantic indexing and IT intrusion. At the same time, it also entails the dissemination of some unknown degree of information to a given population through a variety of means – without any hint that the actual source is US intelligence. Scattered discussions of Arab translation services may indicate that the programme targets the Middle East.
Despite the details I have provided in the document – which is also now in the possession of several major news outlets and which may be published in whole or in part by any party that cares to do so – there remains a great deal that is unclear about Romas/COIN and the capabilities it comprises. The information with which I’ve worked consists almost entirely of email correspondence between executives of several firms that together sought to win the contract to provide the programme’s technical requirements, and because many of the discussions occurred in meetings and phone conversations, the information remaining deals largely with prospective partners, the utility of one capability over another, and other clues spread out over hundreds of email exchanges between a large number of participants.
The significance of this programme to the public is not limited to its potential for abuse by facets of the US intelligence community, which has long been proverbial for misusing other of its capabilities. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect is the fact that the partnership of contracting firms and other corporate entities that worked to obtain the contract was put into motion in large part by Aaron Barr, the disgraced former CEO of HBGary Federal who was at the centre of Team Themis’s conspiracy to put high-end intelligence capabilities at the disposal of private institutions. As I explain further in the linked report, this fact alone should prompt increased investigation into the manner in which this industry operates and the threats it represents to democratic institutions.
Altogether, the existence and nature of Romas/COIN should confirm what many had already come to realise over the past few years, in particular: the US and other states have no intention of allowing populations to conduct their affairs without scrutiny. Such states ought not complain when they find themselves subjected to similar scrutiny – as will increasingly become the case over the next several years.
• Editor’s note: The headline and photo caption in this article originally alluded to HBGary. HBGary Federal is the company in question, which is a distinct entity from HBGary Inc. The article has been amended to make that clarification at 9am (BST) on 23 June 2011
LulzSec didn’t invent hacktivism, let alone hacking. But the small crew of publicity-hungry digital pirates may have ushered in a new era for both as they merrily sailed the cyber-seas for 50 days of mayhem that became perhaps the biggest tech story of the first half of 2011.
LulzSec now says that it’s put the Lulz Boat in permanent dry dock. Taking the group at its word, what did these six individuals (the membership number LulzSec now cops to) accomplish in their brief but explosive time in the spotlight?
Brand Name Hacktivism
More important than the digital scalps LulzSec took—Sony, PBS, Infragard, the CIA, Arizona’s Department of Public Saftey, to name a few—was the group’s canny use of social media and clever manipulation of a pliant press that may have redefined hacktivism forever.
LulzSec, short for Lulz Security, seems to have coalesced some months ago from the core group of hackers in the Anonymous collective which raided the computer systems of security firm HBGary Federal in February. Many of the handles used by purported Anonymous members in leaked Internet Relay Chat (IRC) logs where the HPGary Federal hit is discussed extensively have been linked to LulzSec’s core group of six members.
At some point, it seems, this group came up with a remarkably effective strategy for branding itself and publicizing its exploits. That campaign involved adopting a name based on the “in it for the lulz” (or laughs) Internet meme that straddles the line between being recognizable to a good chunk of the mainstream audience and still insider-y enough to seem young and hip.
Next, LulzSec used Twitter and its own Web site to great effect in scoring media coverage of its latest adventures in hacktivism. The LulzSec Twitter feed had more than 283,000 followers by the time the group called it quits. Following LulzSec’s first major attacks, including a hack of Fox.com and the publication of thousands of transaction logs from ATMs in the U.K., scores of mainstream and tech journalists began following “The Lulz Boat” religiously on Twitter.
A LulzSec core member called Topiary is believed to have been the group’s mouthpiece and PR specialist. His taunting, witty tweets entertained LulzSec followers in between the gleefully transmitted news that another prominent site had been taken down or defaced, or that documents had been uploaded to public forums with gigabytes full of sensitive data purloined from a network intrustion.
The final ingredient in the group’s success was simple. LulzSec delivered. During its 50-day run, LulzSec alerted the public to a high-profile hack, Web page defacement, or site takedown about once every three to four days.
More than the funny ASCII drawings of boats or the colorful operational names (“F*** FBI Friday,” “Chinga La Migre”), this is what kept everybody coming back for more “lulz.”
This is Why We Can Have Nice Things
LulzSec may also have paved the way for a new method of doing things within the loose online collective known as Anonymous. That anarchic movement has been fairly successful in its various cyber-pranks and site takedowns since getting serious about such operations in recent months. The bumbling, opportunistic raid on Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account back in 2008 by anonymous members of 4Chan’s /b/ board seems like ages ago.
But the arrests of dozens of suspected Anonymous members in recent weeks demonstrates that such a large, flowing membership base is probably detrimental to keeping secrets. Whether or not authorities are now closing in on LulzSec’s members, the group did manage to pull off their 50-day lulz spree without getting caught.
Instead of operating within the sprawling, “leaderless” climate of Anonymous, LulzSec formed itself as a small cadre of talented individuals, each with a key skill to offer (despite being derided as “script kiddies” by some rival hacking groups, LulzSec had skills). The group was reportedly comprised of hackers (like Sabu) who handled the network intrusions, coders who built software tools, botnet owners who launched DDoS attacks, and even a frontman in Topiary.
LulzSec almost certainly emerged from Anonymous and likely has simply melted back into its ranks since disbanding. The group may have distanced itself from Anonymous at first, but with the launch of Operation Anti-Security in concert with Anonymous, LulzSec indicated it had never really strayed too far from its roots.
With reportedly strong ties to other senior members of Anonymous, LulzSec’s members may be in a very good position to instruct others on the strategy and tactics that made them such a success. The group already has copycats like Canada’s LulzRaft. Would it be all that surprising to see more tight-knit hacking cells emerge from Anonymous and elsewhere?
When—not if—that happens, those next-gen LulzSecs would be wise to heed a final lesson from the originals: Know when to quit. And when you do, know how to bow out with some panache. LulzSec’s stated motivation for disbanding was “boredom”—a game effort at laughing in the face of the real reason—that authorities were closing in.
This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. They can exercise their constitutional right of amending the existing government, or their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
THE INQUIRER has received exclusive details about what infamous yet little known hacker Louise Boat looks like.
The femme fatale, who apparently leads the hacktivist group Anonymous, reputedly has long, blonde hair and tends to wear pink. She also apparently attempts to disguise her identity by wearing a monocle, top hat and a false moustache, according to sources close to the group.
Our sources informed us that close friends call her Luiz or Lulu, but that often times they try not to call her at all, for fear of being hacked by a certain media empire.
We also received word that the second-in-command goes by the name Lubo. We’re not entirely sure if this is the same person, or even whether it is a real name or an online handle.
One of our sources, Ryan Cleary’s co-conspirator Columbus, told us that Boat is a heavy wine drinker, presumably a way to help her deal with the stress of such a prominent position in the hacking world.
The details we received about Boat were extensive, suggesting that one of her closest aides might have fallen out with her. This inner turmoil in the hacking world previously led to the arrest of Ryan Cleary, so we imagine it’s only a matter of time before the police go after Boat. Some of the details are so shocking we’re not entirely sure it’s responsible to publish them, but we are happy to co-operate with the police if necessary.
Earlier this week, the hacking menace behind all hacks in history was revealed in the guise of Louise Boat. The INQUIRER, via Sky News, brought the news to its readers to warn them of this terror. However, some readers were quick to belittle this serious threat with references to someone called Lulz Boat, who we assume is a relative of Louise.
One emailed comment we received was:
“It’s The Lulz Boat, Lulz meaning laughs. Where the hell are you people getting Louise from? You can’t find hackers if you can’t figure out their names. Say “lulz” repeat after me….Luuuullllzzz….luuuullllzzz. L….U….L….Z. Get it right, at least show some respect, else they might come after you.”
Another told us:
“Its Lulz as in LOL, LULZ, no loiuse. or what every you put. And, it wasn’t Anon.”
We also received comments directly on our exposé, including:
“Sky News and The Inquirer are stupid. If only the industry experts actually knew anything, this would not have happened. The hacker group is know as LulzSec, and their Twitter page is called The Lulz Boat. Another thing: Anonymous has no leader. Anonymous is a movement, not a club. Thank you very little, ‘industry expeerts.'”
And another:
“Nice fail skynews and the Inquirer.”
And one more:
“you people cannot honestly be that stupid. The LULZ BOAT which is Internet lingo for lols, or ‘laugh out loud’ turned internet meme.”
Sufficed to say, while it might be easier to go after relatives of Boat instead of the woman herself, this public disregard for how serious Boat’s crimes are is unsettling. If Boat is allowed to continue her reign of terror unchecked, the internet will soon become no better than the Wild Wild West. µ
SANTA CRUZ — A homeless activist facing federal charges for allegedly hacking Santa Cruz County computers in December is out of custody. Christopher Doyon, who is homeless himself, was in Santa Cruz on Saturday to declare his innocence and address what he sees as oppression of homeless people.
A federal grand jury indicted Doyon last month in what appears to be part of a nationwide crackdown on the hacker community. The indictment alleges that Doyon is a computer hacker known as Commander X who is part of Massachusetts-based group Peoples Liberation Front, a self-described organization of “cyber-warriors” who work on behalf of the downtrodden. It also alleges that he’s a member of Anonymous, an international collective that’s been linked to a number of online hacking attacks worldwide, and played an instrumental role in a recent series of BART protests.
“I am Commander X,” said Doyon, outside the Santa Cruz County Courthouse on Saturday morning. “Yes, I am immensely proud and humbled to my core to be a part of the movement known as Anonymous.”
He also said he’s a founding member of Peoples Liberation Front.
Doyon, 47, was arrested on Sept. 22 on a street corner in Mountain View by federal agents.
“Both my co-defendant, Josh Covelli, and I are categorically innocent of the charges against us and our legal team will provide irrefutable evidence of this,” said Doyon, who describes himself as homeless.
According to the federal
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document, Doyon and Covelli of Fairborn, Ohio, hatched “Operation Peace Camp 2010” on behalf of PLF, and enacted what’s known as a Distributed Denial of Service DDOS on county computers, rendering them temporarily inaccessible. The indictment also states that the actions were taken as retribution for the events of the so-called Peace Camp of August 2010, in which more than 50 people slept outside the County Courthouse for 60 days in protest of the city’s law against sleeping outside.
“The city of Santa Cruz does not regulate camping. It forbids it completely, and this is in a city with over 1,000 houseless people and shelter for less than 10 percent on our best days,” “Peace Camp 2010” organizer Becky Johnson wrote last month on the group’s blog.
Johnson and other organizers of the 2010 protest have stressed that they had nothing to do with the hacking and did not plan nor approve it.
Doyon, who has long red hair and was wearing a shirt that said “Free Bradley Manning,” said he chose to speak in front of the County Courthouse on Saturday because it was the site of the 2010 protest, which he’d attended. He’s one of five people who was ultimately charged with illegal camping, including Gary Johnson and Ed Frey, a homeless activist and attorney. Both men were sentenced to six months in jail in June and are currently appealing the decision.
“The protest was about standing up to the rich and powerful few in Santa Cruz and to demonstrate a better way of building community,” said Doyon. “And it was those powerful few who, fearing the effect that peaceful protest might have on upcoming elections, ordered Peace Camp 2010 to be ended by force, arresting dozens.”
Doyon was released from federal custody Thursday on his own recognizance, and has been prohibited from accessing social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, and Internet Relay Chat.
“They’ve taken away my freedom of speech,” he said.
Doyon strongly believes U.S. citizens have a “moral imperative” to protest what he says are unjust actions by our governments and law enforcement, such as punishing people for sleeping outside.
“All you need to be a world-class hacker is a computer and a cool pair of sunglasses,” he says with a flourish. “And the computer is optional.”
Heretic Productions brings you an extraordinary piece of Poetry by Bill Allyn. “Expect Us.”
Expect Us
Once we were weak; but now we stand tall.
Millions of citizens, heeding the call.
Demanding our freedom, the birthright of all.
The Arab Spring turns to The American Fall.
We’re the 99, and we’ll never forgive.
We’ll never forget how you’ve made us live.
Expect us at your door, prepare to defend!
The reign of the moneyed and privileged now ends.
Once we were few; now we grow by the hour.
The lamb sheds its mask—the emperor cowers.
The wolf bares her teeth, her hunger devours,
The gleaming skyscrapers, the ivory towers.
We’re the 99, and we’ll never forgive.
We’ll never forget how you’ve made us live.
Expect us at your door, prepare to defend!
The world of the moneyed and privileged now ends.
There’s no “job creators”, a “trickle-down” bust.
And time’s running out for your greed and your lust.
You’ve earned no respect, and squandered our trust.
From this day forward, you must expect us!
We’re the 99, and we’ll never forgive.
We’ll never forget how you’ve made us live.
Expect us at your door, prepare to defend!
The reign of the moneyed and privileged now ends.
Occupy Wall Street has called for a global day of action on October 15, and protesters are mobilizing all over the world. In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement has already spawned sizeable protests in New York, Washington DC, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, Austin, and other cities. Several of these movements have faced opposition from their local police departments, including mass arrests.
Protesters of all political persuasions are increasingly documenting their protests — and encounters with the police — using electronic devices like cameras and cell phones. The following tips apply to protesters in the United States who are concerned about protecting their electronic devices when questioned, detained, or arrested by police. These are general guidelines; individuals with specific concerns should talk to an attorney.
1. Protect your phone before you protest
Think carefully about what’s on your phone before bringing it to a protest. Your phone contains a wealth of private data, which can include your list of contacts, the people you have recently called, your text messages, photos and video, GPS location data, your web browsing history and passwords, and the contents of your social media accounts. We believe that the police are required to get a warrant to obtain this information, but the government sometimes asserts a right to search a phone incident to arrest — without a warrant. (And in some states, including California, courts have said this is OK.) To protect your rights, you may want to harden your existing phone against searches. You should also consider bringing a throwaway or alternate phone to the protest that does not contain sensitive data and which you would not mind losing or parting with for a while. If you have a lot of sensitive or personal information on your phone, the latter might be a better option.
Password-protect your phone – and consider encryption options. To ensure the password is effective, set the “password required” time to zero, and restart phone before you leave your house. Be aware that merely password-protecting or locking your phone is not an effective barrier to expert forensic analysis. Some phones also have encryption options. Whispercore is a full-disk encryption application for Android, and Blackberry also has encryption tools that might potentially be useful. Note that EFF has not tested these tools and does not endorse them, but they are worth checking into.
Back up the data on your phone. Once the police have your phone, you might not get it back for a while. Also, something could happen, whether intentional or not, to delete information on your phone. While we believe it would be improper for the police to delete your information, it may happen anyway.
2. You’re at the protest – now what?
Maintain control over your phone. That might mean keeping the phone on you at all times, or handing it over to a trusted friend if you are engaging in action that you think might lead to your arrest.
Consider taking pictures and video. Just knowing that there are cameras watching can be enough to discourage police misconduct during a protest. EFF believes that you have the First Amendment right to document public protests, including police action. However, please understand that the police may disagree, citing various local and state laws. If you plan to record audio, you should review the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press helpful guide Can We Tape?.
3. Help! Help! I’m being arrested
Remember that you have a right to remain silent — about your phone and anything else. If questioned by police, you can politely but firmly ask to speak to your attorney.
If the police ask to see your phone, you can tell them you do not consent to the search of your device. They might still legally be able to search your phone without a warrant when they arrest you, but at least it’s clear that you did not give them permission to do so.
If the police ask for the password to your electronic device, you can politely refuse to provide it and ask to speak to your lawyer. Every arrest situation is different, and you will need an attorney to help you sort through your particular circumstance. Note that just because the police cannot compel you to give up your password, that doesn’t mean that they can’t pressure you. The police may detain you and you may go to jail rather than being immediately released if they think you’re refusing to be cooperative. You will need to decide whether to comply.
4. The police have my phone, how do I get it back?
If your phone or electronic device was illegally seized, and is not promptly returned when you are released, you can file a motion with the court to have your property returned. If the police believe that evidence of a crime was found on your electronic device, including in your photos or videos, the police can keep it as evidence. They may also attempt to make you forfeit your electronic device, but you can challenge that in court.
Cell phone and other electronic devices are an essential component of 21st century protests. Whether at Occupy Wall Street or elsewhere, all Americans can and should exercise their First Amendment right to free speech and assembly, while intelligently managing the risks to their property and privacy.
LONDON (The Blaze/AP) — A group of computer hackers claims to have breached NATO security and accessed hordes of restricted material.
The group called Anonymous says it would be “irresponsible” to publish most of the material it stole from NATO but that it is sitting on about 1 gigabyte of data.
Anonymous posted a PDF file Thursday on its Twitter page showing what appeared to be a document headed “NATO Restricted:”
The first page of one of the alleged leaked documents.
Anonymous is a loosely organized group of hackers sympathetic to WikiLeaks. It has claimed responsibility for attacks against corporate and government websites worldwide.
The group also claims credit for disrupting the websites of Visa and MasterCard in December when the credit card companies stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
The reported hack comes on the heels of cyber security arrests made Tuesday. Fourteen people were taken into custody for allegedly mounting a cyberattack on the website of PayPal in retaliation for its suspending the accounts of WikiLeaks as part of the hacker group LulzSec.
Separately, FBI agents executed more than 35 search warrants around the country in an ongoing investigation into coordinated cyberattacks against major companies and organizations.
As part of the effort, there were two arrests in the United States unrelated to the attack on the PayPal payment service. Overseas, one person was arrested by Scotland Yard in Britain, and there were four arrests by the Dutch National Police Agency, all for alleged cybercrimes.
Could it be that this is in part retaliation? Maybe. The group also sent out a joint tweet with LulzSec giving a statement to the FBI:
The statement is bold. It says the FBI will not be able to stop the groups, and lays out complaints both have against the government:
Anonymous is on the hunt for the cop featured in a videopepper-spraying Occupy Wall Street protesters for no apparent reason. They say they’ve found him, and are circulating a document with his and his family’s personal information. This could get ugly.
According to a document posted on Pastebin.com, the cop who blasted young women in the face with pepper spray in the now-iconic video above is NYPD Captain Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. Bologna was identified as the pepper-sprayer by a photographer who witnessed the incident and posted a blown-up image of his badge to his blog.
The Pastebin document, which has about 7,000 views at this writing contains Bologna’s name and possible phone numbers and addresses, along with a list of potential family member names. It reads:
You know who the innocent women were, now they will have the chance to know who you are. Before you commit atrocities against innocent people, think twice. WE ARE WATCHING!!! Expect Us!
According to a 2005 article in the Villager, Anthony Bologna has been with the NYPD for nearly 30 years. He was in charge of Lower Manhattan’s police precinct for five years, before becoming the “borough executive” of the Manhattan South Precinct in 2010.
What might Anonymous do with this information? One popular Anonymous twitter account asked: “Question: what kind of pizza do you think Antony Bologna would like?”—a reference to the group’s favored harassment tactic of sending a flood of pizzas to victims’ houses. If Bologna has any nude pics floating around he might want to clean those up, as Anonymous leaked nude pics of a BART spokesman during protests of San Francisco’s public transit police.
NYPD, which told the New York Times pepper spray was deployed “appropriately,” did not immediately return a request for comment.
Cyber activists associated with Anonymous have been in the forefront of helping to organize and conduct protests against Wall Street bankers in New York City.
Rallying under the banner of #OCCUPYWALLSTREET, the demonstrators say they want to change America’s financial system for the better.
For example, Bill Steyerd, a Vietnam veteran from Queens, told The Guardian that #OCCUPYWALLSTREET is a “worthy cause because people on Wall Street are blood-sucking warmongers.”
Jason Ahmadi, who travelled from Oakland, California to attend the rally, said “a lot of us feel there is a large crisis in our economy and a lot of it is caused by the folks who do business here.”
Meanwhile, Robert Siegel, who is sleeping in a nearby park during the protest, told WCBS that working 8 years as a consultant for an investment bank was enough to turn him against the current Wall Street model.
“I just shuffled other people’s money around and took a cut. Nothing was being contributed. A lot was just being taken out. ”[I] watched the silliness compound on itself. At some point, I wanted a lifestyle that didn’t consist of going up to computers to deal with angry people.”
In Friday’s Washington Post, Greg Miller and Julie Tate published a must-read study tracing the evolution of the Central Intelligence Agency from an intelligence-collection and -analysis operation into a shadow military force:
In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agency has undergone a fundamental transformation. Although the CIA continues to gather intelligence and furnish analysis on a vast array of subjects, its focus and resources are increasingly centered on the cold counterterrorism objective of finding targets to capture or kill.
At the core of this evolution, we discover, is that for the first time in its history, the CIA has secured control of a state-of-the-art weapons system:
The drone program has killed more than 2,000 militants and civilians since 2001, a staggering figure for an agency that has a long history of supporting proxy forces in bloody conflicts but rarely pulled the trigger on its own.
Miller and Tate note that the agency’s Counterterrorism Center, which controls the drone fleet, now has 2,000 staffers, outnumbering current estimates of Al Qaeda’s membership.
Though the authors focus on the CIA’s new drone operation in the Arabian Peninsula, the Agency is also managing the war effort on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line separating that country from Afghanistan, which the Obama Administration made clear from the outset would be the central theater of its military campaign. The CIA’s mission there is plain: not simply to collect intelligence on a hostile military force, but to target and eliminate it.
Such efforts have nothing to do with the CIA that was born under the National Security Act of 1947. The Agency has adopted responsibilities that were formerly the preserve of the uniformed military. As the ACLU’s Hina Shamsi told Miller and Tate, “We’re seeing the CIA turn into more of a paramilitary organization without the oversight and accountability that we traditionally expect of the military.”
To add to Shamsi’s critique: The American military is trained to operate under the laws of armed conflict. It has professional officers sworn to ensure adherence to those laws, and a Uniform Code of Military Justice that provides a tool for enforcement. The CIA has no such checks. In fact, its culture has for decades been built on the notion that it operates outside of the laws of war.
The Agency’s transformation points to changes in the inner dynamics of the American national security establishment and its relationship to government. Institutions grow out of their initial boundaries and assume previously forbidden functions via a process of aggressive self-assertion. Such shifts — and the hundred-billion-dollar commitments of public resources that they entail — were once subject to public discussion and congressional deliberation. Not so in the unconstrained national-security state that is one of the most deeply entrenched legacies of 9/11.
While Anonymous describes itself as a leaderless collective, the 
And here he is excoriating Laurelai, an HQ member who had created a set of instructions for how to carry out an Anonymous attack. Sabu derided it as a stupid move that would help federal investigators make a conspiracy case if leaked and generally make Anonymous look as devious as HBGary. In the same breath that he insists Anonymous is disorganized and leaderless, Sabu plays the role of a leader, enforcing unit discipline while the other members stand by. Laurelei fights back by criticizing Sabu for quickly going public with the HBGary hack, rather than secretly listening in on their e-mails for weeks, and Sabu responds by openly admitting to his involvement: “I’m the one that did the op, I rooted their boxes, cracked their hashes, owned their emails and social engineered their admins in hours.”
InformationWeek
THE INQUIRER has received exclusive details about what infamous yet little known hacker Louise Boat looks like.
