Anonymous is a
decentralized
Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and gi ...
international
activist
Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...
and
hacktivist
Hacktivism (or hactivism; a portmanteau of '' hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. A form of Internet activism with roo ...
collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...
and
movement primarily known for its various
cyberattack
A cyberattack (or cyber attack) occurs when there is an unauthorized action against computer infrastructure that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its content.
The rising dependence on increasingly complex and inte ...
s against several governments, government institutions and
government agencies
A government agency or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government (bureaucracy) that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, ...
,
corporation
A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as ...
s, and the
Church of Scientology.
Anonymous originated in 2003 on the
imageboard 4chan representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an "
anarchic", digitized "
global brain" or "
hivemind".
Anonymous members (known as ''anons'') can sometimes be distinguished in public by the wearing of
Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the
graphic novel
A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length form of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and Anthology, anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics sc ...
and
film
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...
''V for Vendetta''. Some anons also opt to mask their voices through
voice changers or
text-to-speech
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or Computer hardware, hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system conv ...
programs.
Dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous
cyberattack
A cyberattack (or cyber attack) occurs when there is an unauthorized action against computer infrastructure that compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of its content.
The rising dependence on increasingly complex and inte ...
s in countries including the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
, the
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
,
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
, and
Turkey
Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
. Evaluations of the group's actions and effectiveness vary widely. Supporters have called the group "freedom fighters"
and digital
Robin Hood
Robin Hood is a legendary noble outlaw, heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature, theatre, and cinema. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions o ...
s,
while critics have described them as "a cyber lynch-mob"
or "cyber terrorists".
In 2012, ''
Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' called Anonymous one of the "
100 most influential people" in the world.
Anonymous' media profile diminished by 2018,
but the group re-emerged in 2020 to support the
George Floyd protests
The George Floyd protests were a series of protests, riots, and demonstrations against police brutality that began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020. The protests and civil unrest began in Minneapolis as Reactions to the mu ...
and other causes.
Philosophy
Internal dissent is also a regular feature of the group. A website associated with the group describes it as "an Internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives".
Gabriella Coleman writes of the group: "In some ways, it may be impossible to gauge the intent and motive of thousands of participants, many of who don't even bother to leave a trace of their thoughts, motivations, and reactions. Among those that do, opinions vary considerably."
Broadly speaking, Anons oppose Internet censorship and control and the majority of their actions target governments, organizations, and corporations that they accuse of censorship. Anons were early supporters of the global
Occupy movement
The Occupy movement was an international populist Social movement, socio-political movement that expressed opposition to Social equality, social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of real democracy around the world. It aimed primar ...
and the
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring () was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings, and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began Tunisian revolution, in Tunisia ...
. Since 2008, a frequent subject of disagreement within Anonymous is whether members should focus on pranking and entertainment or more serious (and, in some cases, political) activism.
Because Anonymous has no leadership, no action can be attributed to the membership as a whole.
Parmy Olson and others have criticized media coverage that presents the group as well-organized or homogeneous; Olson writes, "There was no single leader pulling the levers, but a few organizational minds that sometimes pooled together to start planning a stunt." Some members protest using legal means, while others employ illegal measures such as DDoS attacks and hacking. Membership is open to anyone who wishes to state they are a member of the collective; British journalist
Carole Cadwalladr of ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.
In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...
'' compared the group's decentralized structure to that of
al-Qaeda
, image = Flag of Jihad.svg
, caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions
, founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden
, leaders = {{Plainlist,
* Osama bin Lad ...
: "If you believe in Anonymous, and call yourself Anonymous, you are Anonymous." Olson, who formerly described Anonymous as a "brand", stated in 2012 that she now characterized it as a "movement" rather than a group: "anyone can be part of it. It is a crowd of people, a nebulous crowd of people, working together and doing things together for various purposes."
The group's few rules include not disclosing one's identity, not talking about the group, and not attacking media. Members commonly use the tagline "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."
Brian Kelly writes that three of the group's key characteristics are "(1) an unrelenting moral stance on issues and rights, regardless of direct provocation; (2) a physical presence that accompanies
online hacking activity; and (3) a distinctive brand."
Journalists have commented that Anonymous' secrecy, fabrications, and media awareness pose an unusual challenge for reporting on the group's actions and motivations.
Quinn Norton of ''
Wired
Wired may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
* ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976
* ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993
* ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017
* "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street''
* "Wired ...
'' writes that: "Anons lie when they have no reason to lie. They weave vast fabrications as a form of performance. Then they tell the truth at unexpected and unfortunate times, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. They are unpredictable."
Norton states that the difficulties in reporting on the group cause most writers, including herself, to focus on the "small groups of hackers who stole the limelight from a legion, defied their values, and crashed violently into the law" rather than "Anonymous's sea of voices, all experimenting with new ways of being in the world".
Arrests and trials
Since 2009, dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks, in countries including the U.S., UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Turkey. Anons generally protest these prosecutions and describe these individuals as martyrs to the movement. The July 2011 arrest of LulzSec member Topiary became a particular rallying point, leading to a widespread "Free Topiary" movement.
The first person to be sent to jail for participation in an Anonymous DDoS attack was Dmitriy Guzner, an American 19-year-old. He pleaded guilty to "unauthorized impairment of a protected computer" in November 2009 and was sentenced to 366 days in
U.S. federal prison.
On June 13, 2011, officials in Turkey arrested 32 individuals that were allegedly involved in DDoS attacks on Turkish government websites. These members of Anonymous were captured in different cities of Turkey including
Istanbul
Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...
and
Ankara
Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...
. According to ''
PC Magazine
''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues .
Overview
''PC Mag ...
'', these individuals were arrested after they attacked websites as a response to the Turkish government demand to ISPs to implement a system of filters that many have perceived as censorship.
Chris Doyon (alias "Commander X"), a self-described leader of Anonymous, was arrested in September 2011 for a cyberattack on the website of
Santa Cruz County, California.
He
jumped bail in February 2012 and fled across the border into Canada.
In September 2012, journalist and Anonymous associate
Barrett Brown, known for speaking to media on behalf of the group, was arrested hours after posting a video that appeared to threaten FBI agents with physical violence. Brown was subsequently charged with 17 offenses, including publishing personal credit card information from the Stratfor hack.
Operation Avenge Assange
Several law enforcement agencies took action after Anonymous' Operation Avenge Assange.
In January 2011, British police arrested five male suspects between the ages of 15 and 26 with suspicion of participating in Anonymous DDoS attacks. During July 19–20, 2011, as many as 20 or more arrests were made of suspected Anonymous hackers in the US, UK, and Netherlands. According to the statements of U.S. officials, suspects' homes were raided and suspects were arrested in
Alabama
Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...
,
Arizona
Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
,
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
,
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...
,
Washington DC
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...
,
Florida
Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
,
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...
,
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...
, and
Ohio
Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
. Additionally, a 16-year-old boy was held by the police in south London on suspicion of breaching the
Computer Misuse Act 1990
The Computer Misuse Act 1990 (c. 18) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced partly in response to the decision in ''R v Gold & Schifreen'' (1988) 1 AC 1063. Critics of the bill complained that it was introduced hastily, w ...
, and four were held in the Netherlands.
AnonOps admin
Christopher Weatherhead (alias "Nerdo"), a 22-year-old who had reportedly been intimately involved in organizing DDoS attacks during "Operation Payback",
was convicted by a UK court on one count of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers in December 2012. He was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment. Ashley Rhodes, Peter Gibson, and another male had already pleaded guilty to the same charge for actions between August 2010 and January 2011.
Analysis
Evaluations of Anonymous' actions and effectiveness vary widely. In a widely shared post, blogger Patrick Gray wrote that private security firms "secretly love" the group for the way in which it publicizes cyber security threats. Anonymous is sometimes stated to have changed the nature of protesting,
and in 2012, ''Time'' called it one of the "100 most influential people" in the world.
In 2012,
Public Radio International
Public Radio International (PRI) was an American public radio organization. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, PRI provided programming to over 850 public radio stations in the United States.
PRI was one of the main providers of programmi ...
reported that the U.S.
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
considered Anonymous a potential national security threat and had warned the president that it could develop the capability to disable parts of the U.S. power grid. In contrast, CNN reported in the same year that "security industry experts generally don't consider Anonymous a major player in the world of cybercrime" due to the group's reliance on DDoS attacks that briefly disabled websites, rather than the more serious damage possible through hacking. One security consultant compared the group to "a jewelry thief that drives through a window, steals jewels, and rather than keep them, waves them around and tosses them out to a crowd... They're very noisy, low-grade crimes."
In its ''2013 Threats Predictions'' report,
McAfee
McAfee Corp. ( ), formerly known as McAfee Associates, Inc. from 1987 to 1997 and 2004 to 2014, Network Associates Inc. from 1997 to 2004, and Intel Security Group from 2014 to 2017, is an American proprietary software company focused on online ...
wrote that the technical sophistication of Anonymous was in decline and that it was losing supporters due to "too many uncoordinated and unclear operations".
Graham Cluley, a security expert for
Sophos
Sophos Limited is a British security software and hardware company. It develops and markets managed security services and cybersecurity software and hardware, such as managed detection and response, incident response and endpoint security s ...
, argued that Anonymous' actions against child porn websites hosted on a
darknet could be counterproductive, commenting that while their intentions may be good, the removal of illegal websites and sharing networks should be performed by the authorities, rather than Internet vigilantes.
Some commentators also argued that the DDoS attacks by Anonymous following the January 2012
Stop Online Piracy Act protests had proved counterproductive. Molly Wood of CNET wrote that "
the SOPA/PIPA protests were the Web's moment of inspiring, non-violent, hand-holding civil disobedience, #OpMegaUpload feels like the unsettling wave of car-burning hooligans that sweep in and incite the riot portion of the play."
Dwight Silverman of the ''
Houston Chronicle
The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. ...
'' concurred, stating that "Anonymous' actions hurt the movement to kill SOPA/PIPA by highlighting online lawlessness." The
Oxford Internet Institute
The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) serves as a hub for interdisciplinary research, combining social and computer science to explore information, communication, and technology. It is an integral part of the University of Oxford's Social Science ...
's Joss Wright wrote that "In one sense the actions of Anonymous are themselves, anonymously and unaccountably, censoring websites in response to positions with which they disagree."
Gabriella Coleman has compared the group to the
trickster
In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, human or anthropomorphisation) who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherw ...
archetype
The concept of an archetype ( ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, philosophy and literary analysis.
An archetype can be any of the following:
# a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main mo ...
and said that "they dramatize the importance of anonymity and privacy in an era when both are rapidly eroding. Given that vast databases track us, given the vast explosion of surveillance, there's something enchanting, mesmerizing and at a minimum thought-provoking about Anonymous' interventions". When asked what good Anonymous had done for the world,
Parmy Olson replied:
Quinn Norton of ''Wired'' wrote of the group in 2011:
Furthermore, Landers assessed the following in 2008:
Media portrayal
Sam Esmail shared in an interview with ''Motherboard'' that he was inspired by Anonymous when creating the
USA Network
USA Network (or simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group division of Comcast's NBCUniversal. It was launched in 1977 as Madison Square Garden Sports Network, one of the first national sports ...
hacktivist drama, ''
Mr. Robot
''Mr. Robot'' is an American drama thriller television series created by Sam Esmail for USA Network. It stars Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity engineer and hacker with social anxiety disorder, clinical depression, and dissoci ...
''. Furthermore, ''Wired'' calls the "Omegas", a fictitious hacker group in the show, "a clear reference to the Anonymous offshoot known as
LulzSec
LulzSec (a contraction for Lulz Security) is a Grey hat, grey hat computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the 2011 PlayStation Network outage, compromise of user accounts from PlayStation N ...
".
In the TV series ''
Elementary'' a hacktivist collective called "Everyone" plays a recurring role; there are several hints and similarities to Anonymous.
History
4chan raids (2003–2007)
The name Anonymous itself is inspired by the perceived anonymity under which users post images and comments on the Internet. Usage of the term Anonymous in the sense of a shared identity began on
imageboards, particularly the
/b/ board of
4chan, dedicated to random content and to raiding other websites.
A tag of Anonymous is assigned to visitors who leave comments without identifying the originator of the posted content. Users of imageboards sometimes jokingly acted as if Anonymous was a single individual. The concept of the Anonymous entity advanced in 2004 when an administrator on the 4chan image board activated a "Forced_Anon" protocol that signed all posts as Anonymous. As the popularity of imageboards increased, the idea of Anonymous as a collective of unnamed individuals became an
Internet meme
An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...
.
Users of 4chan's /b/ board would occasionally join into mass pranks or raids.
In a raid on July 12, 2006, for example, large numbers of 4chan readers invaded the Finnish social networking site
Habbo Hotel with identical avatars; the avatars blocked regular Habbo members from accessing the digital hotel's pool, stating it was "closed due to fail and AIDS". Future LulzSec member
Topiary became involved with the site at this time, inviting large audiences to listen to his prank phone calls via
Skype
Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...
. Due to the growing traffic on 4chan's board, users soon began to plot pranks off-site using
Internet Relay Chat
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for Many-to-many, group communication in discussion forums, called ''#Channels, channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via instant mess ...
(IRC). These raids resulted in the first mainstream press story on Anonymous, a report by
Fox station
KTTV
KTTV (channel 11) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast of the United States, West Coast flagship (broadcasting), flagship station of the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox network. It is owned a ...
in Los Angeles, California in the U.S. The report called the group "hackers on steroids", "domestic terrorists", and an "Internet hate machine".
Encyclopedia Dramatica (2004–present)
Encyclopedia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DeGrippo, initially as a means of documenting gossip related to
LiveJournal
LiveJournal (), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, as a way of keeping his high school ...
, but it quickly was adopted as a major platform by Anonymous for parody and other purposes.
The
not safe for work
Not safe for work, also called not suitable for work (NSFW), is Internet slang or shorthand used to mark links to content, videos, or website pages the viewer may not wish to be seen viewing in a public, formal, or controlled environment. The ...
site celebrates a
subversive
Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to sabotage the established social order and its structures of power, authority, tradition, hierarchy, and socia ...
"
trolling
In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a internet forum, forum, a chat room, an Multiplayer video game, online video game) or who performs similar be ...
culture", and documents
Internet meme
An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...
s,
culture
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
, and events, such as mass pranks, trolling events, "raids", large-scale failures of Internet security, and criticism of
Internet communities that are accused of
self-censorship Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own discourse, typically out of fear or deference to the perceived preferences, sensibilities, or infallibility of others, and often without overt external pressure. Self-censorship is c ...
to gain prestige or positive coverage from traditional and
established media outlets. Journalist
Julian Dibbell described Encyclopedia Dramatica as the site "where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend."
The site also played a role in the anti-
Scientology campaign of
Project Chanology
Project Chanology (also called Operation Chanology) was a protest movement against the practices of the Church of Scientology by members of Anonymous (group), Anonymous, a leaderless Internet-based group. "Chanology" is a portmanteau of "4chan" ...
.
On April 14, 2011, the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website named ''Oh Internet'' that bore little resemblance to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes.
In response, Anonymous launched "Operation Save ED" to rescue and restore the site's content. The Web Ecology Project made a downloadable archive of former Encyclopedia Dramatica content. The site's reincarnation was initially hosted at encyclopediadramatica.ch on servers owned by Ryan Cleary, who later was arrested in relation to attacks by LulzSec against Sony.
Project Chanology (2008)
Anonymous first became associated with
hacktivism in 2008 following a series of actions against the Church of Scientology known as Project Chanology. On January 15, 2008, the gossip blog
Gawker posted a video in which celebrity Scientologist
Tom Cruise
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962) is an American actor and film producer. Regarded as a Cinema of the United States, Hollywood icon, he has received List of awards and nominations received by Tom Cruise, various accolades, includ ...
praised the religion; and the Church responded with a
cease-and-desist letter for violation of copyright. 4chan users organized a raid against the Church in retaliation, prank-calling its hotline, sending
black faxes designed to waste ink cartridges, and launching
DDoS attacks against its websites.
The DDoS attacks were at first carried out with the Gigaloader and
JMeter applications. Within a few days, these were supplanted by the
Low Orbit Ion Cannon
Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) is an open-source network stress testing and denial-of-service attack application written in C#. LOIC was initially developed by Praetox Technologies, however it was later released into the public domain and is cur ...
(LOIC), a network stress-testing application allowing users to flood a server with
TCP or
UDP packets. The LOIC soon became a signature weapon in the Anonymous arsenal; however, it would also lead to a number of arrests of less experienced Anons who failed to conceal their
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...
es. Some operators in Anonymous IRC channels incorrectly told or lied to new volunteers that using the LOIC carried no legal risk.

During the DDoS attacks, a group of Anons uploaded a YouTube video in which a robotic voice speaks on behalf of Anonymous, telling the "leaders of Scientology" that "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind—for the laughs—we shall expel you from the Internet."
Within ten days, the video had attracted hundreds of thousands of views.
With more than 10 thousand followers on their IRC server waiting for instructions, they felt they had to come up with something. The idea of a worldwide protest emerged because they both wanted to use a symbol or image to unify the protests, and since all protesters were supposed to be anonymous, it was decided to use a mask. Due to shipment problems caused by the short amount of time to prepare, they improvised and called all the costume and comic book-shops in the major cities around the world, and found that the only mask available in all the cities was the
Guy Fawkes mask from the graphic novel and film ''
V for Vendetta
''V for Vendetta'' is a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd (comics), David Lloyd (with additional art by Tony Weare). Initially published between 1982 and 1985 in black and white as an ongoing Serial (li ...
'', in which an anarchist revolutionary battles a totalitarian government. The suggestion of the choice of mask was well received. On February 10, thousands of Anonymous joined simultaneous protests at Church of Scientology facilities in 142 cities in 43 countries. The stylized Guy Fawkes masks soon became a popular symbol for Anonymous. In-person protests against the Church continued throughout the year, including "Operation Party Hard" on March 15 and "Operation Reconnect" on April 12. However, by mid-year, they were drawing far fewer protesters, and many of the organizers in IRC channels had begun to drift away from the project.
Operation Payback (2010)
By the start of 2009, Scientologists had stopped engaging with protesters and had improved online security, and actions against the group had largely ceased. A period of infighting followed between the politically engaged members (referred to as "moralfags" in the parlance of 4chan) and those seeking to provoke for entertainment (trolls). By September 2010, the group had received little publicity for a year and faced a corresponding drop in member interest; its raids diminished greatly in size and moved largely off of IRC channels, organizing again from the chan boards, particularly /b/.
In September 2010, however, Anons became aware of Aiplex Software, an Indian software company that contracted with film studios to launch DDoS attacks on websites used by copyright infringers, such as
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay, commonly abbreviated as TPB, is a free searchable online index of Film, movies, music, video games, Pornographic film, pornography and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank , The Pirate Bay facilitates the connection ...
. Coordinating through IRC, Anons launched a DDoS attack on September 17 that shut down Aiplex's website for a day. Primarily using LOIC, the group then targeted the
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...
(RIAA) and the
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the Major film studios, five major film studios of the Cinema of the United States, United States, the Major film studios#Mini-majors, mini-major Amazon MGM Stud ...
(MPAA), successfully bringing down both sites. On September 19, future LulzSec member Mustafa Al-Bassam (known as "Tflow") and other Anons hacked the website of Copyright Alliance, an anti-infringement group, and posted the name of the operation: "Payback Is A Bitch", or "Operation Payback" for short. Anons also issued a press release, stating:
As IRC network operators were beginning to shut down networks involved in DDoS attacks, Anons organized a group of servers to host an independent IRC network, titled AnonOps. Operation Payback's targets rapidly expanded to include the British law firm
ACS:Law,
the
Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, the British nightclub
Ministry of Sound
Ministry of Sound or Ministry of Sound Group is a multimedia entertainment business based in London with a nightclub, shared workspace and private members' club, worldwide events operation, music publisher (popular music), music publishing busin ...
,
the Spanish copyright society
Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, the
U.S. Copyright Office,
and the website of
Gene Simmons
Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz; ; born August 25, 1949) also known by his stage persona "The Demon", is an Israeli-born American musician. He was the bassist and co-lead singer of the hard rock band Kiss (band), Kiss, which he co-founded wit ...
of
Kiss
A kiss is the touching or pressing of one's lips against another person, animal or object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely; depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, romance, sex ...
.
By October 7, 2010, total downtime for all websites attacked during Operation Payback was 537.55 hours.
In November 2010, the organization
WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...
began releasing
hundreds of thousands of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables. In the face of legal threats against the organization by the U.S. government,
Amazon.com booted WikiLeaks from its servers, and
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...
,
MasterCard, and
Visa cut off service to the organization. Operation Payback then expanded to include "Operation Avenge
Assange", and Anons issued a press release declaring PayPal a target. Launching DDoS attacks with the LOIC, Anons quickly brought down the websites of the PayPal blog;
PostFinance, a Swiss financial company denying service to WikiLeaks;
EveryDNS, a web-hosting company that had also denied service; and the website of U.S. Senator
Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore Lieberman (; February 24, 1942 – March 27, 2024) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. Originally a member of the Democratic Party (United States), Dem ...
, who had supported the push to cut off services.
On December 8, Anons launched an attack against PayPal's main site. According to Topiary, who was in the command channel during the attack, the LOIC proved ineffective, and Anons were forced to rely on the
botnet
A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more Internet bot, bots. Botnets can be used to perform distributed denial-of-service attack, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send Spamming, sp ...
s of two hackers for the attack, marshaling hijacked computers for a concentrated assault. Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll also reported that the "zombie computers" of involuntary botnets had provided 90% of the attack. Topiary states that he and other Anons then "lied a bit to the press to give it that sense of abundance", exaggerating the role of the grassroots membership. However, this account was disputed.
The attacks brought down PayPal.com for an hour on December 8 and for another brief period on December 9. Anonymous also disrupted the sites for Visa and MasterCard on December 8. Anons had announced an intention to bring down Amazon.com as well, but failed to do so, allegedly because of infighting with the hackers who controlled the botnets. PayPal estimated the damage to have cost the company US$5.5 million. It later provided the IP addresses of 1,000 of its attackers to the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
, leading to at least 14 arrests. On Thursday, December 5, 2013, 13 of the
PayPal 14 pleaded guilty to taking part in the attacks.
2011–2012

In the years following Operation Payback, targets of Anonymous protests, hacks, and DDoS attacks continued to diversify. Beginning in January 2011, Anons took a number of actions known initially as
Operation Tunisia in support of
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring () was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings, and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began Tunisian revolution, in Tunisia ...
movements. Tflow created a script that Tunisians could use to protect their web browsers from government surveillance, while fellow future LulzSec member
Hector Xavier Monsegur (alias "Sabu") and others allegedly hijacked servers from a London web-hosting company to launch a DDoS attack on Tunisian government websites, taking them offline. Sabu also used a Tunisian volunteer's computer to hack the website of Prime Minister
Mohamed Ghannouchi, replacing it with a message from Anonymous. Anons also helped Tunisian dissidents share videos online about the uprising.
In Operation Egypt, Anons collaborated with the activist group
Telecomix to help dissidents access government-censored websites.
Sabu and Topiary went on to participate in attacks on government websites in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Zimbabwe.
Tflow, Sabu, Topiary, and Ryan Ackroyd (known as "Kayla") collaborated in February 2011 on a cyber-attack against
Aaron Barr, CEO of the computer security firm
HBGary Federal, in retaliation for his research on Anonymous and his threat to expose members of the group. Using a
SQL injection
In computing, SQL injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution (e.g. to dump the database contents to the attacker). SQL injec ...
weakness, the four hacked the HBGary site, used Barr's captured password to vandalize his Twitter feed with racist messages, and released an enormous cache of HBGary's e-mails in a
torrent file
In the BitTorrent file distribution system, a torrent file or meta-info file is a computer file that contains metadata about files and folders to be distributed, and usually also a list of the network locations of trackers, which are computers ...
on Pirate Bay. The e-mails stated that Barr and HBGary had proposed to
Bank of America
The Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America) (often abbreviated BofA or BoA) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in ...
a plan to discredit WikiLeaks in retaliation for a planned leak of Bank of America documents, and the leak caused substantial public relations harm to the firm as well as leading one U.S. congressman to call for a congressional investigation. Barr resigned as CEO before the end of the month.
Several attacks by Anons have targeted organizations accused of homophobia. In February 2011, an open letter was published on AnonNews.org threatening the
Westboro Baptist Church
The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an American unaffiliated Primitive Baptists, Primitive Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, that was founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps. It is widely considered a hate group and a cult, and is known for Prot ...
, an organization based in
Kansas
Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...
in the U.S. known for picketing funerals with signs reading "God Hates Fags". During a live radio current affairs program in which Topiary debated church member
Shirley Phelps-Roper, CosmoTheGod hacked one of the organization's websites. After the church announced its intentions in December 2012 to picket the funerals of the
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
On December 14, 2012, a mass shooting occurred at Newtown Public Schools, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. The perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people. The victims were 20 children bet ...
victims, CosmoTheGod published the names, phone numbers, and e-mail and home addresses of church members and brought down GodHatesFags.com with a DDoS attack. In August 2012, Anons hacked the site of Ugandan Prime Minister
Amama Mbabazi in retaliation for the
Parliament of Uganda
The Parliament of Uganda is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of Uganda. One of its primary functions is to pass laws that support effective governance in the country. Government ministers are required to answer to the people's represe ...
's consideration of
an anti-homosexuality law permitting capital punishment.
In April 2011, Anons launched a series of attacks against Sony in retaliation for trying to stop hacks of the
PlayStation 3
The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...
game console. More than 100 million Sony accounts were compromised, and the Sony services
Qriocity and
PlayStation Network were taken down for a month apiece by cyberattacks.
In July 2011, Anonymous announced the launch of its social media platform
Anonplus. This came after Anonymous' presence was removed from
Google+
Google+ (sometimes written as Google Plus, stylized as G+ or g+) was a Social networking service, social network owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challe ...
. The site was later hacked by a Turkish hackers group who placed a message on the front page and replaced its logo with a picture of a dog.
In August 2011, Anons launched an attack against
BART
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California. BART serves List of Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, 50 stations along six routes and of track, including eBART, a spur line running t ...
in San Francisco, which they dubbed #OpBart. The attack, made in response to the killing of Charles Hill a month prior, resulted in customers' personal information leaked onto the group's website.

When the
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, capitalism, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial ...
protests began in New York City in September 2011, Anons were early participants and helped spread the movement to other cities such as
Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
. In October, some Anons attacked the website of the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
while other Anons publicly opposed the action via Twitter.
Some Anons also helped organize an Occupy protest outside the
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...
on May 1, 2012.
Anons launched Operation Darknet in October 2011, targeting websites hosting
child pornography
Child pornography (also abbreviated as CP, also called child porn or kiddie porn, and child sexual abuse material, known by the acronym CSAM (underscoring that children can not be deemed willing participants under law)), is Eroticism, erotic ma ...
. In particular, the group hacked a child pornography site called "
Lolita City" hosted by
Freedom Hosting, releasing 1,589 usernames from the site. Anons also said that they had disabled forty image-swapping pedophile websites that employed the anonymity network
Tor
Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to:
Places
* Toronto, Canada
** Toronto Raptors
* Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain
* Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city
* Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano
* Tor Bay, Devon, England
* Tor ...
. In 2012, Anons leaked the names of users of a suspected child porn site in OpDarknetV2. Anonymous launched the #OpPedoChat campaign on Twitter in 2012 as a continuation of Operation Darknet. In attempt to eliminate child pornography from the internet, the group posted the emails and IP addresses of suspected pedophiles on the online forum PasteBin.
In 2011, the
Koch Industries
Koch, Inc. () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation based in Wichita, Kansas, and is the second-largest privately held company in the United States, after Cargill. Its subsidiarie ...
website was attacked following their attack upon union members, resulting in their website being made inaccessible for 15 minutes. In 2013, one member, a 38-year-old truck driver, pleaded guilty when accused of participating in the attack for a period of one minute, and received a sentence of two years federal probation, and ordered to pay $183,000 restitution, the amount Koch stated they paid a consultancy organization, despite this being only a denial of service attack.
On January 19, 2012, the U.S.
Department of Justice shut down the file-sharing site
Megaupload on allegations of copyright infringement. Anons responded with a wave of DDoS attacks on U.S. government and copyright organizations, shutting down the sites for the RIAA, MPAA,
Broadcast Music, Inc., and the FBI.
In April 2012, Anonymous hacked 485
Chinese government
The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a Unitary state, unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's ...
websites, some more than once, to protest the treatment of their citizens. They urged people to "fight for justice, fight for freedom,
ndfight for democracy".
In 2012, Anonymous launched Operation Anti-Bully: Operation Hunt Hunter in retaliation to
Hunter Moore's revenge porn site, "
Is Anyone Up?" Anonymous crashed Moore's servers and publicized much of his personal information online, including his social security number. The organization also published the personal information of Andrew Myers, the proprietor of "Is Anyone Back", a copycat site of Moore's "Is Anyone Up?"
In response to
Operation Pillar of Defense, a November 2012 Israeli military operation in the
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...
, Anons took down hundreds of Israeli websites with DDoS attacks. Anons pledged another "
massive cyberassault" against Israel in April 2013 in retaliation for its actions in
Gaza, promising to "wipe Israel off the map of the Internet". However, its DDoS attacks caused only temporary disruptions, leading cyberwarfare experts to suggest that the group had been unable to recruit or hire botnet operators for the attack.
2013
On November 5, 2013, Anonymous protesters gathered around the world for the Million Mask March. Demonstrations were held in 400 cities around the world to coincide with
Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration list of minor secular observances#November, observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and firewor ...
.
Operation Safe Winter was an effort to raise awareness about homelessness through the collection, collation, and redistribution of resources. This program began on November 7, 2013 after an online call to action from Anonymous UK. Three missions using a charity framework were suggested in the original global spawning a variety of direct actions from used clothing drives to pitch in community potlucks feeding events in the UK, US and Turkey. The #OpSafeWinter call to action quickly spread through the mutual aid communities like Occupy Wall Street and its offshoot groups like the
open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
-based OccuWeather. With the addition of the long-term mutual aid communities of New York City and online hacktivists in the US, it took on an additional three suggested missions. Encouraging participation from the general public, this operation has raised questions of
privacy
Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...
and the changing nature of the Anonymous community's use of monikers. The project to support those living on the streets while causing division in its own online network has been able to partner with many efforts and organizations not traditionally associated with Anonymous or online activists.
2014
In the wake of the
fatal police shooting of unarmed African-American Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri
Ferguson is a city in St. Louis County, Missouri, St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. It is part of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. Per the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 18,527, and is predominantly Bla ...
, "Operation Ferguson"—a
hacktivist
Hacktivism (or hactivism; a portmanteau of '' hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. A form of Internet activism with roo ...
organization that claimed to be associated with Anonymous—organized cyberprotests against police, setting up a website and a Twitter account to do so.
The group promised that if any protesters were harassed or harmed, they would attack the city's servers and computers, taking them offline.
City officials said that e-mail systems were targeted and phones died, while the Internet crashed at the City Hall.
Prior to August 15, members of Anonymous corresponding with ''
Mother Jones'' said that they were working on confirming the identity of the undisclosed police officer who shot Brown and would release his name as soon as they did.
On August 14, Anonymous posted on its Twitter feed what it claimed was the name of the officer involved in the shooting.
However, police said the identity released by Anonymous was incorrect. Twitter subsequently suspended the Anonymous account from its service.
It was reported on November 19, 2014, that Anonymous had declared
cyber war on the
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
(KKK) the previous week, after the KKK had made death threats following the Ferguson riots. They hacked the KKK's Twitter account, attacked servers hosting KKK sites, and started to release the personal details of members.
On November 24, 2014, Anonymous shut down the
Cleveland
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...
city website and posted a video after
Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy armed only with a BB gun, was shot to death by a police officer in a Cleveland park.
Anonymous also used
BeenVerified to uncover the phone number and address of a police officer involved in the shooting.
2015
In January 2015, Anonymous released a video and a statement via Twitter condemning
the attack on ''
Charlie Hebdo
''Charlie Hebdo'' (; ) is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian, and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism ...
'', in which 12 people, including eight journalists, were fatally shot. The video, claiming that it is "a message for
al-Qaeda
, image = Flag of Jihad.svg
, caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions
, founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden
, leaders = {{Plainlist,
* Osama bin Lad ...
, the
Islamic State
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadism, Salafi jihadist organization and unrecognized quasi-state. IS ...
and other terrorists", was uploaded to the group's Belgian account. The announcement stated that "We, Anonymous around the world, have decided to declare war on you, the terrorists" and promises to avenge the killings by "shut
ing
Ing, ING or ing may refer to:
Art and media
* '' ...ing'', a 2003 Korean film
* i.n.g, a Taiwanese girl group
* The Ing, a race of dark creatures in the 2004 video game '' Metroid Prime 2: Echoes''
* "Ing", the first song on The Roches' 199 ...
down your accounts on all social networks." On January 12, they brought down a website that was suspected to belong to one of these groups. Critics of the action warned that taking down extremists' websites would make them harder to monitor.
On June 17, 2015, Anonymous claimed responsibility for a Denial of Service attack against Canadian government websites in protest of the passage of bill
C-51—an anti-terror legislation that grants additional powers to Canadian intelligence agencies. The attack temporarily affected the websites of several federal agencies.
On October 28, 2015, Anonymous announced that it would reveal the names of up to 1,000 members of the
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
and other affiliated groups, stating in a press release, "You are terrorists that hide your identities beneath sheets and infiltrate society on every level. The privacy of the Ku Klux Klan no longer exists in cyberspace." On November 2, a list of 57 phone numbers and 23 email addresses (that allegedly belong to KKK members) was reportedly published and received media attention. However, a tweet from the "@Operation_KKK" Twitter account the same day denied it had released that information The group stated it planned to, and later did, reveal the names on
November 5.
Since 2013, Saudi Arabian
hacktivists have been targeting government websites protesting the actions of the regime. These actions have seen attacks supported by the possibly Iranian backed
Yemen Cyber Army. An offshoot of Anonymous self-described as
Ghost Security or GhostSec started targeting
Islamic State
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadism, Salafi jihadist organization and unrecognized quasi-state. IS ...
-affiliated websites and social media handles.
In November 2015, Anonymous announced a major, sustained operation against ISIS following the
November 2015 Paris attacks,
declaring: "Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go." ISIS responded on
Telegram
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...
by calling them "idiots", and asking "What they hack?" By the next day, however, Anonymous claimed to have taken down 3,824 pro-ISIS Twitter accounts, and by the third day more than 5,000, and to have
doxxed ISIS recruiters. A week later, Anonymous increased their claim to 20,000 pro-ISIS accounts and released a list of the accounts. The list included the Twitter accounts of
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
,
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...
, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', and
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
. The BBC reported that most of the accounts on the list appeared to be still active. A spokesman for Twitter told ''
The Daily Dot
''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. It was founded by Nicholas White in 2011, and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometown newsp ...
'' that the company is not using the lists of accounts being reported by Anonymous, as they have been found to be "wildly inaccurate" and include accounts used by academics and journalists.
In 2015, a group that claimed to be affiliated with Anonymous, calling themselves as AnonSec, claimed to have hacked and gathered almost 276 GB of data from NASA servers including NASA flight and radar logs and videos, and also multiple documents related to ongoing research. AnonSec group also claimed gaining access of a Global Hawk Drone of NASA, and released some video footage purportedly from the drone's cameras. A part of the data was released by AnonSec on Pastebin service, as an Anon Zine. NASA has denied the hack, asserting that the control of the drones were never compromised, but has acknowledged that the photos released along with the content are real photographs of its employees, but that most of these data are already available in the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
.
2016
The Blink Hacker Group, associating themselves with the Anonymous group, claimed to have hacked the Thailand prison websites and servers. The compromised data has been shared online, with the group claiming that they give the data back to Thailand Justice and the citizens of Thailand as well. The hack was done in response to news from Thailand about the mistreatment of prisoners in Thailand.
A group calling themselves Anonymous Africa launched a number of DDoS attacks on websites associated with the controversial South African
Gupta family in mid-June 2016. Gupta-owned companies targeted included the websites of Oakbay Investments,
The New Age
''The New Age'' was a British weekly magazine (1894–1938),credited as a major influence on literature and the arts during its heyday from 1907 to 1922, when it was edited by Alfred Richard Orage. It published work by many of the chief politi ...
, and
ANN7. The websites of the
South African Broadcasting Corporation
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is the public broadcaster in South Africa, and provides 19 radio stations (Amplitude modulation, AM/Frequency modulation, FM) as well as 6 television broadcasts and 3 OTT Services to the general ...
, the political party
Economic Freedom Fighters
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is a South African communist and black nationalist political party. It was founded by expelled former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president Julius Malema, and his allies, on 26 July 20 ...
, and Zimbabwe's
Zanu-PF were also attacked for "politicising racism."
Late 2010s
In late 2017, the
QAnon
QAnon ( ) is a far-right conspiracy theories in United States politics, American political conspiracy theory and political movement that originated in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals kno ...
conspiracy theory first emerged on 4chan, and adherents used similar terminology and branding to Anonymous. In response, in 2018, anti-Trump members of Anonymous warned that QAnon was stealing the collective's branding and vowed to oppose the theory.
However, in 2017, some members stood against similar groups
and QAnon itself.
2020
In February 2020, Anonymous hacked the United Nations' website and created a page for
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
, a country which has not had a seat at the UN
since 1971.
The hacked page featured the
Flag of Taiwan
The flag of the Republic of China, commonly called the flag of Taiwan, consists of a red field with a blue Canton (flag), canton bearing a white disk surrounded by Dodecagram, twelve triangles; said symbols symbolize the sun and rays of lig ...
, the
KMT emblem, a
Taiwan Independence
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of Chi ...
flag, and the Anonymous logo along with a caption.
The hacked server belonged to the
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) is part of the United Nations Secretariat and is responsible for the follow-up to major United Nations Summits and Conferences, as well as services to the United Nations Econ ...
.
In the wake of protests across the U.S. following the
murder of George Floyd
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black American man, was murdered in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old White police officer. Floyd had been arrested after a store clerk reported that he made a purchase using a c ...
, Anonymous released a video on Facebook as well as sending it out to the Minneapolis Police Department on May 28, 2020, titled "Anonymous Message To The Minneapolis Police Department", in which they state that they are going to seek revenge on the
Minneapolis Police Department
The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is the primary law enforcement agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is also the largest police department in Minnesota. Formed in 1867, it is the second-oldest police department in Minnesota ...
, and "expose their crimes to the world". According to
Bloomberg
Bloomberg may refer to:
People
* Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer
* Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian
* Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician a ...
, the video was initially posted on an unconfirmed Anonymous Facebook page on May 28. According to BBC News, that same Facebook page had no notoriety and published videos of dubious content linked to UFOs and "China's plan to take over the world". It gained repercussions after the video about George Floyd was published
and the Minneapolis police website, which is responsible for the police officer, was down. Later,
Minnesota
Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...
Governor
Tim Walz
Timothy James Walz (; born April 6, 1964) is an American politician who has served since 2019 as the 41st governor of Minnesota. He was the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States, vice pre ...
said that every computer in the region suffered a sophisticated attack. According to BBC News, the attack on the police website using DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) was unsophisticated.
According to researcher
Troy Hunt, these breaches of the site may have happened from old credentials. Regarding unverified Twitter posts that also went viral, where radio stations of police officers playing music and preventing communication are shown, experts point out that this is unlikely to be due to a hack attackif they are real.
Later, it was confirmed by
CNET that the leaks made from the police website are false and that someone is taking advantage of the repercussions of George Floyd's murder to spread misinformation.
On June 19, 2020, Anonymous published
BlueLeaks, sometimes referred to by the
Twitter hashtag #BlueLeaks, 269.21
gigabytes of internal
U.S. law enforcement data through the activist group
Distributed Denial of Secrets, which called it the "largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies".
The data — internal intelligence, bulletins, emails, and reports — was produced between August 1996 and June 2020 by more than 200 law enforcement agencies, which provided it to
fusion centers. It was obtained through a security breach of Netsential, a web developer that works with fusion centers and law enforcement. In Maine, legislators took interest in BlueLeaks thanks to details about the Maine Information and Analysis Center, which is under investigation. The leaks showed the fusion center was spying on and keeping records on people who had been legally protesting or had been "suspicious" but committed no crime.
In 2020, Anonymous started cyber-attacks against the Nigerian government. They started the operation to support the
#EndSARS movement in Nigeria. The group's attacks were tweeted by a member of Anonymous called LiteMods. The websites of EFCC, INEC and various other Nigerian government websites were taken-down with DDoS attacks. The websites of some banks were compromised.
2021
The
Texas Heartbeat Act, a law which bans
abortion
Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
s after six weeks of pregnancy, came into effect in
Texas
Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
on September 1, 2021. The law relies on private citizens to file
civil lawsuits against anyone who performs or induces an abortion, or aids and abets one, once "cardiac activity" in an
embryo
An embryo ( ) is the initial stage of development for a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male sp ...
can be detected via
transvaginal ultrasound
Vaginal ultrasonography is a medical ultrasonography that applies an ultrasound transducer (or "probe") in the vagina to visualize organs within the pelvic cavity. It is also called transvaginal ultrasonography because the ultrasound waves go ''a ...
, which is usually possible beginning at around six weeks of pregnancy.
Shortly after the law came into effect, anti-abortion organizations set up websites to collect "whistleblower" reports of suspected violators of the bill.
On September 3, Anonymous announced "Operation Jane", a campaign focused on stymying those who attempted to enforce the law by "exhaust
ngthe investigational resources of bounty hunters, their snitch sites, and online gathering spaces until no one is able to maintain data integrity".
On September 11, the group hacked the website of the
Republican Party of Texas
The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) is the Texas affiliate of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party in the United States. It is currently chaired by Abraham George (politician), Abraham George, who succeeded Matt Rinaldi in 2024 ...
, replacing it with text about Anonymous, an invitation to join Operation Jane, and a
Planned Parenthood
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is an American nonprofit organization donation link.
On September 13, Anonymous released a large quantity of private data belonging to
Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to websites that host
far-right
Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, and nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the ...
,
neo-Nazi
Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazism, Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and Supremacism#Racial, racial supremacy (ofte ...
, and other
extremist
Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views". The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied shar ...
content.
Epik had briefly provided services to an abortion "whistleblower" website run by the anti-abortion Texas Right to Life organization, but the reporting form went offline on September 4 after Epik told the group they had violated their terms of service by collecting private information about third parties. The data included domain purchase and transfer details, account credentials and logins, payment history, employee emails, and unidentified
private keys.
The hackers claimed they had obtained "a decade's worth of data" which included all customers and all domains ever hosted or registered through the company, and which included poorly encrypted passwords and other sensitive data stored in
plaintext
In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted.
Overview
With the advent of comp ...
.
Later on September 13, the
Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) organization said they were working to curate the allegedly leaked data for more accessible download, and said that it consisted of "180
gigabyte
The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The SI prefix, prefix ''giga-, giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte i ...
s of user, registration, forwarding and other information".
Publications including ''The Daily Dot'' and ''
The Record by Recorded Future'' subsequently confirmed the veracity of the hack and the types of data that had been exposed.
Anonymous released another leak on September 29, this time publishing bootable
disk image
A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device.
Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...
s of Epik's servers; more disk images as well as some leaked documents from the Republican Party of Texas appeared on October 4.
2022
On February 25, 2022, Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous declared that they had launched a 'cyber operations' against the
Russian Federation
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, in retaliation for the
invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian president
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
. The group later temporarily disabled websites such as
RT.com and the website of the
Defence Ministry along with other state owned websites. Anonymous also leaked 200 GB worth of emails from the Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr, which provided logistical support for Russia in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anonymous also hacked into Russian TV channels and played Ukrainian music through them and showed uncensored news of events in Ukraine.
Operation Russia
On March 7, 2022, Anonymous actors DepaixPorteur and TheWarriorPoetz declared on Twitter
that they hacked 400 Russian surveillance cameras and broadcast them on a website. They call this operation "Russian Camera Dump".
Between March 25, 2022, and June 1, 2022,
DDoSecrets collected hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes and millions of emails allegedly from the
Central Bank of Russia
The Central Bank of the Russian Federation (), commonly known as the Bank of Russia (), also called the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), is the central bank of the Russia, Russian Federation. The bank was established on 13 July 1990. It traces its ...
, Capital Legal Services,
All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company
The Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (RTR) or Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, also known as Russia Television and Radio, is a national State media, state-owned broadcaster which operates many television and ...
(VGTRK), Aerogas,
Blagoveshchensk
Blagoveshchensk ( rus, Благовещенск, p=bləɡɐˈvʲeɕːɪnsk, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Amur Oblast, Russia. It is located at the confluence of the Amur River, Amur and the ...
City Administration,
Continent Express, Gazregion, GUOV i GS - General Dept. of Troops and Civil Construction, Accent Capital, ALET/АЛЕТ, CorpMSP,
Nikolai M. Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO),
the
Achinsk City Government,
SOCAR Energoresource,
Metprom Group LLC, and the Vyberi Radio / Выбери Радио group, all of which were allegedly hacked by Anonymous and Anonymous aligned NB65.
Iranian protests
On September 18, 2022,
YourAnonSpider hacked the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran's official webpage belonging to Ali Khamenei in retaliation to the death of Mahsa Amini. Anonymous launched a cyber operation against the Iranian government for the alleged murder of
Mahsa Amini. Anonymous launched
distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against Iran's government and state-owned websites. On September 23, 2022, a hacktivist named "Edaalate Ali" hacked Iran's state TV government channel during the middle of broadcast and released CCTV footage of Iran's prison facilities. On October 23, 2022, an Iranian hacker group known as "Black Reward" published confidential files and documents email system belonging to Iran's nuclear program. Black Reward announced on their Telegram channel that they have hacked into 324 emails which contained more than a hundred thousand messages and over 50 gigabytes of files. A hacktivist group by the name "Lab Dookhtegan" published the Microsoft Excel macros, PowerShell exploits
APT34 reportedly used to target organizations across the world.
Chinese protests
In response to the
2022 COVID-19 protests in China, "Anonymous OpIran" launched ''Operation White Paper'', attacked and took down Chinese government controlled websites, and leaked some Chinese government officials' personal information.
Related groups
LulzSec
In May 2011, the small group of Anons behind the HBGary Federal hack—including Tflow, Topiary, Sabu, and Kayla—formed the hacker group "Lulz Security", commonly abbreviated "LulzSec". The group's first attack was against
Fox.com, leaking several passwords, LinkedIn profiles, and the names of 73,000 ''
X Factor
''The X Factor'' is a television music competition franchise created by British producer Simon Cowell and his company Syco Entertainment. It originated in the United Kingdom, where it was devised as a replacement for '' Pop Idol'' (2001–200 ...
'' contestants. In May 2011, members of Lulz Security gained international attention for hacking into the American
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia
Arlington County, or simply Arlington, is a County (United States), county in the ...
(PBS) website. They stole user data and posted a fake story on the site that claimed that rappers
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Amaru Shakur (; born Lesane Parish Crooks; June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper and actor, regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all tim ...
and
Biggie Smalls were still alive and living in New Zealand. LulzSec stated that some of its hacks, including its attack on PBS, were motivated by a desire to defend WikiLeaks and its informant
Chelsea Manning
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage ...
.
In June 2011, members of the group claimed responsibility for an attack against
Sony Pictures
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment (theatrical motion pictures, television programs, and rec ...
that took data that included "names, passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses and dates of birth for thousands of people." In early June, LulzSec hacked into and stole user information from the
pornography website www.pron.com. They obtained and published around 26,000 e-mail addresses and passwords.
On June 14, 2011, LulzSec took down four websites by request of fans as part of their "Titanic Take-down Tuesday". These websites were ''
Minecraft
''Minecraft'' is a 2011 sandbox game developed and published by the Swedish video game developer Mojang Studios. Originally created by Markus Persson, Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java (programming language), Java programming language, the ...
'', ''
League of Legends
''League of Legends'' (''LoL'', commonly referred to as ''League'', is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by ''Defense of the Ancients'', a Mod (video games), custom map for ''Warcraf ...
'', ''
The Escapist'', and IT security company ''FinFisher''. They also attacked the login servers of the multiplayer online game ''
EVE Online'', which also disabled the game's front-facing website, and the ''League of Legends'' login servers. Most of the takedowns were performed with
DDoS attacks.
LulzSec also hacked a variety of government-affiliated sites, such as chapter sites of ''
InfraGard'', a non-profit organization affiliated with the FBI.
The group leaked some of InfraGard member e-mails and a database of local users. On June 13, LulzSec released the e-mails and passwords of a number of users of senate.gov, the website of the
U.S. Senate.
On June 15, LulzSec launched an attack on cia.gov, the public website of the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
, taking the website offline for several hours with a distributed denial-of-service attack. On December 2, an offshoot of LulzSec calling itself LulzSec Portugal attacked several sites related to the government of Portugal. The websites for the
Bank of Portugal, the
Assembly of the Republic, and the
Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Development all became unavailable for a few hours.
On June 26, 2011, the core LulzSec group announced it had reached the end of its "50 days of lulz" and was ceasing operations. Sabu, however, had already been secretly arrested on June 7 and then released to work as an FBI informant. His cooperation led to the arrests of Ryan Cleary, James Jeffery, and others.
[Thomson, Iain.]
LulzSec sneak Sabu buys six more months of freedom
." ''The Register
''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, s ...
''. August 23, 2012. Tflow was arrested on July 19, 2011,
Topiary was arrested on July 27,
and Kayla was arrested on March 6, 2012.
Topiary, Kayla, Tflow, and Cleary pleaded guilty in April 2013 and were scheduled to be sentenced in May 2013. In April 2013, Australian police arrested the alleged LulzSec leader Aush0k, but subsequent prosecutions failed to establish police claims.
AntiSec
Beginning in June 2011, hackers from Anonymous and LulzSec collaborated on a series of cyber attacks known as "Operation AntiSec". On June 23, in retaliation for the passage of the immigration enforcement bill
Arizona SB 1070, LulzSec released a cache of documents from the
Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona is a state in the Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the northwest and California to the west, and ...
, including the personal information and home addresses of many law enforcement officers. On June 22, LulzSec Brazil took down the websites of the
Government of Brazil and the
President of Brazil
The president of Brazil (), officially the president of the Federative Republic of Brazil () or simply the ''President of the Republic'', is the head of state and head of government of Brazil. The president leads the executive branch of the ...
. Later data dumps included the names, addresses, phone numbers, Internet passwords, and
Social Security number
In the United States, a Social Security number (SSN) is a nine-digit number issued to United States nationality law, U.S. citizens, Permanent residence (United States), permanent residents, and temporary (working) residents under section 205(c)(2 ...
s of police officers in
Arizona
Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
,
Missouri
Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
, and
Alabama
Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...
. AntiSec members also stole police officer credit card information to make donations to various causes.
On July 18, LulzSec hacked into and vandalized the website of British newspaper ''
The Sun
The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot Plasma (physics), plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as ...
'' in response to a
phone-hacking scandal.
Other targets of AntiSec actions have included FBI contractor
ManTech International, computer security firm Vanguard Defense Industries, and defense contractor
Booz Allen Hamilton
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation (informally Booz Allen) is the parent of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., an American company specializing in intelligence, AI, and digital transformation. It is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washing ...
, releasing 90,000 military e-mail accounts and their passwords from the latter.
In December 2011, AntiSec member "sup_g" (alleged by the U.S. government to be
Jeremy Hammond) and others hacked
Stratfor, a U.S.-based intelligence company, vandalizing its web page and publishing 30,000 credit card numbers from its databases. AntiSec later released millions of the company's e-mails to Wikileaks.
See also
*
Timeline of events associated with Anonymous
; Memetic persona
*
Luther Blissett (nom de plume)
Luther Blissett is a multiple-use name, an " open pop star" informally adopted and shared by hundreds of artists and activists all over Europe and the Americas since 1994. The pseudonym first appeared in Bologna, Italy, in mid-1994, when a num ...
*
Crowd psychology
Crowd psychology (or mob psychology) is a subfield of social psychology which examines how the psychology of a group of people differs from the psychology of any one person within the group. The study of crowd psychology looks into the actions ...
*
John Doe
John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used in the British, Canadian, and American legal systems, when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law ...
*
Proteus effect
; Composition
*
Emergent organization
*
Fourth-generation warfare
*
Self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order and disorder, order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spont ...
*
Spontaneous order
Spontaneous order, also named self-organization in the hard sciences, is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. The term "self-organization" is more often used for physical changes and biological processes, while "spontaneous ...
*
Adhocracy
Adhocracy is a flexible, adaptable, and informal form of organization defined by a lack of formal structure and employs specialized multidisciplinary teams grouped by function. It operates in a fashion opposite to bureaucracy. Warren Bennis coin ...
; Activism
*
Electronic civil disobedience
*
Leaderless resistance
*
Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is an unintended consequences, unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or Censorship, censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information.
The term was coined in 2005 by ...
; Other related articles
*
Anti-mask laws
*
Derp (hacker group)
*
LulzRaft
*
Securax
*
RedHack
* ''
We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists''
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
External links
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