hacktivism Archives - Serious Startups

Anonymous Steals UK Police Email Addresses, Then Asks Them To Join In

We’ve covered Anonymous here at nibletz quite a bit. Anonymous is the loose knit organization of hacktivists around the world credited with some of the biggest hacks in the world including Sony, Universal, Visa, Mastercard and many more. Anonymous is no stranger to hacking government officials and even law enforcement.

Last year in one of their more infamous attacks, Anonymous stole email, passwords and information from a company in Atlanta that subcontracts for the FBI.

Now, the Associated Press is reporting that Anonymous has stolen email addresses from a forum called UKPoliceOnline. They then used those email addresses to distribute a “manifesto” to current and former members of British Law Enforcement.

“We know that most of you are working-class people, like the majority of us, and that you too have mortgages, student loans, or your children do, and other debts as well. Don’t defend the traitors against us, your fellow citizens,” the message read in part. “We offer you our hands in friendship. Join us.”

The Managing Director of the NSI Group (which runs UKPoliceOnline), Geoff Hyams, said the emailed manifesto said the email was thoughtful adding: “It was almost like a recruitment-type email,”

Linkage:

Anonymous coverage from nibletz.com

Source: Washington Post

Anonymous Is Building A New Social Music Platform

The RIAA and the hacktivist group Anonymous has been at odds for a while. Anonymous and coherts LulzSec went after most of the major record labels in 2011 getting usernames, email addresses and more and doing data dumps all over the place.

The new service called Anontune is still in the early stages of development. The system is designed to pull songs from third party sites like Youtube and then users can put them into their own playlists and share them. They plan to do all of this and all the while keep the service from getting shut down by the music industry, reports wired.

“We would say stuff like, ‘People really use YouTube as a music player yet it really sucks for that purpose … it’s too unorganized,’” the anon wrote to Wired. “And then, ‘YouTube does make a good music player but you can’t play all your songs on it since the obscure ones aren’t uploaded,’ then eventually, ‘Hmmm, what if you were to combine music websites like Myspace, Yahoo, YouTube and others?’”

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Not Anonymous This Time: 15 Year Old Austrian Boy Arrested For Hacking 259 Businesses

Austrian officials admit they are still investigating and totaling up the damage however as it stands 15-year-old who goes by the hacker handle ACK!3STX has been arrested, and so far charged with hacking over 259 businesses.

The damage includes stealing data from businesses and publicly posting it, defacing company websites, and of course breaking security infrastructures. There was no specific target. The young hacker hacked everything sports sites, travel sites, tourism sites, adult sites and more, reports ZDNet.

The Austria Federal Criminal Police Office reported that as soon as the boy was questioned he admitted to the attacks. All of the hacking happened between January of 2012 and March of 2012. He said he was bored and wanted to prove himself, and proving himself is exactly what he did. He found a hacker forum that gave points for successful hacks, after three months he was in the top 50 out of 2,000 hackers registered on the forum.

At some point the young man either forgot to use anonymizing software or his anonymizing software failed him and his IP address was traced back to his residence in Lower Austria. From there authorities were able to get a search warrant and track him down.

The investigation is on going and its also been reported that Europol is trying to determine the number of attacks in both Austria and abroad. The hacker’s real name was withheld because of his age.

source: ZD Net
image courtesy of ZDNet via Sebastian Gruber

Member Of Anonymous, Arrested Thanks To A Picture Of His Girlfriend

FBI officials, thanks to a photo uploaded by Higinio O. Ochoa or as he likes to be called “Anonw0rmer”,part of the “CabinCr3w”, was arrested thanks to the Data on a photo he uploaded. A 30 year old Linux administrator Ochoa was part of “Operation Pig Roast” which accessed sites belonging to law enforcement groups and releasing personal information via Paste Bin like so many other Anonymous hacks in the past.

The photo in question that lead to the arrest as well as other small information left by Ochoa is what lead authorities to his apartment. After the photo started who did the hack,

Anonymous To China, This Is Just A Start Of Things To Come

We reported how on 30 March, Anonymous took down some Chinese government websites in reactions to human conditions in which Anon believe China is depriving its citizens of. One of those who “control” the @AnonymousChina tells Reuters

First we want to alert the Chinese government that we aren’t afraid, and we are going to show the truth and fight for justice

This isn’t the first time that Anonymous has gone after a government in which they believe have done wrong. This past weekend, another wing of Anonymous went after the British governments websites for actions it also did.

Yes, we are planning more attacks, a few at a time, the plan was to take down the “Great Firewall of China

[Breaking News] Anonymous Drops UK Home Office From Existence With DOS Attack

As we reported on Thursday, Anonymous was planning to go after the UK Home Office’s website due to actions in which they’ve helped the West prosecute British civilians. As of now, people just can’t connect to the site, no letter or anything has been left yet.

#OpTrialAtHome is Anonymous newest cause. Unlike last Saturdays “attempt” to take down the Net which makes no sense as why would they crash their playground. This one is being reported by all the Anonymous Twitter feeds and people close to it. In a group showing against UK extraditing people to the USA to face crimes, Anonymous is telling its supports to take out the countries home website.

Source: @Anon_Central

#OpTrialAtHome From Anonymous To Hit This Saturday

#OpTrialAtHome is Anonymous newest cause. Unlike last Saturdays “attempt” to take down the Net which makes no sense as why would they crash their playground. This one is being reported by all the Anonymous Twitter feeds and people close to it. In a group showing against UK extraditing people to the USA to face crimes, Anonymous is telling its supports to take out the countries home website.

Breaking: Anonymous Hacks Chinese Site

Anonymous, has in the past shown great “humanitarian” beliefs by going after government sites in which those countries take away the freedom from their people. That is just what Anonymous did yet again by Hacking multiple Chinese related sites. But instead of defacing them, left messages explaining how people in China can have a free internet, without the censorship of it’s dictating Government.

A new Twitter account has been opened just for Anonymous attacks against China, which we have a feeling will start to become very active in response to preventing it’s people from having a free world.

MasterCard And Visa Hack, Work Of Anonymous Again?

Both Visa and MasterCard are reporting that over 10 million customers of both Credit Card companies have had their information hacked into.

As a result, we have alerted payment card issuers regarding certain MasterCard accounts that are potentially at risk

Krebs has been quoted on their Security blog. What they’ve failed to mention though is if this is payback from Anonymous as they have gone after both companies before. Or if this is another group of hackers. Alerts where sent out last week to banks as the Hack happened between Jan. 21 and Feb. 25.

Credit Cards them selves where not the target, however the processing of them was.

We’ve seen in the past that after both companies stopped letting donations to Wikileaks, that Anonymous hacked into both companies. Could this be their doing again is the question.

Both Visa and MasterCard have refused comment on this so far as the investigation is still on going. As well as the fact it’s yet another black eye on both companies as they continue to feel heat from Hackers who continue to go after both companies.

Hacktivism, All Explained In An Infographic

Anarchist, Hackers, Criminals, Freedom Fighters, which ever you want to call them. Hacktivist has become part of the vocabulary over the past two years with groups like Anonymous, LulzSec and others. Below is a graphic explaining where it started recently, the cause and effect of such actions which we’ve seen.

Verizon Report Confirms: Hacktivist Stole 100 Million Records

If that number astonishes you it should. In a study published this week by Verizon, it’s been reported that hacktivists like Anonymous and Lulzsec were responsible for compromising 100 million records.

Now to put the power of the hacktivist groups in perspective; out of an estimated 855 data breach incidents last year, only 25 of them were attributed to hacktivist groups. While they were only responsible for 2% of the data breaches they were by far the most detrimental. Their 2% of data breaches resulted in 58% of the 174 million total records stolen in 2011.

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