Anonymous, the best defense in the online cyberwar

Anonymous: The Evolving Cyberwar Defense Net

The United States Government is holding a winning lotto ticket in the online cyberwar happening constantly. They are stuck in the middle of a win-win situation as thousands of unpaid “employees”, appropriately titled Ghost Hackers, are stationed around the world. These Ghost Hackers anonymously feed information to the different federal agencies creating mutual bond between the intelligence community and the fed’s…wait what?

The Guy Fawkes Mask, a global symbol for Anonymous

This is what has the older “Anons” (Anon=Anonymous member) pissed off. Anonymous of course wants to fight terrorism along with corporate fraud, but they don’t necessarily want to be rewarded or recognized. They’re valiant knights of the night, or the internet, but rarely are chasing recognition quite the opposite actually, anonymity.

The leaders of anonymous call the division between their ranks so bad that it is an all out civil war. The newbie Anons are stacked up against the wise older Anons who have been there since the beginning.

Anonymous began as a small community of highly-skilled, and some not so skilled, hackers trolling across the pre-mature web causing mayhem. They would cause pointless mayhem as well through creatively frustrating ways. A claim to fame is their shutting down of the pool in the online game Habbo, of course by creating a swastika barrier using cloned characters with afros. The original Anonymous was bored as hell and ruthless.

I guarantee you thought I was lying, sorry if this offends anyone

The older Anons claim fight is the eternal battle for our freedom of speech, expression, and access to information. These constitutional values always seem to get lost or mixed up with the wrong crowd. It takes a hack like the Ashley Madison leak to show everyone who is still really in power, the people.

So at this point, Avid Life Media knew they were absolutely and royally screwed.

Ashley Madison’s 37 million customers were also screwed. Their names were instantly thrown into database search-engines that were quickly created once the leak hit. This is a great example of a Ghost Hacker squad, this team is titled the “Impact Team”, following the traditional ways of the older Anons. They were savage, as seen in this excerpt from the original manifesto that was published by the “Impact Team”

“We have hacked them completely, taking over their entire office and production domains and thousands of systems, and over the past few years have taken all customer information databases, complete source code repositories, financial records, documentation, and emails, as we prove here,” they wrote. “And it was easy. For a company whose main promise is secrecy, it’s like you didn’t even try, like you thought you had never pissed anyone off.”

70,000 “FemBots” were found to be doing the vast majority of conversing on the site. This little spark of information is all that was needed for this hack to occur, at least that is my opinion. The intention or reason behind the hack is still a mystery other than what one can conclude themselves through the facts.

As I slothfully watch this Vice “Cyberwar” episode, one of the leaders of the older Anons was speaking on how he doesn’t agree with how Anonymous “members” are only fighting ISIS online. While he agrees there is merit in stopping ISIS, he doesn’t agree that this is the spirit or intention of the true Anonymous. Freedom of speech and expression.

“ISIS is fun, a great time!”

I found it ironically hilarious that when this Anon leader was speaking on the ISIS topic, he gave them some great PR/Social Media advice; release the information on the war freely rather than it be released by law enforcement, “Then the world can know what they are up to on the internet.” Which in theory makes sense as it would cater more content to the “fanboys” of ISIS who scroll and post on social media, but don’t pull a trigger. The ISIS member in the photo above looks as though he just arrived at Disney World and can’t wait to ride the tanks.

I do agree with this dude in his stating that the censorship campaigns are not going to work, like at all. Censorship only creates demand, at least that is what history shows. Here are some Top 10 “Censorship Doesn’t Work” articles:

Ok, that last one was just for fun but you get the point. Censorship just doesn’t work especially on such a humongous scale as the internet, and the seemingly everlasting development occurring within the social media world.

The online social world is now a well oiled machine and ISIS is taking advantage of it’s bounty. Sadly, the fight is a somewhat hopeless battle, but with thousands of Ghost Hackers, the Federal Government, and even the older Anons are joining these forces and finding ways to bring full attention to any threats…Just knowing that helps me sleep better at night, kind of.

Cheers,

J. Robert Fallon III