Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are only killed once - Winston Churchill
|
|
|
Anonymous is run by only a dozen real hackers
THE GUARDIAN newspaper claims to have exposed the hierarchy of the hacktivist group that calls itself Anonymous.
It claims that while the group is described as "leaderless" and "anarchic" the group is actually hierarchical and is really run by only about a dozen skilled hackers co-ordinating attacks across the web.
Several members of Anonymous have been chatting with the Guardian, wanting to provide more information about their motives and how the group works. None of them wanted to "go on record" because they are worried about a backlash within the hacktivist underground.
You apparently only get into the group's "command and control" centres if you are invited. The reason for this is to protect people. If people know who you are, they know you can be trusted.
Apparently it is not that difficult to get into a command and control centre but the trustworthy thing keeps a lot of the press and the cops away.
Gabriella Coleman, a New York University professor who has studied Anonymous, estimated that up to 1,000 people are members of the broader network. But 99 per cent of the group have no say over the direction of the group or its strategy.
While there is no overall leader, each of the inner circle people has different roles. The degree of leadership and organisation in the various projects varies a lot.
The leaders of the group use Internet relay chat (IRC) and some of them have control over "botnets" to direct "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks against target organisations.
Anonymous released a multi-authored but unsigned three-page statement, entitled, "Free Thinking Citizens of the World". The angry tract said, "Many people think they understand Anonymous, but as an amorphous, opt-in entity, Anonymous is ... fractitious [sic] at best and anything but unanimous."
The Guardian pointed out that the letter is the work of a small group. The letter quotes Thomas Jefferson, so at least one of the leaders is likely American. µ
Share this:
Share
Fan your ego, get caught.
This paper and this writer are complete f***ing tools without a clue. LOIC downloaded 80,000 times. Iran nuclear computers screwed. Only a few leaders of Anonymous....ROFLMAO at this RAG!
I believe the kids now have a word for this- what is it again?
Oh yeah. EPIC FAIL.
My personal theory is that the decision-making structure of Anonymous is emergent as it is in ant colonies: the unexpectedly organized sum of the hectic and often opposing actions of individuals in the colony. But that's much harder to report than "no, really, they have a seekrit bunker with twelve leet hackers and a separate vault for their lifetime supply of Doritos!"
One should not confuse these "command centers" with anything like a real command hierarchy. Most people who are Anonymous don't care what these people who think they are "in command" are actually doing.
While the Guardian usually does a lot of research it appears this article differs.
1. They were misquoting Gabrielle Coleman. See her response to the article here:
http://savageminds.org/2010/12/16/anonymous-vs-the-guardian/
2. The alleged connection between Anonymous and the hacking of the Gawker site is questionable as the group that took responsibility, called "Gnosis" said they were not connected. See
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/hacker-group-gnosis-takes-credit-for-gawker-attack-plans-more-ahead/?news=123
There are a lot of muppets. We know this. There must be at least a few people with some skills to kick the whole thing off. But to suggest that there's any sort of organisation or hierarchy in anonymous seems ridiculous. I don't think the traditional media has grasped just how many kids use /b It doesn't need organisation, there's _always_ a decent cadre there...