HBGary quails in the face of Anonymous

SHADOWY SECURITY OUTFIT HBGary Federal, the firm that claimed to have been close to identifying members of Anonymous, attracted rather closer attention from the hacktivist group than it would have liked, and, as a result, bailed out on one of its public appearances.

The dodgy security firm was booked into the RSA Expo to flog its security services. Unfortunately, Anonymous had already proven that it doesn't know much about information security, and it visibly taunted the firm at its booth in the RSA Expo exhibition hall, so the company chose to pack up and leave early with its tail between its legs.

The HBGary and Anonymous story started seemingly innocently when Aaron Barr, the head of security services firm HBGary Federal, told The Financial Times that he had identified two key members of Anonymous in the US, including an alleged co-founder, as well as other alleged senior members in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Australia.

This drew a less than quivering response from the always aggressive Anonymous, which hit back with a post on the Anonnews website entitled, "Anonymous admits defeat".

It said, "Mr Barr has successfully broken through our over 9,000 proxy field and into our entirely on-public and secret insurgent IRC lair, where he then smashed through our fire labyrinth with vigour, collected all the gold rings on the way, opened a 50 silver key chest to find Anon's legendary hackers on steroids password." It continued sarcastically, "At this point, it is safe to assume that the underground server sites at the North Pole have been compromised as well."

As its satire machine was in motion so were the Anonymous security experts, and presented with this red flag they went after HBGary Federal's systems like ticked-off wolverines.

Anonymous made light work of some poor coding in the firm's CMS and took the logins and passwords of some of the firm's employees, including those belonging to Barr.

Anonymous used this information to place a new image on the firm's website and upload Barr's entire email archive to The Pirate Bay along with instructions on how to view it. Those that viewed it found plans for a smear campaign designed to erode confidence in the Wikileaks organisation and intimidate the Salon civil liberties journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Then, perhaps because Barr used the same logins and passwords on other accounts, Anonymous began posting messages on Barr's Twitter account and took over his LinkedIn presence. None of which made that so-called security professional look very professional at computer security.

However, these events were not the reason for the conference-interruptus which appeared to occur right at the last minute. According to the firm threats from the group saw it off, although the fact that it had managed to sack the firm's stand at RSA Expo, "Just for the Lulz" as it said, might have had something to do with it, too.

Greg Hoglund, the founder of HBGary had been due to present at a panel discussion on cyberwar, but perhaps sensing that he had had enough of cyberwar for one conference, he pulled out and the firm posted a message to that effect at the conference and on the firm's website.

It said, "A group of aggressive hackers known as 'Anonymous' illegally broke into computer systems and stole proprietary and confidential information from HBGary... In addition to the data theft, HBGary individuals have received numerous threats of violence including threats at our tradeshow booth."

"In an effort to protect our employees, customers and the RSA Conference community, HBGary has decided to remove our booth and cancel all talks."

Bold to the end. µ