“We are anonymous. We are Legion. We do

not forget. We do not forgive. We do not

forget. Expect us.”

-Anonymous

Anonymous

By Thomas Griffith

Who is Anonymous?

• Anonymous is a loosely associated hacking organization. It was formed on “4chan” to represent the idea of many online and offline community users existing as an anarchic digitalized global brain.

• Anonymous strongly opposes internet censorship and surveillance, and have shutdown multiple government websites.

• Their members can be recognized by their “Guy Fawkes” mask in public.

How do you join Anonymous?

• It is impossible to join Anonymous as they have no ranks, leaders and no means of communication.

• You are “Anonymous” if you simply choose to be.

Commander X

• A person simply known as Commander X provides interviews and Video’s for Anonymous.

• He is thought to be a San Francisco gardener, and the leader of Anonymous. Command X said in his own words that he is a “peon” in Anonymous.

Distributed-Denial-Of-Service Attack

• Distributed-Denial-Of-Service attack or more commonly known as a DDOS is an attempt to make a machine or network unavailable to its users.

• This is usually done by saturating the target with external communications requests.

Low Orbit Ion Cannon

• Low Orbit Ion Cannon is a network stress test application that Anonymous uses to launch its DDOS attacks.

• Users download it and willing allow their computer to be part of a bot net, which is then launched at a target decided by AnonOPs.

Example of a government site hacked by Anonymous.

Anonymous members wearing “Guy Fawkes” masks.

Some “Achievements” of 2006-2007

• In 2008 Anonymous specialized in doing “Habbo Raids”, they would go on “HabboHotel and form swastika like formations.

• Later that year Anonymous tracked child predator Chris Forcand even before the police started investigations. Anonymous was responsible for Chris Forcands arrest some sources say.

2008

• Project Chanology was Anonymous’ mission to take out the Church Of Scientology. Anonymous sees Scientology as a lie and wishes to end their religion one way or another. They have released many videos about scientology from 2009 to the present day.

2009

Anonymous TargettedCalifornia Teen McKay Hutch who ran the “No Cussing Club”.

They leaked his home address, phone number and other personal information on the internet.

2010

• In 2010 Anonymous launched Denial-Of-Service attacks on VISA, MasterCard and Paypal companies for removing their services from wiki-leaks.

2011

• Aaron Barr the chief executive of Hbgarysecurity firm announced that he had infiltrated Anonymous. In response Anonymous hacked his website, dumped 68 000 emails, erased files, and took down the phone system.

2012

• In April 2012, Anonymous launched a attack on 485 Chinese Government websites, some more than once to protest the lack of democracy in the country.