Anonymous Strikes Back, Hacks "Internet Security" Firm

[CrystalShadow]

wow anonymous really needs to be taken out there too dangerous and too good at what they do

They aren't too good at what they do if they were too good they wouldn't of had to trick someone into giving them the password they would have been able to get it only through their programs.

Don't be silly. 'Social engineering' is a pretty impressive hacking skill given that it can get around any software security, no matter how good.

Security is only as good as it's weakest link. And the weakest link, 9 times out of 10, is the people working at a company.

Why go through the time, effort and difficulty of finding and exploiting a security flaw, when you can convince someone working at your target to hand you the keys?

Or, to give a different example, why try and cut your way through a safe with a blowtorch, if you know how to get someone to give you the key to open it?

 

[KidTheFat]

The FBI is THRILLED about this I mean in times when layoffs are happening they can hire even more agents to track down the "dangerous members of anonymous" I mean they could say that the only way to stop them is to catch all of them, that could take years meanwhile the deficit gets bigger a bin laden's corpse has not been found yet.

I like how you think hunting down these hackers is a waste of time, while also saying we should expend resources searching for a corpse.

it is a waste of time and if we find the corpse then we can say hes dead and stop looking for him you see its kind of a paradox because everyone knows hes dead but we cant actully prove it.

any response to the meat of my post or are you just nit picking

dude, if Bin Laden was actually dead, his body would have been prepared and carried through the streets of Baghdad, being hailed as a martyr. We don't need to find a corpse, we need to find a man. Also, I say the FBI should just give up on both counts.

 

[Fappy]

I wish I had seen the look on the FBI investigator in charge of this investigation's face when he walked into the office this morning.

 

[Slinker07]

I sort of see this as a huge troll wars. I have both respects for both sides, but it is a bit like that.

On a side note -- a challenge for "Anonymous."

'Hey guys? How about putting all your amazing haxoring ability into cracking some terrorists sites? Or China's?

I'm sure the FBI would be your best buds then.

Most "terrorists" sites is pretty open for anyone. They want to bomb stuff and make jihad. Also attacks on other countries that goes against freedom of speech on the internet has occured.

 

[mythgraven]

Unless The Escapist is being admin'd by moonlighting members of this testament to Planned Parenthood, may I humbly request that you stop posting stories about these children? It seems like we are seeing weekly updates on what 4year old Chan is up to, and all it seems to be doing is legitimizing their actions. Anonymous is neither news, nor interesting, nor relevant to the internet. Unless we make them.

Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

Judging by the amount of responses to this thread, and how much people are enjoying it and reading it, I'd say it's both News AND Interesting. If you don't like it, stop reading it.

Constructive post. Ive honestly never seen the "If you dont like X, Don't Y" before. I see where it addresses the fact that posting articles about fools and morons makes it seem like being a fool and a moron are a good thing, worthy of being lauded and/or followed.

Its good that you didnt choose to attack what I typed, and kept your focus on what my over-arching point was. Sometimes it seems as though people lose track of whats really important so that they can focus on things like their ego, or e-go as it would be.

Keep up the good work!
Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

 

[sunpop]

Step one to tracking down and fighting a group of people who are great hackers is to not use any technology past pen and paper to keep records on them. Oh well this should be funny as always go get em anon!

 

[Phyroxis]

Does anyone else feel a movie adaptation coming up?

In all honesty, I think the FBI should just hire Anonymous.

You can't hire an idea. Anon aren't all hackers. Anon is a collection of like-minded people tied solely around an ideology. Even then its loosely based. Some are hackers, many are not.

I know that. Doesn't mean they couldn't come to an agreement with the part of Anonymous that is hacker.

Isn't the whole point of this news story the fact that they can't find Anon? Or the Anon who are hacking? =P

Besides, this isn't an example of hacking, honestly. Aside from the entry, its mostly just social engineering.

Well let's see, they broke into their website, replaced it with their own, and infiltrated and published all of the private emails of the company.

What part of this is "not hacking"?

Most of it. Hacking was getting and spoofing the initial e-mail. The rest was social engineering and childs play. Any middle-schooler can make a web page or a torrent.

I'm not saying they didn't do a lot, I'm saying that calling it hacking is downplaying the other skills at work here.

 

[Danpascooch]

The FBI is THRILLED about this I mean in times when layoffs are happening they can hire even more agents to track down the "dangerous members of anonymous" I mean they could say that the only way to stop them is to catch all of them, that could take years meanwhile the deficit gets bigger a bin laden's corpse has not been found yet.

I like how you think hunting down these hackers is a waste of time, while also saying we should expend resources searching for a corpse.

it is a waste of time and if we find the corpse then we can say hes dead and stop looking for him you see its kind of a paradox because everyone knows hes dead but we cant actully prove it.

any response to the meat of my post or are you just nit picking

It wasn't exactly a page long post, and I was addressing the points you made not the grammar, choice of words, or any other meaningless crap.

You sure you know what nitpicking means?

 

[KidTheFat]

Unless The Escapist is being admin'd by moonlighting members of this testament to Planned Parenthood, may I humbly request that you stop posting stories about these children? It seems like we are seeing weekly updates on what 4year old Chan is up to, and all it seems to be doing is legitimizing their actions. Anonymous is neither news, nor interesting, nor relevant to the internet. Unless we make them.

Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

Judging by the amount of responses to this thread, and how much people are enjoying it and reading it, I'd say it's both News AND Interesting. If you don't like it, stop reading it.

Constructive post. Ive honestly never seen the "If you dont like X, Don't Y" before. I see where it addresses the fact that posting articles about fools and morons makes it seem like being a fool and a moron are a good thing, worthy of being lauded and/or followed.

Its good that you didnt choose to attack what I typed, and kept your focus on what my over-arching point was. Sometimes it seems as though people lose track of whats really important so that they can focus on things like their ego, or e-go as it would be.

Keep up the good work!
Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

They are, indeed, morons and fools, but the article is not an attempt to make them appear as heroes. The article is written in such a way as to keep readers interested, and it is about something that many people find interesting because they want readers to come back to this site often. Most websites make money from advertisements and the more readers come back, the more those advertising spaces are worth. So once again, if Anonymous is not interesting to you, stop reading the article, because you are only generating more views and making it worth more money.

 

[KeyMaster45]

So why can't you sell this information to the FBI like you intended? Because we're going to give it to them for free.

This made me chuckle, a DDoS attack is just annoying and at best inconveniences a company's IT department for a few hours. This on the other hand, this is a giant middle finger to the entire company and in my book is some pretty epic trolling.

In my opinion, fire that system admin that just up and sent the passwords to them based on a convincing looking e-mail. That's their weak security link right there. Of course that's always the weak link when a big company gets hacked, human stupidity.

 

[Slinker07]

dude, if Bin Laden was actually dead, his body would have been prepared and carried through the streets of Baghdad, being hailed as a martyr.

Duuue, y'know Baghdad is in Irak.... Makes little sense why they would great him has a martyr. Maybe some people in alfganistan. But then again, I doubt the generall population is very pleased how his actions ended up for them.

 

[Reed Spacer]

I mean they could say that the only way to stop them is to catch all of them

Geez, I hope they have enough Pokeballs...

 

[KidTheFat]

Duuue, y'know Baghdad is in Irak.... Makes little sense why they would great him has a martyr. Maybe some people in alfganistan. But then again, I doubt the generall population is very pleased how his actions ended up for them.

Crap. I didn't come prepared for a geography test and I look stupid for it. Well played.

 

[Xan Krieger]

I wish I had seen the look on the FBI investigator in charge of this investigation's face when he walked into the office this morning.

This, a thousand times this.
some guy at the office: "Sir, it seems Anon hacked us and kinda sorta....well.....I really shouldn't say."
The boss: "What!?! spit it out you fool!"
same guy at the office: "They hacked your twitter account and posted your social security number"
The boss: "fffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" *rageface*

keep up the good work Anon.

 

[RaffB]

The Beautiful thing about Anonymous?

You could arrest every single person who has ever used that title, and there would be thousands more willing to carry on...

 

[Wow they sure are generous with the usernames]

Unless The Escapist is being admin'd by moonlighting members of this testament to Planned Parenthood, may I humbly request that you stop posting stories about these children? It seems like we are seeing weekly updates on what 4year old Chan is up to, and all it seems to be doing is legitimizing their actions. Anonymous is neither news, nor interesting, nor relevant to the internet. Unless we make them.

Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

Judging by the amount of responses to this thread, and how much people are enjoying it and reading it, I'd say it's both News AND Interesting. If you don't like it, stop reading it.

Constructive post. Ive honestly never seen the "If you dont like X, Don't Y" before. I see where it addresses the fact that posting articles about fools and morons makes it seem like being a fool and a moron are a good thing, worthy of being lauded and/or followed.

Its good that you didnt choose to attack what I typed, and kept your focus on what my over-arching point was. Sometimes it seems as though people lose track of whats really important so that they can focus on things like their ego, or e-go as it would be.

Keep up the good work!
Whiskey Echo!!
Mythgraven

Whether or not the actions of Anonymous is "news" is pretty subjective, especially considering that the escapist focuses on stories pertaining to video games, computers, the internet, and other geeky things. Considering their previous actions against mastercard and visa were reported on by major news sources like the Wall Street Journal, I think it's safe to say that they can be considered news worth in certain scenarios. News coverage does not equal legitimization.

As for them being relevant to the internet, it's pretty hard to not notice how terms and phrases from 4chan have become extremely common even among people who don't spend any time on the internet. Owned? Pwned? Epic Fail? Those goddamn I can haz cheezburger cats? Whether or not they've done anything culturally relevant recently is up for debate, but they're hardly an obscure website.

Also, don't sign your posts, we can see your username right there, it's just obnoxious.

 

[KidTheFat]

I wish I had seen the look on the FBI investigator in charge of this investigation's face when he walked into the office this morning.

This, a thousand times this.
some guy at the office: "Sir, it seems Anon hacked us and kinda sorta....well.....I really shouldn't say."
The boss: "What!?! spit it out you fool!"
same guy at the office: "They hacked your twitter account and posted your social security number"
The boss: "fffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" *rageface*

keep up the good work Anon.

they didn't hack the FBI, they hacked a computer security firm that was working with the FBI. the FBI investigator in charge of this' face would have been more like
"Anon hacked HBGary? Ok fire them and find a new one. AND they put the data we were going to pay millions for on the internet for free? Start that download. *smiling coffee sip* It's a good day."

 

[The Hairminator]

Duuue, y'know Baghdad is in Irak.... Makes little sense why they would great him has a martyr. Maybe some people in alfganistan. But then again, I doubt the generall population is very pleased how his actions ended up for them.

Crap. I didn't come prepared for a geography test and I look stupid for it. Well played.

He spelled both Iraq and Afghanistan wrong, I wouldn't feel too bad about it.

Also; I'd say Anonymous actually did the FBI, thus the US Government, thus American Taxpayers a favor by providing the information for free, no? I only see patriotic citizens (and perhaps foreigners) aiding their country here.

 

[dududf]

Dont this people have anything better to do? If they used all that time and energy on legal things they could make lots of money.

wow anonymous really needs to be taken out there too dangerous and too good at what they do

Agreed. 'Anonymous' are really just criminals who use ID theft to fund their crimes. Calling themselves 'heroes' is insulting to anybody who works for a living.

What crimes, pray tell? Protesting against Scientology? Defending Wikileaks? Revealing a sham of a security company that is taking peoples private information and selling it to the FBI? What?

If revealing what the company was doing was all they did it wouldn't be bad but stealing the guys Identity. Defending Wikileaks is one thing but taking down sites like Pay Pal is illegal.

As if Pay Pal is any better then anonymous. Go tell that To India or various other people they rob and steal from. Like for instance, Notch the creator of Minecraft. How much did they steal from him you ask? 600 thousand euros.

Fuck paypal if their site got shut down and lost millions in dollars because of it, it still wouldn't be near from what they've out right stolen from their users. I personally lost 300 bucks to paypal, my account has been "under observation" for the last 4 years.

 

[Canid117]

wow anonymous really needs to be taken out there too dangerous and too good at what they do

You do realize there are anon members who frequent this site right?




And they will hunt you down... and! send you pizza! because they do that! That and cat porn!