Anonymous
About
Anonymous is an ad-hoc group of Internet users who are often associated with various hacktivist operations, including protests against Internet censorship, Scientology and government corruption.
History
Users of the anonymous image board 4chan, launched in late 2003, began using the term "Anonymous" when referring to themselves as a collective. User registration is not required on the site and users who do not identify themselves are given the label "Anonymous." In 2004, a 4chan administration manipulated the site to force every user to be displayed as "Anonymous," which perpetuated the notion that users of the site was part of an anonymous group.
An informative 1 hour and 36 minute documentary detailing the history of Anonymous was released in 2012 titled We Are Legion The Story of the Hacktivists (shown below) and has its own official website.[13] It won numerous awards through its careful conduction of numerous interviews and detailed descriptions.[12]
On January 22nd, 2014, the four part comic Hacktivist, based on Anonymous, was released.[3] The fictional fill in for Anonymous within the world of Hacktivist is a group called sve_Urs3lf. The idea for story was created by actress Alyssa Milano. Milano promoted the comics in November 2013 by tweeting with the hashtag #sve_Urs3lf, then tweeting she had been hacked.[4] She explained in an interview to news website The Daily Dot that while the group is based on Anonymous, the story's main character is based on Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The comic is written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, and illustrated by Marcus To.[5] The comic's publisher, Archaia summarizes the story:
The world knows “sve_Urs3lf” as the largest white-hat hacking group on the planet, exposing information and sparking revolutions across the globe.
What the world doesn’t know is that this is a lie.
Ed Hiccox and Nate Graft are sve_Urs3lf.
When their operation is discovered by the US Government, and their company is taken over by military contracts and the CIA, Ed and Nate must face the real world beyond the code and choose between friendship and what they believe to be right. The comic's publishers, Archaia plans to put all four comics into one book by summer 2014."
Archaia plans to compile all four parts of the comic into one book by summer 2014.
Operations
The Great Habbo Raid was an online raid in 2006 organized by Anonymous against racist mods on the now defunct social networking site Habbo Hotel. The raid spawned the Pool's Closed meme, inspired by participants who blocked off access to the game's pool.
Project Chanology is a series of protest movements launched against the Church of Scientology in January of 2008 by members of Anonymous. The project began in response to the church's attempts to have video clips removed from the Internet featuring an interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise.
Operation Lioncash is a graffiti practice initiated by the online group Anonymous in April of 2008, which involves drawing a lion face emoticon (" ") over portraits on banknotes and releasing them back into circulation. According to its mission statement, the purpose of the global operation is to convert all regional currencies into Lioncash.
Operation YouTube (also known as "YouTube Porn Day") was a series of adult video spamming raids launched by Anonymous which took place on YouTube in early June 2009.
Operation Teaspoon was a campaign started in July of 2010 against the Oregon Tea Party for using the Anonymous slogan "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." Prior to its usage in bumper stickers, the slogan had been seen on protest signs and as the official description on the Tea Party Patriots website. Anonymous members retaliated by spamming the Oregon Tea Party Facebook with memetic catchphrases like "desu" and "derp".
Operation Payback was a series of DDoS attacks organized by Anonymous that started on September 17th, 2010 against major entertainment industry websites such as the websites for the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.
After the Sony Corporation pursued legal action against the hackers George Hotz and Egorenkov, a contingent within Anonymous networks began attacking Sony-branded websites in a campaign named Operation Sony in April of 2011.
Operation Antisec (a.k.a Operation Anti-Security, #antisec) was an international hacktivist campaign launched by a coalition of Anonymous hackers including former members of Lulzsec. The operation officially began with the attacks against the United Kingdom's Serious Organized Crime Agency in June of 2011.
In July of 2011, the "Your Anon News" page was banned from Google's new social networking service Google Plus on the grounds that "some of the posted content violates the company's Community Standards."
Following the ban, Anonymous announced via one of its Tumblr sites that the group will build its own social network called "AnonPlus," a presumably anonymous social networking service with "no fear of censorship, of blackout, nor of holding back." Currently, AnonPlus.com displays the following message:
In July of 2011, a video titled "Message from Anonymous: Operation Facebook, Nov 5 2011" was uploaded to YouTube which claimed that the social networking site Facebook would be destroyed by Anonymous on November 5th, 2011 (shown below). Business Insider[1] reported on it and the article was then posted to the r/technology subreddit.[2]
Operation BART (#OpBART) is an Anonymous hacktivist campaign that was launched against San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) websites following its disruption of cellphone services in select subway stations in August of 2011. According to the group’s press release, the BART authorities disabled cellphone signals on its stations on August 11th, 2011 after receiving reports about a planned protest over fatal shootings of passengers by transit security officers.
Operation Darknet was the codename for a series of DDoS attacks starting in October of 2011, which were carried out by Anonymous against Lolita City, a child pornography sharing website that is accessible in anonymity via The Tor Project’s encrypted service.
Operation Invade Wall Street was a contentious hacktivist campaign launched in October of 2011 by a faction within Anonymous with the objective of bringing down the New York Stock Exchange website through distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests. From the beginning, the ambitious plan was met with skepticism regarding its authenticity and effectiveness and the proposed cyber attack never materialized.
Operation Megaupload is a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaign launched by online hacktivist group Anonymous in retaliation against the U.S. Justice Department’s seizure and closure of file-hosting service Megaupload in January 2012. On the day of launch, 10 high-profile government and music industry websites were reportedly brought down, which was described as “one of the largest scale cyber attacks ever carried out” by an Anonymous-affiliated channel @Anonops.
The Operation Save the Arctic campaign launched in June of 2012 by leaking internal data allegedly obtained from the Exxon Mobil Corporation by members of Anonymous in support of the Greenpeace Save the Arctic campaign.
Operation Kinder is a prank orchestrated by Anonymous members in November of 2012, who encouraged other posters to vote for a child model nicknamed “Victor” in an online contest which would choose an image of a child to be displayed on the boxes of Kinder chocolate bars in Kazakhstan.
Operation Israel, also known as #OpIsrael, is an Anonymous hacktivist campaign started in November of 2012 seeking to protest the Israeli Defense Forces’ Operation Pillar of Defense by taking down Israeli government websites through distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Operation Last Resort was a campaign launched in retaliation of the United States Justice Department's persecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz prior to his suicide. During the course of the operation, the United States Sentencing Commission was defaced and Anonymous threatened to release "warhead" files containing sensitive information about individuals in the Justice Department.
In December of 2012, an offshoot group of Anonymous known as KnightSec became involved in the Steubenville rape case by hacking into the football team’s website and replacing the page with a video message warning that the group would release personal information for every student and staff member involved in the case unless an apology was issued to the victim. Operation RollRedRoll was launched on December 23rd, named after the Steubenville High School football fan site RollRedRoll.com.
Impact
In November 2009, New Jersey resident Dmitriy Guzner was sentenced to 366 days in a federal prison for his participation in an Anonymous DDoS attack against the Church of Scientology.[8] On July 13th, 2011, 32 people were arrested in Turkey for participating in Anonymous-led DDoS attacks against Turkish government websites in protest of new Internet filters.[9] On July 19th, 14 suspected Anonymous hackers were arrested in connection with the cyber attacks against Paypal as part of Operation Payback.[6] On September 22nd, self-described member of Anonymous Chris Doyon (a.k.a. Commander X) was arrested as a suspect for cyberattacks against the Santa Cruz County website.[10] In September 2012, writer Barrett Brown, often treated as a spokesperson for Anonymous, was arrested for threatening a police officer.
In July 2013, Anonymous member Sue Crabtree launched the Dancing For Anons fundraising campaign for FreeAnons.org, a Florida-based company that aims to help members of Anonymous who have been criminally prosecuted.
On February 4th, 2014, NBC News[7] reported that it had received documents[11] from former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, revealing that a division of the British agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had disrupted communications among Anonymous hacktivists with large-scale DDoS attacks. The operation referred to as "Rolling Thunder" was launched by the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) unit targeted Anonymous members in IRC chat rooms.
Fandom
Related Memes
Rules of the Internet is a list of protocols and conventions, originally written to serve as a guide for those who identified themselves with the Internet group Anonymous. The list serves as a summation of popular catchphrases and axioms commonly associated with 4chan. Since there are numerous drafts and editions in circulation, the rules fluctuate in number and the validity of each rule remains debatable. Despite this, several of the rules including Rule 34 and Rule 63 are agreed upon across internet communities.
The Fifth of November refers to an English folk verse used in recognition of Guy Fawkes Day, an annual commemoration of the arrest of Guy Fawkes, a British-born rebel who was caught guarding a stockpile of explosives during a failed attempt at blowing up the House of Lords and assassinate King James I of England and IV of Scotland in 1605. The masks saw a modern-day resurgence with the 1982 comic series V for Vendetta and its film adaptation in 2006, after which it was co-opted as a symbol of the hacktivist group Anonymous beginning with the Project Chanology protests in 2008. Since then, November 5th has been regularly observed by the members of Anonymous through various hacking operations and protests against powerful institutions and corporations.
The Internet Hate Machine is a term initially used by a Los Angeles news station to describe Anonymous, which has since been co-opted as an inside joke by members of the group. The label can be seen as a testament to the perception gap between outsiders who may feel that Anonymous actions are carried out of sadistic pleasure and insiders of the group who insist they're done for the lulz, or one’s comedic enjoyment.
Green/True/Old Anonymous/Anon refers to a personification of anonymous users on 4chan as a faceless green man in a suit. Prior to V for Vendetta’s movie that was released 17 March 2006, Anonymous’ mascot was faceless. It was a green faced male, no eyes or mouth and sometimes a nose, Wearing a black suit with a red tie he would have “No Picture Available” printed on his face.
The Party Van is a nickname for the vehicle used by FBI agents and is often referenced to indicate that an Internet user is in danger of being arrested.
External References
[1] Business Insider – Hacker Group Anonymous Vows To Destroy Facebook On November 5
[2] Reddit – Hacker Group Anonymous Vows To Destroy Facebook On November 5
[3] The Daily Dot – Why Alyssa Milano created a comic book tribute to Anonymous
[4] Comic Vine – Archaia Entertainment Presents: Alyssa Milano’s ‘Hacktivist’
[5] Archaia (via Wayback Machine) – Hacktivist
[6] Wired – Feds Arrest 14 Anonymous Suspects
[7] NBC News – War on Anonymous
[8] NJ – Verona man admits role in attack on Church of Scientology
[9] PC Mag- Turkey Arrests 32 AnonymousTurkey Arrests 32 Anonymous
[10] Cnet – Alleged Commander X
[11] MSNBC (via Wayback Machine) – Snowden Documents
[12] We Are Legion The Documentary – ABOUT THE FILM
[13] We Are Legion The Documentary – We Are Legion | The Story of the Hacktivists Official Website