The Hezbullah Cyber Army: War In HYPERSPACE!

WAR! in HYPERSPACE: The Cyber Jihad!

A day or so ago, a story came out and made the rounds on the INFOSEC-O-Sphere about the Hezbullah Cyber Army The story, which was cub titled “Iranian Terror” was titled  ”Iranian Cyber-Jihadi Cells in America plot Destruction on the Net and in Reality” Which, would get all our collective attentions right? The story goes on to tell about the newly formed Cyber Army that will be waging all out war on the US and others in “Hyperspace”

Yes, that’s right, you read that correctly.. This guy Abbasi is either trying to be clever, or, this is some bad translation. Sooo… Hyperspace it is! Well, I have a new tag line for him…

“In hyperspace.. No one can hear you giggle”

At any rate, the whole idea of a Cyber Jihad or a Cyber Hizbullah is a notion that should not just be sloughed off as rhetoric. I do think that if the VEVAK are involved (and they would want a hand in this I am sure) they could in fact get some real talent and reign in the ranks to do some real damage down the road a piece I think. So, while I may be a little tongue in cheek here at the start of this post, I want you all to consider our current threatscape (*cough* SCADA etc) and consider the amount of nuisance they could be if they made a concerted effort with the likes of the HCARMY.

So, yeah, this could be an interesting development and it is surely one to keep our eyes on collectively… But.. Don’t exactly fear for your lives here ok? After all, my opinion still applies that the bugaboo of scada does not easily fit into the so called  cyberwar unless it is effectively carried out with kinetic attacks and a lot of effort. Nope, if the HCA is going to do anything at all, it will be on the playing field of the following special warfare fronts;

1. PSYOPS
2. DISINFORMATION (PSYOPS)
3. Support of terrorism (Hezbullah and others)
4. INTEL OPS

These are the primary things I can see their being good at or being pawns of the VEVAK for.

So.. Sleep well for now because really all you have to truly worry about is that they are going to deface your page it seems (see picture at the top of the post)

Interview by IRNA with HCA

More than anything else though at the moment, the whole revealing of the HCA is more a publicity stunt than much else I think. For all of the talk in the US and other countries about mounting their own “Cyber Militia’s” it seems that Iran and Hezbullah wanted to get in on the ground floor..

Oh… Wait..

They forgot about the PLA and the Water Army!

DOH!

Oh well, sorry guys… Guess you will have to keep playing on that whole “HYPERSPACE WAR” angle to get your headlines huh? Besides, really, how much street cred is an organization like this anyway? So far I have been poking around all of their sites and find nothing (links or files) that would he helpful in teaching their “army” how to hack.

My guess.. This is kinda like putting out the inflatable tanks and planes for the Germans to bomb in place of the real ones.

The "About" Statement on HCA

Now.. Before You All Go Off Half Cocked (That means you Mass Media)

Meanwhile, I have seen the story that I linked up top scrawled all over the digital wall that is Twitter these last couple days. I am sure with everything that has been going on in Iran of late (i.e. the tendency for their bases to explode lately as well as their pulling another takeover of a consulate as well as spy roll ups) the media is salivating on this story because its juicy. It has it all really…

Cyberwar (hate that term)

HYPERSPACE!

Espionage

BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA We’re gonna activate our hackers inside your borders and attack your SCADA’s!

What’s the media not to love there?

HCA's YouTube Page Started in September

Well, let me set you all straight. This is piffle. This is Iran posturing and the proof thus far has been they have defaced a couple of sites with their logo.

THE HORROR!

This group has not even reached Anonymous standards yet! So relax.. Sit back… Watch the show. I am sure it will quickly devolve into an episode of the keystone cops really. They will make more propaganda videos for their YouTube, create a new Twitter account, and post more of their escapades on their two Facebook pages to let us all know when they have defaced another page!

… Because no one will notice unless they let us know…

Just The Persian Facts Ma’am

The real aegis here seems to be shown within the “about” statement for the group. Their primary goals seem to be to attack everyone who does not believe in their moral and religious doctrine. A translation of the statement rattles on about how the West are all foul non believers and that we are “pompous” Which really, kinda makes me think that the Iranian people, or at least this particular group, has a real inferiority complex going. More so though, it seems from the statement that they intend more of a propaganda and moral war against the west and anyone else they see fit than any kind of real threatening militant movement.

You know.. Like AQAP or AQ proper.. Or Jamaa Islamiya.

This is an ideological war and a weak rallying cry by a group funded by a government in its waning years trying to hold on to the digital snake that they cannot control forever. Frankly, I think that they are just going to run around defacing sites, claiming small victories, and trying to win over the real hackers within their country to their side of the issue.

Which… Well, I don’t think will play well. You see, for the most part, the younger set who know how to hack, already bypass the governments machinations and are a fair bit more cosmopolitan. Sorry Mamhoud, but the digital cat is already out of the bag and your recognition of this is too late. How long til the Arab Spring reaches into the heart of Tehran and all those would be hackers decide to work against you and your moral jihad?

Be afraid Mamhoud… khomeini…

All you really have is control temporarily.. You just have yet to realize it.

Tensions In The Region: Spooks & The Holiday Known as KABOOM

Now, back to the region and its current travails. I can see why this group was formed and rolled out in IRNA etc. Seems to me even with the roll up of the CIA operations there in Iran you guys still are being besot with problems that tend to explode.

• Wayward Trojan drones filled with plastique
• Nuclear scientists who are either being blown up or shot in the streets
• Nuclear facilities becoming riddled with malware that eats your centrifuges.

You guys have it tough right now.

Let me clue you guys in on something… If you weren’t such a repressive and malignant regime, we might work with you on your nuclear programs to power your country. But, unfortunately, you guys are FUCKING NUTS! So, we keep having to blow your plans to shit (we as in the rest of the world other than say North Korea that is) because we are all concerned you just want a bomb. Why do you want that bomb? So you can lord it over the rest of us and use it as a cudgel to dismantle Israel say.. Or maybe to just out and out lob it over the border.

You are untrustworthy.

Oh well.. Yes we all have played games there and I agree some shit was bad. The whole Shah thing.. Our bad… Get over it.

I suspect that the reason why all of these bad things are happening to you now though sits in the PDB on the presidents desk or maybe in a secret IAEA report that says you guys are close to having a nuclear device. You keep claiming that you are just looking to use nuclear power peacefully… But then you let Mamhoud open his mouth again and shit just comes right out.

Until you guys at least try to work with others and not repress your people as much.. Expect more KABOOM.

What You Should Really Worry About From All of This

My real fear though in all of this hoo ha out of the HCA is that VEVAK and Hezbullah will see fit to work with the other terrorist groups out there to make a reality of this whole “Cyber Jihad” thing. One of these factors might in fact be the embracing of AQ a bit more and egging them on in their own cyber jihad. So far the AQ kids have been behind on this but if you give them ideas AND support, then we have a problem I think. The ideal of hit and run terror attacks on infrastructure that the government and those in the INFOSEC community who have been wringing their hands over might come to pass.

HCA Propaganda Fixating on OWS

If the propaganda war heats up and gains traction, this could embolden others and with the support of Hezbullah (Iran) they could “try” to make another Anonymous style movement. Albeit I don’t think that they will be motivated as much by the moral and religious aspects that HCA puts out there as dictum. Maybe though, they will have the gravitational force enough to spin all of this off into the other jihadist movements.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”

If the HCA does pull off any real hacks though (say on infrastructure) then indeed they will get the attention they seek and more than likely give the idea to other movements out there to do the same.

AND that is what worries me.

Cinch Up That Seatbelt… It’s Gonna Be A Bumpy Ride

Finally, I think that things are just getting started in Iran and its about to  get interesting. With all of the operations that seem to be going on in spook world (please don’t use PIZZA as a code word again mmkay?) and the Israeli’s feeling pressured by Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and rhetoric, I suspect something is about to give way. Add to this the chicken-hawks who want to be president (Herman I wanna touch your monkey) Caine and the others who have so recently been posturing like prima donna models on a runway over Iran and we have a disaster to come.

Oh.. and Bachmann.. *Shudder* Please remove her from the Intelligence committe!! That whole Pakistani nuclear AQ attacks thing was sooo not right!

PSSSSST BACHMANN they’re called SECRETS! (or, for your impaired and illiterate self SEKRETS) STFU ok?

OH.. Too late, now NATO is attacking into Pakistan…

It looks to me like the whole middle east is about to erupt like a pregnant festering boil and we are the nurse with the needs who has to pop it and duck.

So.. Uh yeah, sorry, got carried away there… I guess the take away is this; When you look at all the other stuff going on there, this alleged cyber army is laughable.

Yuk yuk yuk… You’re killin me Ahmed!

K.

DEFCON PANEL: Whoever Fights Monsters: Confronting Aaron Barr, Anonymous, and Ourselves Round Up

A week before this year’s DEFCON, I got a message that I was being considered to replace Aaron in the the “Confronting Aaron Barr” panel discussion. It was kind of a surprise in some ways, but seemed like a natural choice given my tet-e-tet with Anonymous, LulzSec, and even Mr. Barr. After coming to BlackHat and seeing the keynote from Cofer Black, it became apparent that this year, all of these conferences were about to see a change in the politics of the times with reference to the hacking/security community and the world of espionage and terrorism. Two things that I have been writing about for some time and actually seeing take place on the internet for more than a few years with APT attacks on Defense Base contractors and within Jihadist propaganda wars.

“This is a very delicate window into our future,” he told the hackers. “Cold war, global war on terrorism and now you have the code war — which is your war.”

Going into the planning for the panel discussion, I was informed that I was hoped to be the stand in for Aaron in that I too see the world as very grey. Many of my posts on the Lulz and Anonymous as well as the state of affairs online have been from the grey perspective. The fact is, the world is grey. There is no black and white. We all have varying shades of grey within our personalities and our actions are dictated by the levels to which our moral compasses allow. I would suggest that the example best and most used is that of torture. Torture, may or may not actually gain the torturer real intelligence data and it has been the flavor of the day since 9/11 and the advent of Jack Bauer on “24″ face it, we all watched the show and we all did a fist pump when Jack tortured the key info out of the bad guy to save the day. The realities of the issue are much more grey (complex) and involve many motivations as well as emotions. The question always comes down to this though;

If you had a terrorist before you who planted a dirty nuke in your city, would you ask him nicely for the data? Give him a cookie and try to bond with him to get the information?

Or, would you start using sharp implements to get him to talk in a more expedient fashion?

We all know in our darkest hearts that had we families and friends in that city we would most likely let things get bloody. Having once decided this, we would have to rationalize for ourselves what we are doing and the mental calculus would have to be played out in the equation of “The good of the one over the good of the many” If you are a person who could not perform the acts of torture, then you would have to alternatively resolve yourself to the fates as you forever on will likely be saying “I could have done something” Just as well, if you do torture the terrorist and you get nothing, you will also likely be saying “What more could I have done? I failed them all” should the bomb go off and mass casualties ensue.

I see both options as viable, but it depends on the person and their willingness to either be black and white or grey.

Within the security community, we now face a paradigm shift that has been coming for some time, but only recently has exploded onto the collective conscious. We are the new front line on the 5th battlespace. Terrorists, Spies, Nation States, Individuals, Corporations, and now ‘collectives’ are all now waging war online. This Black Hat and Defcon have played out in the shadow of Stuxnet, a worm that showed the potential for cyber warfare to break into the real world and cause kinetic attacks with large repurcussions physically and politically. Cofer Black made direct mention of this and there were two specific talks on SCADA (one being on the SYSTEM7′s that Iran’s attack was predicated on) so we all ‘know’ that this is a new and important change. It used to be all about the data, now its all about the data AND the potential for catastrophic consequences if the grid, or a gas pipeline are blown up or taken down.

We all will have choices to make and trials to overcome… Cofer was right.

“May you live in interesting times” the Chinese say…

Then we have the likes of Anonymous, Wikileaks, and the infamous ‘LulzSec’ Called a ‘Collective’ by themselves and others, it is alleged to be a loose afiliation of individuals seeking to effect change (or maybe just sew chaos) through online shenannigans. Theirs and now their love child ‘LulzSec’ ideas on moral codes and ethics really strike me more in line with what “The Plague” said in “Hackers” than anything else;

“The Plague: You wanted to know who I am, Zero Cool? Well, let me explain the New World Order. Governments and corporations need people like you and me. We are Samurai… the Keyboard Cowboys… and all those other people who have no idea what’s going on are the cattle… Moooo.”

Frankly, the more I hear out of Anonymous’ mouthpieces as well as Lulzs’ I think they just all got together one night after drinking heavily, taking E, and watching “Hackers” over and over and over again and I feel like Curtis exclaiming the following;

“Curtis: If it isn’t Leopard Boy and the Decepticons.”

So, imagine my surprise to be involved in the panel and playing the grey hat so to speak. The panel went well and the Anon’s kept mostly quiet until the question and answer after, but once they got their mouths open it was a deluge. For those of you who did not see the panel discussion you can find the reporting below. My take on things though boils down to the following bulletized points:

1. Anons and Lulz need to get better game on if they indeed do believe in making change happen. No more BS quick hits on low hanging fruit.
2. Targets need recon and intelligence gathered has to be vetted before dumping
3. Your structure (no matter how many times you cry you don’t have one) can be broken so take care in carrying out your actions and SECOPS
4. Insiders have the best data… Maybe you should be more like Wikileaks or maybe an arm of them.
5. Don’t be dicks! Dumping data that can get people killed (i.e. police) serves no purpose. Even Julian finally saw through is own ego enough on that one
6. If you keep going the way you have been, you will see more arrests and more knee jerk reactions from the governments making all our lives more difficult
7. Grow up
8. The governments are going to be using the full weight of the law as well as their intelligence infrastructure to get you. Aaron was just one guy making assertions that he may or may not have been able to follow through on. The ideas are sound, the implementation was flawed. Pay attention.
9. If you don’t do your homework and you FUBAR something and it all goes kinetically sideways, you are in some deep shit.
10. You can now be blamed as well as used by state run entities for their own ends… Expect it. I believe it has already happened to you and no matter how many times you claim you didn’t do something it won’t matter any more. See, all that alleged security you have in anonymous-ness cuts both ways…
11. Failure to pay attention will only result in fail.

There you have it, the short and sweet. I am sure there are a majority of you anonytards out there who might not comprehend what I am saying or care.. But, don’t cry later on when you are being oppressed because I warned you.

K.

http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks-breaches/231300360/building-a-better-anonymous.html

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/396320/three_tips_better_anonymous

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/08/defcon-anonymous-panel/

http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/06/defcon-panel-anonymous-is-here-lulzsec-is-here-theyre-everywhere/

Team Inject0r: The Multinational Connection

The recent compromise of a NATO server by “Team Inj3ct0r” has recently made the news, but, as the media usually do, they did not look any deeper than the website for Inj3ct0r and perhaps a little data as to what the team said in a text doc on the compromised server. A further examination of the group shows that Inj3ctor has been around since 2008, and has ties to Chinese hackers as well as Russia, Turkey and other countries.

This could change the paradigm on the “hacktivism” moniker that Team Inj3ctor has branded themselves with recently (post the goings on with Anonymous and LulzSec/Antisec movements) Before these movements, this site and the teams all were loosely linked and purveyors of 0day, and not so much in it for any political means. What has changed? Who might benefit here to use the hacktivism movement as a cover for hacking activities that could cause a stir?

… Maybe the PLA? Maybe the FSB?…Some other political orgs from Gaza? or Turkey?

Or, perhaps they are just a bunch of hackers who like the cause celebre of hacktivism? It’s hard to say really, but, when you get China into the mix, the lines blur very very fast.

Below I am outlining the data I collected on the main inj3ct0r site, its owner, and two of the players who are on both teams of hackers that span China and Russian hacking. This makes for a new wrinkle in the Anonymous/Lulz movement in that the NATO hack was claimed by someone using the name “Team Inj3ct0r” and this site seems to fit the bill as the source of the attack since it has been quoted by the hackers that they used 0day on the NATO server to crack it and keep access. If indeed there are connections to state sponsored hacking (as the China connection really does lead me to believe) then we have a new problem, or perhaps this has been the case all along that the state sponsored hackers have been within Anonymous, using them as cover.

Another interesting fact is the decision to attack NATO. Was it a hack of opportunity? Or was there a political motive here? As I have seen that these groups are multi-national, perhaps this attack had a overall political agenda in that NATO is supposed to be the worlds policeman. I am still unsure.

Teams and Members:

In looking at the sites and the members, it came to light that two members belong to each of the teams (inj3ct0r and DIS9) The two are “knockout” and “Kalashinkov3″ The teams are tied together in the way they present their pages and the data they mirror so it is assumed that they have a greater connection underneath. In fact, more of them may be working together without being named in the teams listed below. Each of these people have particular skills and finding 0day and posting them to this site and others for others to use.

Team Inj3ct0r: http://77.120.120.218/team

Team Inj3ct0r’s site is located in Ukraine and is registered to a Matt Farrell (mr.r0073r@gmail.com) My assumption is that the name given as well as the address and phone numbers are just bogus as you can see they like to use the netspeak word “1337″ quite a bit. A secondary tip on this is that the name “Matt Farrel” is the character name for the hacker in “Live Free or Die Hard” Someone’s a fan…

Team Inj3ct0r

r0073r – r0073r is the founder of inj3ct0r and I believe is Russian. The site r0073r.com owned by Mr. Czeslaw Borski according to whois. However, a whois of inj3ctor.com comes up with a Anatoly Burdenko of 43 Moskow Moskovskaya Oblast RU. Email: e-c-h-0@mail.ru

• The domain r0073r.com owned by a Mr. Czeslaw Borski out of Gdansk Poland (another red herring name) domain hosted in Germany with a .ru name server
• The domain inj3ct0r.com created in 2008 belongs to Anatoly Burdenko and has been suspended
• The domain inject0r.com was hosted in China  61.191.0.0 – 61.191.255.255 on China net
• Another site confirms that r0073r is the founder of team inj3ct0r aka l33tday
• Another alias seems to be the screen name str0ke
• Also owned www.0xr00t.com

http://www.inj3ct0r.com domain details:

Registrant:
Inj3ct0r LTD
r0073r        (e-c-h-0@mail.ru)
Burdenko, 43
Moskow
Moskovskaya oblast,119501
RU
Tel. +7.4959494151
Creation Date: 13-Dec-2008
Expiration Date: 13-Dec-2013
Domain servers in listed order:
ns1.suspended-domain.com
ns2.suspended-domain.com
Administrative Contact:
Inj3ct0r LTD
r0073r        (e-c-h-0@mail.ru)
Burdenko, 43
Moskow
Moskovskaya oblast,119501
RU
Tel. +7.4959494151                     

Sid3^effectsr

4dc0reSeeMe

XroGuE

gunslinger_

indoushka
KnocKout

• knockout@e-mail.com.tr
• knockoutr@msn.com
• Alleged to be Turkish and located in Istanbul
• Member of the Turkish cyber warrior site cyber-warrior.org last access July 4rth 2011

ZoRLu
anT!-Tr0J4n
eXeSoul
KedAns-Dz
^Xecuti0n3r
Kalashinkov3

• Claims to be from Algeria
• kalashinkov3[at]Hotmail[dot]Fr
• http://internetblog.pl/tag/kalashinkov3/
• He’s a member of GazaHackers 

DIS9.com:

DIS9.com is a hacker group that is linked to and shares two members with Team Inj3ct0r (Kalashinkov3 and KnocKout) Both sites are very similar in design and content. DIS9.com resolves to an address in China and is registered to a YeAilin ostensibly out of Hunan Province in China. The owner/registrar of the site has a familiar email address of yeailin225@126.com also a domain registered and physically in China.

A Maltego of this data presents the following interesting bits: A connection to the site http://www.vi-xi.com a now defunct bbs which lists the yeailin225 account and other data like his QQ account. This site also lists another name attached to him: Daobanan ( 版主 )  vi-xi.com had hacking discussions that involved 0day as well. The domain of vi-xi.com was registered to jiang wen shuai with an email address of jwlslm@126.com and listed it out of Hunan Province.

The connections from DIS9 to other known hackers who are state actors was found within the Maltego maps and analogous Google searches. As yet, I am still collecting the data out there because there is so much of it. I have been inundated with links and user names, so once I have more detailed findings I will post them. Suffice to say though, that there is enough data here to infer that at the very least, hackers who work for the state in China are working with others on these two sites at the very least, sharing 0day and perhaps hacking together as newly branded “hactivists”

DIS9 Team:
Rizky Ariestiyansyah
Blackrootkit - 
Kedans-Dz

: Team Exploit :

Nick
Kalashinkov3
KnocKout
K4pt3N
Liquid
Backdoor Draft

h4x0er.org aka DIS9 Team

Another interesting fact is that a link to the site h4x0er.org itself shows that the DIS9 team is the umbrella org for Inj3ct0r and other teams. This is a common practice I have found with the Chinese hacking groups to have interconnected sites and teams working together. This looks to be the case here too, and I say this because of the Chinese connections that keep turning up in the domains, sites, and team members.

Other Teams within the DIS9 umbrella:

• ID Backtrack Team
• FreeBUF Team
• Inj3ct0r Team
• r0eXpeR Team
• Rsoul Team
• Vim0x0n
• Nuclear’Atk

In the end, it seems that there is more to the inj3ct0r team than just some random hackers and all of this data bears this out. I guess we will just have to wait and see what else they hit and determine what their agenda is.

More when I have it…

K.

BlackkatSec: The New Kids on the Block Who Allege They Took Down Al-Qaeda

From GamerCrypt

Last week, the AQ site shamikh1.net was taken down by unknown persons and their domain suspended by Godaddy for abuse. Evan Kohlmann of Flashpoint Global was making the rounds on the media circuit pimping that it was in fact MI6 or the like that took the site down. However, Evan had little to no evidence to back this claim, and frankly, the media just ate it up evidence be damned. I came to the party after hearing online the previous weekend that the site was under attack and going down from an unknown type of attack. However, I knew from past experience that the site was likely being attacked through some SQLi or a DD0S of some kind. The reasoning I have had is that the site was vulnerable to attack in the past and as far as I knew, the admin’s at Shamikh1 had not fixed the problems.. Not that anyone was goint to tell them that their site was vulnerable.

As time passed and more stories circulated, Evan’s tale changed slightly to include the fact that he thought there was a domain hijack that had happened. There is once again no evidence of a domain hijack at all, but, there still lingers the idea that the site was taken down by someone other than skiddies out for a good time. Once again, there was no evidence to back up any claims, but the media is.. well the media.. They will buy anything if it gets them attention. So on it went, and on Saturday the back up site that AQ had registered in May (as I surmised that it was the backup in my earlier post) was back up serving the main page. To date the page is not fully functional and once again Evan has made a claim on the news that they are back up for registration, another false claim as they are not taking submissions.

Either way, the site is online (mostly) and seems to be getting back into the swing while a new dark horse has entered the race as to who did it and perhaps why. @blackkatsec or BlackKatSec, is a new splinter group of LulzSec/AntiSec/Anonymous that has turned up quietly making claim to the hack on shamikh1. They so far, have not said much on why never mind how, but, it would be interesting to hear from them on the pastebin site as to what data they may want to release on their hack. If indeed they used SQLi attacks and in the end rm -rf * ‘d the site, then I would LOVE to see what they got out of it before they did so. If on the other hand, they just attacked the site and the admins as well as Godaddy took it down, then I would like to know.

Speculation is.. Well it’s mental masturbation really. Good for the media, bad for those who really want to know something.

So, dear BlackKatSec, if you feel so moved, please do drop me some data.. I will make sure its used to cause the boys from Shamikh1 more heartburn. Otherwise, please do keep us up on your attacks as I do not look forward to hearing all the damned speculation that comes out of the spinning media heads like a certain someone who I mentioned above. Of course you could just be trying to claim the hack for whatever reasons and not done it… But, the lack of trumpeting it to the world says to me that maybe you were involved…

Say.. You guy’s aren’t MI6 are ya?

HA!

More when I have it.

K.

The Lulzboat Sailed The Internets and All I Got Was This Stupid Garbage File!

That’s it? All we get is this stinkin garbage file?

Well, it seems that the Lulz are over for now as last night saw the Lulzboat sail into the sunset. In a post on twitter and a rapidly seeded file dump on Pirate Bay, the LulzSec collective decided to hang up their tophat claiming that they were basically going to pull a Costanza at the top of their game.

Within the torrent file the following parting words were sent:

Friends around the globe,

We are Lulz Security, and this is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. 50 days ago, we set sail with our humble ship on an uneasy and brutal ocean: the Internet. The hate machine, the love machine, the machine powered by many machines. We are all part of it, helping it grow, and helping it grow on us.

For the past 50 days we’ve been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could. All to selflessly entertain others – vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It’s what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.

While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn’t that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.

Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we’ve gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don’t stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.

So with those last thoughts, it’s time to say bon voyage. Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind – we hope – inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.

Thank you for sailing with us. The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon.

Let it flow…

Hrmmm.. 50 days? Is there any real significance to this other than perhaps the party van was pulling up outside your doors and you had to dump the garbage file quick like? Honestly, the files that you dumped, while in sheer numbers of passwords and logon’s to a few sites is well, kinda weak. In short, there is nothing revelatory here. I mean, jeez at LEAST the garbage file in the movie had some interesting malware shit in it right?

The Files:

So, we have some AT&T data from inside that cover some frequency ranges, and some manuals, minutes from meetings etc that are kind of interesting. There is a scan of the FBI.gov site that shows a vuln, and they managed to add Pablo Escobar to the Navy jobs database.

Whoopee.

All in all I have to give the Lulzsec crew a big “MEH” on this as well as their other dumps really. Sure, they have pointed out that low hanging fruit is abundant on the internet, but, really, who in the security or hacking world did not know this? Further more, what does the average everyday end user care? I mean, if their passwords are stolen, they will reset them. If their money is stolen they are insured by the Fed… Is there a great hue and cry from the masses because Lulz were had by the general populace to have the Lulzboat crew hoisted on the yard arm?

Not that I have seen.

In short kidz, you have only served to amuse yourselves and others out there but if you had anything else in mind about bringing change to the scene, I don’t think you have succeeded. People are creatures of habit and sloth. Short of taking the whole system down for the count, nothing will be so epic as to make corporations secure their networks and perform due diligence. Those who have done so out of worry because of your antics will go back to their peaceful Luddite slumber.

Leaving So Soon?

So, on to your sudden departure from the scene. I have the feeling that as I had written about before, you were coming to realize that perhaps you could never be as clever or wily to evade detection and prosecution given your penchant for the dramatic you all seem to have. Your propaganda machine and communication channels were leaking, this you could see from the A-Team dumps.

You guys have tried variations of your names, you have attempted obfuscate as much as you could, but, in the end, your re-use of favored screen names was your undoing. You see, the jester has been scouring the internet (I am sure with help from others) looking for any connections to those screen names or iterations thereof. I myself have done this and came up with analogous data to what jester and others have posted. With each successive day, your true identities are being uncovered if they have not fully been as of now.

However, this re-use of nick names and ties to email addresses aside, you guys just were immature enough to do yourselves in with petty disputes and the use of non trustworthy assets. This whole outing of each other thing was one of the most stupid things I have seen. Sure, some of it could be digital chaff, with you trying to set out disinformation, but I think that is not the case. Your own hubris shall be the thing that ends up placing the party vans on your collective front steps.

Lets face it, you played the game of spooks and I think in the end, you will lose. In fact, I think that you should probably have been better off had you just gone off seeking some sharks with frikkin lazers on their heads in your volcano lair instead of playing with the fire that you have been. Once they do pop you, you all are going to see some very interesting things inside jail as the governments kluge together terrorism charges on you.

Your Legacy:

Well, I guess we will have to see if anyone decides to take up the Lulzsec mantle. For now, we all await the party van posse to pick you all up sooner or later. You have spawned some more fools though like Team Poison who want to up the ante with releases of data like old Tony Blair stuff… That was kinda lame too frankly and made so sense when they claimed to still have access.. Why dump what you have and then claim to still have access? If it was current, I am pretty sure they have yanked the plug on that mail server and ‘five’ has it.

Oh, did you take that into account? I mean, he is Tony Blair after all… They are MI5… ‘Expect them’

So where was I?… Oh yeah..

In all of your dumps you delivered nothing worth your or our time. You proved a point that SQLi is prevalent but who didn’t know this? You have proved that you were pretty immature and likely suffer from Asperger’s yourselves… Well that will be the claim that your lawyers make to the judge won’t it huh? I mean that is the mental illness du jour as excuses go for immature hacking antics today isn’t it? I don’t think that will work though, the government just doesn’t care, they will medicate you and then put you on trial. You see Asperger’s is not a form of insanity, and the insanity plea, as some of us know, is NOTORIOUSLY hard to use as a defense in court. Nope, you guys really actually suffer from inflated ego’s and too much jolt cola.. That’s my diagnosis, for what its worth.

So, yeah, legacy… Well, you certainly have tried to do your best imitation of SPECTRE, but instead you came off as Bighead. I am sure there will be others following in your footsteps, but, in the end I don’t think you have launched a new SPECTRE.

Nope, I expect your real legacy will be the creation of more draconian laws by the government as a backlash to your antics. Laws that will make all our lives a bit more less private and a lot more prone to being misused. I also expect that the lulz will continue, though at your expense once you are all caught and put into the pokey.

… And those lulz will also be epic fail.

K.

LulzSec: How NOT To Run An Insurgency

Oh how the Lulz turn…

Lulzsec seems to be imploding a bit with the pressure put on them by their own interpersonal issues as well as the likes of Th3j35t3r and the Web Ninja’s on their backs as well. I however, would like to point out the Lulz tactical failures that are directly leading to their ultimate party van special that seems to be coming soon. I say ‘seems’ to be coming because who really knows what will happen. Perhaps some of these guys will actually skate because they were smart enough to keep some of their personal details.. well.. personal.. Maybe not though as is evidenced by the ‘doxing pastebin-palooza’ of late.

Secrecy is important:

LulzSec seems to have misunderstood that secrecy is really really important when you are doing something like a digital insurgency. Sure, you can try to rely on all the technologies like proxies to hide your IP, but, you also have the human element to contend with. It is here where the Lulz have not thought things out too clearly. They attempted to use the Anonymous model, but, unlike Anonymous, they, had a smaller crew and a central core that, well, has been rather chatty. Chatty mind you, on IRC channels that have been compromised and monitored.

Loose lips sink ships.. Yeah, I went there…

Nope, while Lulzsec has been attempting to be secret, they failed to follow through and actually carry out their insurgency behind a wall of utter secrecy or even a cell based infrastructure it seems. Of course most of these efforts have been planed out and talked about on said IRC channels (even the sooper sekret ones) and advertised so others could revel in the lulz.

This and the other things I am going to mention will be their undoing.

Communications Should be COVERT:

Ok, so,  how long did Osama have runners with USB keys on donkey’s going to Peshawar Internet cafe’s without being caught? Oh, yeah, 10 friggin years! It took the CIA a long time to catch on to the runners/couriers and even then they did so only from a VERY FEW pieces of hard SIGINT. The key here kids is that the AQ guys were practising ‘tradecraft’ unlike the Lulzsec kids. They took pains to insure that their communications were not easily picked up by the NSA or anyone else listening and watching.

You guys in Lulzsec? Not so much….

Instead, you have relied on technology to keep you safe while flagrantly whipping out your collective pee pee’s and waving them at forces who are much better equipped, trained, and funded to hunt you down and make you go bye bye. Some might see that as daring… Others see it as just plain stupid. Either way, since you have failed to use real covert channels that you do not advertise, you have highly increased the likelihood that you will soon see those party van’s you speak of so often (mockingly) in your yards as they start taking all your computers out the door, and you to the local orange jump suit palace.

Next time, just have your meetings in the parking lot of the local PD. It will cut out the middle man.

Ego is the mind killer:

I must not have too much Ego. Ego is the mind-killer. Ego is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my Ego. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the Ego has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Ah yes, I have been ruminating on this one for some time and even adjusted this quote from Dune, which I think fits nicely. Your ego’s have been writing checks that you aren’t likely to want to have cashed kids. You have said that you do it for the lulz, you have also made intimations that its about how poor security is within the internet ecology, but, I think mainly your motivations have been ego driven. What this means is that you are getting quite the buzz off of being so darn smart and snarky. You have been having fun poking the badgers in the eyes and feeling invincible.

Well, you aren’t geniuses and you aren’t invincible. Eventually everyone gets caught, especially those who do not take care to cover their tracks and act smartly.

Simply, your ego’s have done you in… Be sure to check that ego at the door to the federal penitentiary that will be your new home, because there are bigger and nastier people in there who will be trading you for smokes soon. Oh, and remember to buy a lot of tucks pads.. You are going to need them.

Untrustworthy Assets Should NOT be Trusted With Operational Details:

This brings me to the bust of your minimally affiliated IRC op Ryan. It seems from all of the press and from the kids history, that he was unstable to start. This is the guy you want to trust with any data, no matter how small, on who Lulzsec is and how they operate?

Really?

Well then, who else do you have running your servers and running errands? Because I think they are likely to be just as whacked as Ryan and likely to be caught and roll within the first few minutes of interrogation!

Bravo, well done!

If you guys had any operational smarts, you would have to know that you cannot trust anyone with the whole picture. You pretty much are claiming that now after his arrest, but I think secretly you are all leaving fudge stains in your pants presently. According to the police Ryan had A LOT of data laying round and how are you to know who he talked to and how much he really knew about you all? Even IF you tried to be as careful as possible, you more than likely slipped up and gave him information that he will be giving.. Nope.. wait.. HAS GIVEN to the FBI and the Met.

Another failure on your part in the game of insurgency… I guess you will learn the hard way. Just as you will learn that outing your pals yourselves because they decided they wanted out, or did something to piss you off, will only lead back to you. Not the smartest of moves should any of these guys have data on you that they can use to turn against you.

“Never burn an asset unless you burn them and then shoot them between the eyes.. Or they will come back at you”

LulzSec Fall Down.. Go BOOM:

Finally, as if you could not tell from everything I said above, you are going to go down and likely go down hard. It will be a learning experience for you and for everyone else who wants to let their ego run free to gather 220K of followers on twitter by poking the badger. I am imagining that Ryan and his volumes of digital data, are being disseminated throughout the community of Feds and other agencies as I write…

Oh well, like I said, there’d daring and then there is stupid… Remember what John Keating said in “Dead Poets”

“Phone call from God. If it had been collect, that would have been daring!”

Be seeing you soon as your being put in the back of the party van kids…

K.

Anonymous vs. Anonymous: Enough Hubris To Go Around

The nameless revolution that calls itself Anonymous may be about to have its own, online civil war.

A hacker startup calling itself Backtrace Security–made up of individuals who formerly counted themselves as part of Anonymous’ loose digital collective–announced plans Friday to publish identifying information on a handful of active members of Anonymous. According to one source within the Backtrace group, it will release the names and instant messaging logs of dozens of Anonymous hackers who took part in attacks onPayPal, Mastercard, the security firm HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and the Marine officials responsible for the detainment of WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning.

That spokesman, who goes by the name Hubris and calls himself BackTrace’s “director of psychological operations,” tells me that the group (Backtrace calls itself a company, but Hubris says it’s still in the process of incorporating) aims to put an end to Anonymous “in its current form.” That form, Hubris argues, is a betrayal of its roots: Fun-loving, often destructive nihilism, not the political hacktivism Anonymous has focused on for much of the past year. “[Anonymous] has truly become moralfags,” says Hubris, using the term for hackers who focus on political and moral causes instead of amoral pranks. “Anonymous has never been about revolutions. It’s not about the betterment of mankind. It’s the Internet hate machine, or that’s what it’s supposed to be.”

The rest is HERE

“Cyberdouchery” it’s a term coined within the last year as far as I know for snake oil or hype mongers within the Infosec community. I have to say that this alleged group of ex-anon’s kinda fits the term for me. Whether it’s the reason that they state of being tired of Anonymous’ being moral fags, or the idea that they just want to get back to their troll roots, I pretty much just think its a publicity stunt. Of course, the darker side of me could see the way to believing that this is just some sort of psyop by person/persons unknown to get a reaction out of Anonymous.

I have written in the past about the herd mentality as well as convergence theory where it regards Anonymous. In each of those scenarios though, there is the idea that there are leaders. No matter the number of times Anonymous may say they are leaderless, I say that this is just impossible from the point both of these theories take. Even if someone is a leader for a day or minute, there is a leader, and there are followers, either anointed by the pack or by themselves. There are also the minions that do the work, such as the mods and the managers of the servers and systems. Those too could be seen as leaders within the infrastructure too. Now it seems though, that this new group is going to attempt to name leaders by use of social engineering and data collection.

… And that is what Aaron Barr wanted to do.. Well sorta… Then he shot himself in the foot with his own machine gun of hubris.

All in all though, this looks to be on the face of it, just an attempt at #LULZ by these folks at Backtrace. The use of the crystal palace image alone screams nearly the same shrill tune as using too many numbers in one’s nickname in leet terms. If you look closely though, you will see that they also claim to offer services such as “Cyber Espionage” *blink* Not counter intelligence nor counter cyber espionage, but cyber espionage. Just as they also offer cyber warfare and a host of other hot terms with cyber in them. That just reeks of the cyberdouchery I spoke of at the top of the post. So, in reality I don’t take this all too seriously.

I guess we will just have to wait and see what develops with this insurance file and the alleged outing that will happen…

There will be #lulz

K.

Digital Kinetic Attacks: South Korean DD0S Botnets Have “Self Destruct” Sequence



From McAfee Blog

There has been quite a bit of news recently about distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks against a number of South Korean websites. About 40 sites– including the Presidential, National Intelligence Service, Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry, and the National Assembly–were targeted over the weekend, beginning around March 4 at 10 a.m. Korean time. These assaults are similar to those launched in 2009 against sites in South Korea and the United States and although there is no direct evidence connecting them so far, they do bear some similarities.

DDoS attacks have occurred with more and more frequency, but one of the things that makes this attack stand out is its use of destructive payloads. Our analysis of the code used in the attack shows that when a specific timezone is noted by the malware it destroys the infected computer’s master boot record. If you want to destroy all the data on a computer and potentially render it unusable, that is how you would do it.

The malware in the Korean attacks employs an unusual command and control (C&C) structure. Instead of receiving commands directly from its C&C servers, the malware contacts two layers of servers. The first layer of C&C servers is encoded in a configuration file that can be updated at will by the botnet owner. These C&C servers simply provide a list of servers in the second layer, which will provide additional instructions. Looking at the disbursement of the first-layer C&Cs gives us valuable insight into the malware’s global footprint. Disbursement across this many countries increases resilience to takedowns.

The rest HERE

At first, the idea of a digital kinetic attack to me would be to somehow affect the end target in such a way as to destroy data or cause more down time. These current attacks on South Korea’s systems seems to be now, more of a kinetic attack than just a straight DD0S. Of course one then wonders why the bot-herders would choose to burn their own assets with this new type of C&C system and malware. That is unless the end target of the DD0S is just that, one of more than one target?

So the scenario goes like this in my head;

• China/DPRK work together to launch the attacks and infect systems also in areas that they would like to do damage to.
• They choose their initial malware/C&C targets for a secondary digital kinetic attack. These systems have the potential of not only being useless in trying to trace the bot-herders, but also may be key systems to allies or the end target themselves.
• If the systems are determined to be a threat or just as a part of the standard operation, the attackers can trigger these systems to be rendered (possibly) inert with the wipe feature. This too also applies to just going after document files, this would cause damage to the collateral systems/users/groups

Sure, you burn assets, but at some point in every operation you will likely burn at least one. So doing the mental calculus, they see this as a win/win and I can see that too depending on the systems infected. It is not mentioned where these systems (C&C) were found to be, but, I am assuming that they were in fact in China as well as other places around the globe. This actually steps the DD0S up a level to a real threat for the collateral systems.

Of course the malware here does not physically destroy a drive, it is in fact just rendering it useless (potentially, unless you can re-build the MBR AND you zero out the data on board) as you can see from this bit of data:

The malware in its current incarnation was deployed with two major payloads:

• DDoS against chosen servers
• Self-destruction of the infected computer

Although the DDoS payload has already been reported elsewhere, the self-destruction we discussed earlier in this post is the more pressing issue.

When being installed on a new computer, the malware records the current time stamp in the file noise03.dat, which contains the amount of days this computer is given to live. When this time is exceeded, the malware will:

• Overwrite the first sectors of all physical drives with zeroes
• Enumerate all files on hard disk drives and then overwrite files with specific extensions with zeroes

The service checks for task files that can increase the time this computer is allowed to live, so the botmaster can keep the botnet alive as long as needed. However, the number of days is limited to 10. Thus any infected computer will be rendered unbootable and data will be destroyed at most 10 days after infection! To protect against tampering, the malware will also destroy all data when the system time is set before the infection date.

The malware is aware enough to see if someone has tampered with the date and time. This sets off the destruct sequence as well, but, if you were able to stop the system and forensically evaluate the HD, I am sure you could make an end run and get the data. Truly, we are seeing the next generation of early digital warfare at this scale. I expect that in the near future we will see more nastiness surface, and I think it highly likely in the post stuxnet world, that all of the players are now thinking in much more complex terms on attacks and defences.

So, let me put one more scenario out there…

Say the malware infected key systems in, oh, how about NASDAQ. Those systems are then used to attack NYSE and suddenly given the order to zero out. How much kinetic warfare value would there be to that?

You hit the stock market and people freak

You hit the NASDAQ systems with the compromise and then burn their data

Ouch.

Interesting times….

//SIGINT FOR ANALYSIS: DD0S: CHINA/S.KOREA/WORDPRESS “So Ronery”

THREE stories in the news recently have me pondering the tit for tat nature of what may be Kim Jong Il’s mostly impotent attacks against the outside world. It would seem that Mr. “ronery” may have been a little miffed of late because South Korea decided to float balloons laden with leaflets over into the Northern side after the Middle East began to protest against repressive regimes.

I laughed til I cried when I saw this on the news, poor Kim Jung! What’s even more hilarious is that I have also heard that the South Koreans also put KJI’s image on the pamphlets because it is a crime to destroy or defile any image of the “dear leader” So, the North Koreans must have fits and starts when these balloons start coming down! Net net though, the information makes it to some in the closed country, and one hopes that they are seeing what is happening outside in the real world… At least a little.

Post the balloon launches (Feb 25 2011) we are now seeing some interesting things happening on the internet that may in fact be KJI and North Korea acting out against everyone, especially the South Koreans. Both attacks on the face of it, may not be related, however with a closer look one may see that they could very well be related;

WordPress traces 2nd DDoS assault to China

Shock

By John Leyden

Posted in Enterprise Security, 7th March 2011 12:27 GMT

Free whitepaper – The Register Guide to Enterprise Virtualization

Blogging service WordPress suffered a further series of denial of service assaults on Friday, days after recovering from a particularly debilitating attack.

WordPress.com, which serves 18 million sites, traced the vast majority of the attack traffic of the latest assault back to China. Analysis pointed to a Chinese language site as one of the principal targets of the attack.

This as-yet-unnamed site is blocked by Chinese search engine Baidu, prompting speculation that the attack might be politically motivated. However, a closer inspection of events led WordPress to conclude that commercial motives were probably behind the attack, TechCrunch reports [1].

Separately the French finance ministry has admitted that it came under a sustained and targeted attack in December, targeting files related to the G20 summit that took place in Paris two months later. More than 150 computers at the ministry were affected, the BBC reports [2].

Paris Match magazine, which broke the story, quotes an anonymous official who told it: “We noted that a certain amount of the information was redirected to Chinese sites. But that [in itself] does not say very much.” ®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/07/wordpress_ddos_reloaded/

South Korea Probes Internet, GPS Disruptions

South Korea is investigating the latest high-technology assault against it. The attack targeted government computers and users of the GPS navigation system. It came as South Korea and the United States hold an annual military exercise that North Korea calls a prelude to an invasion.

Fifteen million South Koreans logging online Monday received an alert from the country’s Internet Security Agency. It instructed them to download a vaccine program to thwart a foreign online attack against Web sites of key government agencies and financial institutions.

Officials Monday said the government is trying to figure out who ordered the attack on the Internet sites last Friday and Saturday. Targets included the presidential Blue House, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the National Intelligence Service, South Korean military headquarters, the U.S. military forces in the country and several other agencies.

They were hit by what is known as a distributed denial of service attack. It was done by overloading targeted sites with Web page requests from about 80,000 personal computers infected with malicious software.

Suspicion as to who masterminded the attack falls on North Korea. But Park Kun-woo, a spokesman at Ahn Lab, a leading South Korean maker of security software, says there is no clear evidence Pyongyang orchestrated this one.

Park says nothing is certain at this point because malicious computer hackers tend to disguise themselves in various ways. It is clear, he says, however the attack did not originate in South Korea and was dispersed via a number of countries.

The National Police Agency says the attacks were routed through computer servers in numerous places, including Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Russia, Taiwan and Thailand.

Internet security companies say, as of Monday, more than 100 of the so-called zombie computers that were used to carry out the online attack have seen the contents of their hard drives erased by the malware that the computer owners unsuspectingly downloaded.

This incident did not last as long as a similar disruption over five days in July 2009, but it targeted more Web sites. Officials have said the 2009 attack was traced to an Internet protocol address in China used by North Korea’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

Other attacks also have been traced to China.

Experts say North Korea has an Internet warfare unit that targets South Korean and American military networks.

Also Monday, the South Korea Communications Commission confirmed that interference to Global Position System signals on Friday came from a location in North Korea that was pinpointed as the source of a similar disruption last August.

The incident reportedly affected GPS receivers in military equipment and mobile phones as far south as Seoul. It also took place, as was the case last August, while a military exercise with the United States was under way here.

The U.S. military command in the country is not confirming whether the GPS jamming disrupted the exercise. A spokesman says as a matter of policy, the command does not comment on intelligence matters.

The Yonhap news agency quotes a South Korean defense official saying the GPS disruption did have a slight effect on military artillery units.

Now, WordPress was attacked around the same time as the South Korea attacks. However, the linking factors for me are twofold:

1) Both have Chinese elements

2) Both are aimed at political targets (wordpress has said that there seemed to be a foreign political nature in the attacks)

While N. Korea does not have an infrastructure in house to set off attacks, they do indeed have connections with China and certain Chinese telco/internet backbone providers that they have worked with in the past on such occasions. While the attacks seem to be a bit more wide spread as attacking systems go, both would be timed in such a way that tips me to believe both are the work of North Korea. So far, no one has really made this connection that I have seen in the news as yet, but, it’s not such an outlandish idea.

Now, KJi has nukes, and he has all kinds of other weapons of war, but, he seems to be lacking in one area, “cyber” as the press might put it. Since his regime is SO repressive that they have no infrastructure, it is likely that any such programs would be run out of the south of China. North Korea likely has many programmers/military types working in the south China area at facilities that are Chinese run working on cyber war capabilities. Were N. Korea actually to get its own infrastructure I have no doubt they would be read to go. That they don’t at present is only a small stumbling block.

It is also well known that the Chinese and others will easily rent out bot-nets for the work as well as be paid for information/cyber operations of this nature. So, the attacks are really only cogently linked together here from their connections to pissing off N. Korea. Frankly, I am kinda surprised the attacks didn’t also have some Facebook DD0S as well…

All in all though, the DD0S did not do permanent damage anywhere and for me, just seem to be more a cry for attention on the part of Mr. Ronery…

Sad panda.

K

Anonymous: Headless, Herd Mentality, or Convergence Theory Driven Entity?

In my last couple of posts I took a look at what has been going on with Anonymous and HBGary Federal. Within those posts, I began musing on just how decentralised Anonymous really is. By looking at the overall picture of how Anonymous seems to work on the face of it, you might think that they are just a fluctuating group of online personae who sign up for certain operations that they desire to devote time to. However, no matter how many times I look at the big picture, I still see an underlying structure(s) that potentially have more static features that can be analysed and thus, allows for the potential of there being pseudo-anonymity.

Now, this may rankle some within the anonymous camp and likely will cause some comments here but, this is something that interests me as well as really is an academic thought experiment as opposed to Aaron’s little projects. So, you anon’s out there, take this post and my musings as food for thought as you go on about your anonymous lulz. I am not searching you all out to “out” you, just looking at an interesting problem.

With that said, lets move on to my theories.

Motivations, Drivers, Flocking, Herding, and Convergence Theory:

Before I go into the infrastructure of Anonymous as I see it, let me first go into the psychology behind the human side of Anonymous. This bears directly on the infrastructure due to the fact that humans online comprise the entity known as Anonymous. It is the psychology behind that human element, that give rise to the means by which they are carried out in a social media format. (i.e. the internet/IRC/Social media)

Human motivations can and are myriad, however, there are some basic desires that are fulfilled by action as a cohesive group. These desires or goals take shape in differing ways. In the case of Anonymous, they have aligned themselves with a “swarm” mentality, and I ascribed to that at first, but, after thinking about it quite a bit, I have come to the conclusion that a swarm does not really fit the patterns of behaviour exhibited by Anonymous. A swarm implies lack of thought and instead just reaction. The examples used before of bee’s or ants are good ones to use to show in fact, Anonymous does not resemble them. Instead, the Anon’s all have motivations as a whole and on their own individually that motivate them to act as they are. In this simple fact, the aspect of having self awareness and motives, shows that the allusion to swarming is a fallacy.

Instead, I propose that since humans are behind the actions of anonymous, and comprise its ranks, that other theories apply to them that come from a more humanistic approach, much of it being from psychology. The following theories apply as I see it.

From Wikipedia

Herd behavior in human societies
The philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche were among the first to critique what they referred to as “the crowd” (Kierkegaard) and “herd morality” and the “herd instinct” (Nietzsche) in human society. Modern psychological and economic research has identified herd behavior in humans to explain the phenomena of large numbers of people acting in the same way at the same time. The British surgeon Wilfred Trotter popularized the “herd behavior” phrase in his book, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1914). In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen explained economic behavior in terms of social influences such as “emulation,” where some members of a group mimic other members of higher status. In “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903), early sociologist George Simmel referred to the “impulse to sociability in man”, and sought to describe “the forms of association by which a mere sum of separate individuals are made into a ‘society’ ”. Other social scientists explored behaviors related to herding, such as Freud (crowd psychology), Carl Jung (collective unconscious), and Gustave Le Bon (the popular mind). Swarm theory observed in non-human societies is a related concept and is being explored as it occurs in human society.

Information Cascade:

An information (or informational) cascade occurs when people observe the actions of others and then make the same choice that the others have made, independently of their own private information signals. Because it is usually sensible to do what other people are doing, the phenomenon is assumed to be the result of rational choice. Nevertheless, information cascades can sometimes lead to arbitrary or even erroneous decisions. The concept of information cascades is based on observational learning theory and was formally introduced in a 1992 article by Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch.[1] A less technical article was released by the authors in 1998.[2][3]

[4][5]

There are two key conditions in an information cascade model:
1. Sequential decisions with subsequent actors observing decisions (not information) of previous actors.
2. A limited action space (e.g. an adopt/reject decision).[6

Classical theories
The main idea of Sigmund Freud's crowd behavior theory is that people who are in a crowd act differently towards people from those who are thinking individually. The minds of the group would merge to form a way of thinking. Each member's enthusiasm would be increased as a result, and one becomes less aware of the true nature of one's actions.
Le Bon’s idea that crowds foster anonymity and sometimes generate emotion has become something of a cliché. Yet it has been contested by some critics, such as Clark McPhail who points out that some studies show that "the madding crowd" does not take on a life of its own, apart from the thoughts and intentions of members. Norris Johnson, after investigating a panic at a 1979 Who concert concluded that the crowd was composed of many small groups of people mostly trying to help each other. However, ultimately, leaders themselves identify themselves to an idea.

Theodor Adorno criticized the belief in a spontaneity of the masses: according to him, the masses were an artificial product of "administrated" modern life. The Ego of the bourgeois subject dissolved itself, giving way to the Id and the "de-psychologized" subject. Furthermore, the bond linking the masses to the leader through the spectacle, as fascism displayed in its public representations, is feigned:

"When the leaders become conscious of mass psychology and take it into their own hands, it ceases to exist in a certain sense. [...] Just as little as people believe in the depth of their hearts that the Jews are the devil, do they completely believe in their leader. They do not really identify themselves with him but act this identification, perform their own enthusiasm, and thus participate in their leader’s performance. [...] It is probably the suspicion of this fictitiousness of their own ‘group psychology’ which makes fascist crowds so merciless and unapproachable. If they would stop to reason for a second, the whole performance would go to pieces, and they would be left to panic.”[1]

Edward Bernays (1891–1995), nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was considered the father of the field of public relations. Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the psychology of the subconscious. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he felt was irrational and dangerous.

Convergence theory

Convergence theory holds that crowd behavior is not a product of the crowd itself, but is carried into the crowd by particular individuals. Thus, crowds amount to a convergence of like-minded individuals. In other words, while contagion theory states that crowds cause people to act in a certain way, convergence theory says the opposite: that people who wish to act in a certain way come together to form crowds. An example of convergence theory states that there is no homogeneous activity within a repetitive practice, sometimes observed when an immigrant population becomes common in a previously homogeneous area, and members of the existing community (apparently spontaneously) band together to threaten those trying to move into their neighborhoods. In such cases, convergence theorists contend, the crowd itself does not generate racial hatred or violence; rather, the hostility has been simmering for some time among many local people. A crowd then arises from convergence of people who oppose the presence of these neighbors. Convergence theory claims that crowd behavior as such is not irrational; rather, people in crowds express existing beliefs and values so that the mob reaction is the rational product of widespread popular feeling.

My money though is on Convergence Theory. While herd mentality works in many respects, the herd seems less actively motivating the outcome as it is reacting to external stimuli or a certain single entity moving them to “herd” in a specific direction. In Convergence Theory however, we have a more nuanced approach to understanding that like minded individuals congregate together socially and then as a crowd, act out on their collective consciousness. I believe that all of these behaviours and observations play a role in the macro-verse of Anonymous.

I also believe that at times, there are leaders who take up the issue that they feel needs redress and then start that herd moving toward a goal by beating the drum. Thus you have the chats and the boards where people take their digital soap boxes out and speak on the target, the reasons, and the method of attack. If the idea gets enough traction vis a vis the oration of the de facto leader at that time, then, a movement begins. Which brings me to the next topic.

Cells vs Spontaneous Headless Entities:

Anonymous has said many times and rather vociferously, that they are a headless organisation. I have always been of the opinion that no matter how many times they make that claim, it is functionally impossible. There will always be a core group of individuals that will be leading an operation. It is also the case that Anonymous is predicated on infrastructure that must be maintained. The IRC rooms, the servers, the web servers etc, all have people who operate them and manage them. In this respect, those persons would be the holders of the keys to the kingdom would they not? If a person in charge of such functions were to turn (or be turned) on the organisation, they could do massive damage to the org by being in charge of key assets.

I would further like to posit that for each “raiding party” as they may be called, would also have de facto leaders. An incidence of this can be seen in the WBC debacle in the response to WBC that claims 20 people had worked on the document. Those twenty people would nominally be leaders of that cell or operation by my accounts. So, to extend this further, for every operation there must be a division of roles and responsibilities doled out to function, it is just our nature to do this. If Anonymous were truly a chaotic system, nothing would get done effectively.

Cells however, also fit as an modus operandi for Anonymous. When I say cells I mean this from the perspective of cells in terrorism. Al Qaeda, as a functional operation has been winnowed down to the point of only being a titular entity in the jihadi movement. Due to the war on terror, AQ has shifted their operations from being rather linear to a cell mentality. All of the cells out there are pretty much self formed at present. The cells consist of like minded people who get subtle and not so subtle information/mandates from the AQ HQ via things like “Inspire Magazine” or the jihadist boards. The same can be applied to the structure of Anonymous. There are still those people who are making suggestions and or are outright perceived leaders, that can be singled out as targets of interest. This may not be the case every time, but, by using the information above on motivations and crowds, you can infer that it is the case more times than not.

Nick Re-Use as De-Anonymization:

Now, once you consider the motivations and the structures that are created or used, one must then consider how would someone go about trying to determine targets of interest. In the case of Anonymous this allusion had been made (poorly) by Aaron Barr. He went after certain parties that he claimed were in fact the core leaders of Anonymous. I can’t say that any of those names were in fact core leaders, however, I will say that the nicknames themselves could have been used to gain intelligence on said users and indeed prove their affiliation.

My premise is this;

1) The more unique a nick is the easier it is to track

2) Nickname re-use on other sites in tandem with uniqueness makes tracking and expanding on social connections easier

3) With the right foot-printing, one can potentially get enough information not only to see affiliations and actions, but also real names of individuals

So, if you are on the Anon boards and you re-use your nick, AND it is unique enough, I know that you can be tracked. Add to this the notion that you use your nick as an email address, then you are adding even more context for someone to search on and cogently put together patterns for recognition. So, the more data points, the more coherence to the picture if you see what I mean. By using tools like Maltego or even Palantir correctly, one can make those connections. In the hands of a trained analyst, the data can really show a person’s online personae and lead to enough data being revealed to have law enforcement breathing down your neck with warrants.

In looking at the Anon sites, one can see regular names turning up. Using Maltego on some of those names have also given returns that would be a good start on locating those people because the used the same nickname for other uses that are inherently insecure. Which is ironic as Anonymous is supposed to be just that. In fact, one can log onto their IRC session just as “anonymous18457″ etc. I would do this every time I wanted to go onto their servers so as not to have too much residual data for someone to mine.

Aaron was right in that people are inherently lazy at times. We as a species are also ill equipped to delineate long term threats as opposed to near term. In most cases though, many of the Anon’s are in fact young and likely inured to the idea that the Internet is in fact an anonymous space.

It isn’t, unless you take pains to make it so.

Conclusion:

So there you have it. I have been pondering this for a little while now. I am sure there will be more as I think about it a bit. Aaron was a fool, but let me tell you, there are others out there in spook country who aren’t. These techniques are no secret nor are the theories of behaviour. These are common ideas that are used within the psyops realm and you, “anonymous” legions must take that into account. If the authorities cannot get the core members, they will eventually get round to going after the low hanging fruit.

However, with these techniques, even someone diligent about their anonymity can be defeated. Everyone makes mistakes…

Keep your wits about you.

K.