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.

SMS Terror: Not so new but, this is a new twist

One of the Taliban’s most effective tools to persuade Afghans not to work with the U.S. or its allies is the night letter — a note warning people they’ll be targeted for death unless they change their infidel-loving ways. But that’s too analog. These days, the Taliban is mass texting gruesome videos to Afghans’ cellphones to spread the same message.

The insurgency’s media committee produces videos like this one — which we won’t embed — glorifying suicide bombers and posts them on Taliban websites like Shahamat.info and Alemarah-iea.net. Befitting the growing importance of social media to insurgents, Facebook pages purporting to be adjuncts of Taliban propaganda networks pop up to display the imagery, hoping to slip past Facebook’s usage police.

But to maximize the videos’ reach, insurgents send them out through SMS chains, until they eventually reach unsuspecting Afghans. It’s a quick way to take night-letter videos viral — and disguise the usage chain from its origin, preventing authorities from shutting down the distribution system.

The rest is at Wired

Since the communications infrastructure has been built up some more with the help of the likes of private contractors in Afghanistan, it is only natural that mass SMS barrages would be used by the Taliban. This is not a new thing though to the jihadis, they have been passing along shahid videos for some time on mobile phones via SMS. The twist here is now instead of passing along just propaganda, they are also sending threats. It would seem the Talib’s have been taking cues from the rest of the world on social media and its uses.

Of course, the original method of scaring people into submission, to me, seems to be much more visceral, the “night letter” This is where people tack up a letter to your door and bang on it, scaring the occupants, something akin to a jack booted Nazi door kick. Except in this case these guys run away instead of  coming in and terrorizing everyone. It’s the Taliban version of leaving a dead rat tacked to the door.

On the other side of this though, I have to wonder about with all of the new infrastructure, there must be some potential to be tracking these SMS originators through their ESN’s right? Not all phones can be “burner” phones there in Afghanistan right? Even if they are, surely the cell towers can’t be that plentiful so as to make DF-ing them ponderous? If I were the anti terror forces, I would be heavily monitoring the comm’s anyway… So, keep on SMS-ing everyone Taliban! Soon the night letter will be coming to your flap.

CoB