* Hacker Manifesto Music: Credit Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

Cold Open: “We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

This is the typical calling card sign-off for Anonymous, a hacking collective that had formed by 2007.

These hackers/activists - or to use their language, “hacktivists” - have used their ability to break into the technology that runs our lives to protest governments, bring down websites, and expose countless pieces of personal information.

Anonymous has hassled the KKK, the Church of Scientology, and various governments across the world.

They’ve hacked into institutions previously thought to be un-hackable. Like the NSA - the US National Security Agency.

Who are they? Well- as the name implies - they are… anonymous.

We don’t know most of their identities. They hide behind online aliases and the iconic Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta.

Anonymous was born on 4-Chan’s B-Board - a forum dedicated to sharing ridiculous content, offensive jokes, and otherwise provide a safe-haven for young people with dark senses of humor.

Humor like mine. Probably like yours.

And from this community would bloom an ethos centered around protecting free speech, fighting government corruption, trying to not pay for copy-written movies and music, and sometimes fucking with completely innocent people just for some lulz [lulls].

Anonymous has backed both revolutions and cyber bullying.

Today we will dig into the deeds and misdeeds of Anonymous - how they began, what they’ve done, and also dive into the history of hacking. Who were the first hackers? How has hacking evolved over the years? What kinds of heists have some of the world’s most talented and criminally- minded hackers pulled off?

Been listening to a lot of early 2000’s techno this week doing the research. It felt right for this cyber punk, keyboard warrior, “You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all” hacker edition of Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome!

A.Happy Monday: Happy Monday Meatsacks!

I’m Dan Cummins, The Suck Master, drug legalization advocate, but maybe still don’t do meth. Maybe easy on the heroin.

Hail Nimrod, Lucifina, Glory be to Triple M - and praise be to good boy Bojangles.

Recording again in the Suck Dungeon out of Couer d’Alene, Idaho - suns out maybe not quite guns out. Still a bit chilly.

B.Tour Dates?:

Excited for a Live Scared to Death show this Thursday night.

Thursday, April 22nd, 6:00 PM PST the virtual “doors” open for a 6:30PM PT start time.

Go to looped.com for tickets!

C.Merch: Remember how I was talking about drugs a second ago? Well, since it’s ALSO 4/20 this week, we now have a Timesuck Highly Curious 4/20 collection at Bad Magic Merch dot com.

We got tees, hoodies, and long sleeves from Bella. We have a whole collection. Tote bags, framed canvas art, face masks, stash jars, grinders, bamboo rolling trays, water bottles - GOTTA STAY HYDRATED - brass lighter cases, and accessory pouches.

I’d just say a generic line about having a handful of options to browse.

Don’t do drugs, meatsacks. Unless you don’t have to worry about a random drug test, and you're gonna do ‘em right and are confident you won’t get caught. Then best of luck. Enjoy yourselves. Life’s short.

Hail Lucifina!

D.Additional Announcements: Also - had a problem with some venues displaying incorrect dates for some upcoming standup shows. I am not touring anywhere until August. Any venue that has dates for me listed before August? Not true. They need to change up their website info and stop trying to trick people.

In August, the Symphony of Insanity stand up tour starts up barring any further waves of closures and lockdowns.

And that’s it for announcements.

E.Segue to Topic/Introduction to Content:

Now onto the story of Anonymous and the world of hacking.

Gonna go over the technical side of hacking today and the development of cybersecurity to protect us from hackers. Gonna talk about “hacktivism”, and then, after taking a peek at a few of the biggest online heists of all time that some especially talented hackers have pulled off - we’ll dig into the story of Anonymous.

Gonna look at how the group started, how the group is organized - IF it’s organized, and what it’s been up to since it’s formation.

Anonymous has hacked just about every institution you can think of - from the NSA, CIA, NASA and the Federal Reserve to the Vatican and just about every big corporation known to man.

To tell the story of Anonymous, we’ll wander through lulz [lulls], Reddit threads, feuds between collectives and more.

Let’s get to hacking!

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

II. Hacking:

Did you ever see the movie War Games with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy? Two 80s acting GIANTS.

It came out in the summer of 1983. Broderick was only twenty when it was filmed.

Classic 80’s cold war flick where Broderick plays David Lightman - a young hacker and Seattle high schooler who unwittingly hacks his way into a giant US military super computer programmed to predict a nuclear war against the Soviet Union and make sure the US launches its nukes first.

It was a big hit.

Thinking, at first, he’s playing an early online game, David Lightman is actually making the computer’s AI think the Russians are attacking.

And then, of course, he has to SAVE THE DAY. This young hacker must save the world from a nuclear apocalypse.

War Games introduced hacking to mainstream America.

I don’t really remember a lot of moments from the movie. I saw it when I was in grade school. But I DO remember the impression it made on me.

Shortly after seeing it, Papa Ward and grandma Betty bought me an early computer - a Commodore 64.

We didn’t have internet access yet - only super nerds could figure out how to get online in 1983 and they sure as shit weren’t doing that from Riggins where cable hadn’t even been laid - it was satellite TV or three channels over the airwaves.

The world wide web most casual nerds like myself could figure out how to use wasn’t invented until 1990. The very first online game had only been played on ARPANET - the precursor to the internet - in 1980, three years before War Games.

BUT - when I saw the movie around 1987or 1988 - I wanted to hack.

I wanted to somehow Matthew Broderick my way…. into Sarah Jessica Parker’s vagina. Hail Lucifina!

Wait. Sorry.

I wouldn’t fantasize about that until a little over a decade later. First Wives Club? Bette Middler? May have watched it with my mom. May have enjoyed more than I let it since it was marketed towards middle aged women.

LATER I would be jealous that Broderick was sleeping with Sarah Jessica Parker.

In the mid-80s when I saw War Games, I didn’t even know what a vagina was. I only knew girls made me anxious and computers and video games made so very happy. And I wanted to Matthew Broderick my way… into the local bank. And siphon off just a few pennies a day from all of the accounts into my account - no big whoops! whose gonna miss a few pennies a day??? - and somehow - from that - become very, very rich.

But how could I do that!?! How could I hack??

I knew it had something to do with programming, so I started to teach myself coding.

And I didn’t get very far.

I learned enough in Basic to make a ball bounce around the screen and then got frustrated by how many lines of code it took to do something that… well… basic… and I gave up and went back to playing Airborne Ranger and Skate or Die.

Never learned to hack. Probably for the best.

What even IS hacking?

Hacking is “the gaining of unauthorized access to data in a system or computer.” (Oxford Dictionary Definition) It is “the activity of identifying weaknesses in a computer system or a network to exploit the security to gain access to personal data or business data.” https://www.guru99.com/what-is-hacking-an-introduction.html

1. History of the Hack: The term “hack” originated from MIT students. At first, it didn’t even refer to computers.

Way back in 1961, MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club hacked their high-tech train sets in order to modify their functions.

God I love this! The nerdiest shit EVER. The first hackers did NOT look like Neo from the Matrix. They looked like Steve Urkel from Family Matters.

The first hackers were dicking around with model trains at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A semi-automatic control system based on telephone relays was installed by these model train nerds in the mid-1950s. It was called the ARRC - the Automatic Railroad Running Computer. It could run a train over the entire set of track, in both directions, without manual intervention, throwing switches and powering tracks ahead of the train. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club

And MIT students who worked on programming when switches were thrown and when tracks were powered - they became the first hackers.

They weren’t initially hacking IN to anything. They were hacking away at different types of code, playing with new forms of programming - inventing new types of programming.

They weren’t actually that into trains - they were into computer systems. They were learning how to manipulate them.

They were employing a new style of programming different from the cut and dried methods employed by the world’s first system programmers. They enjoyed the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming and circumventing limitations of programming systems and trying to extend the capabilities of programming.

These super nerds soon took off their choo-choo train conductor hats and and moved from little model trains to giant computers, using the elusive and expensive IBM 704’s at MIT to innovate, explore, create new rules for how these machines functioned, and try to expand the tasks that computers could accomplish.

And those computers truly were giant. They were MASSIVE. They weighed over 30,000 pounds. Only some Avenger or other superhero could use them as a lap top. Spendy too. Over two million bucks each.

And the first hackers using them weren’t trying to break into anything or commit any crimes. They were using hacking as a tool to explore, improve, and test the limits of existing programs. More system manipulation.

And then in the 1970s, a new type of hacker showed up - phone hackers. Dubbed “phreakers,” phone hackers, such as the infamous John Draper, exploited operational characteristics in the telephone switching network, which had recently gone completely electronic.

John Draper legendarily discovered that a toy whistle found in Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes produced the exact tone necessary – 2600 hertz – to indicate to AT&T telephone lines that a line was ready and available to route a new long distance call sometime around 1969.

At this time, telephone lines only relayed audio information, not digital information. So when you pushed a button on your phone, for example, that number sent a specific tone into the line. I remember hearing those tones.

Those tones travelled through the line to a central switching station.

At the station, the tones were converted back into numbers and connected to the right telephone line and eventually to the right telephone on the other end of the line.

And the tone that Captain Crunch Whistle made told the switching station to open a long distance line for a call WITHOUT you having to pay for it.

It hacked it.

It bypassed the typical number sequence you had to punch in to make a long distance call you WOULD be charged for.

And while a lot of people, once the news got out, started using Captain Crunch whistles to place free calls all over the world, John Draper - whose still known in hacker circles as either Captain Crunch, Crunch, or Crunchman - he and other phreakers were not trying to save money.

They were just trying to manipulate systems. And a computer is a type of system which would lead to this same curiosity being later applied to hacking computer systems.

Some very high profile people were phone phreakers before they went legit — including Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, co-founders of Apple. https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data- protection/cyber-security/the-evolution-of-hacking/ #:~:text=Interestingly%2C%20the%20term%20%E2%80%9Chac k%E2%80%9D,order%20to%20modify%20their%20functions.

Interestingly, hacking today STILL doesn’t necessarily mean committing a crime. Often, the term “cracking” is reserved for criminal hacking.

But since the term “Cracker” now is mostly associated with either a thin, tasty wafer perfect for placing cheese on, or a derogatory racial slur for a white person, Hacker is generally used for both good and bad hackers.

By the 1970s, the military potential for computers started to be realized.

And now hacking got a bit more serious.

Those model train nerds at MIT were really working on artificial intelligence systems when they were fucking with track switches and such, and some of those early hackers would go on to work on the team that assembled that internet precursor network known as ARPANET - and ARPANET was funded by the Department of Defense as a means to link government offices across the nation.

These early hackers contributed to the technological development of the military-industrial complex.

Then, in the early 70s, counter culture university students, protesting hacker involvement in the Vietnam War, would drive a lot of the early hackers underground.

It wasn’t cool, man, to help the Man.

Interesting that a lot of the first hackers weren’t been hunted down by the government - they were being FUNDED by the government.

The military-industrial complex funded both the projects that would create modern hacker culture, and produced the first anonymous shields for hackers to hide their identities when they secretly hired programmers in the 70s to continue to work for them clandestinely. https://haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/subcultures-and-scenes/hacker- subculture/

Then, in the 1980s, with the new popularity of personal computers that first entered the market in 1977, the modern hacker was truly born. The one Matthew Broderick would give a big screen face too.

While there were still a large number of hackers interested primarily in tinkering with operating systems, a new breed emerged that was more concerned with personal gain. Instead of using their technological know-how for improving computers, they used it for criminal activities, including pirating software, creating viruses and breaking into systems to steal sensitive information.

Ian Murphy aka Captain Zap was the first hacker - called at that time a cracker - to be tried and convicted as a felon, in 1981.

Murphy broke into AT&T's computers and changed the internal clocks that metered billing rates. People were getting late-night discount rates when they called at midday. Noice. Of course, the bargain-seekers who waited until midnight to call long distance were hit with high bills.

AT&T - the first corporation to really, really start to hate hackers. The first to be fucked with starting with Captain Crunch and his fellow phreakers and now Captain Zap.

SO MANY CAPTAINS TO DEAL WITH! It was a hacking captain epidemic.

In 1983, a group of six teenage hackers from Milwaukee calling themselves the 414s hacked into sixty different computer systems, including the Security Pacific National Bank and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Their story broke around the same time War Games came out to really get people talking about Hackers.

They exposed a wee bit of a security breach since Los Alamos was where atomic bombs were designed. Couple military secrets the US would rather not share with the world.

These teen hackers didn’t do much once they did break into the systems, but, the fact that six kids DID break into both sensitive financial information and classified military information was a bit concerning to Uncle Sam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_414s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_security_hacking_incidents

In 1986, the first legislation related to hacking, the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, is passed.

That same year a legendary hacker, Loyd Blankenship, calling himself The Mentor - early member of the Hacker group the Legion of Doom - is arrested. Shortly after his arrest, he publishes the Hacker Manifesto aka The Conscience of a Hacker, on January 8th, 1986.

It’s not long and it’s a revered document in hacker culture said to have HEAVILY influenced the hacker ethos, so I’ll read the whole thing:

PLAY FROM BEGINNING https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=NZ4Of3lID84

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers.

"Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal," "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering". .. Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950s techno-brain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker?

Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world ... Mine is a world that begins with school ... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me ... Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school.

I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head... "

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me ... Or feels threatened by me ... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here ... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened ... a door opened to a world ... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought ... a board is found. "This is it ... this is where I belong. . . " I know everyone here ... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again ... I know you all ... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike…

... You bet your ass we're all alike ... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak ... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless.

We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic.

The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now ... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.

We explore ... and you call us criminals.

We seek after knowledge ... and you call us criminals.

We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias ... and you call us criminals.

You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity.

My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all ... after all, we're all alike. https://faculty.weber.edu/apainter1/Readings/Manifesto.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Blankenship

Damn!

Not gonna lie. That shit got my blood moving when I found it.

Sounds like something I’d want to write for Timesuck. Reminds me of my younger self when I wanted to tear everything down. Sometimes for the right reasons - sometimes just because I didn’t really understand how the world worked and just like to create chaos. Make myself heard. Make the world react to my destruction.

I think this manifesto does sum up hacker ethos pretty well, including the ethos of Anonymous.

Sometimes… Anonymous has burned shit down to expose and/or destroy corruption and punish those who’ve committed blatantly heinous actions. Other times… they’ve burned shit down just to watch it burn.

So easy to ready that manifesto and be like “Fuck yeah, bro! NOICE! Go Hackers, Go! Fuck the Man! Fuck the banks! Fuck the government! BURN IT ALL!!!!!”

And then later - when you have your credit card and banking information stolen and you’re not be able to buy groceries or pay your rent because some hackers wiped out your account you’re like, “WHOOOAAAA! HOLD UP, HACKERS! Wait a MINUTE! NOT loving the hacking right now. Forgot that when you burn it all down, sometimes you get trapped in the fire.”

And then - when the bank and the credit card company help you get your money back and federal law enforcement agencies track down the hacker who stole from you and you’re like, “Get those fucking hackers! GIT ‘EM! HATE Hackers! Yip, yip, YAW!”

A lot more fun to read about hackers exploits than it is to be victimized by them.

In 1988, in response to a growing number of hackers and security breaches, DARPA - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency forms CERT - the Computer Emergency Response Team to address cyber security.

In the 1990s, in an effort to crack down on a growing number of hackers committing computer-based crimes, the US Secret Service begins launching sting investigations, conducting raids and arresting a number of hackers.

Trying to avoid conviction, members in the hacking community begin to inform on each other in exchange for immunity which of course leads to further arrests.

But even as law enforcement cracks down further and further on cyber crimes, the sheer proliferation of computers being sold means more and bigger opportunities for hackers and their ranks swell.

No matter how many they arrest, there are always other hackers continuing to hack. It’s like the Mentor said in the manifesto, “You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all …"

Businesses, corporations, and government facilities were now no longer using isolated computer systems but had moved on to large networks with massive, interconnected servers that allowed them to do business more efficiently.

It was a fantastic improvement on the previous way of doing business. These larger networks paved the way for today’s e- commerce.

But these larger networks were also more vulnerable to hacking.

New cyber attacks cost many organizations millions and millions of dollars every year and exposed countless pieces of private and sensitive information.

Since 2010, data breaches have exposed over 38 BILLION personal records in 40,650 data hacks in just the United States alone, according to the cybersecurity firm Risk Based Security. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/the-10-biggest-data-hacks-of- the-decade.html

And since there are roughly 327 million Americans, according to the latest Census estimate, that means that the average person has had 116 of their accounts compromised over the past decade.

FUCKING HACKERS! Really getting harder and harder to root for them. I’ll think they’re cool when I watch some movie like the Matrix. And then I’ll fucking hate them when I can’t log into some app because I’ve had to change the password five times in the last three years and I can’t remember what the new password. All that online security password bullshit we have to deal with - all the layers of encryption - all thanks to cybersecurity measures put in place to deal with hackers.

While most hacks have led to small data breaches, there have been numerous mega hacks over the years as well.

Several companies, such as 7-Eleven, WhatsApp and Fortnite, reported security flaws in the past couple years that could have exposed millions of customers’ data - the extent of THESE hacks has not been reported.

But check out the numbers on some of these other big hacks whose reach was reported…

143 million records were stolen from UnderArmour’s My Fitness Pall app in 2018. That’s a LOT of payment information. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/29/under-armour-stock-falls-after- company-admits-data-breach.html

In 2017, Equifax was breached to the point of effecting about 56% of Americans—147 million people.

Hackers were able to get access to people’s names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, credit card numbers and even driver’s license numbers.

Equifax agreed to pay $700 million to settle federal and state investigations into how it handled the massive data breach. https://investor.equifax.com/news-and-events/press-releases/ 2019/07-22-2019-125543228 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/the-10-biggest-data-hacks-of- the-decade.html https://fortune.com/2017/06/19/deep-root-analytics-voter-data- exposed/ https://www.upguard.com/breaches/the-rnc-files

An email marketing company, River City Media, made headlines in 2017 for a hack that released 1.4 billion records.

The company improperly configured a backup that accidentally placed their entire database online, which contained details like customer’s IP addresses, names, and even physical addresses. https://fortune.com/2017/03/06/spammer-leaks-data/

Currently, the title for the largest data breach in history goes to Yahoo - at least as far as we could tell.

Yahoo first told the public in September 2016 it had experienced a breach in 2014 that affected at least 500 million accounts.

And then that December, Yahoo revealed that they had been a victim of an attack all the way back in 2013 that exposed at least a billion user accounts.

This number would increase when Verizon bought Yahoo in 2017 and revealed that the number of accounts compromised in the 2013 hack was more like three billion.

Yahoo eventually agreed to pay $117.5 million to settle a class- action lawsuit in April 2019 over how it handled communications around the hacks.

LOT of fucking money to have to pay over some hacker bullshit. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/technology/yahoo- hackers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/technology/yahoo-hack-3- billion-users.html https://www.yahoodatabreachsettlement.com/en https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/23/the-10-biggest-data-hacks-of- the-decade.html

These are just a few enormous hacks. There are so many others.

Hacks happen all over the world, on big and small scales.

But that doesn’t mean ALL hackers have criminal intentions.

The old-school ways of hacking— as a means of improving systems— are still there, as well as a vigilante hacking.

Within the hacker community, hackers seem to separate themselves primarily into five groups.

2. Ethical Hackers (White Hats):

There’s a class of hackers that claim to use their powers for good — “ethical hackers,” also known as “white hats.”

Ethical hacking consists of identifying weakness in computer systems and/or computer networks and coming with countermeasures that protect the weaknesses.

Ethical hackers get written permission from the owner of the computer system before hacking, protect the privacy of the organization, and report the weaknesses they find. OR - they’re hired by the owner of the system.

www.eccouncil.org/ https://www.guru99.com/software-testing.html

3. Cracker (Black Hat): The opposite of the white hat is the “black hat,” also known as a “cracker,” AKA criminal hacker.

A cracker is a SILLY ASS WHITE BOY WHO NEEDS TO KEEP HIS ENTITLED FUCKING MOUTH SHUT.

Wait. Sorry. That doesn’t make any sense for me to say.

No, a cracker is a hacker who gains unauthorized access to computer systems for personal gain— making them cyber- criminals. Again - no one commonly calls them crackers in mainstream press or mainstream conversation.

Crackers usually intend to steal corporate data, violate privacy rights, transfer funds from bank accounts, blackmail their targets - or simply to cause pain and suffering.

Their actions fall under the broad umbrella of “cybercrime.”

Cyber crimes include computer fraud, privacy violation - sometimes called “doxxing”, identity theft, sharing copyrighted files -like illegally downloading music, transferring electronic funds illegally, electronic money laundering, ATM fraud, and even spam.

Fucking spammers!

Another type of cyber crime is a Denial of Service Attack.

A DoS is an attack used to deny legitimate users access to a resource such as accessing a website, network, emails, etc. or making it extremely slow.

This type of attack is usually implemented by hitting the target resource such as a web server with too many requests at the same time.

Anonymous LOVES this type of attack and has used it very effectively. It’ll come up a lot in our Anonymous timeline.

A DDoS attack results in the server failing to respond to all the requests. Ideally, this attack crashes the servers.

There are two types of DoS attacks—a basic DoS, which is performed by a single host—and a distributed DoS, also called a DDoS—which is performed by a number of compromised machines that all target the same victim.

Much more effective. Power in numbers here. A DDoS floods the network with oh so many data packets. Way too many. It jams the network, slowing it down or - ideally for the hacker - crashing the server. There’s so only much bandwidth! Only so much information servers can handle.

A DDoS fucks things up pretty nicely.

But usually not for long.

Most of these attacks don’t seem to say, shut a server and a major corporate website down, for more than an hour or two, as opposed to - please LISTEN HACKERS - maybe replacing the homepage with a GIF of some super aggressive deep-fake porn making it appear that the CEO is having a REAL good time with the CFO and the COO and then changing all the admin passwords to lock out anyone trying to erase that GIF.

And then maybe do the same thing a few hours later after they get their system back online, and then do it again, and again, and again.

Just tossing that out a fun idea, hackers!

BUT PLEASE DON’T DO THAT TO ANY OF MY WEBSITES.

Actually… maybe do.

First off, it would be pretty funny to see what kind of deep fake porn you could come up with - some combination of me, Lynze, maybe Joe, maybe Zaq, Logan, Liz, Sophie, the mannequins in the office, the doodles Penny and Ginger - who knows? Might get us some great free press as we get to both laugh AND play the victim.

https://www.imperva.com/learn/ddos/high-orbit-ion-cannon/

Anyway - back to the five types of hackers.

4. Grey Hat: Not everyone fits in neatly to either the White Hats or the Black Hats - good and bad, so there are the morally ambiguous “grey hats.”

These are the hackers break into computer systems withOUT authority with a view to identify weaknesses and reveal them to the system owner …OR, depending on what they find, maybe… steal… or break things.

I feel like I might be a Grey Hat if I was a hacker.

5.Script Kiddies:

Then there are what are called “script kiddies.”

Script kiddies are like… assistant hackers. Junior hackers? Slacker Hackers maybe? Hacker Lackeys? I like that one best.

They like to create a little havoc online, BUT, actually learning the coding skills required to hack gets too much in the way of some Fortnite or Call of Duty— so, as part of a larger script kiddie army - they work with software that a more skilled coder/hacker created for them to use.

6.Hacktivist: Finally, there’s the hacktivists.

This is the class that Anonymous and its splinter groups fall under…. or, at least they consider themselves to be hacktivists.

Hacktivism is the act of using legal or illegal digital tools in pursuit of political ends, free speech, and social messages.

Hacktivists are usually motivated by human rights issues, or claim to be, and often hijack websites to display a message about their cause.

B. Hacking Basics:

Now that we’ve gone over hack types, let’s say you would like to become a hacker—hopefully an ethical one. Or at least a grey hat.

As a hacker, you will need to develop skills that will help you get the job done.

First a hacker needs a knowledge of how computers talk to one another and relate information to a network system - also known as programming language.

Different platforms have different programming languages. As an example, Visual Basic Classic - 3, 4, 5, and 6.0, and then the successor to visual basic, Visual Basic dot net, are used to write applications that run on Windows operating system. The most recent version on the dot net framework is Visual Basic 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_.NET#2019_(VB_16.0)

It would, therefore, be illogical for you to learn how to program in Visual Basic when the program you’re trying to hack runs on JavaScript. https://www.guru99.com/skills-required-become-ethical-hacker.html

Once you know your way around how to program - some good “social engineering” skills can really help you hack. Social engineering is really just a nice way of saying “Being manipulative.”

How can you manipulate the user of a computing system into revealing confidential information that can be used to gain unauthorized access to said computer system?

How good are you at tricking people into revealing passwords or downloading hacking code that will allow you access to whatever system you want to exploit?

How good are you at getting someone to click the right link in an email that will start downloading some bullshit that’s gonna fuck their life up?

An example of a little bit more involved bit of social engineering could be to look into a company directory and pick out an employee that has the access you desire and then just straight up stalk them. Find them on social media. Find out where the live. Spy on them and learn their routine and then maybe sneak an infected flash drive into their laptop when they go to the bathroom that downloads some type of trojan horse, worm, or virus onto their computer.

A Trojan horse is a program that allows the attack to control the user’s computer from a remote location. The program is usually disguised as something that is useful to the user.

Once the user has installed the program, it has the ability to install malicious payloads, create backdoors, install other unwanted applications that can be used to compromise the user’s computer, and so on.

A worm is a malicious computer program that replicates itself usually over a computer network. An attacker may use a worm to install backdoor entries on victim’s computers to send spam emails, perform distributed denial of service attacks or create opportunities for other malware to exploit.

Finally, there are viruses.

I’m sure you’ve heard of them.

A virus is a computer program that attaches itself to legitimate programs and files without the user’s consent. Viruses can consume computer resources such as memory and CPU time. The attacked programs and files are said to be “infected”.

A computer virus may be used to access private data, display annoying messages to the user, corrupt data and even track the user’s keystrokes.

Obviously, all of this is super illegal.

https://www.guru99.com/learn-everything-about-trojans-viruses-and- worms.html https://www.guru99.com/what-is-hacking-an-introduction.html

C. Laws and Enforcement:

And who are the folks looking to find and arrest these cyber-crooks?

Initially, long before his career in reality television, the world’s most successful cyber cop was Dog the Bounty Hunter.

Dog - real name Duane Chapman - went to MIT for two years before dropping out in 1973 and moving to the Silicon Valley and becoming one of those Phreakers. He and Apple co-founder Steven Wozniak were briefly roommates, sharing the same Cupertino apartment for about a month.

Duane then went to work for Radio Shack shortly after the company was founded as a purchaser. While living in Columbus and opening up some Ohio stores in the early 80s, he got real, real into hacking and is rumored to have broken into Wells Fargo’s primary servers where some sources say he then moved over a hundred million dollars into several offshore accounts in the Cayman islands.

And he was about to retransfer the funds to Switzerland when the CIA caught him and made him a deal - return the money and come work for them or spend the rest of your life in prison.

AND - grow out your hair and bleach it. AND - mostly wear leather vests with no shirt underneath. AND - start wearing Oakley sunglasses all the time. Even indoors. ESPECIALLY INDOORS.

AND change your name to dog and start saying shit like “Dog is Gold spelled backwards” and “Born on a mountain, raised in a cave, arresting fugitives is all I crave.”

Does anyone still believe that Dog the Bounty Hunter had anything to do with hackers? Or once went to MIT?

God I hope someone had to hit pause after I said Dog the Bounty Hunter once cyber attacked Wells Fargo and stole over a hundred million dollars and is telling everyone they know that.

No - the FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating cyber attacks and intrusions followed closely by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Under the DHS, the Secret Service has a Cyber Intelligence Section that works to target financial cyber crimes.

https://www.secretservice.gov/investigation https://www.cisa.gov/combating-cyber-crime

The DHS created the Enhanced Cybersecurity Services, ECS, to protect public and private sectors in the United States.

The Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency approves private partners that provide intrusion detection and prevention services through the ECS.

States have their own cybercrime units as do many cities. And none of them employ the computer programming savant that is Dog the Bounty Hunter.

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber https://www.floridatechonline.com/blog/information-technology/the- importance-of-understanding-encryption-in-cybersecurity/

Speaking of Dog- let’s talk about some criminals.

Two of the most criminally successful hackers ever.

D.Biggest Criminal Hackers:

On January 8th, 2013, the Algerian hacker Hamza Bendelladj aka BX1 was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the US after a five year international manhunt.

Dude had was on both the FBI and Interpol’s ten most wanted list.

He was only twenty-four years old when arrested, and because of a big grin he flashed when press took a picture of him shortly after his arrest, he was dubbed the “Smiling Hacker.”

Hamza speaks five languages and used his linguistic skills in conjunction with his hacking skills to fuck with people all over the world.

He’s the co-creator of some nasty malware called SpyEYE, and his malware infected over sixty million computers world wide. And once a computer was infected, he and his Russian malware co-creator, the Aleksandr Panin aka the hacker “Gribodemon,” could and did steal banking information that they would then use to drain someone’s account with.

On April 20, 2016, Hamza was sentenced to 15 years in prison and 3 years of probation. His accomplice, Aleksandr, arrested at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in the summer of 2013, was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison.

The US Department of Justice, at their trials, estimated that these two, using their SpyEye malware, had stolen approximately… a BILLION dollars.

Hamza is also rumored to have hacked into the Israeli government’s official website and stolen valuable information he then gave to the Palestinian government.

AND he’s rumored to have give 280 million dollars he stole to Palestinian non-profits.

No traditional in-person bank robber has ever stolen anywhere NEAR that amount of money. https://www.appknox.com/blog/is-donating-to-charity-a-good- excuse-to-hack https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/9/21/hamza-bendelladj-is-the- algerian-hacker-a-hero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamza_Bendelladj

And then there is the Carbanak cyber gang.

This shit is even more ridiculous.

From 2013 to 2018, using a series of malware attacks called Anunak and Carbanak, and then using some modified Cobalt Strike software- turned-into-malware, this gang targeted financial transfers and ATM networks to steal “well over a billion dollars.”

Cobalt Strike is actually a legitimate piece of software that's used to simulate cyberattacks - it’s cyber security software - and these fuckers hacked it and modified it to pull off real cyberattacks. https://fortune.com/2018/03/26/carbanak-europol-arrest-spain- malware-banks/

Their leader - a man identified as Ukrainian Dennis Katana, was arrested in Alicante, Spain on March 6th, 2018.

And check out one of the ways this gang would rob.

On the evening of July 10, 2016, in Taipei [ tahy-pey], Taiwan, it was pouring down rain and most people were staying inside.

Not Sergey Berezovsky and Vladimir Berkman.

The two Russians walked up to an ATM at First Commercial Bank, one of Taiwan’s top lenders.

Wearing hats and the kind masks we see everyone wearing now with Covid, two witnesses watched them just stand in front of the machine for a few moments.

And then, as the astonished couple in line behind them later told the police, the ATM just started spitting out cash - so much cash - without either man ever having even touched it.

Can you imagine seeing that?

The two men started shoving all the big bills the machine continued to spit out into a satchel, then they jumped into a waiting black sedan and sped off.

Only reason we know who they are is because one of them fucked up and had a bank card he didn’t even use that night fall out of his pocket and the couple who witnessed all this picked it up. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/the-biggest- digital-heist-in-history-isn-t-over-yet

These guys were just two of 15 “money mules” who hit 41 ATMs at 22 branches of First Commercial over that same stormy weekend, taking 83 million New Taiwan dollars (NT$), or about $2.6 million US.

How did they do it? Carbanak cyber gang Hackers had hacked into the banks ATM network and forced the machines to spit out cash.

And how did they know when to spit that cash out? The gang had ALSO hacked into the ATM security camera feed and were able to watch from remote computers and wait for the right guys to stand in front of the ATMS.

Holy shit.

I know bank robbery is fucked up, BUT - I think this might be the coolest bank robbery I’ve ever read about it. This is like something out of a movie - Hackers on computers who could’ve been back in Spain or anywhere else in the world took over 41 ATMS in Taipei [ tahy-pey], watched through the machines cameras for hired money mules to show up, and then made those machines empty out their cash.

And this wasn’t the first time they’d done this. And it wouldn’t be the last time.

They also redirected huge money transfers from intended accounts to their accounts over and over again. By 2018, they’d hacked into over 100 banks in over 40 nations, including Germany, Russia, the Ukraine, and the US, and stolen more than an estimated 1.2 billion dollars according to Europol.

They stole the identities of countless network administrators and bank executives and plumbed their hard drive files for sensitive information about security and account management practices. The gang operated through remotely accessed computers and hid their tracks in a sea of internet addresses

No word on what’s going on with Dennis Katana.

After his arrest, info on him goes silent. No idea what he’s been charged with or if he’s even still being held. I imagine he can afford some good attorneys. And, since his arrest, Carbanak has pulled off new heists adding to their already over 1.2 billion dollar cash haul.

Is Dennis even the real gang leader?

To quote Mentor again, “You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all …" https://www.wired.co.uk/article/carbanak-gang-malware-arrest- cybercrime-bank-robbery-statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbanak https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/the-biggest- digital-heist-in-history-isn-t-over-yet

Alright.

Now we’ve gone over how hacking evolved, what kinds of hackers there are, how hacking is done, glanced at what a few of the most successful criminal hackers have pulled off - at least theft-wise, and examined Dog the Bounty Hunter’s Roll in all this.…

…Let’s dive into an Anonymous Timeline.….

MIDROLL PAUSE

…after our sponsor break.

PAUSE

Thanks for listening. NOW - let’s hack.

PAUSE

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

III.Timesuck Timeline

1. October 1, 2003: On October 1st, 2003, 4Chan, an anonymous English-language imageboard website comes into existence.

The site was inspired by 2channel - 2ch.net - which now redirectes to 5ch.net , a massive Internet forum, with seemingly random content that was especially popular in Japan.

2channel debuted back in 1999.

Most of the initial various forums on 4chan were based on Japanese pop culture, but their most popular forum quickly became /b/ - a forum designated for “random” content.

And in this sea of “random” content, Anonymous would form…

2.Mid 2000s: In the mid 2000s, Aubrey Cottle was part of a crew of online pranksters who called themselves “trolls” - one of the OG web trolls - and these trolls met up on in 4chan b, and also on a site called Something Awful, a comedy website full of blogs, forums, and lots of dark humor and memes - the kind of content that got our Cult of the Curious private facebook group thrown in facebook prison where it still sits.

I STILL am emailing back and forth with them every week by the way and only getting a new vague email each Monday, that is probably autogenerated, letting me know the Facebook team is still reviewing the Cult of the Curious.

Damn you QAnon! You fucked social media up for everyone.

Anyway, in 2018, Gizmodo ranked Something Awful as 89th on their list of "100 Websites That Shaped the Internet as We Know It". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful

Tens of thousands of users were on these forums and image boards back in the early 2000s—almost all young men— many likely covered in Cheetos and Doritos dust, full of Mountain Dew and worried mom was gonna walk into their rooms and catch them jerking off again - and among these keyboard warriors was an especially die-hard band who hung out in the same chat rooms, feuded online, and then met up in real life.

And THESE dudes started called themselves Anonymous.

The name was derived from the way 4chan presented usernames.

If none was specified, the site displayed “Anonymous” by default.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/hacker- group-anonymous-returns/615058/

3.December 2006 - January 2007: And in 2006, these anonymous tech wizards decided to start attacking people they didn’t like. One of the first Anonymous attacks may have been on Hal Turner in December of 2006.

A deserving target I have to say.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Harold C. "Hal" Turner is a white supremacist true believer who has been using radio and Internet broadcasts to disseminate his hate since the 1990s.

This guys’s a real piece of work.

What Anonymous members didn’t know when they started fucking with him was that he was working as an informant for the FBI, providing information on white supremacist groups for the same government he frequently railed against.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/ hal-turner

And according to Hal, from December 2006 to January 2007, individuals who identified themselves as Anonymous took Turner's website offline, costing him thousands of dollars in bandwidth bills.

As a result, Turner sued 4chan, eBaum's World, 7chan, and other websites for copyright infringement.

And he didn’t win shit. He DID expose Anonymous to the Feds.

Because Hal was secretly working for the Feds, Anonymous was put on the government’s radar and in 2007, an agent from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service - Canada’s CIA - showed up at Aubrey Cottle’s Toronto door. Or rather, at his mom’s door. Cottle was twenty and still living at home.

The agent, according to Cottle, wanted him to raid internet forums for the CSIS.

Anonymous had been conducting a fair amount of raids - flooding online games and chat rooms with their “army” of users to disrupt the space.

When 4chan began cracking down on organizing raids, Anonymous migrated to Cottle’s copycat site, 420chan, which he’d created to discuss his principal interests: drugs and professional wrestling.

Cottle became the de facto leader of Anonymous, a role he relished.

Cottle turned down the CSIS offer. Apparently, they didn’t have enough on him to charge him with anything, they just wanted his hacking help.

4.December 7, 2007: In late 2007, Anonymous set its sights on a new target to harass.

On December 7, 2007, the Canada-based newspaper the Toronto Sun publishes an article on one Chris Forcand.

Forcand, who was fifty-three, was charged with two counts of luring a child under the age of 14, attempt to invite sexual touching, attempted exposure, possessing a dangerous weapon, and carrying a concealed weapon.

Anonymous knew about his illegal activities before the police themselves did.

How?

The creepy diddler had tried to molest one of their young Toronto members.

And they made him pay.

Love it.

The Canadian media group The Global Television Network identified the group responsible for Forcand's arrest as a "self- described Internet vigilante group called Anonymous.”

The article noted that this incident marked the first time that a suspected Internet predator was arrested as a result of Internet vigilantism. https://archive.ph/20121205070551/http://cnews.canoe.ca/ CNEWS/Crime/2007/12/07/4712680-sun.html

By 2008, the infamous Guy Fawkes mask started to show up in relation to Anonymous.

They chose it simply because they loved the movie V for Vendetta.

And it is a GREAT movie. Highly recommend if you haven’t seen it already.

The movie is a 2005 film adaptation of a dystopian-fiction Alan Moore graphic novel.

V, the film’s protagonist, dons the disguise to fight a future fascist police state by firebombing buildings, inverting the story of the original Guy Fawkes, who is vilified in English folklore for attempting to blow up Parliament in 1605.

David Lloyd, the artist who illustrated the graphic novel the movie was based on, once told The New York Times that the mask was “… a great symbol of protest for anyone who sees tyranny."

The Guy Fawkes mask has become a global symbol of dissent.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70807/brief-history-guy- fawkes-mask

5.Late 2000s: Sometime in the late 2000s, grammy winner and platinum record selling member of the Rock and Roll Hall of fame Michael Motherfucking McDonald - Triple M - records a popular ad for Folger’s coffee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzSNs7VLfV0 START AT :30. PLAY the whole thing.

What does that have to do with hacking. NOTHING!!!

It has everything to do with being McDonald’d.

“Folgers in your cup. Whooo Hooooo!!!”

You’re welcome.

Back to Anonymous.

6.2008: In 2008, Anonymous members started wearing those V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks in relation an attack on the Church of Scientology - Project Chanology time.

The era of hacktivism begins!

At its core, Project Chanology was a hacker-based protest against the Church of Scientology led by a bunch of 4-Chan B-Board trolls.

7. January 14, 2008: Things kicked off on January 14, 2008 when a video produced by the Church of Scientology featuring an insane and unintentionally hilarious interview with Tom Cruise was leaked to the Internet and uploaded to YouTube.

Such a good video. I played a bit from it in the Suck I did on Scientology four years ago.

In the video, music from Cruise's Mission: Impossible films play in the background while Cruise makes various wild statements, like saying that Scientologists are the only people who can help after a car accident and that Scientologists are the authority when it comes to how to get addicts off drugs.

Listen to a bit of this nonsense:

youtube.com/watch?v=r899I8dc49k Start at 1:05 - End at 1:20

Ummmm… huh. I would think a paramedic is who you would want to come help you if you got into a car accident. Nope. Call Tom Cruise!

youtube.com/watch?v=r899I8dc49k Start at 4:29 - End at 4:52

An SP is a “suppressive person” - Scientology speak for anyone who doesn’t think following the teachings of Scientology is the one and only true way to live.

I am a VERY suppressive person.

And Anonymous, full of SPs.

The Church of Scientology was not a fan of someone posting this video. They claimed that the footage was taken out of context and manipulated, and then slapped on a copyright violation claim to get YouTube to take the video down.

And Youtube did take it down, and then someone from Anonymous re-uploaded it under a new name.

“You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all …"

The video I just played was uploaded by someone with Anonymous in their channel name.

Anonymous formulated Project Chanology in response to Scientology trying to make this video go away.

A member of Anonymous told the Los Angeles Times that, as of February 4th, 2008, the group consisted of "a loose confederation of about 9,000 people" who posted anonymously on the Internet.

Anonymous members saw the copyright actions by the Church of Scientology as censorship. Given the Church’s long history with combatting poor press, the members started to see themselves as a vanguard against Scientology’s scorched-earth legal moves.

Members of Project Chanology said their main goal was "to enlighten the Church of Scientology (CoS) by any means necessary."

The created a website that stated: "This will be a game of mental warfare. It will require our talkers, not our hackers. It will require our dedicated Anon across the world to do their part.”

Project Chanology's stated goals included the complete removal of the Church of Scientology's presence from the Internet and to "save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing.”

To do this, they organized a series of denial of service attacks against Scientology websites, as well as prank calls and something called “black faxes.”

Black faxes are exactly what they sound like— a faxed full page of black ink. It takes a long time to print, gums everything up, wastes a bunch of ink, etc.

It’s super annoying and fucks up doing bizness.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080705202321/http:// www.thelegality.com/archives/22

8.January 21, 2008: On January 21, 2008, individuals claiming to speak for Anonymous announced their goals and intentions via a video posted to YouTube, titled ”Message to Scientology.”

A subsequent press release declared “war” against the Church of Scientology.

https://www.prlog.org/10046797-internet-group-anonymous- declares-war-on-scientology.pdf

In the press release, the group stated that the attacks against the Church of Scientology would continue in order to protect the right to freedom of speech. They also wanted to draw attention to the financial exploitation of Church members.

A few days later, a new video, titled “Call to Action,” appeared on YouTube on January 28, 2008. The video called for protests outside of various Church of Scientology centers.

9.February 2, 2008:

And people followed the call to action.

On February 2nd, 2008, 150 people gathered outside of a Church of Scientology center in Orlando, Florida, protesting the organization’s practices.

Many protesters wore those Guy Fawkes masks, or otherwise disguised their identities, in part to protect themselves from reprisals from the Church.

Small protests were also held in Santa Barbara, California, and Manchester, England.

10.February 10, 2008: Then, on February 10th, 2008, about 7,000 people protested Scientology in more than 93 cities worldwide.

11.March 15, 2008: Anonymous held another wave of protests against Scientology on March 15, 2008 in cities all over the world.

People gathered in Boston, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Vancouver, Toronto, Berlin, Dublin, and many more cities.

The global turnout was estimated to be "between 7000 and 8000” people.

The Church of Scientology is under attack.

12.March 28, 2008: And on March 28th, 2008, they may have fought back.

That date, JavaScript code was maliciously injected into the Epilepsy Foundation of America’s web forums, to generate animations that could trigger epileptic seizures.

Wee bit fucked up thing to do.

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffered from pattern- sensitive epilepsy, clicked on a forum post with a legitimate- sounding title and then her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors… and she had a seizure.

And Anonymous was blamed for the attack.

Members of the epilepsy forum claimed they had found a thread in which the attack was being planned at 4chan.org.

But the 4chan administrators believed the attack was done by the Church of Scientology, making it look like it was done by Anonymous to harm their reputation.

It’s a cyber war, baybeeeee!!!!

https://www.wired.com/2008/03/hackers-assault-epilepsy- patients-via-computer/ https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/a-history-of- anonymous/

13.April 12, 2008: A third wave of protests against Scientology takes place on April 12th, 2008.

Named "Operation Reconnect,” it aimed to increase awareness of the Church of Scientology's disconnection policy.

The policy basically amounts to the Church pressuring people to discontinue their associations with anyone in their lives that could potentially become hostile to Scientology - people labeled as SPs!

Damn Suppressive Persons.

Going forward in the timeline now, I will not list out every single cyber attack credited to Anonymous to keep the timeline from being incredibly boring and repetitive.

Also - because of the nature of a hacking group like this, it’s almost impossible which attacks are in fact carried about “Anonymous” and which are carried out by other hackers claiming to be “Anonymous.”

There is still debate over how organized or unorganized this group is and has been.

Has it been primarily one group of hackers coordinating attacks? Or has it been a revolving door of random hackers hiding behind the Anonymous banner?

We’ll never know for sure.

14. September 16, 2008: Anonymous gets more press in September of 2008.

Shortly after midnight on September 16th, the private Yahoo Mail account of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is hacked by a 4- Chan user.

At this time, Palin was the running mate for John McCain in his 2008 presidential bid. McCain had announced that he’d chosen Palin on August 29th, in Dayton, Ohio, making her the first Alaskan and the second woman to run on a major US party ticket.

The hacker, known as Rubico, claimed he had read Palin's personal emails because he was looking for something that "would derail her campaign.”

But he didn’t find much. Rubico reported that all he found was some personal stuff and some clerical stuff from when she was governor.

Rubico claimed he used the Sarah Palin Wikipedia article to find Palin's birth date - one of the standard security questions used by Yahoo.

And a minute later he’d taken over her account. And then he posted the account's password on 4-Chan’s B-Board. Rubico also posted screenshots from the account to WikiLeaks.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533108/update-- hackers-claim-to-break-into-palin-s-yahoo-mail-account.html https://www.latimes.com/california

15. January 2009: In January 2009, hackers claiming to be Anonymous found another interesting target— a California teenager named McKay Hatch who ran a website against profanity called the No Cussing Club.

Hatch's home address, phone number, and other personal information were spread across the Internet.

Over the following years, his family received hate mail, obscene phone calls, and frequent deliveries— mostly of pizza and pornography.

This poor kid.

I’d love to think otherwise, but had I had the talent to hack and been a teenager in 2009, I would’ve ABSOLUTELY used my skills to do shit like send porn to another teen who started a club called the No Cussing Club.

I wonder if he ever finally cussed when more and more porn and pizza kept showing up at this door.

DOORBELL BUTTON

(Pizza guy) Pizza delivery!

(McKay) Oh Gosh Dang! Fifth time today. Oh my HECK! What is it now??

(Pizza guy) Hi McKay. Got three extra large meat lovers. That’ll be $35 bucks.

(McKay) Flipping Heck, Peter! You know golly darn well I didn’t order these. Heaven’s to Betsy! ….Oh no…. what are these magazines laying in front of the door???

(Pizza guy) Uh, looks like copies of Swank… Barely Legal, Club Seventeen, Asian Babes, Juggs.”

(McKay) What the FLIP! These naughty bit picture books aren’t mine. You know that! Please get off my porch, Peter. And take these harlot self pleasure mags with you! Burn them before Satan uses them to steal your heart and soul.

(Pizza guy) Uh.. alright, McKay, sure see you tommorow.

And then twenty minutes later.

DOORBELL BUTTON

(Pizza guy) Pizza delivery!

(McKay) Ah, Corn Nuts!! Fifth time today. NOW what is it??

(Pizza guy) Hi McKay.

(McKay) Hi Rodrigo.

(Pizza guy) I got three medium Hawaiians, four extra large cheese stuffed crusts, seventeen orders of breadsticks, and a dozen liters of Dr. Pepper. It’s gonna be 185 dollars.

(McKay) “Ah Fudge me in the face, Peter. You know these aren’t mine. Gee Wiz I’m flippin’ peeved!

OH NO!!!! Why are there more dirty bits magazines out here? What even are these?”

(Pizza guy) “Uh… these look like copies of Asian Fever, Black Inches, Big Titties and Small Holes, Bound and Gagged, Man Shots, Cum Slappers, and Dirty Britches and Naughty Bitches.”

(McKay) Goddamn it, Peter! I am losing my mother fucking mind with all this porn and pizza! Fuck Anonymous. Fuck ‘em in their tight little shaved assholes!….. OH NO! FORGIVE ME GOSH! Sorry, Rodrigo….. I don’t know what came over me… criss cross spaghetti sauce… it’s been a real rough few weeks.”

If you’re worried about the real McKayHatch, he seems fine. Based on his IG account, McKay is doing alright and still not cussing.

He just posted a pic of himself the other day wearing a hoodie that has “Shut the front door” printed on the front.

Anonymous doesn’t seem to have completely broken him.

16. June 2009: Things got more serious and international for Anonymous hacktivists in the summer of 2009. Anonymous turns away from cyber bullying and turns to trying to protect free speech and democracy.

The results of the June 2009 Iranian presidential election had declared incumbent President Mahmoud [mah mood] Ahmadinejad [ah muh deen uh jod] the winner, but allegations that the election had been rigged quickly followed.

Thousands of Iranians protested.

And the Iranian government responded by blocking opposition websites and other media, as well as disrupting mobile-phone connections.

Anonymous, working with the bit torrent file-sharing website The Pirate Bay and various Iranian hackers, launched an Iranian Green Movement Support site called Anonymous Iran, which provided users with advice forums to fight government censorship.

They also encouraged Iranian users to use distributed-denial-of- service attacks in order to take down key government websites.

Ultimately, unfortunately, they would not change the outcome of anything though.

At least they tried.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-11971259 https://web.archive.org/web/20100812110619/http:// iran.whyweprotest.net/

17. November 2009: November 2009 would see the first person sent to jail for participating in an Anonymous attack.

His name was Dmitriy Guzner, an American 19-year-old.

Guzner was arrested after a YouTube video of a real-life protest that mentioned his Internet handle "Aendy" caught the attention of federal authorities.

The FBI and the U.S. Secret Service worked together to identify Aendy as Guzner. They searched his home in Brooklyn and turned up a Guy Fawkes mask.

He pleaded guilty to "unauthorized impairment of a protected computer" in November of 2009 and was sentenced to 366 days in US federal prison.

Cyber-attacking Scientology was what got him in trouble.

Fuuuuuck.

TOM CRUISE LAUGH BUTTON

https://www.nj.com/news/2009/11/ verona_man_admits_hacking_chur.html

18. February 10, 2010: On February 10th, 2010, Anonymous launches Operation Titstorm.

Hail Lucifina!

Such a great name. Sounds like something DJ Iceberg would say to promote hosting a live wet t-shirt contest.

DJ ICEBERG BUTTON

(Cheesy DJ Voice) “Hey there, rock listeners. Join me, DJ Iceberg, down at the Three Amigos Bar and Grille on the corner of East Sprague and Helena this Friday Night at 9PM for Operation Tit Stormmmmm!!!!

BLOWOUT SALE BUTTON

It’s a wet t-shirt contest and I’ll be the judge. Motorboat bribes accepted AND appreciated!!

BLOWOUT SALE BUTTON

The winner gets a Three Amigos $100 gift certificate and two tickets to the Lucky Jack’s Casino next Saturday night to STRYPER!!!!

STRYPER BUTTON

Fuck yeah, bro!

Operation Titstorm was actually a cyber attack on the Australian Government.

The Australian government had decided to crack down on pornography— specifically pornography featuring women with small breasts and female ejaculation.

Their rationale was that porn featuring these images were more likely to feature underage actors.

Anonymous saw the crack down as freedom-attacking censorship.

At 8AM on February 10, 2010, Operation Titstorm was launched.

Anonymous hackers used denial-of-service attacks on various Australian government websites.

Australian anti-censorship groups then complained that the attack only hurt their cause.

Australian government members dismissed the attack and said that they would just restore the service when the attack finished.

And they did.

The attack didn’t do much but worth mentioning because, you know, it was called Operation Tit-storm.

https://www.theregister.com/2010/02/11/ oz_anti_censorship_ddos_latest/

19. September 2010: Operation Payback is a Bitch commences in September of 2010.

It started when the MPAA - Motion Picture Association of America, and the RIAA -Recording Industry Association of America, hired the Indian software firm AIPLEX to launch DDoS attacks on The Pirate Bay and other websites related to file sharing.

In retaliation, Anonymous posted the following:

“Operation:Payback is a bitch.

DATE September 19, 2010

To whom it may concern,

This is to inform you that we, Anonymous, are organizing an Operation called “Payback is a bitch”. Anonymous will be attacking the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America), and their hired gun AIPLEX for attacks against the popular torrent and file sharing site, the Piratebay (www.thepiratebay.org).

We will prevent users to access said enemy sites and we will keep them down for as long as we can. But why, you ask? Anonymous is tired of corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people’s rights to spread information, but more importantly, the right to SHARE with one another.The RIAA and the MPAA feign to aid the artists and their cause; yet they do no such thing. In their eyes is not hope, only dollar signs. Anonymous will not stand this any longer.

We wish you the best of luck.

Sincerely,

Anonymous,

We are legion.”

Anonymous executed DDoS attacks on the MPAA, the RIAA and AIPLEX.

Oh boy. You can really see the age of these hackers come through based on a lot of their target choices.

Try and take away their online porn - they come for you! Try and take away movies and music they want to download illegally and not pay for - they come for you!

Not exactly looking like serious revolutionaries with many of these attacks.

https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/mediacenter/news/4chan- users-organize-ddos-against-mpaa/?ref=mc_bloglabs_en

20.December 2010: In December of 2010, Anonymous gets a little more serious again and goes after Mastercard, Visa Paypal, the Bank of America and Amazon.

That December, the document super-archive WikiLeaks would come under fire.

WikiLeaks was ordered to stop publishing US military secrets. And when they didn’t, Mastercard, Visa Paypal, the Bank of America and Amazon blocked all charitable donations to their site.

In response, Anonymous announced its support for WikiLeaks.

And then Anonymous launched DDoS attacks against Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and also the Swiss bank PostFinance.

Due to the attacks, both MasterCard and Visa's websites were brought down on December 8th.

Anonymous also launched Operation Avenge Assange, an attack that brought down his Swedish prosecutor's website.

This was done in response to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest in London.

https://web.archive.org/web/20101213031528/https://uloadr.com/ u/4.png https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/europe/06wiki.html? hp

21.December 17, 2010: On December 17th, 2010, the Tunisian Revolution—also known as the Jasmine Revolution—begins in Tunisia.

This would be a big moment for hacktivism and the world.

Demonstrations started because of high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of political freedoms, and poor living conditions.

An intensive 28-day campaign of civil resistance included a series of street demonstrations that led to the ousting of longtime president Zine [zeen] El Abidine [ab uh deen] Ben Ali.

Following these demonstrations, Tunisia would have free elections.

The protests inspired similar actions throughout the Arab world, in a chain reaction which became known as the Arab Spring movement.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/27/tunisian-prime- minister-ghannouchi-resigns

Anonymous would play an important roll in the regime change to come.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12110892 22. January 2, 2011: Starting on January 2nd, websites for the Tunisian Stock Exchange and the Tunisian Ministry of Industry were brought down by more Anonymous DDoS attacks.

The Tunisian government had tried to restrict the Internet access of its citizens - and Anonymous was not having it.

By the 6th, Tunisia had arrested a variety of bloggers and cyber activists who had been critical of its government.

Protests followed and culminated in the fleeing of President Ben Ali on January 14, 2011, ending the Tunisian Revolution.

VICTORY! And Anonymous really helped. This was huge.

Ali would be sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment and would die in exile in 2019.

23. January 26, 2011: On January 26th, 2011, the Egyptian government became Anonymous’s next target.

Efforts started with the intention of removing Egyptian President Hosni [hos nee] Mubarak [moo bar eck] from power.

When the government blocked their citizens from accessing Twitter, Anonymous brought down Egyptian government websites with DDoS attacks.

And the sites remained offline until President Hosni [hos nee] Mubarak [moo bar eck] stepped down.

He would do so on February 11th.

ANOTHER VICTORY that Anonymous had a big hand in.

During the protests that led to his resignation, Anonymous provided protesters with documents required to take down the incumbent government as well as distributing digital care packages, among other things, including Tor—used for access to the Dark Web, and a grease monkey script to avoid proxy interception by the government.

They also aided in passing information about the protests in and out of the country.

The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia were the first in what would become the Arab Spring.

In response to oppressive regimes and a low standard of living, revolutions spread to five after Tunisia: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain.

In support of the Arab Spring protests, Anonymous also released the names and passwords of the email addresses of Middle Eastern governmental officials.

Countries targeted included officials from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.

Big WINS for Anonymous hacktivism here. They weren’t just fucking around with teens who didn’t like profanity. They were helping topple autocratic regimes.

NOW, they’re looking like true revolutionaries.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/world/middleeast/ 03hackers.html?_r=1 https://www.aljazeera.net/blogs/liveblog/yemen-libya- jun-5-2011-2247 https://web.archive.org/web/20110607035539/http:// pastebin.com/n98jDJMq

24. 2011: In 2011, hacking groups like Anonymous are big news. They seem invincible.

Hacking proliferates.

Members of Anonymous went on to form off-shoot groups— like the infamous LulzSec.

LulzSec would become notorious for successfully breaking into a number of corporations and police servers, disabling government security sites, stealing sensitive information such as credit card details, and defacing commercial websites.

25. February 5-6, 2011: On the weekend of February 5th, 2011, Anonymous flexes its power yet again.

Aaron Barr, the chief executive of the IT security firm HBGary Federal, announces that his firm had successfully infiltrated Anonymous and was taking them down.

He said he would reveal his findings at a later conference in San Francisco.

He done did poked the bear! Ahhhh shit! He done did poked the wrong fucking bear. A whole legion of bears wearing Guy Fawkes masks.

And they would tear him to shreds.

In retaliation for Barr's claims, Anonymous hacked the website of HBGary Federal and replaces the welcome page with a message stating that Anonymous should not be fucked with.

Damn.

Then Anonymous also took control of the company's e-mail, dumping 68,000 emails from the system, erasing files, and even took down their phone system.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/anonymous-speaks- the-inside-story-of-the-hbgary-hack/

The documents they leaked revealed sensitive information.

Among the documents was a PowerPoint presentation entitled "The Wikileaks Threat.” HGBarry was trying to figure out how to attack WikiLeaks.

Their plans included cyberattacks, disinformation, and getting journalists to deny their support for WikiLeaks.

Anonymous was pissed. They LOVED WikiLeaks.

Anonymous then personally attacked Aaron Barr by taking control of his Twitter account and posting his home address and social security number.

Anonymous also clogged up HBGary Federal’s fax machines for weeks. And they made a series of harassing and threatening phone calls.

To make it all end, Aaron Barr resigned on February 28th.

He didn’t take down Anonymous. Anonymous took him down instead.

Back in 2011, Anonymous was at the height of the their power. They were certainly not to be fucked with.

https://www.npr.org/2011/02/16/133811429/e-mails-hacked-by- anonymous-raise-concerns

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/how-one-security- firm-tracked-anonymousand-paid-a-heavy-price/

https://web.archive.org/web/20110211192508/http:// crowdleaks.org/anonymous-retaliates-against-hbgary-espionage/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/28/hbgary- federals-aaron-barr-resigns-after-anonymous-hack-scandal/? sh=7c1b43187591

26. April 20, 2011: Anonymous announced their intent to attack Sony websites on April 20th, 2011, in response to Sony's lawsuit against George Holtz.

Holtz was a hacker, hiphop artist and software engineer. Sony’s PlayStation Network banned user GeoHot - who was Holtz - for jailbreaking and modifying his PS3 console. GeoHot attracted Sony’s attention by posting information about how to mod PS3s to the Internet.

Sony fired back with a libel lawsuit.

Sony had gained access to the IP addresses of all of the people who visited George Holtz’s blog. Anonymous didn’t like this— said it was in violation of free speech and internet freedom.

Throughout April, the PlayStation Network and various Sony websites were brought down via organized DDoS attacks. It took a number of weeks until the PlayStation Network was operating normally.

https://venturebeat.com/2011/04/22/as-playstation-network- outage-continues-hackers-deny-involvement/

27. June 12, 2011: On June 12th, 2011, there was a DDoS attack on the website of the Spanish Police, starting at 21:30 GMT.

Anonymous claimed responsibility the following day, stating that the attack was a "direct response to the Friday arrests of three individuals alleged to be associated with acts of cyber civil disobedience attributed to Anonymous."

The site was down for approximately an hour as a result of their efforts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13749181 https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/hackers-join-ramdevs- campaign-457960

28. June 15, 2011: On June 15, 2011, Operation Malaysia began as the group launched attacks on ninety-one websites of the Malaysian government.

This was in response to the Malaysian government’s censorship of websites like WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay within the country.

Fighting the old censorship fight. AND also advocating for the illegal downloading of copy written music and movies.

Anonymous continues to vacillate back and forth between being revolutionaries and being angsty teens who just don’t want to pay for shit.

https://www.pcmag.com/archive/hackers-target-malaysian- government-sites-265766

29. August 2011: In early August, Anonymous hacked the Syrian Defense Ministry website and replaces it with a vector image of the pre-Ba’athist [baa ath-ist] flag, a symbol of the pro-democracy movement in the country.

They also put up a message supporting the 2011 Syrian uprising and calling on members of the Syrian Army to defect and protect the protesters.

Again, no change came from this. But they tried to help. Gotta give them some points there.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/08/08/139094501/ syria-is-hacked-by-anonymous-and-pressed-by-gulf-allies

The same month, the Bay Area Rapid Transit in San Francisco shuts down cell service in an attempt to disconnect protestors demonstrating against the recent shooting of two men by BART police, and prevent them from assembling.

Anonymous would intervene.

Anonymous sends out a mass email/fax bomb to BART personnel and organized multiple mass physical protests at the network's Civic Center station.

Anonymous also hacked the BART website, releasing the personal information of 102 BART police officers, as well as account information for about 2,000 customers.

https://www.pcmag.com/archive/anonymous-bart-protest-shuts- down-several-underground-stations-286377

ALSO in August 2011, in an event dubbed "Shooting Sheriffs Saturday”—Anonymous hacks into 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites and releases 10 GB of leaked information in response to other police shootings.

The name is likely a reference to the song "I Shot the Sheriff" by Bob Marley.

https://www.cnet.com/news/antisec-hackers-post-stolen-police- data-as-revenge-for-arrests/

30. August 16, 2011:

On August 16, 2011, Anonymous launches Operation Pharisee.

This time the target was the Vatican and the pope’s official websites. The goal? To protest sexual abuse at the hands’ of priests and the Catholic Church’s abuse coverups.

Nice name since Pharisee can mean a self-righteous hypocrite.

The attack lined up with the Catholic Church’s World Youth Day event, which was held that year starting on August 16th in Madrid, Spain.

But Anonymous would not be successful.

The Vatican had hired a cyber security company called Imperva to protect their networks.

Despite a barrage of 34 times the normal traffic from Anonymous’s denial-of-service attacks, Imperva managed to keep Anonymous from doing any damage.

And who ran Imperva at that time? Dog the fucking Bounty Hunter!

No. He was busy tackling meth abusers in Hawaii for A&E.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/technology/attack-on- vatican-web-site-offers-view-of-hacker-groups-tactics.html

31. August 23, 2011: On August 23rd, 2011, Anonymous expresses support of the Occupy Wall Street movement with a video post on YouTube.

From September 17th on, Anonymous and Anonymous supporters cover the movement on Anonymous related blogs. Protesters in person were often seen wearing the Guy Fawkes mask.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110708023423/http:// anonops.blogspot.com/

32. October 2011: In October 2011, Anonymous campaigns against child pornography.

Their specific target was users of child pornography protected by anonymous hosting techniques.

It was called Operation DarkNet.

They temporarily took down 40 child porn sites, and published the usernames of over 1500 people frequenting one such website.

“If the FBI, Interpol, or other law enforcement agency should happen to come across this list, please use it to investigate and bring justice to the people listed here,” the group said.

Fucking LOVE IT.

Like a lot of people, these Hackers are all about protecting individual liberties until you start diddling kids or consuming content based on kid-diddling. Then - fuck your liberties.

Too bad Anonymous couldn’t take down Jeffrey Epstein.

https://www.ibtimes.com/anonymous-back-action-targets-child- porn-web-sites-releases-user-names-325728

After a few more cyber battles, Anonymous wrapped up 2011 and then kicked off 2012 with a bang.

33. January 2012: In January, Anonymous hacked the website of the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association to protest police brutality

Anonymous released the names, addresses and phone numbers of members of the California Association. They also posted credit card information taken from the association's online gift store.

They called it “pr0j3ct m4hy3m.”

And they posted the following as their reasoning: "California police have a notorious history of brutality and therefore have been on our hit list for a good minute now,"

The CSLEA would call them terrorists for their actions.

Not a big fan of this hack.

They didn’t do any research to find cops with multiple complaints of brutality. They just unleashed ALL the names they found.

They just threw, odds are, a LOT more good cops than bad cops under the same bus.

And I know many of you disagree with my law enforcement stance in instances like this, so… I’ll move on for the moment.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140102191620/http:// www.news10.net/news/california/article/170789/430/Anonymous- hacks-California-Statewide-Law-Enforcement-Asso

34. January 19, 2012: On January 19th, 2012, Operation MegaUpLoad begins.

This time, Anonymous is protesting Hong Kong’s closure of the file sharing service Megaupload after Hong Kong authorities arrested four workers.

Anonymous D-DoSed the websites of UMG, a company that was suing Mega upload.

They also crashed the websites belonging to the United States Department of Justice, the United States Copyright Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the MPAA, Warner Brothers Music, the RIAA, and the French HADOPI—which is an acronym for a French government organization that I’m not even going to try to pronounce today.

The US House of Representatives had also just recently passed the Stop Online Piracy Act and Anonymous was pissed.

Also, the US Senate was working on the Protect Intellectual Property Act.

How DARE the US government protect the intellectual products of people, well… like me.

Not at all behind Anonymous’s continued stance on piracy. Just buy your movies, music, and comedy albums you assholes. And that’s coming from a former chronic shoplifter.

Online theft and in person theft - no different.

35. January 21, 2012: On January 21st, 2012, a series of DDoS attacks on Polish government websites takes place.

Anonymous was furious that members of the Polish government wanted to start meeting indoors, no longer live in caves in the forest and under bridges, and learn how to read, write, and use computers.

JK!

Gosh Dang.

No, via their Twitter account, Anonymous stated that the attacks had been revenge for the upcoming signing of the Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement by the Polish government.

Once again, they were attacking legislation aimed at protecting intellectual property.

http://archiwum.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/83910

They targeted the Polish Prime Minister, President, and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, shutting down numerous websites.

Anonymous went after the police’s websites, the Internal Security Agency, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the websites of a number of Polish political parties.

The ensuing media coverage brought Anonymous a lot of attention. The attention increased when Anonymous blacked out popular Polish websites on the 24th.

The attacks did lead to Poland abandoning the legislation, although it was passed in numerous other nations.

https://news.am/eng/news/90443.html

36. February 6, 2012: On February 6th, 2012, Anonymous breaks into the mail server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs, gaining access to some 78 inboxes of Bashar al-Assad's staffers.

Embarrassingly, one of the passwords commonly used by Assad's office accounts was “12345."

Noice.

A few months later, in July 2012, Anonymous would give over 2.4 million Syrian government e-mails to WikiLeaks.

https://www.haaretz.com/1.5182336 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/ anonymous-takes-credit-for-syrian-emails-hack/

37. February 10, 2012: Four days later, Anonymous would face off against the CIA.

On February 10, 2012, Anonymous claimed responsibility for taking down the Central Intelligence Agency's website for more than 5 hours.

It doesn’t seem they were able to steal any documents, just able to crash their site with one of those DDOS attacks they love.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/6/fbi-irish- misstep-led-to-conference-call-leak/ https://www.pcmag.com/archive/anonymous-takes-down-cia- web-site-294043

38. February 28, 2012:

Two weeks later some hackers reported to be members of Anonymous are arrested.

Anonymous now had poked the wrong bear. Not likely to embarrass the CIA and get away with it.

On February 28th, Interpol announces they arrested 25 suspected members of the hacking activist group Anonymous in Europe and South America. And within hours, Anonymous struck back shutting down Interpol’s website for a moment.

Again though - no documents were stolen, no damages was caused. Not much of a victory. Just another flex.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/feb/29/interpol- website-cyber-attack?newsfeed=true

39. March 7, 2012: On March 7th, 2012 Anonymous once again turned their eyes towards the Vatican’s main website and launched another one of their DDoS attacks.

The website was back up later that day, but Anonymous would be back after the church in no time.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2012/03/07/ anonymous_hackers_claim_to_bring_down_vatican_website_site_i naccessible_for_hours.html

40. March 12, 2012: Five days later, on March 12, 2012, they struck the Vatican site again.

It was brought down for a few hours by a second DDoS attack.

Anonymous also hacked into Vatican Radio, gaining access to the Vatican Radio database.

What did all this accomplish though? Did they expose any pedophile priests?

Sadly, no. The majority of their cyber attacks don’t seem to do any lasting damage. They just irritate whoever their target is.

A for effort on this one though.

https://archive.ph/20130114073318/http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/ security-bulletin-10000166/vatican-confirms-second-anonymous- hack-10025615/?tag=mncol;txt

41. March 22, 2012: Ten days later, on March 22nd, Anonymous launches a more serious attack.

This time, the target was the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts.

The Judge Rotenberg Center is a day and residential school for people with developmental disabilities, emotional disorders, and behaviors associated with autism spectrum disorder.

So why would Anonymous go after them?

A video was leaked of a boy being tortured at the JRC by a staff member. The video was eventually played on CNN.

The school— which still exists today— also legally tortured hundreds of other students. And five patients have died there over the years with many thinking their deaths were due to improper treatment and abuse.

The school was known for its use of the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, a device that administers electric shocks to students through a remote control.

The device was designed by Matthew Israel, the school's founder.

Anonymous made a YouTube video to reveal that the center—and all their affiliates—were now in their sights.

Anonymous then hacked the JRC's website and publicly posted the names and addresses of JRC's sponsors, lobbyists, lawyers and supporters, as well as the founder and principal himself.

They didn’t get the place closed down, BUT, guessing they did get this school to pay a lot more attention to how they were treating patients.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/05/us-bans- electric-shock-treatment-children-boston-area

42. April 2012: In April 2012, Anonymous hacked 485 Chinese government websites to protest the treatment of their citizens.

They urged people to "fight for justice, fight for freedom, [and] fight for democracy.”

https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/5/2927853/anonymous-hack- chinese-government-sites

2012 would also see sites run by India, Quebec, Cyprus, Australia, Myanmar [mee an maar], the Phillippines, Japan, and more all hacked.

43. August 13, 2012: On August 13th, 2012, Anonymous hacked two Uganda government websites to protest the country's strict anti-gay laws.

https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/uganda/

Anonymous posted the following message on Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi’s website:

“Your violations of the rights of LGBT people have disgusted us. ALL people have the right to live in dignity free from the repression of someone else’s political and religious beliefs. You should be PROUD of your LGBT citizens, because they clearly have more balls than you will ever have.

Real Ugandan Pride is demonstrated in standing up to oppression despite fearing the abuse, torture and murder inflicted on LGBT at the hands of the corrupt government.”

Hail Nimrod!

Sadly, homosexuality is still illegal in Uganda. People found guilty of any of the three different charges for homosexuality can be punished with life in prison.

So fucking absurd.

Uganda is backwards as fuck in many ways.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/uganda-government-websites- hacked-anonymous-gay-rights_n_1789623

44. Mid-September 2012: Anonymous would once again return its sights to Hong Kong in the Fall of 2012.

The hacktivists attacked Hong Kong’s National Education Centre in mid-September which had established a Moral and National Education curriculum for children from 6–18 years of age.

The new syllabus came under heavy criticism and international media attention because it was, frankly, a whole bunch of bullshit.

It didn’t grade students based on how much factual information they learned. Instead, students were graded based on their level of emotional attachment to the Communist Party of China.

Many, both in Hong Kong and the international community, accused the curriculum of being nothing more than brainwashing.

Critics thought it was a plot by the Chinese government to indoctrinate the city’s youth into unquestioning support of the CCP. And they thought that, because it was.

Anonymous found this to be in violation of free speech and freedom of expression.

They leaked classified government documents and took down the National Education Centre’s website, revealing all of this in a video posted to YouTube.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/hong-kong-fears-pro-china- brainwashing-in-education-1.1296013

45. December 16, 2012: Anonymous’s final act of a very, very busy 2012 was to repost the names, addresses, and emails of prominent members of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Hail Nimrod!

They did this on December 16th, responding to the WBC’s plans to picket the funerals of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Then Anonymous hacked the church’s website, found church members’ personal social media accounts and started a whitehouse.org petition to get the WBC legally termed a hate group.

Well done Anonymous. Doing some good shit instead of just trying to get free music and movies.

https://www.inquisitr.com/440545/anonymous-hacks-the- westboro-baptist-church-posts-all-their-personal-information/

46. January 13, 2013: On January 13, 2013, the website belonging to the Mexican army that had also been hacked by an Anonymous branch in Mexico in 2012 was penetrated once again.

All the information found on the hacked servers was disclosed— including usernames and passwords.

Once again, Anonymous claimed to be retaliating against an oppressive government who had gotten power illegally.

https://vimeo.com/57356483

47. January 2013: In January 2013, the group attacked and defaced the United States Sentencing Commission website.

In a manifesto left on the defaced page, the group demanded reform to the American justice system and what the activists said are threats to the free flow of information

And then they crashed the website.

All this was done in protest of the suicide of Reddit co-founder and activist Aaron Swartz.

Swartz was accused of stealing materials from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the intent to distribute them freely. https://www.yahoo.com/gma/blogs/abc-blogs/anonymous-hijacks- federal-website-threatens-doj-document-dump-174943824--abc- news-politics.html

Aaron Swartz was an interesting—and very impressive— guy.

It seemed like he was never really a kid. Schwartz was a genius right out of the gate. While kids his age were finishing potty training, he was reading full books.

In 1999, when he was just thirteen years old, he created the website Theinfo.org, a collaborative online library.

He was just fourteen years old when he started working on the team that created RSS feeds.

Just fourteen!

This podcast and every other podcast you listen to makes it from a host server to your device thanks to an rss feed. Each podcast has its unique rss feed.

Thank you, Aaron! Hail Aaron Swartz!

When other RSS feed creators realized one of their colleagues was a fourteen-year-old they were shocked that he’d been such an integral part of the project.

But he was.

He would speak at computer conferences, not as a passing attraction but as a legit inventor who was pressing the technology forward.

Schwartz would have to stand on boxes to reach the podiums. Even standing on a box, his computer still covered his face.

Swartz was one of the early architects of Creative Commons and a developer of the Internet Archives’ Open Library, a free book database and digital library open to the public.

He founded a software company called Infogami, which would later merge with Reddit. Schwartz then became a co-owner of Reddit.

Swartz played a significant role in making government and academic data available to the public.

And he’d suffer for his efforts.

In 2011, Swartz was accused of using an MIT computer system to download numerous academic articles from the online archive JSTOR.

JSTOR charges money for academic papers. I have an account and use JSTOR for Timesuck research.

Swartz didn’t like this info existing behind a paywall. He argued that the people who wrote the papers and did the research rarely saw a penny of the money JSTOR made.

And he decided that all of JSTOR’s information should be free.

And then JSTOR actually decided not to pursue charges against him.

JSTOR even asked the government not to prosecute, but they would anyway.

Schwartz would be made an example of, especially given the recent rise of cybercrime.

And THIS I think is fucked up. If JSTOR had wanted to press charges, well, then you get what yo get. You don’t get to decide whether or not someone else can charge for something they own.

But in a nonviolent theft situation, if the person or entity you’ve taken from, in this case, JSTOR, makes it clear that they do NOT want to press charges, than I think the government should back the fuck off.

If the adult victims don’t feel victimized, why pursue criminal charges?

Schwartz would pay for the sins of other hackers.

He was indicted by federal prosecutors for 13 felony charges.

One of the brightest and most productive minds of our time was now looking down the barrel of several decades in federal prison.

Prosecutors, bent on punishing Schwartz, refused all of the settlement offers that didn’t include jail time. They required Swartz to plead guilty to felony charges.

The case was pending when Swartz died at age twenty-six on January 11th, 2013. His girlfriend would find him in his apartment. His cause of death was suicide by hanging.

In the weeks leading up to his death, it seemed as though he was looking at thirty-five years in prison and around $1 million in fines.

And if he really was going to be given that sentence, how truly fucked up.

Dude released academic information to the public. Why was it even an option for him to get more prison time than many who’ve committed murder? Or rape? Or armed robbery?

It’s absurd.

His family and supporters accused overzealous prosecutors and the excessive charges he faced of driving him to suicide.

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman—Schwartz’s girlfriend at the time— would say:

“I believe that Aaron’s death was caused by a criminal justice system that prioritizes power over mercy, vengeance over justice; a system that punishes innocent people for trying to prove their innocence instead of accepting plea deals that mark them as criminals in perpetuity; a system where incentives and power structures align for prosecutors to destroy the life of an innovator like Aaron in the pursuit of their own ambitions."

https://mashable.com/2013/02/05/aaron-swartz-girlfriend-why-he- died/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-brilliant-life- and-tragic-death-of-aaron-swartz-177191/

Since his death, Swartz’s case has inspired proposed amendments to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

He was also posthumously awarded the American Library Association’s James Madison Award for being an “outspoken advocate for public participation in government and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly articles.”

There is a lot to his story - hard to do it justice here today.

Such strange, sad story in the middle of this interesting tale.

https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/aaron-swartz

Back to the timeline.

48. February 3, 2013:

On February 3rd, 2013, Anonymous hacks the Federal Reserve.

Anonymous posted the login credentials of over 4,600 banking executives to a government website on Super Bowl Sunday.

The page—with URL filename "oops-we-did-it-again"—remained accessible into early the following morning.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/anger-rises-as-fed-confirms- anonymous-hack-downplays-us-bank-emergency-system-breach/

49. April 2, 2013: On April 2nd, 2013, Anonymous would take aim at one of its biggest targets yet.

North Korea.

It launched a new initiative called “Operation Free Korea.”

The group demanded the resignation of North Korea’s psychotic dictator Kim Jong-un, along with the instatement of democracy and free elections.

Pretty lofty demands.

Other demands included the termination of North Korea’s nuclear program and free internet access for North Korea’s citizens.

If these conditions were not met, Anonymous said, they would use their access to the country’s local networks, mail servers, and web servers and wage war.

https://news.yahoo.com/anonymous-threatens-cyberwar-north- korea-steals-15-000-035903339.html

The event didn't amount to much though.

Bummer.

Instead, a picture posted on North Korea's Flickr site showed Kim's face with a pig-like snout and a drawing of Mickey Mouse on his chest.

The text beneath the image read:

“Threatening world peace with ICBMs and Nuclear weapons/ Wasting money while his people starve to death”

Would have been one of the most incredible events of the past several decades if a hacking group took down the North Korean government.

Maybe it’ll happen in the future. Maybe more revolutions will be fought online.

https://thediplomat.com/2013/06/anonymous-we-have-stolen- north-korean-military-documents/

50. June 7, 2013: On June 7, 2013, Anonymous hacked the National Security Agency of the United States.

Yep. They hacked the fucking NSA.

The documents they stole and released were mostly related to PRISM - the code name for a scary surveillance program - and supporting operations, and mostly date from around 2008, not long after PRISM was initiated.

PRISM was essentially a covert collaboration between the NSA, FBI, and many major telephone and computer companies like Verizon, Microsoft, and more.

PRISM allowed the government unprecedented access to your personal information for at least six years—access the government probably still has.

Did Anonymous stop this from happening? No. But they did at least help expose it. A for effort again.

I’ve had a hard time deciding where I stand on surveillance issues like this. On the one hand, they can stop major acts of terrorism before they happen. On the other, in the wrong hands, they could allow a totalitarian regime to completely control you.

I see both sides but today, I stand on the side of get the fuck out of my business Uncle Sam. The cons of surveillance, I feel, outweigh the pros. It allows for too much governmental power and control.

In the name of public safety, surveillance like this degrades our freedom. No thank you to big government.

https://gizmodo.com/anonymous-just-leaked-a-trove-of-nsa- documents-511854773 https://gizmodo.com/what-is-prism-511875267

51. November 5, 2013: November 5th, 2013, would mark the first “Million Masks March” on Guy Fawkes day.

It was a show of Anonymous’s real physical numbers and the numbers of their supporters as people flooded the streets of London in Anonymous masks.

The numbers? - not overwhelming. No articles seem to reference the number of protestors. Based on a BBC coverage, it seemed like a few hundred people turned up in London.

Maybe the real hackers stayed at home though. Why risk arrest?

These gatherings have continued each year on Guy Fawkes day in cities worldwide.

The goal of this, as stated on a UK Million Mask March Facebook page, was to see positive change in the world. They wrote:

"We have seen the abuses and malpractice of this government, and governments before it, we have seen the encroaching destruction of many civil liberties we hold dear, we have seen the pushes to make the internet yet another part of the surveillance state, we have seen the government's disregard for migrants, for the poor, the elderly and the Disabled, we have seen the capital, profit and greed of the few put before the well-being of the many and we say enough is enough. And one more thing - McKay Hatch, if you’re seeing this, more pizza and porn are coming you no-cussing motherfucker.”

Okay. Maybe they didn’t say that LAST thing about McKay.

That reference to “surveillance state” - that’s pretty scary. Makes me think of the Matrix. And Orwell’s 1984. Don’t want to give Uncle Sam the means to become Big Brother.

Yeah - definitely feeling more and more against government surveillance.

52. January 7, 2015: On January 7th of 2015, two French Muslim brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

They opened fire on the magazine’s staff, killing twelve and injuring eleven.

The gunmen identified themselves as belonging to the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda, which took responsibility for the attack.

As Muslim extremists, they were taking revenge for the newspaper’s satirical portraying of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.

In response for this attack, Anonymous declared their own war on terror, promising to bring down terrorist websites.

Not long after, they started Operation Ice ISIS - since ISIS shared the same goals as Al Qaeda and were a much larger organization at the time - and they stated:

“ISIS, We will hunt you, Take down your sites, accounts, emails, and expose you.

From now on, no safe place for you online...

You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure...

We own the internet..

We are Anonymous; we are Legion; we do not forgive, we do not forget, Expect us.”

AND - it appears that they fucked things up a bit for ISIS.

Anonymous successful exposed the name and address of some ISIS recruiters in the months that followed. And that they shut down the social media handles of thousands of ISIS members.

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/18/what-can-anonymous-really- do-to-isis.html

In February of 2015, they went after international pedophile rings in a mission named Operation Death Eaters. One of their targets? Jeffrey Epstein. Sadly, they didn’t seem to take anyone down.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/anonymous- calls-activists-help-expose-international-paedophile-networks- operation-deatheaters-9998350.html

53. July 17, 2015: On July 17th, 2015, an Anonymous member in a Guy Fawkes mask was shot and killed by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer.

This member, a man named Jay Mack, was protesting a controversial dam project in Dawson Creek, a hydro-electric project on the Peace River. Police reported he had a knife that officers asked him numerous times to put down, and when he refused, he was shot.

https://www.itproportal.com/2015/07/20/activist-group- anonymous-vow-vengeance-against-canadian-mounties-for- shooting-dead-masked-protestor/

Anonymous felt he was straight up murdered and vowed revenge, initiating Operation Anon Down.

On July 19, they took down the RCMP website. Over the course of the operation, they’d bring down twenty-two government websites.

That same month, Anonymous members also went after white supremacist groups in the US.

Mainly the KKK.

In July, Anonymous posted a video that stated their aim to attack Stormfront.

Stormfront was created by former Alabama Klan boss and long- time white supremacist Don Black in 1995. Claiming more than 300,000 registered members as of May 2015, the site has been a very popular online forum for white nationalists and other racial extremists.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/ stormfront

Anonymous planned Operation Stormfront for August 1st, 2015, taking down sites and releasing some member’s personal information.

Love it. Expose those fuckers. No hiding behind those hoods.

https://twitter.com/OpStormFront

54. October 22, 2015: Then, on October 22nd, 2015, Anonymous launches Operation KKK to further damage the hate group

They release the names of 350 additional members.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/06/ anonymous-ku-klux-klan-name-leak https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/259169-anonymous-set- for-kkk-unmasking

55. 2016: In 2016, things were pretty quiet regarding cyber attacks Anonymous took credit for.

That year, there were dozens of high-profile arrests, followed by heavy sentences, for cyber crimes.

It seems that many of the hackers who weren’t arrested were laying low.

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/04/21/1575594/it- grad-23-arrested-comelec-website-hack

56. 2017: In 2017, Anonymous launched just one large-scale attack.

It was called Operation Darknet Relaunch and it once again went after pedophilia.

They hacked server of websites called Freedom Hosting II that hosted websites only accessible by TOR, the browser that lets users access the dark web.

Visitors to more than 10,000 Tor-based websites were met with an alarming announcement:

“Hello, Freedom Hosting II, you have been hacked.”

Anonymous claimed that of all the data they hacked, half of it was child porn.

Jesus. That’s really disturbing.

Researchers estimated that the Freedom Hosting II hosted around twenty percent of the dark web - meaning the attack took down a fifth of the dark web.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/3/14497992/freedom-hosting-ii- hacked-anonymous-dark-web-tor

And after this take down, Anonymous and its splinter groups went silent until recently - at least on a big scale.

57. 2020: In 2020, a group of hackers hacked the United Nations website and added a page for Taiwan.

They did the same on the World Health Organization’s site.

This act would mark the beginning of an Anonymous resurgence.

Hacks followed in the Philippines, Uganda, Nigeria and Brazil as well as in the US in support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

After George Floyd’s death on May 25th, 2020, amid global protests, the Minneapolis Police Department website and its parent site, the website of the City of Minneapolis, were taken down.

A YouTube video claimed credit for Anonymous.

The hack generated a wave of renewed enthusiasm for Anonymous, particularly among young people. Twitter accounts associated with the group saw a surge of new followers, a couple of them by the millions.

More hacks followed the release of the video.

News outlets speculated that it was Anonymous who had hijacked Chicago police scanners on May 30 and 31 to play N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police” and Tay Zonday’s “Chocolate Rain.”

Three weeks later, on June 19th, aka Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States, a person identifying as Anonymous leaked hundreds of gigabytes of internal police files from more than 200 agencies across the US.

https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/anonymous-hackers- minneapolis-police-department-website-george-floyd. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/hacker- group-anonymous-returns/615058/

58. 2021:

Since the initial George Floyd protests, Anonymous has been pretty quiet.

Many think it’s because as more hackers have been arrested over the years, as cyber security has gotten more advanced, as law enforcement agencies have gotten better at tracking down cyber criminals, they’re more scared of getting caught.

Some say they are more wary than ever, often openly wondering who among them are police or informants.

Also - a lot of the members are now simply older - they aren’t teens anymore hanging out in chatrooms laughing about sending some kid who doesn’t like profanity pizza and pussy pics. They don’t care as much about pirating music and other media now because they can afford to buy that shit and also don’t have as much time to consume that content.

An Anonymous activist who runs the Twitter account @Anon2World recently told a reporter. “We’ve grown up a lot—at least I have— since the beginning of all of this. Back in 2010–2012, we would have decimated anything we could to make a point; now we realize how we could inadvertently affect people in negative ways.”

But a new wave of young tech savvy teens could rise up and take hold of the Anonymous banner, or start some equivalent, at any time.

Out of some new chatroom or social media platform, or maybe rising up from the dark web, the arrival of some new group could be on the horizon right now, ready to pull off epic pranks, or become revolutionaries, or maybe both.

Again, as Mentor said, “You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all ... after all, we're all alike.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/hacker- group-anonymous-returns/615058/ https://coconuts.co/kl/news/anonymous-malaysia-hackers-say- they-defaced-five-government-websites/

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE OUTRO

IV. Recap:

Anonymous. What an interesting organization, right? Who are they, really?

Before I recap, one last sponsor. Sorry about that.

PLAY AT BEGINNING https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=7ruYws4bjNQ&t=79s

V. FAKE AD: Today’s Timesuck is Brought to you once again by DADWATCH, a 501 3c nonprofit dedicated to solving dad-related crimes. DADWATCH stands for Dads Are Disappearing Where All The Corpses Hide.

And now - DADWATCH has a cyber division.

STOP AND PLAY THIS FROM BEGINNING https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnRKyLTiKtg

“Hi. I’m Dan Cummins. DADWATCH founder. Did you know that a lot of dads are doing creepy shit online?

Our research has found that 99% of dad’s are watching online porn. And the other 1% just can’t figure out how to find it.

And that’s fine as long as the porn as legal. And as long as the porn doesn’t lead to online stalking and other serious crimes.

Who is your dad talking to online? Who is he jerking off too? Do you know when and where your dad is jerking off? Do you know if he’s stalking someone behind your mom’s or his current wife or girlfriend’s back? What the fuck is your dad doing on his phone right now? On his computer? How long does he spend in the bathroom? What’s he doing in there? Check his search history. Does he follow a lot of half-naked Insta-models? Is he DM’ing them? Check your dad’s DM’s? Is he saying the kind of creepy shit to women that say…. a serial killer might say? Where are your dad’s bodies?

To report your dad, and you probably should, hit us up at DADWATCH dot biz slash Fuck Your Dad’s Freedom.

We here at DADWATCH - including the new Cyber division team - are just trying to do what’s right, and what’s right is probably putting your dad behind bars where he belongs.”

PRESS STOP

Big thanks to Dadwatch - they’ve been a great sponsor.

Back to Anonymous now. Who are they?

One insider to the group compared them to the terrorist group Al Qaeda saying, ”If you believe in Anonymous, and call yourself Anonymous, you are Anonymous."

How do you stop them? In short….. I don’t think you do.

You can’t dismantle an ideal. You can’t arrest a general disdain of authority.

The power of Anonymous and in other hacking groups lies in their anonymity.

I keep thinking back on that Mentor quote: “You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all ... after all, we're all alike.”

Cyber crimes and hacktivism aren’t going ANYwhere.

The internet keeps bringing more and more of the world together.

Governments and armies and businesses, etc - all more and more dependent on the online world.

And once you’re online, you’re open to being hacked.

Think about what you have online.

Almost certainly your money. Or most of it.

Possibly your actual business like me.

Family photos backed up in the cloud. Maybe even nude photos. So many contacts’ phone numbers and addresses. Your social security number. Your financial transaction history. Your home address. Your medical records. Your education records. Your criminal record.

All of that can be hacked which it means it could theoretically be manipulated, deleted, replaced, whatever.

How much would that fuck up your life to have someone alter your credit history and employment history online? What if someone hacked into your social media sites and started posting horrible things on your behalf? How much trouble could that get you in?

Think about the real power hackers have.

Think about that Carbanak cyber gang I talked about earlier.

Hacking into ATMS and spitting out cash. Taking over bank transfers and rerouting funds. Stealing well over a BILLION dollars.

How long until some group that powerful and savvy focuses less on robbing banks and more on launching missiles as more and more militaries move their weaponry online?

Hackers. So powerful and they will only get more powerful as time goes on.

And one of the biggest early hacking conglomerates that showed to the world a glimpse of what that power can look like will always be Anonymous.

Anonymous changed the world.

They helped topple regimes, expose pedophiles, and expose hate groups.

And it all began on a 4-Chan B-Board with some teens from Toronto who wanted to fuck with people they didn’t like online. Maybe send a bunch of pizza and porn to their house.

They definitely don’t always go after the right targets.

But that’s bound to happen when you have a large loosely organized group with no leader.

They’re enigmatic.

Quinn Norton, a journalist and hacker expert at Wired magazine wrote of the group in 2011:

“I will confess up front that I love Anonymous, but not because I think they're the heroes. Like Alan Moore's character V who inspired Anonymous to adopt the Guy Fawkes mask as an icon and fashion item, you're never quite sure if Anonymous is the hero or antihero. The trickster is attracted to change and the need for change, and that's where Anonymous goes.

But they are not your personal army… And when they do something, it never goes quite as planned.

The internet has no neat endings.” https://www.wired.com/2011/11/anonymous-101/

I like that summation.

Anonymous the trickster.

Sometimes the trickster hacks the world and changes it for the better, other times, they just want to set some fires and watch shit burn.

Let’s review a few things we learned today and learn something new with our top five takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS INTRO

VI.Top Five Takeaways

1.Number One: Number one! Anonymous came from the B-Board of 4-Chan, a place devoted to sharing politically incorrect memes and trolling others.

The term “Anonymous” came from the site’s anonymity as well as the fact that when a user who wasn’t logged in posted on the board, the post would come up as authored by “Anonymous.”

2.Number Two: Number two! Anonymous has had many targets over the years, but they’ve most frequently returned to attack government corruption, censorship laws, pedophile rings, and hate groups like the KKK and the Westboro Baptist Church.

This comes from their devotion to free speech, democracy, and their belief that everyone should be able to access the Internet freely.

Arguably the most success they’ve ever had was with the Arab Spring protests, in which people across the Middle East were protesting corrupt governments and poor quality of life.

3.Number Three: Number three! The Carbanak cyber gang. These hackers have made off with over 1.2 billion dollars in heists, largely through hijacking online money transfers and taking over ATM networks.

On one July 2016 weekend in Taipei [ tahy-pey], Taiwan they took over 41 ATMs at 22 branches of First Commercial banks, making those ATMS spit out 83 million New Taiwan dollars (NT$), or about $2.6 million US.

Not “cool” - it is theft, but also, PRETTY FUCKING COOL.

4.Number Four: Number four! No cussing club founder McKay Hatch has to still be pissed about all that pizza and porn. Ah, Corn Nuts!! What the FLIP!?!

Number Five:

Number five! New info!

Arguably the biggest hack in history happened back in 2012. And it wasn’t done by Anonymous.

A hacker group thought to come from Iran, calling itself “Cutting Sword of Justice”, claimed responsibility.

In August of 2012, a technician working at the the Saudi Arabian Oil Company aka Saudi Aramco clicked the wrong spam link and infected his computer with the nasty Shamoon virus.

This virus, once in, compiles a list of files from specific locations on the system, uploads them to the attacker, and then erases them.

Finally the virus overwrites the master boot record of the infected computer, making it completely unusable.

Basically this thing gives sensitive data stored on your network’s devices to the hacker, and then it complete obliterates your devices.

In a matter of hours, 35,000 computers were partially wiped or totally destroyed. Without a way to pay them, gasoline tank trucks seeking refills had to be turned away. Saudi Aramco's ability to supply 10% of the world's oil was suddenly at risk.

The entire company had to move offline for MONTHS. No internet. No corporate email. No office phones. Employees wrote reports on typewriters. Contracts were passed around with interoffice mail. Lengthy, lucrative deals needing signatures were faxed one page at a time. The company temporarily stopped selling oil to domestic gas tank trucks for over two weeks. They went to a new offline system of storage when the did return to their computers, and bought so many external hard drives they created a WORLD WIDE external hard drive shortage.

And the hackers were never caught.

The Cutting Sword of Justice said they did it to strike at Saudi Arabia’s ruling Al-Saud regime in response to crimes and atrocities that took place in various countries around the world, especially in Syria, Bahrain [ bah-reyn], Yemen, Lebanon, and Egypt.

The company never revealed how much this attack cost them but its listed in a variety of sources as the single most devastating cyber attack of all time.

https://pastebin.com/HqAgaQRj https://www.theregister.com/2012/08/29/ saudi_aramco_malware_attack_analysis/

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

VII.Final Announcements

A. Episode has been sucked!:

Anonymous the world of hackers has been SUCKED. SO glad my computers were not hacked when putting this together. PLEASE do not hack me Anonymous. I know we don’t see eye to eye on everything but I gave you a lot of credit for the cool things you did! Please. Just send me porn and pizza. Don’t destroy my websites or computers.

B. Thank you to Timesuck Team:

Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions Team for all the help in making Timesuck! Queen of Bad Magic Lynze Cummins, Reverend Doctor Joe Paisley, the Script Keeper Zaq Flanary, Sophie “Fact Sorceress” Evans, Bit Elixir, and Logan “Art Warlock” Keith running BadMagicMerch.com.

Thanks to all of those who’ve joined the new Cult of the Curious private Facebook group. Maybe the old one will come back. Glad so many subgroups have formed. The Cult of the Curious is like anonymous.

“You may shut down one of our groups, but you can't stop us all ...”

Thanks Liz Hernandez and her All Seeing Eyes keeping the Cult of the Curious alive.

Thanks to Beefsteak - and the “Mod Squad” of Jesse, Becky, and Cody running wild on Discord!

And thanks to all of your Space Lizards playing Timesuck Trivia on the app. Now that I’m recording in advance, doesn’t make a lot of sense to list scores. But congrats to Bodhi Sunyata for winning round nine! Two time champion!

C. Next Episode Preview: Next week on Timesuck, we go FULL FUCKING WACKADOODLE.

We return to the realm of conspiracy theories with two modern-day groups the media has given a lot of attention to in recent months.

Qanon and Antifa.

On October 28th, 2017, someone calling themselves Q began posting a series of cryptic messages in the 4chan internet forum titled “Calm Before the Storm.”

Fucking 4-chan! Here we go again.

Q claimed to be a high-level government insider with access to classified information, and he took that “information” straight to 4Chan, supposedly to covertly inform the public about Donald Trump’s master plan to stage a countercoup against members of the child sex-trafficking deep-state Satanists. In 2018, Time magazine placed Q as one of the 25 most influential people on the internet.

Q followers, who call themselves bakers because they follow Q’s breadcrumb trail, spread info about Q’s messages and soon formed the full-fledged cult of Qanon.

Their beliefs would lead to incidents in the real world, including break- ins, kidnappings, attempted murders, and more— all from Qanon believers who thought they were helping to expose the Deep State.

Qanon would make its presence known in perhaps the biggest showing of Q-force to date at the US Capitol breach on January 6th.

And then Qanon would blame Antifa for that attack - so who the Hell is Antifa??

Antifa— short for Antifaschistische Aktion, from the group’s roots fighting Nazis in Germany— is a leaderless collective of far-left activists that believe in showing up whenever perceived fascists or white supremacists come to town and fighting fire with fire.

Or - they just start fire, like Anonymous does sometimes, just because they like to watch shit burn. Because they’re anarchists who want to destroy mostly because they just like destruction.

To many in the middle of the spectrum like myself - BOTH of these far-leaning extremist groups appear scary.

Getting WILD sticking with the web next week - Antifa and Qanon on Timesuck.

D. Segue to Timesucker Updates:

And now let’s head on over to this week’s Timesucker Updates!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO VIII.Timesucker Updates

1.Let’s start with a hilarious and loving message from funny and caring meatsack, Katie Allen. Katie writes:

Hi Dan!

My partner Austin introduced me to your standup and Timesuck when we started dating. I am a lover of all things weird and interesting so I very quickly became a dedicated Space Lizard. He was able to meet you in Denver for his 21st pre-COVID and he is a HUGE fan of your work - I probably hear your voice more often than my own mother's because we're always listening to Timesuck or Is We Dumb or that fucking nana story.

I wanted to shoot you an email because Austin and I are coming up on our anniversary this weekend. Austin and I were best friends for 8 years beforehand, and we have been through a lot together. One of those things was him fucking my other best friend Rachel four years ago.

We were still completely platonic then, and we laugh about it all the time.

After they hooked up he got in his car and drove from her place in Missouri to New York. This also happened to be the first time he listened to Timesuck and it was the Caligula episode- he has listened to every episode since. We just found out that the day he fucked my best friend and listened to Timesuck for the first time is the EXACT SAME DAY as the day he asked me out.

Fucking April ninth man.

I thought this was hilarious and I hoped you would probably appreciate hearing it as well. It would be the best anniversary gift if you could share this on the next episode.

Austin, I love you so fucking much and thank you so much for always being so supportive of me. Being with you is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I'm so happy we get to spend our lives together. Happy dating anniversary, Timesuck anniversary, and fucking our friend anniversary.

Thank you Dan for everything you do- your work has gotten Austin through some tough shit and we really appreciate you a lot. Hail Lucifina and Praise Bojangles! Your friend, Katie

Wow. Happy belated fucking Katie’s friend anniversary Austin. Hail Lucifina!

I love that you two laugh over this. So healthy. And it is so funny.

Hope you two had a great April 9th and I hope you’re doing great right now. Thanks for listening and sharing!

2. Now a murder question coming in from Super Curious Sack L Moreau. L writes:

Hello suck master, long time listener first time caller and newly birthed space lizard.

I've been binging time suck at my welding job for the past several months and the one thing that keeps jumping out at me is that so many serial killers use .22 caliber guns to commit at least 1 murder.

Why? Is it because the ammo is cheap? These human filth sacks are skimping out on ammo cost!? Or is it something else? You would think it would be some cheep .38 special revolver, the so called "Saturday night specials".

Just something I kept noticing. fuck you this email is not that long. Keep up the great work 3/5 stars wouldn't change a thing.

Thanks, L!

Good question. I don’t know the answer for SURE, but I have a guess.

A lot of hitmen seem to like using 22 handguns as well, and it seems to be a great gun - not for fire fights, not for trying to take out someone who is also shooting at you, not for trying to take out someone at long distance - but specifically for executions.

For killing someone who is unarmed who you’ve overpowered them.

Ammo is cheap and abundant. 22s are easy to get ahold of. They’re light. They don’t kick much at all. They’re quieter than most other guns. They don’t make a big mess because they’re not as powerful. But they still kill someone when you’re shooting up close. Actually, when shot at close range to the head, they can pierce the skull but not be powerful enough to make it out the back of the skull and then ricochet around inside the skull doing more damage than a more powerful weapon. They’re also lightweight and easy to carry around.

Not good for combat, but good for a serial killer who wants to kill relatively quietly in most cases and up close and personal.

And I feel a little weird putting that all together but I think that’s it from what I understand.

3. Now a quick Mao Zedong update, kind of, from funny Sucker Human [who man] Hardin. Human [who man] writes:

Hi Dan, Just listening to the new Time Suck, and I'm extremely worried. My dad got a Shih Tzu dog and named him Mao Zedong when I was a kid. Now I have to reevaluate where my dad was from his birth in 1948 until now.Thanks. #WhereWasHumansDad

SUPER weird your dad named your dog Mao Zedong. I’m guessing your dad is AT LEAST a serial killer if not a mass murderer of some kind. Definitely having the DADWATCH team taking a look into his whereabouts. Thank you for doing what’s right.

4. Now - three updates in one coming from Super Sack Derek Devantier. Derek writes:

Dear Lord Almighty of the suck, Loyal meat sack and Dummy Devo here.

Three of the latest sucks have hit close to home. I’ll try and write this quick. Blackwater suck. I went to work for them in 2006 after getting out of the marines. Went to Moyock for training. While there went to the company headquarters. I met Eric Prince shook hands. He welcomed me aboard, told me while in training or on deployment. At any time I need anything don’t be hesitant to contact him directly. Lots of opinions good and bad but I thought I’d share that.

Also I was friends with Scot Helvenston met him in the marines. He was an absolute PT animal. Often went surfing before he left to go to Blackwater. Was sad to hear about the situation which lead to his death. There was a little memorial outside the headquarters.

The Mao suck. I grew up in Montana. Worked at a Chinese restaurant during high school. My boss Paul Chu was a legendary character. Never could say my name correct , so he called me Guy. It was my birthday one night. He asked how old I was. I said 18. He sat back with a big sigh. And said you want to know what I did when I was 18. I swam from mainland China to Hong king across Mirs bay to avoid being caught. He and his brother trained before making the swim. They did get caught once and put in jail for a time. All he said it was very bad. He went from Hong Kong to New York until finally ending up in Bozeman opening the Great China wall restaurant. Often wonder were he is now.

And finally Grandpa Ward. Took me awhile to listen. Because the way you describe your grandpa. Is similar to mine. Everett or Papa as we called him. He grew up in a one room house with my aunt and uncle. Went into the Navy. Was on Iwo Jima at the start of the invasion. After, he and his dad had a fishing shop in Bozeman. He then worked as campus police at MSU. Growing up I spent nearly every weekend with him. Going for breakfast taking a drive to model train shows or baseball card shows. Telling me stories of hobo’ing around Montana on the trains. Were ever I went in the world. He would be the first person I called. He always answered with where you at. He got the C word. And passed in 2012.

I was able to go back and see him. All he said was, got some things going on and the Doc is trying to fix it. Enough with that story he said. Dan you are 100% correct the last day I saw him before flying back to japan. We hugged and the look he gave me broke me. I could see the strength in his eyes. But his body was failing. As I went out the front door. I said see Ok see you later. I know he knew how much I loved him. But I really wish I had said it. Where did these onions come from. Dang it.

Hearing you and other meat sacks writing in with stories. It shows that generation produced some legendary people and grandparents. Keep up the legendary work you and the rest of the grew do. I always recommend your podcasts to all my friends.

Thanks, Derek! Sounds like you had one helluva grandpa. Also - very cool connection to both Mao and Blackwater.

Love that Paul Chu made it to Bozeman. What a beautiful city. Love that Costner show Yellowstone that’s set there. Finally got Lynze to watch it and she loves it too.

5. Now a cool Mao Zedong update from Traveling Sucker Pat Hendricks. Pat writes.

Hey Suckmaster, Just finished listening to the episode on Mao Zedong and god was he a terrible meat sack.

One thing that stuck out to me was when you talked about the Kuomintang (Guo min dang) and after losing the Chinese Civil War fleeing to Taiwan and setting up the Nationalist government there. I have lived and worked at an international school as a social studies teacher in Taiwan for the last 5 years and have really come to consider it my second home.

When you discussed modern-day Taiwan I felt like you discredited the amazing transition that this place has made since after the end of military rule in 1987 becoming a very vocal and vibrant representative democracy.

Following the end of martial law, Taiwan experienced massive growth as both the economy and government liberalized.

The KMT was forced to begin opening up elections to their main opposition party the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Today, the DPP is the party in power after Taiwan elected its first female president Tsai [sigh] Ing-Wen in 2016 and again in 2020.

The KMT has really lost steam as the dominant party of Taiwan because of their views on reunification with China.

An overwhelming number of younger Taiwanese people feel less and less connected with China with the most recent poll showing 83% of people feel more Taiwanese than Chinese.

These numbers are only increasing as China exerts more pressure on Taiwan to fit into the One China Policy.

Also, in the 2020 Democracy Index, Taiwan was 11th compared to the US at number 25 showing that Taiwan is as strong democratically as many nations around the world.

You're right in saying that the Taiwan issue is a touchy topic, but Taiwan is not China in this social studies teacher's opinion and must be viewed as the strong independent democracy that it is instead of a province of China.

Sorry for the long email, but not really, love the show and I have been listening ever since I moved to Taiwan and heard you on another podcast. Taiwan #1 Pat (Also not me being weird that's a big saying here in Taiwan)

I love that Taiwan info Pat from someone who knows so much more about it than I do. That is all so great to here and I do so hope that Taiwan can somehow properly break away from China completely and keep the freedom it’s fought so hard to have. Very, very cool info. LOVE updates like that. Hail Nimrod, sir!

6.And finally, some more funny. Recovering sack Bee Arthur writes:

Greetings suck master!

I never thought it would happen to me because I usually listen to the suck on youtube, usually letting it play on my laptop while I play video games or something In the comfort of my home.

Well.

Friday the 26th I had a major back surgery. I brought my laptop with me. I saw my youtube notification and let it play, then promptly fell asleep because of heavy narcotics.

My nurse came in for vitals and meds while I was sleeping and you were describing how filthy and disgusting Bobby Willy was. I woke up, realized what was playing, hit pause and apologized deeply. "Whatever you just heard I'm sorry. It's a podcast." She just says "no problem. Hail Nimrod."

Thought you'd enjoy this one. Not sorry about the length or girth of this message.

Bee Goddamn Arthur

I DID enjoy that one Bee Goddamn Arthur! Nice! the Suck spreads in the weirdest of ways! Sounds like you got lucky with that nurse. Not everyone can handle “Bobby Willy! Bobby Willy, eh!? Clean Momma’s Front Butt when done wit dos dere hawgs, eh!?!”

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

IX.Goodbye!

A.Goodbye!:

1.Thanks for listening to this Bad Productions Podcast, meatsacks.

Please don’t destroy our servers this week because if you do, how can any of us keep on sucking?