* 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.