Members of the activist hacker group Anonymous took to the net Wednesday to deny that a rumored plan for an attack on Facebook was not an official Anonymous operation but in fact a small, unsanctioned group of Anonymous members.
The rumors date back to July, when the rogue band put out information on Twitter stating it would launch a cyber-attack targeted at Facebook on Nov. 5, the day when Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the House of Lords in London circa 1605. Let’s take a look back at the history of Anonymous.
2003:
“Hacktivist” group Anonymous begins to form on 4chan, an imageboard created by Christopher Poole who believed that by making users anonymous their arguments would be judged on their own merits.
2006:
4chan’s users made their first appearance as Anonymous on the social networking site Habbo. During the raids on Habbo, Anonymous created fake accounts to block the movement of real users. Later on, the protests appeared to link themselves to the news of an Alabama amusement park banning a 2-year-old toddler affected by AIDS from entering the park’s swimming pool. Anonymous users signed up to Habbo with avatars of black men dressed in suits and blocked entry to the pool, declaring that it was “closed due to AIDS.”
December 2006:
Anonymous succeeded in taking white supremacist radio personality Hal Turner’s webpage offline with a denial of service attack, costing him thousands in bandwidth bills.
Jan. 19, 2007:
Turner sued 4chan, 7chan and eBaum’s world for copyright infringement. Turner’s inaction caused the case to lapse, and charges were dismissed in December of 2007.
March 28, 2008:
Online “griefers” hacked into an epilepsy support forum and uploaded a JavaScript snippet that contained flashing images. The images triggered migraine headaches and seizures in a handful of epileptics who were prone to photosensitivity and pattern-sensitivity. Anonymous denied the attacks, instead offering up the explanation that the Church of Scientology carried out the attacks as a false flag operation to ruin public opinion of Anonymous under the church’s “fair game” policy, according to News.com.au.
Sept. 18-19, 2010:
Members of anonymous carried out a series of distributed denial of service attacks against several entertainment industry websites. The attacks were initially a response to denial of service attacks carried out by Aiplex, a firm employed by Bollywood film studios to launch attacks on sites that host unauthorized torrent files and do not respond to take down notices, and legal action brought against The Pirate Bay by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Targets included the MPAA and RIAA.
Dec. 9, 2010:
A planned distributed denial of service attack on Amazon.com was unsuccessful. The attack was in response to Amazon’s perceived attempts at censoring Wikileaks. Paul Mutton, a security analyst for U.K.-based firm Netcraft, said that the attacks didn’t even seem to make a dent, which is not surprising, considering Amazon’s network infrastructure, reports ComputerWorld.
Dec. 9, 2010:
Anonymous members directed an attack at Twitter after the @Anon_Operations Twitter account was closed. While the attack didn’t shut down the entire Twitter domain, some areas did see a 50 percent drop in usability. The account was quickly restored, and, according to a tweet from the account, it had been closed by accident.
April 3, 2011:
In its most highly publicized campaign to date, Anonymous announced it would target Sony in retaliation for legal actions against PS3 jail breaker George Hotz. Although they took credit for subsequent attacks on Sony websites, they denied responsibility for the attacks on the PlayStation Network that caused a major outage and compromised credit information.
July 19-20, 2011:
More than 20 suspected Anonymous hackers were arrested in the United States, U.K. and the Netherlands for their alleged roles in Operation Avenge Assange. Operation Avenge Assange saw the group attack PayPal, MasterCard and Visa after they froze Wikileaks accounts.