Anonymous

Anonymous
Founded	2007
Preceded by	AntiSec
Political orientation	Ideologies vary, as association with the group is self-declared. However, there is a tendency towards left-wing ideologies.
Slogan	"We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."

Anonymous refers to an international collective of hacktivist cells with differing views and ideologies. The movement was particularly prominent from 2008 - 2013, and was notable in mainstream politics at the time for being a significant part of the Occupy Wall Street protests. The movement has seen a resurgence in recent years, mainly as a response to growing reactionary movements and state action.

History

AntiSec Movement (~1990)

Anonymous is a spiritual successor to the AntiSec movement, which was born in the 1990s around the central issue of corruption within the cybersecurity industry. During that time, it was common practice for cybersecurity companies to hunt for vulnerabilities within operating systems or critical software packages, develop a patch once a vulnerability was found, and release the patch along with a document fully disclosing the discovered exploit, allowing bad actors to make use of it. Such conduct was essentially a ransom tactic, as it encouraged users to buy cybersecurity software from a company which found and disclosed an exploit.

The AntiSec movement popularized many classic digital tactics aimed at creating annoyance and disruption, such as webpage defacing, e-mail flooding and DDoS attacks. Members of AntiSec, such as FBI informant Hector Xavier "Sabu" Montsegur, would later go on to participate in Anonymous cells and in related hacker collectives.

4chan (2007–2009)

Origin and attack on Hal Turner

The embryo of Anonymous was formed on 4chan's "random" board, /b/, which was dedicated to posts about any topic. As posting on 4chan is anonymous by default, with the default handle attributed to uses being "Anonymous", users of the website would be nicknamed "Anons". The board would sometimes organize attacks or annoy public figures for the fun of it, with the first high-profile figure targeted by them being neo-nazi radio show host Hal Turner, whose website was taken down by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack in January 2007. This incident seems to have been the origin of the use of the moniker "Anonymous" as a general way to describe internet troublemakers coming from 4chan.

Project Chanology and creation of an "Anonymous identity"

On the 15th of January, 2008, celebrity-focused website Gawker divulged a video where Tom Cruise professed his love for the Church of Scientology. The Church responded by issuing a copyright notice on the video, which began what would become one of the first overreaching controversies on the internet.

The reaction from 4chan was near-immediate, with a post being made calling for people to utilize the now-defunct website Gigaloader.com (which repeatedly loaded a website's images from a list) to take down the Scientology website. This set the precedent for many anons using low-skill network stress testing tools, such at the Low-Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) to run Denial of Service attacks against target websites. Many who used such tools were not aware that, by default, their IP addresses were publicly exposed to the website they were attacking.

The Scientology website stayed down for around 10 days, only coming back up for sporadic periods. On the 21st of January, anons posted a video declaring war on the Church of Scientology, declaring the start of "Project Chanology". The video is believed to have originated the slogan "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us".After the launch of the video, a great number of activists, many of whom called themselves "members of Anonymous", took part in a DDoS attack that took down the church's website for an entire day.

During February, adherents of Project Chanology started planning physical demonstrations in front of Scientology buildings. As the church is known for persecuting those who protest against them, it was only logical to recommend that protestors wear masks. After some research, adherents concluded that the most common character mask sold all over the world was the Guy Fawkes mask from the film V for Vendetta, and so, it was chosen to be the symbol of the movement.

The hype behind the protests created a split between the anons. While many of them were in it for the fun of the situation, a great number of them had serious concerns about Scientology. The latter were often made fun of as moralists by the former, but eventually, Chanology and the moniker of Anonymous in general would predominantly configure themselves as social movements. By the end of 2008, the movement was beginning to escape the confines of imageboards.

AnonOps and Occupy (2010–2011)

Operation Payback and Operation Avenge Assange

On the 17th of September 2010, an Anonymous cell fired off a DDoS attack against the website of Aiplex Software, an indian company which was hired by Bollywood studios to run DDoS attacks against websites which shared pirated content, such as the Pirate Bay. Eventually, more cells joined in, attacking entities associated with Digital Restrictions Management and copyright protection, such as the US Copyright Group, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The Operation also revealed that a law firm in the United Kingdom, ACS:Law, had been hoarding the names and personal details of internet users accused of piracy, after the contents of the firm's e-mail servers were leaked to the public on the 21st of September.

All the commotion would birth many news Anonymous cells, the bulk of which organized via Internet Relay Chat networks. The high volume of new cells created to participate in the operation would influence further activity, particularly within the Occupy Wall Street movement. After being booted off bigger networks such as Freenode, a group of Anons would go on to form the AnonOps IRC network, specifically created to host chats for Anons.

In November, Operation Payback was still running strong. WikiLeaks had recently gone under fire for releasing multiple confidential US diplomatic cables, with PayPal, Mastercard and Visa cutting service to the website, essentially starving it of financial support. Many other companies, such as Amazon, would cut off critical resources needed to keep WikiLeaks online on the clearweb. This generated massive backlash from many activist groups, including cells of Anons that would go on to attack banking and internet services that had refused to serve WikiLeaks, with the most prominent target being PayPal, which suffered a massive DDoS attack, mostly driven by a couple large botnets.

"Operation Avenge Assange", as it would go on to be known, was one of the largest disruptions of service ever caused by Anonymous. A subsequent investigation by the FBI would lead to 14 arrests, all of them being of people who were individually insignificant to the attacks.

Pre-Occupy operations

In January 2011, many Anon cells would come out in support of Arab Spring movements. This would culminate in "Operation Tunisia", which would lead to attacks on Tunisian government websites and would result in a concerted effort by Anonymous to help Tunisian citizens overcome internet censorship measures.

During the month of February, a cell that would later form into the hacker group "LulzSec" launched a cyber attack against Aaron Barr, of HBGary federal, which had been threatening to expose Anons. Barr's e-mails would be released, and his Twitter account would be vandalized with racist messages. The group would later realize that the identities Barr had collected were not from members of Anonymous, but instead from innocent bystanders which had been put on a list due to coincidences between the logoff times of Anons in IRC chats and their login times on Facebook.

In April, Anonymous cells worked to take down Sony's PlayStation Network service for a month, mostly due to Sony's hostility against pirated content and their constant effort to develop DRM solutions.

Occupy Wall Street

It has been rumored that the embryo for the Occupy movement was thought up by participants of an Anon cell, which proposed a "Manhattan invasion". Occupy truly pushed the Anonymous moniker onto mainstream political activism, bringing attention to the group from other, non-internet activist groups. Anons worldwide helped organize protests, with the most famous one being the May 1 rally in front of the London Stock Exchange.

The bulk of Anonymous supported Occupy Wall Street from the origin of the movement until its collapse. It is suspected that Anons helped set up the "Freedom Towers" across many of the protests, which acted as open computer labs and wi-fi hotspots used to coordinate social media action and circumvent internet censorship in some nations.

Occupy represents a shifting point in the history of Anonymous, as the heavy infiltration by federal and corporate assets within the movement also affected Anonymous, to the point where the AnonOps IRC network became known as a hive of FBI agents.

Late Peak (2012–2013)

Relevant operations in 2012

One of the last major DDoS attacks collectively ran via the AnonOps network happened in January of 2012, when Anons attacked the websites of the RIAA, MPAA, and of the Justice Department of the United States. The attack utilized a clever method in which bystanders' computers would be used to attack the targets via a piece of Javascript code embedded on a webpage that contained a supposed information leaflet against the SOPA and PIPA bills.

In November of 2012, Anonymous attempted to launch coordinated cyberattacks against Israel in retaliation for the genocide against Palestinians, however, experts widely regarded the attacks as a failure. During that time, internet infrastructure was maturing, and it was no longer feasible to take down government websites with coordinated DDoS attacks led by individuals, which meant that cells of Anons had to search for people who would provide them with powerful botnets. Such providers were not found, and services were seldom disrupted.

In December, Anonymous cell "KnightSec" received attention in the United States for revealing the identities of perpetrators involved in a rape case in Steubenville High School. The group also defaced a website, replacing its main page with demands for justice directed at school and city officials. The events would trigger one of the last relatively sizable protests organized by Anons, featuring many city locals.

Involvement in the 2013 protests in Brazil

Anonymous was pivotal in leading the social media frenzy that accompanied the 2013 protests in Brazil, which started as general unrest against rising public transport fares. Research suggests that tags related to the group dominated Brazilian social media on many pivotal days of the protests, with many Anons being present on the ground.

The participation of Anonymous was also important in attempting to unify the demands of the protestors. A video released by the cell "Anonymous Brasil" on the 19th of June, 2013, contained a list of demands which were widely reverberated through mainstream media, and would end up becoming more-or-less the "canonical list" of demands for the entirety of the protests.

Cells of the group also attacked the website of the right-wing Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement twice, defacing it, once in August and once in September, publicizing their demands both times and asking then-president Dilma Rousseff to speak in their favor.

Million Mask March

After the Million Mask March of 2013, which was a part of an annual protest carried out by Anonymous sympathizers, cells in the United Kingdom managed to get in contact with mutual aid networks throughout the country. This led to the creation of Operation Safe Winter, which aimed to rally sympathizers of the group towards donating food and clothing to the homeless.

Decline (2014–2018)

Cells of anons led multiple successful attacks in 2014, mainly against police brutality. Members of the collective disrupted the e-mail servers of Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting of Michael Brown by police officers. Anonymous also publicized the identities of multiple members of the Ku Klux Klan and of Timothy Loehmann, the police officer who shot Tamir Rice.

Activity from Anonymous-related cells started to sharply decline at the start of 2015. Despite minor successes, the group was quickly losing credibility, as, with many previously-existing cells out of the picture, rallying cries often fell to deaf ears, and new "Operations" often amounted to nothing but empty threats. This resulted in the creation of many anti-anon jokes that were popular at the time, such as "Waiting for Anonymous to act is like waiting for your dad to return from getting cigarettes". Anonymous had gone from a powerful network of cells to a laughing stock, and such a change was quickly becoming visible.

Anons were becoming quick to join in on failed attacks. Particularly, a wave of attacks against the Islamic State proved to have a disastrous effect, as the identities of many claimed ISIS sympathizers turned out to be the identities of innocent people. With the ongoing conflict against the KKK dying down, Anonymous was quickly shifting towards becoming completely sterile in its actions.

The group's situation wasn't helped by a massive PR blunder triggered by cell "AnonSec", which had gained access to part of NASA's computer network via a prolonged phishing campaign, and claimed to hold over 200GB of data, mostly relating to drone experiments. The group only released a slice of the data, which was later found to be composed mostly of data already released to the public domain. NASA later denied the hack, and the group seems to not have issued a response. The space agency claimed that their drone control systems remained unaffected.

During 2018, the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory movement started co-opting Anonymous branding, particularly via their use of the "We are legion" tagline. After the release of a video calling for an operation against QAnon by communicator "anon2world", an Anonymous cell coordinated a response by divulging the identity of Q adherents and by taking over Q-related hashtags on Twitter. This would be the last sizeable attack by the group until the George Floyd protests started in 2020.

Revival (2020–present)

George Floyd protests

The 2020 protests against police brutality in the United States launched Anonymous into a new political landscape. It is speculated that, during the protests, Anonymous cells coordinated a DDoS attack against the website of the Minneapolis Police Department. Later, a cell published confidential documents from police stations around the US.

Operation Jane

The name "Anonymous" would not go back into the halls of mainstream media until September 2021, when the State of Texas passed the Heartbeat Act, a law that forbid abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. This led to the creation of "Operation Jane", which targeted the Republican Party of Texas and accessories to the enforcement of anti-abortion laws.

In their initial stages, attacks involved filling report forms on websites with fake, but believable information, which would turn the entire dataset of reported abortions useless, as it would no longer be reliable to use it for investigations. Actions quickly escalated, and on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Texas Republican Party website was defaced with links to Planned Parenthood, memes, pornography and protest.

The attacks culminated on the release of confidential data sourced from right-wing website host Epik, along with confidential documents of the Republican Party. While the attacks died down by the end of October, they pretty much erased most third-party "abortion watchdog" reporting sites from the internet.

Reunification of Anonymous in Brazil

In 2020, Anon cell "EterSec" started efforts to bring together old adherents to Anonymous, particularly the ones that had been part of the group during the 2013 protests. It more or less succeeded, and by 2021, EterSec became one of the biggest hacktivist cells in the world, having tens of participants spread throughout different "layers" of the group. The cell also attracted support from many anon communicators. It is a self-proclaimed anarchist group.

The cell gained wide media attention in 2023 for publishing the personal information of Brazilian right-wing politician Carla Zambelli, and for revealing that she resided in a SPA while one of the districts that voted for her were suffering from calamities due to floods and rain. EterSec also revealed the identities of individuals who financed the 8 January coup attempt in Brazil, and continues to recruit members and call awareness to social issues.