Categories: Security

#OpLastResort & #OpBigBrother, Anonymous against governments

Someone early this year said the hacktivism phenomena and its symbol Anonymous, will exhausted its strength, sincerely I was shocked by this affirmation because I believe that is not possible to stop an ideology and hacktivism is a form to express the dissent with cyber operations. The Aaron Swartz’s tragedy has raised many questions regarding the freedom of expression and the will to grant free access to internet and its resources to every citizen of the global world. Aaron ideology was the same of Wikileaks followers and of members of the popular collective Anonymous, but his thought was the same of millions of people around the world and they will go on also without the material presence of Aaron. Anonymous has sworn revenge against the institutions that Blamed the young talent and its operations will increase against who has hindered him. The first target hit by Anonymous campaign #OpAngel was the MIT from which Aaron has stolen the documents. The manifest of the operation states:

“Operation Angel has a number of goals. First, we mean to facilitate the flow of information regarding the cult’s movements. We are encouraging the public and any members of Highland Park law enforcement with intel on the cults to e-mail that information to OpAngel@hushmail.com. You can use an anonymous e-mail address. You will not receive a response. You will not be exposed.

The second phase of the operation announced by Anonymous will “pursue reform within the DOJ and other government agencies to prevent the kind of unnecessary harassment that Aaron Swartz was victim to.” Swartz was risking up to 50+ years in jail and a $4 million fine after releasing pay-walled academic articles from the JSTOR database.. The hacktivists this time have defaced the official website of U.S. Sentencing Commission (ussc.gov) under a new operation dubbed “Operation Last Resort” in memory of Aaron Swartz announcing to release sensitive and secrets U.S. government documents. They left the message:

“The time has come to show the United States Department of Justice and its affiliates the true meaning of infiltration. The time has come to give this system a taste of its own medicine.” “As a result of the FBI’s infiltration and entrapment tactics, several more of our brethren now face similar disproportionate persecution, the balance of their lives hanging on the severely skewed scales of a broken justice system,”

The attacks is clearly a demonstrative act against policies of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and its decision to blame Aaron Swartz. The hackers have also published a collection of encrypted government files, but they gave no details on their content, announcing to give away decryption keys publicly as soon as possible. While I’m writing the website is still down, the hackers also left a backdoor on the site to allow other attackers to access to the server. Anonymous is very active all over the world, in many cases they manifested dissent against political decision of governments, while I was just informed for example of Anonymous hackers from Turkey @Anonsturkey that today defaced Republic of Turkey Transport web site, Maritime Affairs and Communications Ministry (http://emissions.udhb.gov.tr) websites and (arge.hgm.gov.tr) for #OpBigBrother campaign. The message left states:

“Anonymous from turkey decides to drop Turkey operations and now will join international operations because lack of support from Turkish people!“.

Websites are down while I’m reporting the news but readers can see mirror of hack at following URL’s

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.