We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

The assertion that Anonymous was “starting to look like a joke” comes from my own observations as well as discussions with
supporters.
Chapter 16: Talking About a Revolution
Most of the details and descriptions from this chapter were derived from interviews with Topiary and Sabu over the course of several
months, including Internet Relay Chat interviews, discussions by phone, and face-to-face meetings.
The point about New York mayor Rudy Giuliani increasing the city’s police force to 40,000 was corroborated by the April 11, 2000,
Congressional Record for the House of Representatives and by press reports.
The details about COINTELPRO were corroborated by information on the FBI’s own website, which states that the project was
“rightly criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons.” See
http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro
The point that Kayla, Tflow, and AVunit had been on “breaks” before the formation of LulzSec was corroborated by Sabu and at least
one other LulzSec supporter.
The quote “Most professional and high-level hacks are never detected” comes from an interview with a hacker supporting Anonymous
who did not wish to be named.
Chapter 17: Lulz Security
The majority of details in this chapter were sourced from interviews with Topiary, Sabu, and Kayla. Additional details, including
dialogue from Pwnsauce, was derived from my observation of discussions among Topiary, Kayla, Tflow, AVunit, and Pwnsauce in
the IRC channel #charmy, which was set up for discussions that I could repeat in this book. I also held interviews with some in the
group, such as Pwnsauce, in this channel.
The assertion that it “took a week for Fox’s IT administrators to notice the breach” was derived from interviews in #charmy.
Regarding the original Twitter feed for LulzSec, @LulzLeaks: the original account that contains that first tweet is still online.
I corroborated that LulzSec had indeed posted a database of potential contestants for The X Factor by speaking to a spokesman from
Fox about twenty-four hours after the hack was first announced. I also saw the published database on Pastebin.
Chapter 18: The Resurrection of Topiary and Tupac
Details about the PBS hack were sourced from interviews with the hackers involved, as well as from a post that Topiary had put on
Pastebin that gave details about what sort of tools, such as Havij, the group had used. According to a March 2012 article on
darkreading.com, the tool “favored by hacktivists” was created by Iranian hackers, and its name is derived from the Persian word for
“carrot,” also a nickname for the male sexual organ.
The statement that “people in the #anonleaks chat room on AnonOps IRC went into a frenzy” when Topiary posted something on
Twitter from his personal account was sourced from interviews with Topiary after he visited the chat network.
Chapter 19: Hacker War
Regarding Pastebin’s boost in traffic, the website’s controllers would later show their appreciation for LulzSec by retweeting
@LulzSec’s July 13, 2011, announcement that “If @pastebin reaches 75,000 followers we’ll engage in a mystery operation that will
cause mayhem.” (This was one of the rare tweets from @LulzSec after the group officially disbanded.) Hours later, @Pastebin
tweeted, “The # of followers @pastebin is growing very rapidly since @lulzsec is sending their love,” followed by “The twitter
madness continues thanks to @lulzsec.” That same day, Topiary exchanged e-mails with Pastebin owner Jeroen Vader, a twentyeight-year-old
Dutch entrepreneur, in which Topiary requested a “unique green crown” icon next to his personal “Topiary” account
on Pastebin, which, when highlighted, would also say “CEO of consuming pie.” Vader agreed, saying, “I’ll be sure to fix you up
with a very special crown. Many thanks for trusting Pastebin with your ‘special’ releases.” Pastebin statements from LulzSec and
Anonymous rank among the top-trafficked posts on Pastebin, along with LulzSec’s final “50 Days of Lulz” release on June 25, 2011,
which clocked 411,354 page views as of April 3, 2012. (Pastebin hosts ads on its site, so the extra traffic will have aided its bottom
line.) Ironically, Vader said in early April of 2012 that he would hire more staff to help police “sensitive information” that got posted
onto the site, according to BBC News.
Details about The Jester’s hangout on 2600 and the other people who frequented it were sourced from LulzSec’s leaked #pure-elite chat
logs, from interviews with Topiary, and from my own observations of the 2600 IRC network. The points about the origins of 2600:
The Hacker Quarterly were sourced from various Web articles, including the PCWorld feature story “Hacking’s History,” published
on April 10, 2001.
The information about the creation of a secondary ring of LulzSec supporters was sourced from conversations with Topiary and Sabu.
The detail about Antisec and its original adherents comprising “a few hundred skilled hackers” was sourced from my conversations
with Andrew “weev” Auernheimer, who was a hacker during the early days of the Antisec movement, and from various Web
articles, including the 2002 Wired story “White-Hat Hate Crimes on the Rise.”
The nicknames of “secondary crew members” of LulzSec, such as Neuron and M_nerva, were sourced from the #pure-elite chat logs
that were first leaked online by Pastebin on June 5, 2011, in a post entitled “LulzSec Private Log.” The logs were republished by The