We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

out initially, then developing the story with a drip feed of exclusive information. Among the teasers was an embarrassing e-mail from Barr to
company employees in which he gave them his password, “kibafo33,” so that they could all take part in a conference call.
Finally, on Monday, February 14, after a few news sites reported that a WikiLeaks-style site called AnonLeaks was coming, the team
launched the new web viewer with all 71,800 e-mails from HBGary. They included 16,906 e-mails from Aaron Barr, more than 25,000 emails
from two other HBGary execs, and 27,606 e-mails from HBGary Inc. CEO Greg Hoglund, including a lovesick e-mail from his wife,
Penny, that said, “I love when you wear your fuzzy socks with your jammies.”
Now more journalists started covering the story, and the coverage went on for more than a month. The attack had been unscrupulous, but
the ends were an exposé on spying, misinformation, and cyber attacks by a security researcher. Hardly anyone pointed out that people with
Anonymous were using exactly the same tactics.
In late February 2011, Barr resigned as CEO of HBGary Federal. A week later, Democratic congressman Hank Johnson called for an
investigation into government, military, and NSA contracts with HBGary Federal and its partners Palantir and Berico Technologies. Johnson
had read reports of the scandal and asked his staff to look into it.
“I felt duty bound to move for further investigation,” Johnson said in an interview at the time. He did not like the idea of government
contractors like HBGary Federal developing software tools that were meant to be used in counterterrorism for “domestic surveillance and
marketing to business organizations.” Spying on your own citizens, he added, was bad enough.
“If you have anything else like this come up,” Laurelai asked Kayla after getting a peek at the chaos from the HBGary attack, “can you let
me know so we can write about it?”
“Sure,” Kayla replied. She kept her word. A couple of days later Kayla asked Laurelai if she wanted to see where some action was
happening and then invited her into a new exclusive IRC channel, again off AnonOps, called #HQ. By now #InternetFeds had been shut
down after rumors that one of the thirty or so participants was leaking its chat logs. This room, #HQ, was smaller and had about six people in
it, at most, at any one time. It included everyone who had helped in the HBGary Federal attack.
“Hang out here and you’ll see when stuff is about to pop up,” Kayla said. Laurelai was excited about being in #HQ and wondered if she
might be able to help expose other white hat security firms that were operating under their own laws and getting away with the kind of stuff
that Anons were getting arrested for. Already in January, the FBI had executed forty search warrants on people suspected of taking part in the
DDoS attacks on PayPal, working off the list of a thousand IP addresses the company had detected.
Though no one else knew it, Laurelai was secretly logging everything that was being said in the #HQ room, even when she wasn’t in it.
Having spent the last two years learning how to hack and social-engineer people, she deemed it important to document what people around
her were saying—at a later date, the logs could be used to corroborate things or refute them if necessary. Logging the chat was just standard
procedure for Laurelai. In the meantime, she gradually became disappointed with the standard of discussion in the room. “They were acting
like a bunch of damn kids,” she later remembered.
“SUCH AN AWESOME CREW HERE,” the hacker known as Marduk (and also known as Q) said on February 8, the same day Aaron
Barr and his family fled their home.
“An Anon Skype party should be in order,” said Topiary. (It eventually happened, but only with people from AnonOps who were willing
to reveal their voices.)
They threw out occasional ideas for short projects. Marduk, who had strong political views and seemed to be older than most of the others,
at one point asked Kayla to scan for vulnerabilities in websites for Algerian cell phone providers. He was looking for databases full of tens of
thousands of cell phone numbers for Algerian citizens that he could then hand over to the country’s opposition party for a mass SMS on
February 12. It would be another attempt to support the democratic uprising in the Middle East after the successful attacks on Tunisia and
Egypt in January.
Kayla seemed more excited about publishing Greg Hoglund’s e-mails. “Greg’s e-mails are ready. Parsed and everything,” she said. “The
time to fuck Greg is now. :3.”
That was one thing they could all agree on.
“Who is handling media?” Kayla asked.
“Housh and Barrett,” Topiary said, referring to Gregg Housh from Chanology, who now spoke to the media as an expert on Anonymous,
and another man, called Barrett Brown, whom Topiary would deal with more closely in the coming weeks.
Eventually, Laurelai introduced herself.
“Hi,” Laurelai said when she first entered that morning.
“Ahai,” said Marduk. “Welcome to where the shitstorm began.” Then he got down to business. “Laurelai, we can’t tie [HBGary Federal]
to WikiLeaks for sure?” he asked.
“I already have,” she answered. “We got enough to smear the shit out of them.” That confirmation pleased Marduk.
“They are one strange company,” said Marduk. “Actually I’m sure it’s a government coverup.”
“The government uses these companies to do their dirty work,” Laurelai explained.
The WikiLeaks connection Laurelai had found conveniently segued with the modus operandi of Operation Payback, making it look almost
as if Anonymous had planned it all.
“*Kayla cuddles Laurelai :3 So much