We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

Anonymous.”
William did not mind that there were obvious tiers in Anonymous, with hackers and writers at the top and social engineers and LOIC users
near the bottom. Each side rode on the other’s reputation—William scared his targets by claiming he was a hacker, and hackers could ride on
the infamy of Anonymous because of the way less skilled people bandied the name around.
The DDoS attacks on Sony continued for several more days, and they became so unpopular that just before April 7, Anonymous
announced it was calling them off.
“Anonymous is not attacking the PSN at this time,” a new press release said. “We realize that targeting the PSN is not a good idea. We
have therefore temporarily suspended our action, until a method is found that will not severely impact Sony customers.”
Strangely, though, the downtime for the PlayStation Network continued, and gamers were furious. On April 22, Anonymous posted a new
press release on AnonNews.org titled “For Once We Didn’t Do It.” The network had been down for almost three weeks now, and it was
clearly not because of an ongoing DDoS attack.
Just as strange: Sony itself had been quiet for weeks. Finally, on May 2, the company made a startling announcement. There had been an
“intrusion” to its network some time between April 17 and 19. Hackers had compromised personal and financial details of more than seventyfive
million accounts with the PlayStation Network. This was a hack that affected tens of millions of people. Nobody in Anonymous was
taking responsibility, and nobody on AnonOps seemed to know who had stolen all those user details. Yet by the end of that month, Sony had
spent $171 million trying to patch the security breach, and within a few months, news outlets were reporting that Sony’s related costs from
the breach could push past $1 billion.
Sony then wrote an explanatory letter to the U.S. House of Representatives. The cyber criminals, they said, had left a file marked
“Anonymous” and “We are legion” in the system. It might have been a calling card or an attempt by criminal hackers to throw police off their
scent, but in any case the news quickly removed any public legitimacy Anonymous had gained from its protests for WikiLeaks and the
Middle East and from the information it had uncovered during its attack on HBGary.
At first, many Anons liked the notion that hackers had damaged Sony so drastically—but the taste was bittersweet. No one knew who had
performed the heist, and there had been no official Anonymous statement—only a strange file left in secret. The whole affair had a
dishonorable feel to it.
To make matters worse, AnonOps soon had internal problems to deal with, as word started spreading of a major leak on the network. A
rogue operator had published a list of 653 nicknames and their IP addresses, the strings of numbers that if naked could lead police, Internet
trolls, and anyone who knew how to use Google straight to the individuals’ doors. Once again the newbies, not the real hackers, were most at
risk.
Almost immediately, AnonOps IRC became a ghost town. The hundreds of regular participants who’d been on the list were too scared to
sign back on. Some retreated to other IRC networks like EFnet and Freenode, while some kept talking on blogs and forums. Anonymous
was suddenly a diaspora with no natural meeting ground.
Former AnonOps admins, including Owen, Shitstorm, Blergh, and Nerdo, released an official statement saying they were “profoundly
sorry for this drama” and urging visitors to stay away from the AnonOps IRC servers.
After two days the name of the culprit finally emerged. Ryan had been an IRC operator who used his servers to host two popular websites
for Anonymous supporters. He was known for being a temperamental web administrator who got a kick out of hosting thousands of people
on his servers, and as the guy who had told Topiary about faking the LOIC hive number back in January. He was also one of the rare
handful of people who controlled a large botnet. Ryan was considered something of a loose cannon, and it seemed that as clashes with
network operators became more bitter, he had gone off the rails.
Ryan should have expected repercussions, and they came when someone dredged up his real-life details. Ryan had allegedly begged Sabu
to prevent his details from getting published. When that didn’t get him anywhere, he used his botnet to DDoS the AnonOps network and
several other Anon-related websites. Despite this, on May 11, Ryan’s full name was published online, along with his home address in Essex,
Great Britain, his age, cell phone number, Skype name, and the e-mail associated with his PayPal account—all presented on a simple black
web page. The doxer had listed his full name, correctly, as Ryan Cleary. The top of the document said “Doxed by Evo,” adding, “Shouts to
Kayla, Sabu, Owen, #krack, #tr0ll and all of AnonOps.” Evo was someone who frequented Kayla’s IRC network, #tr0ll. As a few media
outlets reported on a “civil war” in Anonymous, Ryan denied the details were true, claiming in one IRC chat that they were false details he
had released himself three years prior.
Anonymous was starting to look like a joke. Operation Sony had been called off and then apparently hijacked by hackers who had tried to
use it for cover. And now a former AnonOps operator had turned against the network too. Nobody was interested in raids and operations
anymore, only in gossip, politics, and defending Anonymous’s reason for existing.
“Sony and Ryan may have capped an end to a crazy roller-coaster ride,” Topiary observed at that time. But while he was glad to be on his
break from the ongoing drama, he was also talking to Sabu again. He couldn’t help feeling compelled to relive the whirlwind experience of
the previous winter. If they got the HBGary hackers back together, they could show Anonymous something new, something that would be
not only inspiring, but jaw-dropping.
Chapter 16
Talking About a Revolution
Distance from Anonymous meant Jake was getting real-life things done. His house had never been cleaner. To the left of his desk was a
large notice board with paperwork and a calendar, and there was a thirty-eight-inch monitor to supplement his laptop. The couch in his living