Introduction to Cyber-Warfare - Proiect SEMPER FIDELIS

“CHAOTIC” BEGINNINGS: THE CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB, CCC69legions of Anons originated here (as well as those who later joined from other forums andIRCs) were often less-skilled hackers. Their activism is for the current select cause; their contributionis their computer power as they provide bandwidth to a larger DDoS attack. However,from this mass of supporters, IRC- and system administrators form an intermediatelevel in the Anonymous hierarchy. These people are knowledgeable with information technologyand often moonlight as hackers. In May 2011, the moderator of an Anonymous IRCchannel took control of the servers that hosted the collective’s IRC network, redirected some“AnonOps” domain names, launched a denial of service attack against the IRC servers, andpublished the IP-addresses of everyone connected to those servers. 4 So far, a group of peopleemploying user names like “Owen,” “shitstorm,” “blergh,” “power2all,” and “Nerdo” hasmaintained the servers, paid the bills, registered the domain names, and moderated the IRCssomewhat. 5 Ryan stated his coup was motivated by his concerns over private decision makingon the part of “Owen” and the other leaders. Increasingly, it appeared that important operationswere decided upon and planned in invite-only chats. 6 Lastly, it can be fathomed thatAnonymous, like other social movements, has a considerable amount of sympathizers, whodo not spend much time on IRC channels, but share the proclaimed ideals. They may downloadthe LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) to aid in the DDoS attack against Tunisian governmentWeb sites only, but refrain from any further participation in the future.The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. After outlining the origins and the “membership”of the collective, we attempt to describe the motivations that drive Anons to act ona certain target as well as their most common modus operandi of a DDoS attack. In the casewhere self-professed members of the collective find it (for whatever reason) necessary to exposethe target or affiliated individuals, they conduct cyber-exploitation operations. These may employother tools, such as SQL injection, to capture personal or confidential data in order to publishit later on Pastebin. Over time, the collective morphed from the boundary transgressinghive-mind of random actors to an organization that collaborates with hacker groups worldwide—providedthey pursue a shared goal. During its history, the Anonymous collective gavebirth to smaller entities that emphasize either certain aspects of the original Anonymous motivationor redefined its targets. Eventually, the collective stood to absorb the remnants of thesespin offs as their smaller, more structured organization proved to be their weakest point. Thechapter will conclude with the account of select examples of Anonymous’ hacking activities,which help to illustrate the movement’s multifaceted, multifactional character. The study ofAnonymous and related groups is likely going to gain importance in the study of cyber warfare.The presence of politically motivated hacking groups with an apparent core of highly skilled ITpersonnel, in addition to their global distribution and ability to mass computing resources in anattack, make this kind of organization rather formidable. Further, the political motivations andwillingness to conduct operations against government and military-affiliated Web sites certainlydraws them into the fray of cyber war.“CHAOTIC” BEGINNINGS: THE CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB, CCCAccording to a hacker known as Commander X, Anonymous’ directorate formed itself fromthe Chaos Computer Club (CCC). 7 The CCC looks back on a 25-year history and is today thelargest European hacker conglomerate with its main headquarters in Hamburg, Germany. 8