Behind the Hacks: The Origins of Anonymous | Cyberwar

they hacked corporations none of these targets were particularly difficult to hack a three-year-old could do it they challenged governments any method disruption at any cost any means necessary they wanted to change the world history was being made how do you not get involved in it but after a series of arrests and an informant on the inside I was arrested when I was 16 years old police broke down the front door handcuffed me in my bed who is anonymous now [Music] you have a prepaid call you will not be charged for this call this call is

from Jeremy Hammond an inmate app a federal prison this call is been I'm calling Jeremy Hammond a legendary Anonymous hacker Hammond is serving a 10-year prison sentence for hacking a private intelligence firm yo yo what up what up how you doing Jeremy how you doing it's Ben uh it's all good uh you know early morning drinking coffee okay well look uh they literally just called me to the Lieutenant's office about two seconds ago so uh like and the guy is standing right next to me right now so I can't finish this call yeah I guess

I can't finish this call you can't finish this call yeah I guess I got to go you got to go call you again later okay are you going to call back uh I'm going try yeah okay all right thanks man good luck well that was greeting citizens of the world hello Congress of the United States hello leaders of Scientology Anonymous it's a brand a meme and a movement we are Anonymous We Are Legion we do not forgive we do not forget expect us for almost a decade they've hacked into corporations stolen private information and shut

down websites their signature is instantly recognizable the guy Fox masked from the movie V for Vendetta which was based on the graphic novel series of the same name the real guy Fox was executed in 1606 for conspiring to kill the king and blow up the British Parliament I went to talk with Gabriella Coleman an anthropologist who wrote The Definitive book on anonymous full disclosure she's also a consultant on this show they are ghostly they're spectral they're mysterious they're controversial they're radical it's a protest movement it's not about long-term structural change it's about getting people excited

for activism which is incredibly important and then I think their most kind of constructive contribution has to do with the leaking of information whistleblowing but but that's not how Anonymous started out back in the early 2000s a group of trolls banded together on a web Forum called forchan taking their name from the default ID many used to post anonymous anonymous was never meant to become an activist phenomena today it's identified with politics with activism but its roots are in the offensive sometimes terrifying sometimes humorous world of Internet trolling trolling is the time honored practice of

online baiting and in 2008 Anonymous found an easy target it started with a video featuring the world's most famous Scientologist a very enthusiastic Tom Cruz the Church of Scientology was trying to get this video apparently leaked by a church Insider off the internet and the Church of Scientology threatened all sorts of uh Publishers like Gawker with lawsuits if they didn't take down the video and it was at this moment that Anonymous decides to Target the Church of Scientology with one of these trolling campaigns and in this case it was I like to refer to it

as the mothership trolling campaign that Anonymous engaged in they prank called Scientology um dynetics hotline they sent hundreds of pizzas to churches across North America they sent black faxes to all the churches then Anonymous hit toldy websites with what's called a distributed denial of service or dos a Dos attack floods a website with so much traffic that it crashes when the attack stops the site can come back up without any permanent damage and it was during the course of that campaign that they also then started to debate whether they should kind of earnestly protest the

Church of Scientology not for the sake of trolling uh but for the kind of sake of you know activism for the first time Anonymous was considering real political iCal action and then came a fateful step the collective called for a worldwide Street protest against Scientology and thousands actually showed up anonymous' next big op was just as political it morphed from an anti-copyright movement into a massive campaign to defend Wikileaks and its founder Julie nange in November 2010 Wikileaks began publishing a trove of leaked diplomatic cables classified dispatches between American embassies and the state department Visa

Mastercard and PayPal sto processing donations to WikiLeaks Anonymous struck back with what they called a payback that operation was and I still think is the largest protest dos that the internet has ever seen you had over 7,000 people that showed up on the chat Channel where activity was organized it was Monumental dos multi-day against Visa PayPal MasterCard op payback put Anonymous on the world stage and put them on the FBI's radar as the bureau's top official in cyber crime Sean Henry watched Anonymous rise he retired in 2012 what was it like when you first encountered

an anonymous anonymous I mean just the very name right who who is it that we're trying to investigate where do they reside who do they associate with this is a a group that's been widely dispersed first around the country and has been pretty good about keeping themselves Off the Grid as individuals what about what they actually do because a lot of it's just like a Dos attack is that really all that bad you we're seeing a new form of social protest and that is people taking advantage of their technical skills to object in a loud

sort of way uh to social and political practices that they deem objectionable I mean a lot of that activity is illegal under our our existing law and there are uh authorized ways that people can protest uh using the network to disrupt organizations or to breach data and and to steal it is not one of those Ways by 2011 anonymous had gone from a fringe group of trolls to a global political force the collective attacked the websites of repressive governments to support the Arab Spring took to the streets as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement

and hacked corporations and law enforcement along the way but to understand who Anonymous is now I had to meet some of them in person Anonymous is basically a network of online trolls that became a global force to be reckoned with they usually organized on a network of online chat channels called IRC using aliases but that doesn't mean they never meet in person and Chaos communication Camp a hacker Gathering that only happens once every 4 years turned out out to be a bit of a reunion party some of the people I met have never been interviewed

on camera before my name is Mercedes no haer and I have two State national bowling championships I'm Keith I'm the pretty PayPal 14 defendant I'm Anon Panda and I'm the king of Sweden no keth and Anon Panda took part in anonymous' legendary attack against PayPal visa and MasterCard in support of WikiLeaks and its founder juli Assange I mean I don't like him as a person but I that doesn't mean he doesn't have rights and that doesn't mean that I won't fight for his rights because if he doesn't have rights then I don't have rights everybody

has them or they're just privileges so if I want to be able to publish secret government data that everyone should know then I also have to defend Assange but some within Anonymous weren't as interested in politics as they were in laws internet slang for for hilarity and LC was a small Breakaway group of anonymous members who just wanted some lulls at the system's expense quite frankly hackers get bored and there's nothing wor there's nothing more dangerous than a bored hacker because they'll make themselves not bored very quickly Darren Martin took part in both Anonymous and

LC going by the name Pon sauce poning something can mean that you've hacked it completely when it all really started kicking off the all thing was just when I was turned 19 so pretty much the same as most of the people involved we were all kids basically so we just kind of split off and did her own thing and then well you know just kind of took on life of its own who were some of lwx targets and why did you guys decide on them so L Meo was sort of laughing at security so we

sort of picked targets based on who would be funny to hack and you know corporations are pretty funny to heck because because who wouldn't want to see like a big Corporation put to its needs TFO was a respected Anonymous member and a talented hacker he was also part of LC all at the age of 16 in the summer of 2011 LC went on a hacking spree they dossed the websites of the CIA and the Senate hacked an FBI association called infragard and published a fake story on PBS NewsHour site they also redirected the UK newspaper

the sun to a fake obituary for its owner none of these targets were particularly difficult to hack a three-year-old could do it I mean senate.gov was one of the simplest hacks ever pulled off it was like the '90s called it wants its security fun abilties back in many cases people think it was deserved because of the previous actions for example the sun the sun was involved involved in a news hacking Scandal where they were were hacking into celebrities phones so when the sun was hacked it was you know a lot of people sort of found

that funny what just seems like justice like you said yeah if they're hacking then why not let us hack them yeah it's sort of like justice one anyway both lsac and Anonymous needed servers to organize online and since corporate servers would just shut them down or turn them over to the police the collective built its own network that's where Chris Weatherhead came in he helped establish a non Ops the collectives mean network of chat rooms so you ran the servers that Anonymous used for their operations yes I ran a servers that they use for a

few of their operations probably most notably the ones relating to operation payback the operation avenges s stuff in the Arab Spring like the operation Tunisia helping the Tunisian people operation Egypt helping people get back online when M cut them off did you develop pretty close friendships with certain people none of us knew knew who anyone else really was so it's there's a sort of a crossover between friendship and trust you reach a point where you're implicitly trusting people with information and therefore you are essentially befriending them because you only trust your friends trust was important

since all of this was illegal and the heat was on in 2011 law enforcement around the world located and arrested several members of LC and Anonymous link dozens of charges for their high-profile hat so when the police turned up my house was a highly unpleasant experience they kind of gave it the whole TV treatment I guess you could call it they sent in the whole you know lots of people shouting really loudly with you know firearms and I guess they were afraid that laptops were wired to explode or some crazy like that or that you

know out of a delete button which it make all the evidence disappear or something police broke down the front door came in arrested me in my bed handcuffed me in my bed uh they all seemed so surprised that my computer and everything around it was off of course it's off it's 7 in the morning what do you expect and me personally I was just arrested because you're so pretty it's cuz you're so pretty no and ke were arrested but narrowly avoided doing major time T was too young to go to prison sauce got off with

a fine and Chris spent 4 and A2 months behind bars but there were much harsher sentences to come Anonymous was on a roll that is until a series of arrests in 2011 and 2012 but for members of the collective there was more shocking news to come many of the arrests were made possible by an informant Hector Xavier Monsur otherwise known as Sabu was a vocal member of Anonymous in LC many considered him a friend you met Sabu what was that like and what was he like Sabu is such an interesting character uh he was really

involved Anonymous he was very charismatic his personality online uh was larger than life it was why he was so effective as an informant some of his peers and colleagues you know described him as Legend why do you think he ratted out his friends and his peers so was put in a difficult situation when the FBI showed up uh at his house they basically said look work for us or we will take your foster kids away from you and away from your family entirely and he took the deal that was given to him and started almost

immediately uh to work for the FBI Sabu not only led the FBI to L SEC but to one of anonymous' most brilliant hackers 27-year-old named Jeremy Hammond Hammond was the real deal a radical Anarchist as active in the streets as he was online a activist way before Anonymous was even a thing and we believe that the internet is a powerful new medium where just a handful of people um in small groups just by shifting data around in the right directions can make big changes and big damage any method disruption at any cost any means necessary

Hammond helped launch op antisec which targeted police departments and what he calls the National Security complex Sabu was also a major player in antiek all while working for the FBI with the Feds Watching his every move Sabu introduced hamon to a hacker who had found a way into stratfor a massive Global intelligence firm Hond then hacked stratfor stealing thousands of credit card numbers and millions of emails he was arrested for the hack and is now serving a 10-year sentence in federal prison dial five now yo yo what's up yo what's going on you okay oh

man yeah it's cool um so just I'll get right to it why' you hack stratfor uh well stratfor was a a private intelligence Corporation they're uh mercenaries are kind of like the uh antithesis of you know the black hats right the uh revolutionaries uh people who use their skill for social justice they use it for pay to control and monitor and basically dominate the world so uh it was a kind of a natural Target why don't you tell me about uh Sabu what was his role in in all this well basically he the internet loud

mouth more than anything um he was around you know during the you know time with Anonymous and L SEC and so forth and uh so then they they came and they busted him and then they he flipped and he started working for the fence how'd that make you feel well you know it's dishonest it's betrayal you know he chose to side with the Enemy you know the fence the white hats the end of days of the world to uh not only turn over his friends that he was working with but he also sabotaged uh the

movement at the time the people that he was working with you know were now under monitoring I mean he basically got a bunch of kids arrested and you know if Sabu would have held his ground I think we would have continued on you know we would have been more effective I certainly wouldn't have been busted if a word for sabu's cooperation I asked Sabu to tell his side of the story but he declined to talk to me on the record after Hammond hacked stratfor he leaked the company's emails to WikiLeaks the emails revealed stratfor had

monitored activists worldwide WikiLeaks begins its release of 5,000 emails documenting the private lives and private lies of private spies but one question Still Remains this whole time the FBI had an informant so why did it let stratfor get hacked the FBI could have done something about that they could have prevented all this damage from happening but no there were more interest in trapping people you know in snaring people and doing things while they could have stopped things and done crime prevention instead they thought we're going to entrap everyone I mean that they they completely burned

Stratford and that you know the FBI need to have a good look at themselves and go you know what moral high horse do we have to stand on when we're using other people as bait after the high-profile arrests of some of its core members Anonymous was out of Crossroads but that made some of its hackers more determined than ever sabu's betrayal broke trust within Anonymous anyone could be an informant and security expert Robert Hansen believes the group has been infiltrated I know that there are certain governments who have a keen interest in not only infiltrating

them but uh flipping people inside Anonymous and turning them against one another and you're saying that uh signals intelligence agencies around the world will try to compromise Anonymous yes which ones in particular at this point most of them yeah um I've actually sat in meetings where people have actively talked about doing that and not as a we could as in we are so Anonymous is essentially as clean as a public swimming pool I don't know if I put it that way but what I KN do know is that it would be too dangerous for a

guy like me to ever consider being involved with at this point if I were part of anonymous right now I would burn everything and walk away and I would never look back but for some walking away isn't an option despite the risk Anonymous dos actions and hacks continue across the globe what do you say to people that say Anonymous is Flaming out it's never going to happen why not and anony says a whole will always exist it's an idea you can't kill or jail it bio could go to jail if his identity is revealed he

took part in DOS attacks on Canadian government websites protesting an antiterrorism Bill known as c-51 the legislation gives the government government broader surveillance Powers sparking concerns about privacy abuse are you going to escalate your attacks in Canada are you going to make going to go after more stuff that really depends on where the government goes with this bill it needs to be repealed you could be detained indefinitely if you are proclaimed a terrorist like myself for example I could probably be held indefinitely as a terrorist as a terrorist because I poked a website a few

times and that's about all the damage it does right getting poked right we stop it comes back online if you put your chances of going to jail in a percentage what would it be at this point pretty high and when we set out to do this in the first place with OBS privacy we knew it would end one or two ways Us in prison or we'd win that's that really we're not backing down they not backing down when you arrest someone that doesn't scare them away from it at least within Anonymous it just sort of

makes him more uh motivated and sort of more passionate and more Angry if you could go back and do it all again would you would I have had those ideals probably would I have got involved with Anonymous probably would I have ended up running servers highly likely uh therefore would I still be in the situ I am now very likely how does this end personally for you personally this doesn't end this is my life's work at this point this ends if they lock me up forever other than that I I don't think I'll ever stop

at its best Anonymous is embarrass those in power taunting them paralyzing them and spilling their secrets online as much an idea as a colle itive concerted campaigns by law enforcement could weaken and demoralize but not destroy it and so Anonymous lives on for my comrades still out there in the struggle keep doing your thing it brings me great joy to hear about Big Shot corporations and government systems being hacked having all their details exposed to the world thanks a lot and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us there it is then

take it easy