Anonymous Who are they really? Where are you from? What goals do they have? Discover his true story

Most people, when they do the right thing, like to be rewarded in some way. either monetary or recognition and respect. There is a small group of people who simply prefer to act nice and help humanity without being seen.

Within this group that we have mentioned there is another even smaller and more exclusive, one could even say that it is a very elitist organizationwhich is in charge of finding abuses and immoral practices on the part of the most powerful, in order to make them pay.

In the entry you have to read this time, you will know the history of Anonymous, a group that has resonated a lot in recent years and who have had an arduous trajectory, in the search for justice, who have used unconventional but effective means to make themselves heard Let’s start!

What is Anonymous and what is the objective of this group of cyber activists?

anonymous It is the name that one or many people carry to hide their identity on the Internet, since this word is actually a pseudonym for the anonymous term. Therefore, we know that it is an organization that seeks first to protect its true identity.. Very little is really known about this group of individuals, because, although alleged members have been captured, there is really no certainty that they are authentic members of this clan that operates in the shadows.

We can say then that it is a group of people that make up an organization, which acts under an ideology and under certain principles that we will learn about later. It is a totally decentralized group, since its members are scattered all over the worldthis favors them in many aspects because it allows them to extend their tentacles in many countries.

This group moves under an anarchist banner, so it is very easy to understand that it is dedicated to exposing the darkest truths that governments and large corporations in the world have. From its origins to the present day, its movements have caused much controversy and controversy.for many reasons, but one of them is the fact that not all the information heard about them can be corroborated, because it could be one or many impostors.

Among its main objectives are to promote the existence of a society where there is no abuse of power and freedom of expression abounds. His greatest efforts have been to expose wrongdoing by large and powerful world organizations. Thanks to the fact that most of their actions and movements are carried out from the networkanother of its main objectives is that the information is completely free and accessible to all interested users, for this reason it is a considered and self-styled Hacktivist group.

What is hacktivism and what are the ideals of its greatest exponents?

Even though many times the term of activism can cause controversy, because it is easily associated with collective protests. The true meaning is the tireless search for some general good in the area that is focused, it can be a solution to some social, political, economic, environmental and even religious evil. Secondly, a hacker is a person with the necessary skills to access privileged data stored on a computer.

This is based on getting vulnerabilities in the system of its targets, to later launch attacks with software or scripts made by the same. Hacktivism then is a compound word that encompasses these two known terms, thus generating a new concept that serves to describe the action of violating the systems of large organizations to extract information or to disable its operation on the network.

Many of the existing Hacktivists have built their reputation by disabling the aforementioned government websites., making use of denial of service attacks. This assault is directed at the server that is responsible for covering the requests of users who work and request data on the website. The goal is to overwhelm it with an inordinate number of requests, more than it can handle per second, thus leaving it offline.

This means that the system of the attacked entity must completely stop the services provided until they can be recomposed with a higher level of security so as not to suffer the same inconvenience again. During this process it is possible that data will be lost in the software restore.

Having said all this, a Hacktivist is only considered to be that group or individual who engages in these practices to:

• Expose His ideals.
• Express your discontent.
• Search a social good.
• avoid profit of the weakest with this opportunity.

Origin of Anonymous What were the reasons that led to the founding of this group?

If we want to know the origin of this controversial group we must move at the beginning of the 21st century exactly in the year 2003. At this time, the concept of image boards was very fashionable. This is nothing more than a website where users can share images anonymously. 4Chan is one of these mentioned sites where initially only they touched on trivial topics like Japanese Animes and Mangas.

That’s where the name originated. “Anonymous”, which was assigned to each of the users to protect their names. Over time the 4chan community It grew and the topics of conversation expanded. Between so much leisure, deeper and more controversial issues were opening up about the things that bothered the group the most. It was then in the year 2008 when Anonymous makes its first manifestations through the Chanology project.

These first actions by hacktivists were directed against the Church of Scientology. The spark that ignited this movement was an incident that occurred with a leaked video that the church tried to censor. The video was an interview with a well-known actor who belongs to this religion, Tom Cruise. Where he is said to be somewhat maniacal and perhaps forced to speak well about this religion.

Anonymous released its war manifesto on January 21 as a “Message to Scientology”, condemning censorship and threatening to put religion out of line. we already know that Anonymous became known thanks to its war campaign against Scientology.

4 days after his manifesto, this war began:

• Denial of service attacks for local or international church pages.
• Large-scale phone pranks to collapse the services of attention to the public.
• black faxes to disrupt organizational communication.

Following these initial attacks the sites scientology officials moved to a hosting specialized in securitywhere a couple of days later they received an overflow of requests that completely disabled the system.

There is also talk of the existence of a second video that was removed from the internet due to demands from the Scientology organization, because it revealed information about a death in strange conditions of a Scientologist, Lisa McPherson, who was in the care of “Doctors” of this religion.

On January 28, 2008, a third video was published on YouTube.in which all those who agreed with the the Chanology project, who went to the facilities of the Church of Scientology on February 10 of the same year. During those days, the group of hacktivists was also in charge of modifying the perception of the Google search algorithm.

This means that when typing phrases like:

• brainwashing cult
• dangerous sect

The first results would be the official sites of the religion. By the month of February, collective discontent could be felt in the vicinity of the facilities of the attacked organization and people could be seen with derogatory posters about religion. On the 10th just on the dead Scientologist’s birthday, As scheduled, there was a demonstration in various cities around the world where the number of protesters reached and exceeded 7,000.

Throughout the year 2008 Anonymous took on the task of leading protests on the following dates:

• March, 15th
• April 12th
• June 14th

All of these protests were worldwide, involving people in Europe, Oceania and America. On all these occasions, the ideal that information is free was maintained and illegal and immoral practices were denounced. A small example of these abuses is the obligation that church members had of signing absurd billion-year contracts.

Ideology of the “Anonymous” What is their motto and principles? Do they really do any good?

The ideology of this organization was made known by them in their first video “Message to Scientology”, which was published January 21, 2008.

Several important points about Anonymous are made clear in this video, which is still available on YouTube:

• They are against the harmful manipulation of information, under the concept of disinformation.
• They are against the opinion suppression practices of powerful entities.
• They do not support that in addition to the above these powerful entities are conflictive in society.
• They detest organizations that exercise mind control over their members.
• They are in favor of free and free information.
• If necessary, they can match their opponents in wickedness in order to destroy them.

These points can help us to implicitly understand what the initial ideology of these hacktivists is, but to have a complete notion it is necessary to know their motto:

• Knowledge is free.
• We are anonymous.
• We are legion.
• We do not forgive.
• We do not forget.
• Wait for us.

It is also important know that Anonymous has no leadersince they recognize each other as equals, this has allowed them to reach large masses and get their ideas supported with public demonstrations on various occasions. But the fact that they have public support does not mean that everything they have done is good..

It is true that they have condemned evil acts by powerful people and organizations, yet it is possible that they have been wrong in some of the ways used to carry it out. In any case, we leave it to your discretion to condemn or support the acts of this controversial group..

History of Anonymous What have been the most shocking events and revelations that you have made?

Anonymous’s war against the Church of Scientology lasted two long yearsas of 2010 they focused their attention on new adversaries.

Let’s now see a small review of some of his cyber battles:

Operation Payback

This movement was active during the year 2010, in it the hackers were in charge of strongly attacking several entities that were in favor of copyright:

• Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
• International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)

Due to the high level of piracy that this generated, many artists spoke out against it and also received various computer attacks. Operation Payback also expressed support for WikiLeaks, a global promoter of free information.

To support this friendly organization, hackers attacked and disabled the following services for a whole day:

• amazon
• Telecommunications Company of Cuba S.A.
• PayPal
• MasterCard
• Visa
• PostFinance

Operation against HBGary Federal

HBGary Federal is a company of Informatic securityof which its director in February 2011 said that it had infiltrated without problems in anonymous and that these would be unmasked by his person. As a result the official site of HBGary was hacked and disabled leaving a clear message that Anonymous is hard to mess with. During that time, more than 68,000 emails with confidential company information were extracted.

Sony Operation

In April 2011, a small but significant battle began between Sony and Anonymous, as a result of some lawsuits that Sony was making against some hacker users. In this fight the hacktivists denied the services of several Sony websites in which Kilpatrick Townsend was included., page belonging to the law firm that represented Sony. This contest did not last much more than a month, since many PlayStation users were being harmed and that was not the goal of the hackers.

Attack on the United States Department of Justice

The fall of the official website of the United States Department of Justice was preceded by Anonymous’s support for a former hacker and MegaUpload founder Kim Schmitz (Dotcom). Said hacker was facing a possible penalty of 50 years and the closure of its download website by the FBI. In addition to violating the system of the justice department, the cyber activists took down the services of Universal Music Group, in order to publish a large part of Sony’s music collection for free.

Thanks to this movement, the group of collectives also managed to obtain 1.7 GB of emails from the Department. All this information was released into the public domain, exposing the owner of the account, prosecutor Eric Holder.. This collective group has been very active since its formation and has been involved in numerous countries besides the United Statesleaving its mark in favor of people’s rights.

Let’s see a small list of the countries in which he has performed:

• Spain
• Argentina
• Colombia
• Mexico
• Tunisia
• Egypt
• New Zealand
• Chili
• Panama
• Venezuela

In all these countries Anonymous has hacked government pages and accounts over time and has always positioned itself on the side of the less powerful.

Other characters and organizations that fight against governments and their abuses of people’s privacy

Let’s now quickly get to know some renowned Hacktivists who have fought for ideals and principles:

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden is a well-known American hacktivistwho was at the time an agent of the CIA and the NSA.

In 2013, he uncovered a large number of classified documents, where information on mass surveillance programs of which large companies are part is found, such as:

• Microsoft Corporation
• Yahoo Inc.
• Google Inc.
• Facebook Inc.
• PalTalk
• AOL Inc.
• Skype
• Youtube
• Apple Inc.

By doing this, he made clear his position against the violation of privacy that exists in the world. Since his escape, he is believed to have been to various countries, but is currently a permanent resident of Russia..

WikiLeaks

It is a page that is hosted on the Internet in a way that its users can remain anonymous, much of this is achieved with the browser Tor Browser to access the Deep Web. All kinds of confidential information about the abuses of powerful entities such as the United States government are uploaded on this site. It is a website founded by Julian Assange who is a well-known developer who has made many contributions in renowned software.

In WikiLeaks, the entities of the United States have been exposed on different occasions by different evidence, among which we have:

• A video of an unfair shooting of journalists in Baghdad, caused by US soldiers.
• 92,000 documents from the wars in Afghanistan, including civilian casualties wounded and executed by US soldiers.
• 391,831 documents from the wars in Iraq, with a large amount of data on injustices, torture and unprecedented deaths.
• Data on 251,187 communications between the State Department with each of the embassies around the planet.

Aaron Swartz

This character was a programmer known as “Hacktivist” thanks to the fact that he dedicated himself to exposing the acts of many politicians on a website he founded, Watchdog.net. One of his best works was developing a secure communication platform between journalists and informants who may well be other political activists.

Aaron took his own life in 2013 due to a large build up of depression and possibly because at the time he was facing an unfair trial from 50 years in prison and a fine of more than 4 million dollars.