Quote from: Peregrin;464955There is no "they."  There is no "Anonymous."  It's misleading and a waste of time for anyone to think so.

Le sigh.

Anonymous is a group of hackers. If you can't understand that...

Quote from: danbuter;464984Anonymous is a group of hackers. If you can't understand that...

Anonymous is whoever wants to claim to be Anonymous.  That's the whole joke.  It's a meme, nothing more.  Do you really think those kids standing outside Scientology buildings are directly related to hackers?  No, they're just another group claiming to be part of Anonymous, because it's just an idea.

If you can't understand that...

Except that doesn't really describe the groups in question at all.

Cut the whole "ANONYMOOSE IS LEEJUN!" crap.  It's propaganda, and nothing more.  The current hacks are primarily orchestrated by a fairly small, and fairly organized group of people, using botnets to expand their horsepower beyond what a handful of IRC geeks normally could pull off.

This limp-wristed "but there is no Anonymous!" apologia does nothing but feed the myth that it's some many headed unkillable hydra, when the fact is all these groups are just little sects of nerds, generally easily rooted out with the proper effort.

Quote from: J Arcane;465011This limp-wristed "but there is no Anonymous!" apologia does nothing but feed the myth that it's some many headed unkillable hydra, when the fact is all these groups are just little sects of nerds, generally easily rooted out with the proper effort.

That's why I'm saying what I'm saying.  It's not that they're legion, it's that chasing after "Anonymous" means jack shit, because any random group can appropriate the name and pretend they're bigger than they are.

That's complete bullshit Peregrin. Yes anyone can take the name, but there is a small group who started the meme (and are still driving it) to cover their own cyber-terrorist activities, by stirring up the script kiddies with all the hactivism nonsense. One of your little buddies will screw up soon and hang the everyone else using the Anon front out to dry.  Stop drinking the kool-aid man, don't take the fall for their crimes.

Kool-aid?  I'm not the one in this thread insinuating that this is either a government operation, or that another poster is somehow associated with these punks.

You're defending these hackers pretty strongly, though.

Quote from: danbuter;464974In related news, today Lulz and Anonymous are teaming up. They plan to hit banks and classified information sources and release all the info on the net.

I hope this is a joke.

Nope, there was an article on Slashdot about it. They've announced that they are going to start soon.

Then again, there's been an arrest in England that might be Lulz related:

"London's Metropolitan Police said they had arrested the teenager in Wickford, Essex, on suspicion of computer misuse and fraud offences.

"The arrest follows an investigation into network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group," the London force said."

If that kid knows much of anything, Lulz will all be in jail soon. Moral of the story: Don't mess with big corps or alphabet soup agencies. In any case, France and the US are both pushing for much stronger internet controls, based upon these idiots' actions.

Supposedly too, Lulzsec's head organizers got doxed as well, by a rival group calling themselves the Web Ninjas, who sent their info sent to the FBI.

...and they keep trying to sell me on internet banking.

No thanks, suckers!

Quote from: danbuter;465030You're defending these hackers pretty strongly, though.

I wasn't defending anything.  I was saying that using "Anonymous" is misleading and counter-productive because everyone and their mom thinks of the blown-up news articles where it's this huge mysterious thing, when it's just a namesake that random hacker orgs centered around net cesspits like 4chan use.

In otherwords, yes I get that "Anonymous", when they announce themselves, are usually just a small group that could potentially be pinpointed.  But most people do not understand that, and having the media go off about "Anonymous" again would just spread false impressions.

Now Bioware have been hacked.

They are owned by ea and i thin there will be an almighty shitstorm if they get/got hacked!

Yeah, I got that email too. Luckily, no credit card info got out.

In other news, Lulz has posted classified Arizona police files to Pirate Bay: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/06/23/2352247/LulzSec-Posts-First-Secret-Document-Dump . One big worry is if any undercover cops or informants have been exposed.

In the comments, apparently one of the main lulz guys has been outed and is in hiding. I give it a month before they are all in jail.