Anonymous may be falling victim to their very name. Because of it, it allows them the freedom to become larger than they otherwise could independently – while also protecting them from the obvious legal repercussions. But what’s more important within this group, is how the media has blown out this larger than life perception of the organization – yes it’s becoming that. But now, they’re essentially egging on a group more consumed with PR attention than what most would deem hacktivism.
In light of this, we’ve recently seen Anonymous hack into several law enforcement agencies websites (Boston and Salt Lake City to name two), gain access to informants and tipsters, and go further into sensitive data related to drug crimes, personal information and listen in on FBI internal communications. They have even called on shutting down the social giant Facebook as well – for what, who knows?
Gone are the days when Anonymous could loosely associate its hacking efforts with a cause. A new day for Anonymous is rising and it’s a day when the group itself may be unable to control its own message. Perhaps falling victim the same way the individuals they look to disrupt did – too big too fast. Luckily – insert sarcasm – we have CNN to help focus their message.
Recently, Anonymous perpetrated some denial-of-service attacks against web sites belonging to the FBI, Department of Justice, as well as the RIAA and MPAA, lashing out in retaliation over the FBI’s shutting down of Megaupload.com, a popular file-sharing website. The mainstream media, however, has gotten the analysis of the situation a great deal more wrong than usual.
Really, this is War?
CNN catapulted cable journalism to prominence by breaking new ground in its Gulf War coverage some twenty years ago, and should be able to recognize a war when they see one. They seem to have totally lost perspective on what war is, however, using that term many times during prime news coverage (Wolf Blitzer’s show, Friday) to describe this action by Anonymous.
These actions are much more comparable to Occupy Wall Street protests than to actual war. When protesters link arms across a street, or handcuff themselves to doors, gates, or cars, they’re denying other people access to buildings or thoroughfares. This is denial-of-service and usually we don’t get that worked up about it when reported. Does anybody think the FBI and DOJ rely on their websites for internal operations? Were field operatives and lawyers unable to pursue their cases because their PR machine was offline for a few hours?
Please, folks. I know Anonymous breaks into stuff sometimes, they cause damage, and that’s illegal and wrong. The DDOS stuff is arguably more illegal than it is wrong. Let’s start making a distinction between hacktivism and cyber-terrorism; can we agree on that?
By the way, a great deal of media’s important failure to grasp basic facts centers around the distinction between denial-of-service attacks and actual infiltration. That’s an important distinction, but we’ll save that for another post.
Media Dups: It’s not about Hacking!
The media also fell into a huge trap, and an old one. Think about this question for a second, what is Anonymous actually about?
Have an answer? If you said, “hacking,” you got it wrong. Hacking is secondary for Anonymous, it’s a tool. What is Anonymous really after? What are they much better at? PR!
They’re after attention, and they’re very very good at this. They’re so good at it that I entertained the humorous notion to myself that they might not have even hit a single keystroke to affect this DOS attack. All they needed to do was get enough journalists and bloggers in a lather to get them to DOS the sites. In reality, it probably helped get the job done – with journalists constantly pinging these websites every couple minutes to see if the sites were still down. I’ll bet these sites got more legitimate hits in a single hour than they usually get in a whole year!
Well, it turns out I was half right. Anonymous apparently went even further and purposely tricked curious netizens into taking part in the attack – so much for media savvy. Really, congress can obviously do plenty of damage through ignorance, but media seems equally willing to embrace it for the sake of ratings and buzz.
Same as the Old Boss
Probably the simplest evidence that the media is a naive and unwitting hand puppet for groups like Anonymous, is the fact that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time. One of the favorite pastimes of modern hacking groups that started emerging in the 90′s, is manipulation of the media through propaganda and misinformation. If it’s a psyops technique that the military has ever deployed, there’s probably a shadowy version of it going on underground. Why do they do it? Well mostly for fun and this has been true for quite some time.
The sad thing is, the media never seems to catch on. As a friend of mine likes to say, <heavy sigh>.
