Anonymous Official

"We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not Forgive.  We do not Forget.  Expect Us."

- Anonymous' Tagline

''This is Anonymou's Official YouTube channel, but most of the page will be detailed information about the group that we know about. Due to the group not having any official chain of command, it has several official YouTube Channels dedicated to it created by different people or factions; each of them will be listed at the bottom of this page. ''

Anonymous is a loosely associated international network of activists and hacktivist entities. A website normally associated with the group describes it as "an internet gathering" withi "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives." The group became known as a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service(DDoS) attacks on government, religous, and corporate websites.

Anonymous originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4Chan, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existin gas an anarchic, digitized global brain. Anonymous members, (known as "Anons"), can be distinguished in public by the wearing of stylised Guy Fawkes Masks.

In its early form, the concept was adopted by a decentralized online community acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal, and primarily focusing on entertainment, or "lulz." Beginning with 2008's Project Chanology--a series of protests, pranks, and hacks targeting the Church of Scientology--the Anonymous collective becoming increasingly associated with collaborative hacktivism on a number of issues internationally. Individuals claiming to align themselves with Anonymous undertook protests and other actions, (including direct action), in retaliation against anti-digital piracy campaigns by motion picture and recording industry trade associations. Later targets of Anonymous hacktivism included government agencies of the US, Israel, Tunisia, Uganda, and others; child pornograpbhy sites; copyright protection agencies; the Westboro Baptist Church; and corporations such as PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and Sony. Anons have publically supported WikiLeaks and the Occupy Movement. Related groups LulzSec and Operation AntiSec carried out cyberattacks on US Government agencies, media, video game companies, military contractors, military personnel, and police officers, resulting in the attention of law enforcement to the groups' activities. It has been described as being anti-Zionist, and has threatened to erase Israel from the Internet and engaged in the "#OpIsrael" cyber-attacks of Israeli websites on Yom HaShoah, (Holocaust Remembrance Day), in 2013.

Dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks, in countries including the US, UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Turkey. Evaluations of the group's actions and effectiveness vary widely. Supporters have called the group "freedom fighters" and "Digital Robin Hoods" while critics have described them as "a cyber lynch-mob" or "cyber terrorists." In 2012, Time called Anonymous one of the "100 Most Influential People" in the world.

Philosophy
Anonymous has no strictly defined philosophy, and internal dissent is a regular feature of the group. A website associated with teh group describes it as "an internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives." Gabriella Coleman writes off the group. "In some ways, it may be impossibel to gauge the intent and motive of thousand sof participants, many of who don't even bother to leave a trace of their thoughts, motivations, and reactions.  Among those that do, opinions vary considerably."

Broadly speaking, Anons oppose internet censorship and control, and the majority of their actions target governments, organizations, and corporations that they accuse of censorship. Anons were early supporters of the global Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring. Since 2008, a frequent subject of disagreement within Anonymous is whether members should focus on pranking and entertainment or more sious, (and in some cases political), activism.

"We [Anonymous] just happen to be a group of people on the internet who need—just kind of an outlet to do as we wish, that we wouldn't be able to do in regular society. ...That's more or less the point of it. Do as you wish. ... There's a common phrase: 'we are doing it for the lulz.'"

- Trent Peacock. Search Engine: The face of Anonymous, February 7, 2008

The group's few rules include not disclosing one's identity, not talking about the group, and not attacking media. Members commonly use the tagline "We are anonymous.  We are Legion.  We do not forgive.  We do not forget.  Expect us." Brian Kelly writes that the group's key characteristics are "(1) an unrelated moral stance on issues and rights, regardless of direct or provocation; (2) a physical presence taht accompanies online hacking activity; and (3) a distinctive brand." Because Anonymous has no leadership, no action can be attributed to the membership as a whole. Parmy Olson and others have criticized media coverage that Presents the group as well-organized or homogeneous; the Olson writes, "There was no single leader pulling the levers, but a few organizational minds that sometimes pooled together to start planning a stunt." Some members protest using legal means, while others employ illegal measures such as DDoS attacks and hacking. Membership is open to anyone who wishes to state they are a member of the collective; Carole Cadwaldr of The Observer compared the group's decentralized structure to that of Al Qaeda, writing, "If you believe Anonymous, and call yourself Anonymous, you are Anonymous." Olson, who formerly described Anonymous as a "brand," stated in 2012 that she now characterized it as a "movement" rather than a group:  "anyone can be part of it.  It is a crowd of people,a  nebulous crowed of people, working together and doing things together for various purposes.

Journalists have commented that Anonymous' secrecy, fabrications, and media awareness pose an unusual challenge for reporting on the group's actions and motivations. Quinn Norton of Wired writes that "Anons lie when they have no reason to lie.  They weave vast fabrications as a form of performance.  Then they tell the truth at unexpected and unfortunate tiems, sometimes destroying themselves in the process.  They are unpredictable." Norton states that the difficulties in reporting on the group cause most writers, including herself, to focus on the "small groups of hackers who stole the limelight from the legion, defined their values, and crashed violently into the law" rather than "Anonymous' sea of voices, all experimenting with new ways of being in the world.

History
See Also:  Timeline of Events Associated with Anonymous 

4Chan Raids(2003-2007)
See Also:  4Chan 

The name Anonymous itself is inspired by the perceived anonymity under which users post images and comments on the internet. Usage of the term Anonymous in the sense of a shared identity began on imageboards, particuarly the board of 4Chan, dedicated to random content. A tag of Anonymous is assigned to visitors who leave comments without identifying to the originator of the posted content. Users of imageboards sometiems jokingly acted as if Anonymous was a single individual. The concept of the Anonymous entity advanced in 2004 when an administrator on the 4Chan image board activated a "Forced_Anon" protocol that signed all posts as Anonymous. As the popularity of imagebaords increased, the idea of Anonymous as a collective of unnamed individuals became an Internet Meme.

Users of 4Chan's board would occasionally join into mass pranks or raids. In a raid on July 12, 2006, for example, large numbers of 4Chan readers invaded the Finnish social networking site Habbo Hotel with identical avatars; the avatars blocked regular Habbo members from accessing the digital hotel's pool, stating it was "closed due to fail and AIDS." Future LulzSec member Topiary became involved with the site at this time, inviting large audiances to listen to his prank phone calls via Skype. Due to the growing traffic on 4Chan's boards, users soon began to plot pranks offline using Internet Relay Chat, (IRC). These raids resulted in the first mainstream press story on Anonymous, a report by Fox station KTTV in Los Angeles, California in the U.S. The report calle dthe group, "hackers on steroids," "domestic terrorists," and an "internet hate machine."

Encyclopedia Dramatica(2004-Present)
See Also:  Encyclopedia Dramatica  Encyclopedia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DiGrippo, initially as a means of documenting gossip related to livejournal, but it quickly was adopted as a major platform by Anonymous for satirical and other purposes. The not safe for work site celebrates a subversive "trolling culture", and documents internet memes, culture, and events, such as mass pranks, trolling events, "raids", large scale failures of internet security, and criticism of internet communities that are accused of self-censorship in order to garner prestige or positive coverage from traditional and established media outlets. Journalist Julian Dibbell described Encyclopedia Dramatica as the site "where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous injokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture:  Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend." The site also played a role in the anti-Scientology campaign of Project Chanology.

On April 14, 2011, the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website named Oh Internet that bore little resemblance to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes. In response, Anonymous launched "Operation Save ED" to rescue and restore the site's content. The Web Ecology Project Made a downloadable archive of former Encyclopedia Dramatica content. The site's reincarnation was initally hosted at encyclopediadramatica.ch on servers owned by Ryan Cleary, who later was arrested in relation to attacks by LulzSec against Sony.

Project Chanology(2008)
See Also:  Project Chanology 

 Anonymous first became associated with hacktivism in 2008 following a series of actions against the Church of Scientology known as Project Chanology. On January 15, 2008, the gossip blog Gawker posted a video in which celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise praise the religion; the Church responded with a cease-and-desist letter for violation of copyright. 4Chan users organized a raid against the Church in retaliation prank-calling its hotline, sending black faxes designed to waste ink cartriges, and launching DDoS attacks against its website.

The DDoS attacks were at first carried out with the applications Gigaloader and JMeter. Within a few days, these were supplanted by the Low Orbit lon Cannon, (LOIC), a network stress testing application allowing users to flood a server with TCP or UDP packets. The LOIC soon became a signature weapon in the Anonymous arsenal; however, it would also lead to a number of arrests of less experienced Anons who failed to conceal their IP Addresses. Some operators in Anonymous IRC channels incorrectly told or lied to knew volunteers that using the LOIC carried no legal risk.

During the DDoS attacks, a group of Anons including Gregg Housh uploaded a video to YouTube in which a robotic voice speaks on behalf of Anonymous, telling the "leaders of Scientology" that "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind--for the laughs--we shall expel you from the internet." Within ten days, the video had attracted hundreds of thousands of views.

On February 10, thousands of Anonymous joined simultaneous protests at Church of Scientology facilities around the world. many protesters were the stylized Guy Fawkes Masks, popularized by the graphic novel and movie V forVendetta, in which an anarchist revolutionary battles a totalitarian government; the masks soon became a popular symbol for Anonymous. In-person protests against the Church continued throughout the year, including "operation Party Hard" on March 15 and "Operation Reconnect" on April 12. However, by mid-year, they were drawing far fewer protesters, and many of the organizers in IRC channels had begun to drift away from the project.

Operation:  Payback is a Bitch(2010)
By the start of 2009, Scientologists had stopped engaging with protesters and had improved online security, and actions against the group had largely ceased. A period of infighting followed between the politically engaged members, (called "moralfags" in the parlance of 4Chan), and those seeking to provoke for entertainment, (trolls). By September 2010, the group had received little publicity for a year and faced a corresponding drop in member interest; its raid diminished greatly in size and moved largely off of IRC channels, organizing again from the chan boards, particuarly 4Chan.

In September 2010, however, Anons became aware of Aiplex Software, an Indian software company that contracted wtih film studios to launch DDoS attack on websites providing pirated content, such as The Pirate Bay. Coordinating through IRC, Anons launched a DDoS attack on September 17 that shut down Aiplex's website for a day. Primarily using LOIC, the group then targeted the Recording Industry Association of America, (RIAA), and the Motion Picture Association of America, MPAA), successfully bringing down both sites.  On SEptember 19, future LulzSect member Mustafa Al-Bassam, (known as "Tflow"), and other Anons hacked the website of copyright alliance, an anti-piracy group, and posted the name of the operation:  Payback is a Bitch."  Anons also issued a press release stating the following:

"Anonymous is tired of corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people’s rights to spread information, but more importantly, the right to SHARE with one another. The RIAA and the MPAA feign to aid the artists and their cause; yet they do no such thing. In their eyes is not hope, only dollar signs. Anonymous will not stand this any longer"

As IRC network operators were beginning to shut down networks involved in DDoS attacks, Anons organized a group of servers to host an independent IRC network, titled AnonOps. Operation Payback's targets rapidly expanded to included the British law firm ACS:Law, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Thieft, the British night club Ministry of Sound, the Spanish copyright society Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, the US Copyright Office, and the website of Gene Simmons of Kiss. By October 7, 2010, total downtime for all websites attacked during Operation Payback was 537.55 hours.

In November 2010, the organization WikiLeaks began releasing a hundreds of thousands of leaked US diplomatic cables. In the face of legal threats against the organization by the US government, Amazon.com booted WikiLeaks from its servers, and Paypal, MasterCard, and Visa cut off service to the organization. Operation payback then expanded to include "Operation Avenge Assange," and Anons issued a press release declaring PayPal a target. Launching DDoS attacks with the LOIC, Anons quickly brought down the website of the PayPal blog; PostFinance, a Swiss Financial company denying service to WikiLeaks; EveryDNS, a web-hosting company that had also denied service; and the website of US Senator Joe Lieberman, who had supported the push to cut off services.

On December 8, Anons launched an attack against PayPal's main site. According to Topiary, who was in the command channel during the attack, the LOIC proved ineffective, and Anons were forced to rely on the botnets of two hackers for the attack, marshaling hijacked computers for a concentrated assault. Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll also reported that the "zombie computers" of involuntary botnets had provided 90% of the attack. Topiary states that he and other Anons then "lied a bit to the press to give it that sense of abundance," exaggerating the role of the grassroots membership. However, this account was disputed.

The attacks brough down on Paypal.com for an hour on December 8 and another brief period on December 9. Anonymous also disrupted the sites for Visa and MasterCard on December 8. Anons had announced an intention to bring down Amazon.com as well, but failed to do so, allegedly b ecause of infighting with the hackers who controlled the potnets. Paypal estimated the damage to ahve cost the company US$5.5 million. It later provided the IP Addresses of 1,000 of its attackers to the FBI, leading to at least 14 arrests. On Thursday, December 5, 2013, 13 of the PayPal 14 pled guilty to taking part in the attacks.

2011-2013
In the years following Operation Payback, targets of Anonymous protests, hacks, and DDoS attacks continued to diversity. Beginning in January 11, Anons took a number of actions known initially as Operation Tunisia in support of Arab Spring movements. Tflow created a script that Tunisians could use to protect their web browsers from government surveillance, while fellow future LulzSec member Hector Xavier Monsegur, (alias "Sabu"), and others allegedly hijacked servers from a London web-hosting company to launch a DDoS attack on Tunisian govoernment websites, taking them offline. Sabu also used a Tunisian Volunteer's computer to hack the website of PRime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, replaced it wtih a message from Anonymous. Anons also helped Tunisian dissidents share videos online about the uprising in Operation Egypt. Anons collaborated with the activist group TElecomix to help dissidents access government-censored websites. Sabu and Topiary went on to participate in attacks on government websites in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Zimbabwe.

Tflow, Sabu, Topiary, and Ryan Ackroyd, (known as "Kayla"), collaborated in February 2011 on a cyber-attack against Aaron Barr, CEO of the computer security firm HBGary Federal, in retaliation for his research on Anonymous and his threat to expose members of the group. Using a SQL injection weakness, the four hacked the HBGary site, used Barr's capture password to vandalize his Twitter feed with r a cist messages, and released an enormous cache of HBGary's e-mails in a torrent file on Pirate Bay. The e-mails stated that Barr and HBGary had proposed to Bank of America a plan to discredit WikiLeaks in retaliation for a planned leak of Bank of America documents, and the leak caused substantial public relations harm to the firm as well as leading one US congressman to call for a congressional investigation. Barr resigned as CEO before the end of the month.

Several attacks by Anons have targetd organizations accused of homophobia. In FEbruary 2011, an open letter was published on AnonsNews.org threatening the Westboro Baptist Church, an organization based in Kansas in the US known for picketing funerals with signs reading "God H ates Fags." During a live radio current affair sprogram in which Topiary debated church member Shirley Pheleps-Roper, Anons hacked one of the organization's websites. After the church announced its intentions in December 2012 to picket the funerals of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting victims, Anons published the names, phone numbers, and e-mail and home addresses of church members and brough down GodHatesFags.com with a DDoS attack. Hacktivists also circulated petitions to have the church's tax-exempt status investigated. In August 2012, Anons hacked the site of Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi in retaliation for the Parliament of Uganda's consideration of an anti-homosexuality law permitting capital punishment.

In april 2012, Anons launched a series of attacks against Sony in retaliation for trying to stop hacks of the Playstation 3 game console. More than 100 million Sony accounts were compromised, and the Sony services Qrocity and Playstation Network were taken down for a month a piece by cyberattacks.

When the Occupy Wall Street protests began in New Y Ork City in September 2011, Anons were early participants and helped spread the movement to other cities such as Boston. In October, Anons attacked the website of the New York Stock Exchange while other Anons publicity opposed the action via Twitter. Anonymous also helped organize an Occupy Protest outisde of the London Stock Exchange on May 1, 2012.

Anons launched Operation Darknet in October 2011, targeting websites hosting child pornography. Most notably, the group attacked a child pornography site called "Lolita City" hosted by Freedom Hosting, releasing 1,589 usernames from the site. Anons also stated that they had disabled forty image-swapping pedophile websites that employed the anonymity network Tor. In 2012, Anons leaked the names of users of a suspected child pornography site in OpDarknetV2.

In 2011 the Koch Industries website was attacked by following their attack upon union members, the result being their website could not be accessed for 15 minutes. In 2013 one member, a 38-year-old truck driver pleaded guilty when accused of participating in the attack for aperiod of one minute, and received a sentence of two years federal probation, of participating in the attack for a period of one minute, and received a sentence of two years federal probation, and ordered to pay $183,000 restitution, the amount Koch stated they paid a consultancy organization, despite this being only a denial of service attacks.

On January 19, 2012, the US Department of Justice shut down the file sharing site Megaupload on allegations of copyright privacy. Anons responded witha  wave of DDoS attacks on US government and copyright organizations, shutting down the sites for the RIAA, MPAA, Broadcast Music Inc., and the FBI.

In 2012, Anonymous launched Operation Anti-Bully:  Operation Hunt Hunter in retaliation to Hunter Moore's revenge porn site, "Is anyone UP?" Anonymous crashed Moore's servers and publicized much of his personal information online, including his social security number. The organization also published the personal information of Andrew Myers, the proprietor of "Is Anyone Back," a copycat ssite of Mr. Moore's "Is Anyone Up."

In response to Operation Pillar of Defense, a November 12 Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, Anons took down hundreds of Israeli websites with DDoS attacks. Anons pledged another "massive cyberassault" against Israel in April 2013 in retaliation for its actions in Gaza, promising to "wipe Israel off the map of the Internet." However, it's DDoS attacks caused only temporary distruptions, leading cyberwarfare experts to suggest that the group had been unable to recruit or hire botnet operators for the attack.

On November 5, 2013, Anonymous protesters gathered around the world for the Million Mask March, demonstrations were held in 400 cities around the world including Washington D.C., London, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo, as well as many, many more, to coincide with Guy Fawkes night.

#OpOK(2013)
Operation Oklahoma was a Mutual Aid effort responding to the 2013 flash floods and wind storms in the United States.