Before we get started, the world should know more about what Anonymous is, our ideology and that which bonds us together. What we have done in the past has been beneficial for many government organizations and we have undoubtedly taken a stand for people who have been oppressed, and we have helped them protect their rights. Hacking is not the only thing our people do, but it comes naturally because of the means that we use to protest- the internet.
Whether it comes down to taking a stand against child pornography, helping governments identify Chinese military hackers or taking down different websites of massive hate groups; we always strive to be a force of good.
Image Source: Google Image – Harold Charles “Hal” Turner is an American white nationalist, Holocaust denier and blogger from North Bergen, New Jersey.
The Supremacist Radio Show
So let us begin… in the winter of 2006, the hacking division of Anonymous took down the website of white supremacist radio host, Hal Turner. This hack cost him thousands of dollars worth of bandwidth bills. So naturally, he sued 4chan, eBaum’s World, 7chan and a few other websites for copyright infringement. However, he lost the plea for injunction (it is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts) and failed to receive letters from the court, which caused the lawsuit to lapse.
Image Source: Google Image – Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), beginning in 1952 as a successor to his earlier self help system, Dianetics.
War on Scientology
In January of 2008, Anonymous decided to take down the church of Scientology, a “cult-like religion,” and the project was dubbed ‘Chanology.’ The reason for the attack stemmed from a video that was made by the church, featuring Tom Cruise. When it was leaked on YouTube, it caused such outrage amongst church members that they issued a copyright violation claim against YouTube and requested the removal of the video. When this matter came to light, Anonymous created a video message (click to watch the video) and sent it to the church. After that, it was a mere matter of several waves of ‘Denial of Service’ attacks against their websites, prank calls and full-page black-color faxes to the centers of Scientology.
Image Source: Google Image – The Pirate Bay front page on June 20th, 2009.
The Persian Bay
In 2009 during the Iranian Presidential elections, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by allegedly having rigged the elections. Now, with Mahmoud celebrating his victory as Iranian President, many Iranians participated in demonstrations. Anonymous, in allegiance with Pirate Bay and various Iranian hackers, supported the people by actively participating in ‘hacktivism’ against the Iranian government, shutting down government and semi-government websites and launching an Iranian Green Movement website. The site drew over twenty two thousand supporters worldwide and helped with the exchange of information internationally.
Image Source: Google Image – A protester from the Westboro Baptist Church carrying signs.
Project Ouroboros
The Westboro Baptist Church is notoriously hateful, and likes to point fingers at everyone…. but themselves. Anonymous decided to send a message to the Church. It read, “Cease & desist your protest campaign in the year 2011. Close your public Web sites. Should you ignore this warning. The propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover.” To which the church responded “Bring It”, calling Anonymous a bunch of “pimple faced nerds” and “kids.” Then in February of the same year, Anonymous successfully took down Westboro Baptist Church’s website.
Image Source: Google Image – A powerful drawing of a child
Identifying Child Pornographers
Whether you agree with our ideology or not, all of us agree on one thing: we hate child molesters, and we hate pedophiles. In October of 2011 Anonymous took down websites that were associated to child pornography. Most of them were on the TOR network, using special grids and systems. Anonymous deciphered their encrypted websites, defaced them, and also provided the locations of their servers.
Image Source: Google Image – A parade in honor of North Korea 65th Anniversary Kim Jong-II
Taking Down North Korea
On April, Anonymous started Operation Free Korea, in which they demanded Kim Jong-un resign, create a fair and free democracy state, leave behind all the nuclear ambitions, release their internet restrictions… and the list goes on.
Anonymous also claimed that if they do not meet their demands, they would wage a cyber war against North Korea. On the 3rd of April, 2013, Anonymous stated that it had hacked fifteen thousand user passwords of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea state website and a few days later it had also hacked Uriminzokkiri (a state controlled website that provides Korean language news from North Korea Central News Agency. The term Uriminzokkiri literally translates into “Our Nation Itself”) and also took down their Twitter accounts as well as Flickr pages representing the website. The 22nd June 2013 was the grand finale of this hack, stealing military documents from North Korea and releasing them on the 25th of June – the day the Korean War had started.
Image Source: Google Image – The famous Anonymous logo with slogans ‘Operation Israel’ underneath
Operation Israel
OpIsrael or operation Israel was a coordinated cyber attack by anti-Israeli individuals and Anonymous-affiliated groups that targeted websites that were linked to or perceived as pro-Israeli. The attacks mostly consisted of Denial of Service attacks, and defacing the sites. The main agenda of this operation was to erase Israel form the face of the internet. The hackers targeted several different government online banking websites, as well as small businesses.
Image Source: Google Image – Protest art
Operation National Security Agency
During the last the days of November, Anonymous decided to target the National Security Agency and many other United States government organizations because of their drag-net spying on the internet activity of all American citizens. The reason to do this was simple to expose the corruption. This is why OpNSA was born for exposing politicians accepting bribes to vote in favor of bills that will profit their lobbying partners and thus destroy the freedom of the American republic. With a statement, “Many fear the government but the government still fears many. It fears that educated and empowered few who are willing to say enough and act. It fears the open minded. It fears you. Put some time to take action and be part of something important. The restoration of our freedom.” The target was to disrupt the keywords surveillance system. And so the attack was launched. Thousands of Anons gathered at #opnsa chat room and conducted attacks; the NSA servers did go down for sometime.
Image Source: Google Image – An infographic shows which cities are held by ISIS militants
Operation ISIS
On the 9th of last month, the hacker collective launched an attack on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s social media accounts and other websites, through which they had recruited man of their young and easily-manipulated followers. Anonymous destroyed their online documents and months of other work that ISIS had spent putting together, and released a statement: “ISIS, we will hunt you, take down you sites, accounts, emails and expose you. From now on, no safe place for you is online. You will be treated like virus and we are the cure. ‘We own the internet.’ We are Anonymous; we are a Legion; we do not forgive, we do not forget. Expect us.”
After that, the rest was history and on tenth of February almost nine thousand emails and Twitter accounts were hacked by Anonymous, and one thousand plus websites were taken down.
Sources: Forbes Archive Dockets Justia Wikipedia Canwest Fox News War on Scientology Anonymous PDF The Register UK The New York Times Twitter WSJ The Guardian The Age Washington Post Silicon Republic Net Craft Reason Blog Scribd WSJ Blog
Thank you for all the wonderful work you have done. I don’t know what the world would do without you.
Yes indeed ,,, Thanks to all of you in the Legion of Anonymous!!! Thanks greatly for being there for me and others. Thanks.
Under the Isis section you misspelled “many.”
Great jobs! Exposing govt officals is my fav. Now expose Obama + Hillary? Anyway I can help, just name it! We really need a govt watchdog. I will follow you…
Way to go! Behind your goals! Party on Garth!!
excelente trabajo, ustedes luchan por nuestros derechos…
I am in need of your assistance, BIG TIME! Guess I will just tell you my situation and hopefully you might be able to help. It’s big! It’s complex too. I hope there is enough room. OK: I’m an Osage Indian, on the Osage reservation, in the state of Oklahoma, our capital is Pawhuska. You might of heard about the Osage murders in the 1920’s. The Osage have been plagued with oppression, and exploitation since the 1900’s because of the oil beneath our reservation. Even though things were in progress before my Mother’s death, my situation didn’t start until then in 2011. At that time I was a successful business owner and a successful rancher. Now at this moment I have had everything taken from me. EVERYTHING! My Mother’s Will set up a trust for me as a testamentary trust. I was also designated the executrix/personal representative of the estate and should of had all the rights privileges and control of the funds and monies and authority as my Mother had when she was alive. The Osage Agency Superintendent and employees including the Solicitor in conjunction with the state and the tribe have stripped me of all those things and properties and powers of authority that come with that position. An out and out conspiracy to commit fraud under color of law. It’s been horrendous to say the least! These entities have even gone so far as to take my livelihood business away which was a partnership LLC. My partner is also my brother. I’m sure that he was threatened to have the same things happen to him as they have done to me. Well evidently the bank “Bancfirst has a loan with the tribe and if I could somehow possibly win this battle against all of them(tribe, state, and BIA) then they(bancfirst) might not be able to pay their loan back……..Bottom line. The Bank (bancfirst), where my business did it’s banking is making it very difficult for me to obtain copies of cancelled checks, deposits, withdrawals, etc. They will sell them to me for around $3,000.00, instead of the normal fee of maybe $25.00. I need those documents in order to prove that my brother has committed fraud and embezzlement and breach of contract, yadayada.
I’m glad that your organization started anon. Atleast there are some people with the ability to improve our nation. I can’t do much but I’ll always be on your side when the time to take a stand comes.
Affectionately, I say thank you nerds for all you do to make this a better world <3
Love you guys…what are your opinions of Atropos? You do know, right?…
I am sorry for asking this but it would really help if someone told me. What did Israel do wrong? I have yet to hear something they did wrong, it all seems to be for pretty much no reason.
They killed children, just recently, and committed other war crimes as well. Nobody was brought to justice. And the big issue is holding palestinian people as hostages for decades and abusing them
Israel first became a nation in 1312 B.C., two thousand years before the rise of Islam. Seven hundred and twenty-six years later, in 586 B.C., these first ancient Jews in the land of Israel (Judea) were overrun and Israel’s First Jewish Temple (Solomon’s Temple) on Jerusalem’s Old City Temple Mount was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of ancient Babylon. Many of the Jews were killed, enslaved or expelled; however many were allowed to remain. These Jews along with their progeny and other Jews, who would resettle over the next 500 years, rebuilt the Nation of Israel and also a Second Temple in Jerusalem on the same site as Solomon’s Temple. Thus, the claim that Jews suddenly appeared fifty years ago, right after the Holocaust, and drove out the so-called ‘Palestinians’ is preposterous.
There were very few living in the land of ISRAEL, before it was officially re-established, and they were willing to live in peace… By now almost ALL the ‘refugees’ are gone, yet people keep showing up, calling themselves ‘Palestinians’ and demanding the ‘right of return’ … yes it’s an issue.
Here’s a part of an article:
650,000 “refugees” swell to 5 million. You have heard about those “Palestinian refugees,” who claim “right of return” to Israel. Of course, virtually none of them ever lived in Israel–they are the children and mostly grandchildren GRANDCHILDREN, domestic relations. The children of one’s children. Sometimes these may claim bequests given in a will to children, though in general they can make no such claim. 6 Co. 16. of those who fled in 1948. The total number of those who fled in 1948 is estimated to have been about 650,000. Now the number who wish to return has swollen to almost five million!
How did this exodus come about? In 1948, on the day of the proclamation of the State of Israel, FIVE Arab armies invaded the new country from all sides. In frightful radio broadcasts, they urged the Arabs living there to leave, so that the invading armies could operate without interference. They could return after the expected quick victory in that “holy war,” get their property back–and that of the Jews. Things turned out differently. The invading armies were defeated. Those who had left became refugees–people without a country. Those who stayed, and their children, are full-fledged citizens of the State of Israel.
It seems as if coming to Anon pgs, whether on the site or FB, are becoming increasingly harder to get to. I can always find a work around though. (grin)
Why hack Swirls Cupcakes of Torontos website? I don’t understand…
Your doing a great job keep up the good work. People are awakening but the majority are still ignorant or unwilling to do anything, everyone should have a cause and see it out until the end no matter the consequences. Anonymous gives me hope of a better tomorrow, inspires me to act! So on behalf of all those that follow your cause we thank you
Great job, many thanks and keep going, but never forget, after all we are all Humans.
Thank You for All that you Do! Any Way That I Can Help, Let Me Know, Thanks Again!
I don’t really know what the world would do without Anonymous. We all salute you!
GOOD JOB
Can Anonymous take down Monsanto and their ilk next? Monsanto and the various mega corporations like it have caused us enough harm.