Operation AntiSec
Encyclopedia
Operation Anti-Security, also referred to as Operation AntiSec or #AntiSec, is a series of hacking
attacks performed by members of hacking group LulzSec
, the group Anonymous
, and others inspired by the announcement of the operation. LulzSec performed the earliest attacks of the operation, with the first against the Serious Organised Crime Agency
on 20 June 2011. Soon after, the group released information taken from the servers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety
; Anonymous would later release information from the same agency two more times. An offshoot of the group calling themselves LulzSecBrazil launched attacks on numerous websites belonging to the Government of Brazil and the energy company Petrobras
. LulzSec claimed to retire as a group, but on 22 June they reconvened to hack into the websites of British newspapers The Sun and The Times
, posting a fake news story of the death of their owner Rupert Murdoch
.
Anonymous released their first cache of the operation on 27 June 2011, taken from an anti-cyberterrorism program run by the United States Department of Homeland Security
and Federal Emergency Management Agency
. They continued attacks on the Arizona government. They also launched attacks against the Brazilian government, Government of Zimbabwe, the Municipality of Mosman
, and the Government of Tunisia. Their most recent attacks have been against large corporations, NATO, and various United States law enforcement websites. Anonymous has used the stolen credit card numbers of police officers to make unauthorized donations to various causes. Others have also committed hacks in the name of the operation, including a hack into the Fox News Twitter
account to post a false news story about the assassination of President of the United States
Barack Obama
and attacks on the websites of government entities in various countries. The groups involved have published sensitive government and corporate information, as well as the email addresses, names, and social security numbers, and credit card numbers of website users.
Law enforcement
has launched investigations into many of the attacks committed as part of Operation AntiSec. At least seven arrests have been made in connection to activities related to the operation, including the arrests of two purported LulzSec members, a man who provided LulzSec with security vulnerability information, and four alleged members of AntiSec NL, a group inspired by the operation.
hacking group formed in May 2011 and came to national prominence after hacking the websites of the Public Broadcasting Service
, Sony
, and the United States Senate
. Initially, the group claimed to hack "for the lulz" and to enjoy the chaos that follows their intrusions. However, on 20 June 2011, the group announced that they were teaming up with hacking collective Anonymous
for a series of attacks they dubbed Operation Anti-Security or Operation AntiSec. The press release accompanying the beginning of the operation called for supporters to steal and publish classified government documents under the name AntiSec. Major banks and corporations were also mentioned as potential targets. Though LulzSec disbanded as a group on 26 June 2011, members have been reported to be continuing the operation from within Anonymous.
The groups involved claim that the operation aims to protest government censorship and monitoring of the internet. LulzSec members also mentions ending what they believe are corrupt racial profiling
and copyright laws as a goal of the operation. The War on Drugs
has also been given as a reason for particular hacks. In contrast, USA Today
described the operation as cyberwarfare targeting governments and large corporations.
, the national law enforcement agency
of the United Kingdom
that handles cybercrime
. The group launched a distributed denial-of-service attack
against the agency's website on 20 June, taking it offline for only a few minutes. On the same day, they knocked the website of the Jianhua District
in Qiqihar
, China
offline.
On 23 June, the group released a large cache of documents taken from the servers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety
. The release, titled "chinga la migra", roughly translating to "fuck the border patrol", including email addresses and passwords and hundreds of documents marked "sensitive" or "for official use only". The group claimed that they did so in retaliation for the passage of Arizona SB 1070, a law they saw as leading to unjust racial profiling. Arizona complained that the release of officer identities and the personal information of their families could put them and their families in danger and gave those exposed security protection. In response, they mobilized the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center and locked remote access of Department of Public Safety email accounts.
On 25 June 2011, the group released what they described as their last dump of the operation. The release contained a large amount of information from varied sources. Included was information from numerous companies, including half a gigabyte
of data from telecommunications company AT&T
and IP address
es from Sony
, Viacom
, Disney, EMI
, and NBC Universal
. The AT&T portion included information pertaining to the release of the 4G
LTE, 90,000 personal phones used by IBM
, and the development of the iPad 3. It also contained over 750,000 usernames and password combinations, including 200,000 from hackforums.net, 12,000 from the NATO online bookstore, 500,000 from the online video game Battlefield Heroes
, 50,000 from various video game forums, and 29 from Irish
private investigation company Priority Investigations. Finally, an internal manual for AOL
engineers and a screencapture of the United States Navy
website navy.mil after being vandalized.
On 22 June, an offshoot of the group calling themselves LulzSecBrazil took down the website of the Government of Brazil, brasil.gov.br, and the President of Brazil
, presidencia.gov.br. They also targeted the website of Brazilian energy company Petrobras
. On 24 June, they claimed to publish access codes and passwords to the Petrobras website along with personnel profiles. However, the company denied that any information had been stolen, and the group removed the claim from their Twitter
feed a few hours later. The group also published the personal information of President of Brazil
Dilma Rousseff
and Mayor of São Paulo Gilberto Kassab
.
Despite claiming to have retired, on 18 July LulzSec hacked into the website of British newspaper The Sun. The group redirected the newspaper's website to an also-hacked redesign website of another newspaper The Times
, altering the site to resemble The Sun and posting a fake story claiming that Rupert Murdoch
had died after ingesting a fatal dose of palladium
. They objected to the involvement of News Corporation
, the Murdoch-owned company that publishes The Sun and The Times, in a large phone hacking scandal. The hacked website also contained a webcomic depicting LulzSec deciding on and carrying out the attack. The group later redirected The Sun website to their Twitter feed. News International released a statement regarding the attacks before having the page the statement appeared on also redirected to the LulzSec Twitter page and eventually taken offline. The group also released the names and phone numbers of a reporter for The Sun and two others associated with the newspaper and encouraged their supporters to call them. The group further included an old email address and password of former News International executive Rebekah Brooks. News Corporation took the websites offline as a precaution later in the day.
. The hack included information that the agency distributed in 2009 and contained resources on publicly available hacking software, a list of Federal Bureau of Investigation
bureau locations, details on counter-hacking tools, and form letters that law enforcement agencies used to obtain user details from internet service provider
s.
On 28 June, the group released the second collection of documents stolen from the Arizona Department of Public Safety during Operation Anti-Security. Dubbed "Chinga la Migra Communique Dos", or "Fuck the Border Patrol Message Two", the data file contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, internet passwords, and social security number
s of a dozen Arizona police officers. It also contained the emails, voicemail
s, chat logs of some of them; in at least one instance it included sexually explicit photographs from one of the officer's girlfriends. Anonymous also claimed that the documents included officers forwarding racist chain emails, evidence of K-9 unit
officers using percocet
, and a Fraternal Order of Police
member who is also a convicted sex offender
. Anonymous noted that their motivation stemmed from a desire to make police officers "experience just a taste of the same kind of violence and terror they dish out on an every day basis."
On the same day, the group released information obtained from various government sources. Government data from Anguilla
, passwords from servers belonging to the Government of Brazil, the users of Zimbabwe
government websites, and data from the Municipality of Mosman
council were included. The Mosman council dump included mainly publicly available information from the website as well as a not-publicly-available prototype version of the website that had not yet been launched. They claimed to also have access to all Zimbabwean government websites ending in gov.zw. Most of the information and control were given through SQL injection
. Anonymous claimed they targeted Brazil for its what they saw as data manipulation and Zimbabwe for the controversial 2008 Zimbabwean presidential election
. They also gained control of a website belonging to the Government of Tunisia. They replaced the webpage with a graphic representing Anonymous with text reading "The Internet is the last frontier and we will not let corrupt governments spoil it. We are Anonymous, We are LulzSec, We are People from around the world who are stepping in the name of freedom". The release also included a file containing internal mapping of Viacom
servers as well as passwords and data from umusic.com, a website of Universal Music Group
. They also released the names of 2,800 members of the Black Eagles
paramilitary group.
. Arizona was forced to pull many websites offline for a time. Websites affected included those of the Department of Public Safety and Mariposa
chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. They also claimed to have found "anti-Muslim
" emails during the attack.
On 4 July, Anonymous released a document containing 27 administrative usernames and passwords from an Apple Inc. system used to operate online technical support
follow-up surveys. The encrypted passwords were taken from an SQL
database.
On 3 July, Anonymous hacked into the database of the Democratic Party
of Orange County, Florida
. They published a partial membership list and a handbook for precinct committee members. The hack was also considered part of the group's OpOrlando plan.
Anonymous launched what it dubbed "Turkish Takedown Thursday" on 6 July. They posted internal data from over one hundred .tr
websites and brought down and replaced the content of 74 of them. The 74 sites had their normal pages replaced with an Antisec logo and a message denouncing supposed attempts at internet censorship by the Turkish government. Websites affected included that of a children's hospital, but not of any key government agencies. On the same day, the group released database dumps taken from 20 universities in Italy
. Two days later, Italian police arrested 15 alleged members of Anonymous ranging in age from 15 to 28. The group vowed revenge for the raids.
On 8 July, the group claimed responsibility for hacks against IRC Federal, an engineering
firm that contracts with the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and other agencies of the United States federal government. Internal database documents and personnel email were stolen during the attack. The group also claimed to have vandalized the firm's website and forcing them to take it offline. The group says that in the documents procured, they found a proposal to the FBI for the firm to produce a "Special Identities Modernization (SIM) Project" that would help identify those who might present a criminal or terrorist risk in the future, fingerprinting contracts with the United States Department of Justice
, and biometrics
contracts with the military. They also claimed to have obtained information allowing them to log-in to various virtual private network
s and access panels belonging to the United States Department of Energy
. They also sent a message to company employees urging them to work against the government rather than for it. The hack was done with a simple SQL injection
.
On 11 July, Anonymous hacked into systems belonging to defense contractor
Booz Allen Hamilton
, breaking through barriers that the group described as having "no security measures in place." They released what they said were 90,000 email accounts and encrypted passwords from United States Central Command
, United States Special Operations Command
, the United States Marine Corps
, the United States Air Force
, the United States Department of Homeland Security
, United States Department of State
, and various private sector contractors, calling the released "Military Meltdown Monday". They also sarcastically posted an invoice charging the company for "security audit services rendered". Despite Anonymous' claims that 90,000 emails were released, the Associated Press
counted only 67,000 unique emails, of which only 53,000 were military addresses. The remainder of the addresses came from educational institutions and defense contractors. The Department of Defense said they were aware of the incident and were coordinating with other agencies for a response. Booz Allen confirmed the intrusion on 13 July, but contradicted Anonymous' claims in saying that the attack never got past their own systems, meaning that information from the military should be secure.
On 12 July, the group attacked the web servers of agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto
and released information on the company's employees, including names, addresses, and email addresses. The group claimed they performed the attack to protest the company's lawsuits against farmers who manufacture organic milk
in an effort to stop them from stating on the label that their milk does not contain artificial Bovine Growth Hormones. Monsanto confirmed the attack but claimed that only about ten percent of the information published came from current or former employees of the company. They said that the other ninety percent were email addresses and names of media contacts and employees of other agricultural companies.
On 21 July, Anonymous released two PDFs purportedly taken from servers belonging to NATO. They claimed via Twitter to have obtained around one gigabyte of data that they would release portions of over the course of a few days. The group claimed that some of the data was so sensitive that they felt it would be irresponsible to release, and thus would only make a portion of what was taken available. The first two documents released relate to outsourcing communication and information services (CIS) in Kosovo
and the funding request for the project.
The Austria
n branch of Anonymous hacked the website of the Austrian Gebühren Info Service, the television license agency run by the Austrian national public service broadcaster
, on 22 July. They accessed 214,000 records containing personal information and stole the banking data of 96,000 people from the server. The counter-terrorism bureau of the country launched an investigation and were preparing to file criminal complaints against those involved.
On 25 July, first posted confidential information that they claimed came from the Italian
Centro Nazionale Anticrimine Informatico per la Protezione delle Infrastrutture Critiche, translated as the National Anti-Crime Computer Center for Critical Infrastructure Protection, an agency tasked with protecting vital computer systems for the country. The Twitter account @anonesc posted less than 100 megabytes of data, but they claimed to have taken over eight gigabytes. The data related to oil, nuclear
, and other firms deemed to be involved in "critical infrastructure", as well as government agencies including the Department of Defence
of Australia
.
On 29 July, Anonymous hacked the FBI-contractor ManTech International
. They posted a PDF of a résumé
sent into the company as proof that they had infiltrated their systems. Anonymous claimed that the attack would be the first part of a promised "Fuck FBI Friday", or FFF, campaign as part of the larger Operation AntiSec. They published 400 megabytes of content from the company later the same day. The internal documents generally concern contracts the that ManTech has with NATO, the nature of which Anonymous claims shows a waste of taxpayer money. The files also include dealings with the United States Army
and a list of employee emails.
On 31 July, Anonymous attacked the websites of 77 different law enforcement
websites hosted on the same server. As much as 10 gigabytes of data was taken, including the personal information of police officers from numerous jurisdictions. Emails were also taken, as well as the confidential information of inmates and confidential informants, though not released yet. Anonymous said that they would redact inmate names but would release the names of all " informants who had the false impression that they would be able to ‘anonymously’ snitch in secrecy." The release also included a demand that all arrested members of Anonymous be released immediately. Some of the information released, however, was already publicly available. They proceeded to release the social security number
s of over 100 police officers from the Missouri Sheriffs' Association website. The following Saturday, 6 August, they released a cache of data from the websites title "Shooting Sheriffs Saturday Release" which included the information taken from law enforcement websites. Large amounts of personal information was included, with Anonymous stating, "We have no sympathy for any of the officers or informants who may be endangered by the release of their personal information. For too long they have been using and abusing our personal information." Anonymous claimed that their motive was revenge over the arrests of a number of participants in previous operations and of LulzSec and Anonymous member Topiary
. They also used stolen credit card numbers to make donations to the American Civil Liberties Union
, Electronic Frontier Foundation
, and the Bradley Manning Support Network.
and Senior Vice President of Vanguard Defense Industries, in the name of AntiSec. They claimed that the firm's relationships with United States military and law enforcement organizations made it a legitimate target as part of the operation. They also claimed to have breached the company's website, which was run on a WordPress
platform, though the company says that their website was never affected. The group released 1 gigabyte of information three days later, all of it taken from Garcia's personal email account; it mainly related to Garcia's former role with InfraGard.
, Anonymous attacked the website of the Texas Police Chiefs Association. On 1 September, the group defaced the website and released documents from it marked "law enforcement sensitive" and "for official use only". The release also included police officer private email. The same day, the group brought down the website of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
for the justice system's characterization of Anonymous activities as "cyber-terrorism".
and Occupy movement. The dump including data taken from the International Association of Chiefs of Police
, Boston Police Patrolmen's Association, and the Sheriff's office of Baldwin County, Alabama
. A number of police websites virtually hosted
together also had their content replaced with an anti-police rap
video. The dump 600 megabytes of information including membership rosters, internal documents, and social security numbers from the International Association of Chiefs of Police; nearly 1000 names, ranks, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers of police officers in Jefferson County, Alabama
and Birmingham, Alabama
; 1000 names and passwords of members of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association; and the financial information and client list of web developer and marketing company Matrix Group, a business with several law enforcement clients. AntiSec claimed that at least 40 law enforcement related websites were included in the attack.
account of Alfredo "Fred" Baclagan, a special agent supervising computer crime investigations with the California Department of Justice
and the Computer and Technology Crime Hightech Response Team, to a site on Tor
and to The Pirate Bay
. They also added what they claimed were Baclagan's personal home address and phone number. The group claimed the action as part of their attack on law enforcement in support of the Occupy movement and in protest for prosecution of computer criminals in general. They also claimed to have read his text messages, listened to his voicemail, and used his Google Voice
account to call and text his friends and family. They also purchased a camera using his Google Wallet
. The release includes forensic experts discussing techniques for tracking cybercriminals and how different companies respond to law enforcement requests for information.
. A few days after, a number of locations in Mission Beach, San Diego were vandalized with pieces of graffiti reading the phrase.
On 4 July, a Fox News Twitter account (@foxnewspolitics) was hacked and false tweets reporting that President of the United States
Barack Obama
has been shot three times and killed were sent from the account. The Script Kiddies
, a group with close ties to Anonymous including two hackers with former membership in the group, claimed responsibility for the attack and hoax. The group claimed that the action was in the name of Operation Anti-Security and that they would continue looking to expose information on corporations "to assist with antisec." The United States Secret Service
is investigating the incident as a threat on the President. The group subsequently
hacked into the Facebook
page of pharmaceutical company Pfizer
, claiming they did so for "moral reasons" as part of AntiSec. They posted numerous messages to the company's Facebook wall mocking their security.
On 4 July, someone going by the name f1esc posted a file to The Pirate Bay
containing 600 megabytes of information described as national "AU election data" and labelled with the tag #Antisec. In reality, the data concerned the 2011 New South Wales state election
and was taken from a government website designed to provide election results where the data was publicly available, and the data proved freely accessible information instead of a hack.
In early July, the group RedHack hacked into and defaced over 1000 websites based in Turkey. They claimed to do so both to mark the anniversary of the Sivas massacre
and as part of Operation Anti-Security. The websites belonged both to agencies of the Government of Turkey and Adnan Oktar
, an Islamic creationist. The group vowed to continue contribution to the AntiSec operation.
On 6 July, a hacker called p0keu released of around 2,658 usernames, passwords hidden behind hash functions
, and email addresses from the blog
TamilCanadian.com. He gave no reason for why he chose the website to attack other than that he did so under the AntiSec label. On 14 July, he leaked part of the Stevens Institute of Technology
website database. At least 31 of the records in the database contained plain text file
s with email addresses, user names, and passwords of site users. p0keu posted the user information to Pastebin. P0keu has continued hacking, but has not labelled all of his releases with the AntiSec slogan.
In the Netherlands
, a splinter group inspired by LulzSec formed, calling themselves AntiSec NL. The group hacked into the websites of online dating service
pepper.nl and software company Nimbuzz
. Four people believed by police to be members were later arrested.
On 24 July, a group called BashCrew hacked the website of the House of Representatives of the Philippines
in the name of AntiSec. The names, telephone numbers, and email addresses of members of the Filipino Congress were released via Pastebin, with the group claiming that they may also release blood types and the private websites of some members.
A hacker going by the name Thehacker12, a self-purported AntiSec supporter but not a member of Anonymous, released data stolen from event management
company allianceforbiz.com on 24 August 2011 on Mediafire and Pastebin. The release contained a spreadsheet
of usernames, email addresses, passwords, employers, and other information of around 20,000 people, many of them United States government employees or contractors. The organization with the most employees compromised was the Small Business Administration
.
. He was accused of stealing thousands of documents and applications from AT&T that LulzSec published as part of their so-called "final release" of the operation. LulzSec denied that any of their membership had been arrested, stating "there are six of us, and we're all still here."
On 20 July, prosecutors in the Netherlands released details of the arrests of four suspects aged 17, 18, 25, and 35. All were located in different Dutch cities and accused of being part of the hacking group AntiSec NL, an operation participant inspired by LulzSec. The four, going by the online handles Ziaolin, Calimero, DutchD3V1L, and Time, were arrested on 19 July and their computers and electronic equipment confiscated as evidence. Prosecutors identified the suspects after computer security company Fox-IT
helped them gain access to a chat channel thought to be used by the group.
The Police Central E-Crime Unit
arrested an 18-year-old man from Shetland on 27 July 2011 suspected of being LulzSec member Topiary
. They also searched the house of and interviewed a 17-year-old from Lincolnshire
possibly connected to the investigation. Scotland Yard later identified the man arrested as Yell, Shetland resident Jake Davis. He was charged with unauthorized access of a computer under the Computer Misuse Act 1990
, encouraging or assisting criminal activity under the Serious Crime Act 2007
, conspiracy to launch a denial-of-service attack against the Serious Organised Crime Unit contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977
, and criminal conspiracy also under the Criminal Law Act 1977. Police confiscated a Dell
laptop and a 100-gigabyte hard drive that ran 16 different virtual machine
s. Details relating to an attack on Sony and hundreds of thousands of email addresses and passwords were found on the computer. A London court released Davis on bail under the conditions that he live under curfew with his parents and have no access to the internet. His lawyer Gideon Cammerman stated that, while his client did help publicize LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, he lacks the technical skills to have been anything but a sympathizer.
In early September 2011, Scotland Yard made two further arrests relating to LulzSec. Police arrested a 24-year-old male in Mexborough
, South Yorkshire
and a 20-year-old male in Warminster
, Wiltshire
. The two are accused of conspiring to commit offenses under the Computer Misuse Act of 1990; police said that the arrests related to investigations into LulzSec member Kayla.
Hacking
Hacking may refer to:* Computer hacking, including the following types of activity:** Hacker , activity within the computer programmer subculture** Hacker , to access computer networks, legally or otherwise...
attacks performed by members of hacking group LulzSec
LulzSec
Lulz Security, commonly abbreviated as LulzSec, is a computer hacker group that claims responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline...
, the group Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
, and others inspired by the announcement of the operation. LulzSec performed the earliest attacks of the operation, with the first against the Serious Organised Crime Agency
Serious Organised Crime Agency
The Serious Organised Crime Agency is a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom under Home Office sponsorship...
on 20 June 2011. Soon after, the group released information taken from the servers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona Department of Public Safety is a law enforcement agency with its usual focus being protection of all Arizona highways. The current Director is Robert C. Halliday, a previously retired DPS commander, who began his 5-year term in February 2010...
; Anonymous would later release information from the same agency two more times. An offshoot of the group calling themselves LulzSecBrazil launched attacks on numerous websites belonging to the Government of Brazil and the energy company Petrobras
Petrobras
Petróleo Brasileiro or Petrobras is a semi-public Brazilian multinational energy corporation headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the largest company in Latin America by market capitalization and revenue, and the largest company headquartered in the Southern Hemisphere by market...
. LulzSec claimed to retire as a group, but on 22 June they reconvened to hack into the websites of British newspapers The Sun and The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, posting a fake news story of the death of their owner Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
.
Anonymous released their first cache of the operation on 27 June 2011, taken from an anti-cyberterrorism program run by the United States Department of Homeland Security
United States Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to...
and Federal Emergency Management Agency
Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, initially created by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders...
. They continued attacks on the Arizona government. They also launched attacks against the Brazilian government, Government of Zimbabwe, the Municipality of Mosman
Municipality of Mosman
The Municipality of Mosman is a Local Government Area on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia.- Demographics :According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics...
, and the Government of Tunisia. Their most recent attacks have been against large corporations, NATO, and various United States law enforcement websites. Anonymous has used the stolen credit card numbers of police officers to make unauthorized donations to various causes. Others have also committed hacks in the name of the operation, including a hack into the Fox News Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
account to post a false news story about the assassination of President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
and attacks on the websites of government entities in various countries. The groups involved have published sensitive government and corporate information, as well as the email addresses, names, and social security numbers, and credit card numbers of website users.
Law enforcement
Law enforcement
Law enforcement broadly refers to any system by which some members of society act in an organized manner to promote adherence to the law by discovering and punishing persons who violate the rules and norms governing that society...
has launched investigations into many of the attacks committed as part of Operation AntiSec. At least seven arrests have been made in connection to activities related to the operation, including the arrests of two purported LulzSec members, a man who provided LulzSec with security vulnerability information, and four alleged members of AntiSec NL, a group inspired by the operation.
Background
The LulzSecLulzSec
Lulz Security, commonly abbreviated as LulzSec, is a computer hacker group that claims responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline...
hacking group formed in May 2011 and came to national prominence after hacking the websites of the Public Broadcasting Service
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, and the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
. Initially, the group claimed to hack "for the lulz" and to enjoy the chaos that follows their intrusions. However, on 20 June 2011, the group announced that they were teaming up with hacking collective Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
for a series of attacks they dubbed Operation Anti-Security or Operation AntiSec. The press release accompanying the beginning of the operation called for supporters to steal and publish classified government documents under the name AntiSec. Major banks and corporations were also mentioned as potential targets. Though LulzSec disbanded as a group on 26 June 2011, members have been reported to be continuing the operation from within Anonymous.
The groups involved claim that the operation aims to protest government censorship and monitoring of the internet. LulzSec members also mentions ending what they believe are corrupt racial profiling
Racial profiling
Racial profiling refers to the use of an individual’s race or ethnicity by law enforcement personnel as a key factor in deciding whether to engage in enforcement...
and copyright laws as a goal of the operation. The War on Drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...
has also been given as a reason for particular hacks. In contrast, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
described the operation as cyberwarfare targeting governments and large corporations.
LulzSec activities
LulzSec launched the first attacks of the operation against the Serious Organised Crime AgencySerious Organised Crime Agency
The Serious Organised Crime Agency is a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom under Home Office sponsorship...
, the national law enforcement agency
Law enforcement agency
In North American English, a law enforcement agency is a government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.Outside North America, such organizations are called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police while others have other names In North American...
of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
that handles cybercrime
CyberCrime
CyberCrime was an innovative, weekly America television program on TechTV that focused on the dangers facing computer users. Filmed in San Francisco, California, the show was hosted by Alex Wellen and Jennifer London...
. The group launched a distributed denial-of-service attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
against the agency's website on 20 June, taking it offline for only a few minutes. On the same day, they knocked the website of the Jianhua District
Jianhua District
Jianhua District is a district of the city of Qiqihar, Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China.The area of the district is 81 square km, and holds a population of 220,000.-External links:*...
in Qiqihar
Qiqihar
- Subdivisions :Qiqihar is divided into 16 divisions: 7 districts , 8 counties and 1 county-level city .-Economy:...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
offline.
On 23 June, the group released a large cache of documents taken from the servers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona Department of Public Safety is a law enforcement agency with its usual focus being protection of all Arizona highways. The current Director is Robert C. Halliday, a previously retired DPS commander, who began his 5-year term in February 2010...
. The release, titled "chinga la migra", roughly translating to "fuck the border patrol", including email addresses and passwords and hundreds of documents marked "sensitive" or "for official use only". The group claimed that they did so in retaliation for the passage of Arizona SB 1070, a law they saw as leading to unjust racial profiling. Arizona complained that the release of officer identities and the personal information of their families could put them and their families in danger and gave those exposed security protection. In response, they mobilized the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center and locked remote access of Department of Public Safety email accounts.
On 25 June 2011, the group released what they described as their last dump of the operation. The release contained a large amount of information from varied sources. Included was information from numerous companies, including half a gigabyte
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
of data from telecommunications company AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
and IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
es from Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
, Disney, EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, and NBC Universal
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
. The AT&T portion included information pertaining to the release of the 4G
4G
In telecommunications, 4G is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to the 3G and 2G families of standards. In 2009, the ITU-R organization specified the IMT-Advanced requirements for 4G standards, setting peak speed requirements for 4G service at 100 Mbit/s...
LTE, 90,000 personal phones used by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, and the development of the iPad 3. It also contained over 750,000 usernames and password combinations, including 200,000 from hackforums.net, 12,000 from the NATO online bookstore, 500,000 from the online video game Battlefield Heroes
Battlefield Heroes
Battlefield Heroes is a cartoon-style action video game developed by DICE initially—now developed by —and published by EA for Microsoft Windows. It is played from a third-person EA are calling it FPS perspective. The game is less demanding on computer specifications than the previous games of the...
, 50,000 from various video game forums, and 29 from Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
private investigation company Priority Investigations. Finally, an internal manual for AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
engineers and a screencapture of the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
website navy.mil after being vandalized.
On 22 June, an offshoot of the group calling themselves LulzSecBrazil took down the website of the Government of Brazil, brasil.gov.br, and the President of Brazil
President of Brazil
The president of Brazil is both the head of state and head of government of the Federative Republic of Brazil. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces...
, presidencia.gov.br. They also targeted the website of Brazilian energy company Petrobras
Petrobras
Petróleo Brasileiro or Petrobras is a semi-public Brazilian multinational energy corporation headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the largest company in Latin America by market capitalization and revenue, and the largest company headquartered in the Southern Hemisphere by market...
. On 24 June, they claimed to publish access codes and passwords to the Petrobras website along with personnel profiles. However, the company denied that any information had been stolen, and the group removed the claim from their Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
feed a few hours later. The group also published the personal information of President of Brazil
President of Brazil
The president of Brazil is both the head of state and head of government of the Federative Republic of Brazil. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces...
Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Vana Rousseff is the 36th and current President of Brazil. She is the first woman to hold the office. Prior to that, in 2005, she was also the first woman to become Chief of Staff of Brazil, appointed by then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva....
and Mayor of São Paulo Gilberto Kassab
Gilberto Kassab
Gilberto Kassab is a Brazilian politician, current mayor of São Paulo. His term ends in 2012. A civil engineer and economist, of Lebanese descent, Kassab took over from José Serra, after Serra decided to run for governor of São Paulo...
.
Despite claiming to have retired, on 18 July LulzSec hacked into the website of British newspaper The Sun. The group redirected the newspaper's website to an also-hacked redesign website of another newspaper The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, altering the site to resemble The Sun and posting a fake story claiming that Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
had died after ingesting a fatal dose of palladium
Palladium
Palladium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired...
. They objected to the involvement of News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
, the Murdoch-owned company that publishes The Sun and The Times, in a large phone hacking scandal. The hacked website also contained a webcomic depicting LulzSec deciding on and carrying out the attack. The group later redirected The Sun website to their Twitter feed. News International released a statement regarding the attacks before having the page the statement appeared on also redirected to the LulzSec Twitter page and eventually taken offline. The group also released the names and phone numbers of a reporter for The Sun and two others associated with the newspaper and encouraged their supporters to call them. The group further included an old email address and password of former News International executive Rebekah Brooks. News Corporation took the websites offline as a precaution later in the day.
June 2011
On 27 June 2011, Anonymous published information relating to the Cyberterrorism Defense Initiative's Security and Network Training Initiative and National Education Laboratory program, or Sentinel program, an operation run by the United States Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management AgencyFederal Emergency Management Agency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, initially created by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders...
. The hack included information that the agency distributed in 2009 and contained resources on publicly available hacking software, a list of Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
bureau locations, details on counter-hacking tools, and form letters that law enforcement agencies used to obtain user details from internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s.
On 28 June, the group released the second collection of documents stolen from the Arizona Department of Public Safety during Operation Anti-Security. Dubbed "Chinga la Migra Communique Dos", or "Fuck the Border Patrol Message Two", the data file contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, internet passwords, and social security number
Social Security number
In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents under section 205 of the Social Security Act, codified as . The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent...
s of a dozen Arizona police officers. It also contained the emails, voicemail
Voicemail
Voicemail is a computer based system that allows users and subscribers to exchange personal voice messages; to select and deliver voice information; and to process transactions relating to individuals, organizations, products and services, using an ordinary telephone...
s, chat logs of some of them; in at least one instance it included sexually explicit photographs from one of the officer's girlfriends. Anonymous also claimed that the documents included officers forwarding racist chain emails, evidence of K-9 unit
Police dog
A police dog, often referred to as a "K-9 dog" in some areas , is a dog that is trained specifically to assist police and other law-enforcement personnel in their work...
officers using percocet
Percocet
The combination oxycodone/paracetamol is a narcotic pain reliever used to treat moderate to severe acute pain, marketed by Endo Pharmaceuticals.-History:The U.S...
, and a Fraternal Order of Police
Fraternal Order of Police
The Fraternal Order of Police is an organization of sworn law enforcement officers in the United States. It claims a membership of over 325,000 members organized in 2100 local chapters , organized into local lodges, state lodges, and the national Grand Lodge...
member who is also a convicted sex offender
Sex offender
A sex offender is a person who has committed a sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and by legal jurisdiction. Most jurisdictions compile their laws into sections such as traffic, assault, sexual, etc. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convictions for crimes of a...
. Anonymous noted that their motivation stemmed from a desire to make police officers "experience just a taste of the same kind of violence and terror they dish out on an every day basis."
On the same day, the group released information obtained from various government sources. Government data from Anguilla
Anguilla
Anguilla is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin...
, passwords from servers belonging to the Government of Brazil, the users of Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
government websites, and data from the Municipality of Mosman
Municipality of Mosman
The Municipality of Mosman is a Local Government Area on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia.- Demographics :According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics...
council were included. The Mosman council dump included mainly publicly available information from the website as well as a not-publicly-available prototype version of the website that had not yet been launched. They claimed to also have access to all Zimbabwean government websites ending in gov.zw. Most of the information and control were given through SQL injection
SQL injection
A SQL injection is often used to attack the security of a website by inputting SQL statements in a web form to get a badly designed website in order to dump the database content to the attacker. SQL injection is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability in a website's software...
. Anonymous claimed they targeted Brazil for its what they saw as data manipulation and Zimbabwe for the controversial 2008 Zimbabwean presidential election
Zimbabwean presidential election, 2008
The Republic of Zimbabwe held a presidential election along with a parliamentary election on 29 March 2008. The three major candidates were incumbent President Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front , Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change , and...
. They also gained control of a website belonging to the Government of Tunisia. They replaced the webpage with a graphic representing Anonymous with text reading "The Internet is the last frontier and we will not let corrupt governments spoil it. We are Anonymous, We are LulzSec, We are People from around the world who are stepping in the name of freedom". The release also included a file containing internal mapping of Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
servers as well as passwords and data from umusic.com, a website of Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
. They also released the names of 2,800 members of the Black Eagles
Black Eagles
Black Eagles is a term describing a series of Colombian right wing, counter-revolutionary, paramilitary organizations made up of new and preexisting paramilitary forces, some of which were part of the demobilized Self-Defense Units of Colombia...
paramilitary group.
July 2011
On 1 July, Anonymous once again targeted Arizona law enforcement by publishing a number of backdoors that could be used to access Arizona police servers to PastebinPastebin
A pastebin is a type of web application that allows its users to upload snippets of text, usually samples of source code, for public viewing. It is very popular in IRC channels where pasting large amounts of text is considered bad etiquette. A new trend is that users use Pastebin to post Twitter...
. Arizona was forced to pull many websites offline for a time. Websites affected included those of the Department of Public Safety and Mariposa
Mariposa
Mariposa is the Spanish word for "butterfly". In Portuguese, it is both a synonym for "moth" and "butterfly" .It may also refer to:-Canada:* Mariposa, Saskatchewan, a rural municipality...
chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. They also claimed to have found "anti-Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
" emails during the attack.
On 4 July, Anonymous released a document containing 27 administrative usernames and passwords from an Apple Inc. system used to operate online technical support
Technical support
Technical support or tech support refers to a range of services by which enterprises provide assistance to users of technology products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods...
follow-up surveys. The encrypted passwords were taken from an SQL
SQL
SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
database.
On 3 July, Anonymous hacked into the database of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
of Orange County, Florida
Orange County, Florida
Orange County is a county located in the U.S. state of Florida and is part of the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area . As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 1,145,956....
. They published a partial membership list and a handbook for precinct committee members. The hack was also considered part of the group's OpOrlando plan.
Anonymous launched what it dubbed "Turkish Takedown Thursday" on 6 July. They posted internal data from over one hundred .tr
.tr
.tr is the Internet country code top-level domain for Turkey. It is administered by Middle East Technical University ..nc.tr is used as a second-level domain for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, as it has no country code assigned....
websites and brought down and replaced the content of 74 of them. The 74 sites had their normal pages replaced with an Antisec logo and a message denouncing supposed attempts at internet censorship by the Turkish government. Websites affected included that of a children's hospital, but not of any key government agencies. On the same day, the group released database dumps taken from 20 universities in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Two days later, Italian police arrested 15 alleged members of Anonymous ranging in age from 15 to 28. The group vowed revenge for the raids.
On 8 July, the group claimed responsibility for hacks against IRC Federal, an engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
firm that contracts with the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
and other agencies of the United States federal government. Internal database documents and personnel email were stolen during the attack. The group also claimed to have vandalized the firm's website and forcing them to take it offline. The group says that in the documents procured, they found a proposal to the FBI for the firm to produce a "Special Identities Modernization (SIM) Project" that would help identify those who might present a criminal or terrorist risk in the future, fingerprinting contracts with the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
, and biometrics
Biometrics
Biometrics As Jain & Ross point out, "the term biometric authentication is perhaps more appropriate than biometrics since the latter has been historically used in the field of statistics to refer to the analysis of biological data [36]" . consists of methods...
contracts with the military. They also claimed to have obtained information allowing them to log-in to various virtual private network
Virtual private network
A virtual private network is a network that uses primarily public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or traveling users access to a central organizational network....
s and access panels belonging to the United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
. They also sent a message to company employees urging them to work against the government rather than for it. The hack was done with a simple SQL injection
SQL injection
A SQL injection is often used to attack the security of a website by inputting SQL statements in a web form to get a badly designed website in order to dump the database content to the attacker. SQL injection is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability in a website's software...
.
On 11 July, Anonymous hacked into systems belonging to defense contractor
Defense contractor
A defense contractor is a business organization or individual that provides products or services to a military department of a government. Products typically include military aircraft, ships, vehicles, weaponry, and electronic systems...
Booz Allen Hamilton
Booz Allen Hamilton
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. , or more commonly Booz Allen, is an American public consulting firm headquartered in McLean, Fairfax County, Virginia, with 80 other offices throughout the United States. Ralph Shrader is its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. The firm was founded by Edwin Booz in...
, breaking through barriers that the group described as having "no security measures in place." They released what they said were 90,000 email accounts and encrypted passwords from United States Central Command
United States Central Command
The United States Central Command is a theater-level Unified Combatant Command unit of the U.S. armed forces, established in 1983 under the operational control of the U.S. Secretary of Defense...
, United States Special Operations Command
United States Special Operations Command
The United States Special Operations Command is the Unified Combatant Command charged with overseeing the various Special Operations Commands of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps of the United States Armed Forces. The command is part of the Department of Defense...
, the United States Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
, the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
, the United States Department of Homeland Security
United States Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to...
, United States Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, and various private sector contractors, calling the released "Military Meltdown Monday". They also sarcastically posted an invoice charging the company for "security audit services rendered". Despite Anonymous' claims that 90,000 emails were released, the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
counted only 67,000 unique emails, of which only 53,000 were military addresses. The remainder of the addresses came from educational institutions and defense contractors. The Department of Defense said they were aware of the incident and were coordinating with other agencies for a response. Booz Allen confirmed the intrusion on 13 July, but contradicted Anonymous' claims in saying that the attack never got past their own systems, meaning that information from the military should be secure.
On 12 July, the group attacked the web servers of agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto
Monsanto
The Monsanto Company is a US-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed in the "Roundup" brand of herbicides, and in other brands...
and released information on the company's employees, including names, addresses, and email addresses. The group claimed they performed the attack to protest the company's lawsuits against farmers who manufacture organic milk
Organic milk
Organic milk is defined by the USDA as milk from cows that have been exclusively fed organic feed, have not been treated with synthetic hormones, are not given certain medications to treat sickness. [Citation Needed]- Comparison with regular milk :...
in an effort to stop them from stating on the label that their milk does not contain artificial Bovine Growth Hormones. Monsanto confirmed the attack but claimed that only about ten percent of the information published came from current or former employees of the company. They said that the other ninety percent were email addresses and names of media contacts and employees of other agricultural companies.
On 21 July, Anonymous released two PDFs purportedly taken from servers belonging to NATO. They claimed via Twitter to have obtained around one gigabyte of data that they would release portions of over the course of a few days. The group claimed that some of the data was so sensitive that they felt it would be irresponsible to release, and thus would only make a portion of what was taken available. The first two documents released relate to outsourcing communication and information services (CIS) in Kosovo
Kosovo
Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
and the funding request for the project.
The Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n branch of Anonymous hacked the website of the Austrian Gebühren Info Service, the television license agency run by the Austrian national public service broadcaster
ORF (broadcaster)
Österreichischer Rundfunk, ORF, is the Austrian national public service broadcaster.Funded from a combination of a television licence fees and revenue from limited on-air advertising, ORF is the dominant player in the Austrian broadcast media...
, on 22 July. They accessed 214,000 records containing personal information and stole the banking data of 96,000 people from the server. The counter-terrorism bureau of the country launched an investigation and were preparing to file criminal complaints against those involved.
On 25 July, first posted confidential information that they claimed came from the Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
Centro Nazionale Anticrimine Informatico per la Protezione delle Infrastrutture Critiche, translated as the National Anti-Crime Computer Center for Critical Infrastructure Protection, an agency tasked with protecting vital computer systems for the country. The Twitter account @anonesc posted less than 100 megabytes of data, but they claimed to have taken over eight gigabytes. The data related to oil, nuclear
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
, and other firms deemed to be involved in "critical infrastructure", as well as government agencies including the Department of Defence
Department of Defence (Australia)
The Australian Department of Defence is a Federal Government Department. It forms part of the Australian Defence Organisation along with the Australian Defence Force . The Defence mission is to defend Australia and its national interests...
of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
On 29 July, Anonymous hacked the FBI-contractor ManTech International
Mantech International
ManTech International Corporation was co-founded in 1968 by George J. Pedersen. The company’s main purpose is to deliver upcoming information technology and technical services to federal government customers. ManTech has grown to become one of the U.S...
. They posted a PDF of a résumé
Résumé
A résumé is a document used by individuals to present their background and skillsets. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons but most often to secure new employment. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education...
sent into the company as proof that they had infiltrated their systems. Anonymous claimed that the attack would be the first part of a promised "Fuck FBI Friday", or FFF, campaign as part of the larger Operation AntiSec. They published 400 megabytes of content from the company later the same day. The internal documents generally concern contracts the that ManTech has with NATO, the nature of which Anonymous claims shows a waste of taxpayer money. The files also include dealings with the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
and a list of employee emails.
On 31 July, Anonymous attacked the websites of 77 different law enforcement
Law enforcement
Law enforcement broadly refers to any system by which some members of society act in an organized manner to promote adherence to the law by discovering and punishing persons who violate the rules and norms governing that society...
websites hosted on the same server. As much as 10 gigabytes of data was taken, including the personal information of police officers from numerous jurisdictions. Emails were also taken, as well as the confidential information of inmates and confidential informants, though not released yet. Anonymous said that they would redact inmate names but would release the names of all " informants who had the false impression that they would be able to ‘anonymously’ snitch in secrecy." The release also included a demand that all arrested members of Anonymous be released immediately. Some of the information released, however, was already publicly available. They proceeded to release the social security number
Social Security number
In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents under section 205 of the Social Security Act, codified as . The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent...
s of over 100 police officers from the Missouri Sheriffs' Association website. The following Saturday, 6 August, they released a cache of data from the websites title "Shooting Sheriffs Saturday Release" which included the information taken from law enforcement websites. Large amounts of personal information was included, with Anonymous stating, "We have no sympathy for any of the officers or informants who may be endangered by the release of their personal information. For too long they have been using and abusing our personal information." Anonymous claimed that their motive was revenge over the arrests of a number of participants in previous operations and of LulzSec and Anonymous member Topiary
Topiary (hacktivist)
Topiary is a hacktivist and self-described "Supporter of Anonymous Operations, WikiLeaks, and maintaining freedom on the Internet". He is heavily involved with the Internet group Anonymous, which have publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and...
. They also used stolen credit card numbers to make donations to the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
, and the Bradley Manning Support Network.
August 2011
On 16 August, Anonymous gained access to the email account of Richard Garcia, former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI field office in Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and Senior Vice President of Vanguard Defense Industries, in the name of AntiSec. They claimed that the firm's relationships with United States military and law enforcement organizations made it a legitimate target as part of the operation. They also claimed to have breached the company's website, which was run on a WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
platform, though the company says that their website was never affected. The group released 1 gigabyte of information three days later, all of it taken from Garcia's personal email account; it mainly related to Garcia's former role with InfraGard.
September 2011
In retaliation for arrests of people who allegedly participated in Operation AntiSec, and especially TopiaryTopiary (hacktivist)
Topiary is a hacktivist and self-described "Supporter of Anonymous Operations, WikiLeaks, and maintaining freedom on the Internet". He is heavily involved with the Internet group Anonymous, which have publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and...
, Anonymous attacked the website of the Texas Police Chiefs Association. On 1 September, the group defaced the website and released documents from it marked "law enforcement sensitive" and "for official use only". The release also included police officer private email. The same day, the group brought down the website of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
for the justice system's characterization of Anonymous activities as "cyber-terrorism".
October 2011
On 21 October, anounced a dump of data related to law enforcement in support of the Occupy Wall StreetOccupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters which began September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district...
and Occupy movement. The dump including data taken from the International Association of Chiefs of Police
International Association of Chiefs of Police
The International Association of Chiefs of Police was founded in Chicago in 1893 as the National Chiefs of Police Union. The primary goal of this organization was to apprehend and return criminals who had fled the agency jurisdictions in which they were wanted...
, Boston Police Patrolmen's Association, and the Sheriff's office of Baldwin County, Alabama
Baldwin County, Alabama
-2010:Whereas according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau:*85.7% White*9.4% Black*0.7% Native American*0.7% Asian*0.0% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander*1.5% Two or more races*4.4% Hispanic or Latino -2000:...
. A number of police websites virtually hosted
Virtual hosting
Virtual hosting is a method for hosting multiple domain names on a server using a single IP address. This allows one server to share its resources, such as memory and processor cycles, in order to use its resources more efficiently....
together also had their content replaced with an anti-police rap
Rap
Rap may refer to:*Rapping, performance in which rhyming lyrics are used, with or without musical accompaniment ; while an MC performs spoken verses in time to a beat/ melody**Hip hop subculture**Hip hop music...
video. The dump 600 megabytes of information including membership rosters, internal documents, and social security numbers from the International Association of Chiefs of Police; nearly 1000 names, ranks, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers of police officers in Jefferson County, Alabama
Jefferson County, Alabama
Jefferson County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Alabama, with its county seat being located in Birmingham.As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the population of Jefferson County was 658,466...
and Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
; 1000 names and passwords of members of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association; and the financial information and client list of web developer and marketing company Matrix Group, a business with several law enforcement clients. AntiSec claimed that at least 40 law enforcement related websites were included in the attack.
November 2011
On November 18, 2011, Anonymous posted 38,000 email messages from the GmailGmail
Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well via POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though...
account of Alfredo "Fred" Baclagan, a special agent supervising computer crime investigations with the California Department of Justice
California Department of Justice
The California Department of Justice is the department in the California executive branch under the leadership of the California Attorney General.-Description:It has 5344 employees and a budget of $791 million...
and the Computer and Technology Crime Hightech Response Team, to a site on Tor
Tor (anonymity network)
Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
and to The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
. They also added what they claimed were Baclagan's personal home address and phone number. The group claimed the action as part of their attack on law enforcement in support of the Occupy movement and in protest for prosecution of computer criminals in general. They also claimed to have read his text messages, listened to his voicemail, and used his Google Voice
Google voice
Search by voice is a branded name for a technology to "search by voice on your [digital device]", such as a mobile phone or PC, i.e. have the device search for data upon entering information on what to search into the device by speaking....
account to call and text his friends and family. They also purchased a camera using his Google Wallet
Google Wallet
Google Wallet is a mobile payment system developed by Google that allows its users to store credit cards, loyalty cards, and gift cards among other things, as well as redeeming sales promotions on their mobile phone...
. The release includes forensic experts discussing techniques for tracking cybercriminals and how different companies respond to law enforcement requests for information.
Actions by other groups and individuals
The original announcement of Operation Anti-Security included a call from LulzSec to spread the name "AntiSec" through physical graffitiGraffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
. A few days after, a number of locations in Mission Beach, San Diego were vandalized with pieces of graffiti reading the phrase.
On 4 July, a Fox News Twitter account (@foxnewspolitics) was hacked and false tweets reporting that President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
has been shot three times and killed were sent from the account. The Script Kiddies
Script kiddie
A script kiddie or skiddie, occasionally skid, script bunny, script kitty, script-running juvenile or similar, is a derogatory term used to describe those who use scripts or programs developed by others to attack computer systems and networks and deface websites.-Characteristics:In a Carnegie...
, a group with close ties to Anonymous including two hackers with former membership in the group, claimed responsibility for the attack and hoax. The group claimed that the action was in the name of Operation Anti-Security and that they would continue looking to expose information on corporations "to assist with antisec." The United States Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
is investigating the incident as a threat on the President. The group subsequently
hacked into the Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
page of pharmaceutical company Pfizer
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
, claiming they did so for "moral reasons" as part of AntiSec. They posted numerous messages to the company's Facebook wall mocking their security.
On 4 July, someone going by the name f1esc posted a file to The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website which hosts magnet links and .torrent files, which allow users to share electronic files, including multimedia, computer games and software via BitTorrent...
containing 600 megabytes of information described as national "AU election data" and labelled with the tag #Antisec. In reality, the data concerned the 2011 New South Wales state election
New South Wales state election, 2011
Elections to the 55th Parliament of New South Wales were held on Saturday, 26 March 2011. The 16-year incumbent Australian Labor Party government led by Premier Kristina Keneally was defeated in a landslide by the Liberal-National coalition opposition led by Barry O'Farrell.New South Wales has...
and was taken from a government website designed to provide election results where the data was publicly available, and the data proved freely accessible information instead of a hack.
In early July, the group RedHack hacked into and defaced over 1000 websites based in Turkey. They claimed to do so both to mark the anniversary of the Sivas massacre
Sivas massacre
The Sivas massacre refers to the events of July 2, 1993 which resulted in the deaths of 37 people, mostly Alevi intellectuals, and two hotel employees. Two people from the mob were also dead...
and as part of Operation Anti-Security. The websites belonged both to agencies of the Government of Turkey and Adnan Oktar
Adnan Oktar
Adnan Oktar , also known as Harun Yahya, is an author and Islamic creationist. In 2007, he sent thousands of unsolicited copies of the Atlas of Creation advocating Islamic creationism to American scientists, members of Congress, and science museums...
, an Islamic creationist. The group vowed to continue contribution to the AntiSec operation.
On 6 July, a hacker called p0keu released of around 2,658 usernames, passwords hidden behind hash functions
Cryptographic hash function
A cryptographic hash function is a deterministic procedure that takes an arbitrary block of data and returns a fixed-size bit string, the hash value, such that an accidental or intentional change to the data will change the hash value...
, and email addresses from the blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
TamilCanadian.com. He gave no reason for why he chose the website to attack other than that he did so under the AntiSec label. On 14 July, he leaked part of the Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens Institute of Technology
Stevens Institute of Technology is a technological university located on a campus in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA – founded in 1870 with an 1868 bequest from Edwin A. Stevens. It is known for its engineering, science, and technological management curricula.The institute has produced leading...
website database. At least 31 of the records in the database contained plain text file
Text file
A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a computer file system...
s with email addresses, user names, and passwords of site users. p0keu posted the user information to Pastebin. P0keu has continued hacking, but has not labelled all of his releases with the AntiSec slogan.
In the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, a splinter group inspired by LulzSec formed, calling themselves AntiSec NL. The group hacked into the websites of online dating service
Online dating service
Online dating or Internet dating is a dating system which allows individuals, couples and groups to make contact and communicate with each other over the Internet, usually with the objective of developing a personal, romantic, or sexual relationship...
pepper.nl and software company Nimbuzz
Nimbuzz IM
Nimbuzz IM is a free peer-to-peer mobile and desktop application service that enables people to chat/ call from their mobile phones and desktop applications. Co founded by Evert Jaap Lugt, Nimbuzz IM allows users to add their Gtalk, Facebook, Yahoo, Windows Live, AIM, Twitter, MySpace IM, ICQ and...
. Four people believed by police to be members were later arrested.
On 24 July, a group called BashCrew hacked the website of the House of Representatives of the Philippines
House of Representatives of the Philippines
The House of Representatives of the Philippines is the lower chamber of the...
in the name of AntiSec. The names, telephone numbers, and email addresses of members of the Filipino Congress were released via Pastebin, with the group claiming that they may also release blood types and the private websites of some members.
A hacker going by the name Thehacker12, a self-purported AntiSec supporter but not a member of Anonymous, released data stolen from event management
Event management
Event management is the application of project management to the creation and development of festivals, events and conferences.Event management involves studying the intricacies of the brand, identifying the target audience, devising the event concept, planning the logistics and coordinating the...
company allianceforbiz.com on 24 August 2011 on Mediafire and Pastebin. The release contained a spreadsheet
Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
of usernames, email addresses, passwords, employers, and other information of around 20,000 people, many of them United States government employees or contractors. The organization with the most employees compromised was the Small Business Administration
Small Business Administration
The Small Business Administration is a United States government agency that provides support to entrepreneurs and small businesses. The mission of the Small Business Administration is "to maintain and strengthen the nation's economy by enabling the establishment and viability of small businesses...
.
Law enforcement response
Law enforcement agencies in various countries have arrested or searched the property of alleged participants in Operation AntiSec. These suspects have come from different groups who carried out attacks as part of the operation. On 19 July 2011, the London Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of possible core LulzSec member T-flow. A 16 year-old male was arrested in South London on charges of violating the Computer Misuse Act as part of an operation involving the arrest of several other hackers affiliated with Anonymous in the United States and United Kingdom. On the same day, the FBI arrested 21-year-old Lance Moore in Las Cruces, New MexicoLas Cruces, New Mexico
Las Cruces, also known as "The City of the Crosses", is the county seat of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 97,618 in 2010 according to the 2010 Census, making it the second largest city in the state....
. He was accused of stealing thousands of documents and applications from AT&T that LulzSec published as part of their so-called "final release" of the operation. LulzSec denied that any of their membership had been arrested, stating "there are six of us, and we're all still here."
On 20 July, prosecutors in the Netherlands released details of the arrests of four suspects aged 17, 18, 25, and 35. All were located in different Dutch cities and accused of being part of the hacking group AntiSec NL, an operation participant inspired by LulzSec. The four, going by the online handles Ziaolin, Calimero, DutchD3V1L, and Time, were arrested on 19 July and their computers and electronic equipment confiscated as evidence. Prosecutors identified the suspects after computer security company Fox-IT
Fox-IT
Fox-IT is a Dutch consultancy company based in Delft. Fox-IT is active in the information technology security sector. Their mission-statement is: "Making technical and innovative contributions for a more secure society."-History:...
helped them gain access to a chat channel thought to be used by the group.
The Police Central E-Crime Unit
Police National E-Crime Unit
The Police National E-Crime Unit is a part of the Specialist Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, dedicated to combating e-crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
arrested an 18-year-old man from Shetland on 27 July 2011 suspected of being LulzSec member Topiary
Topiary (hacktivist)
Topiary is a hacktivist and self-described "Supporter of Anonymous Operations, WikiLeaks, and maintaining freedom on the Internet". He is heavily involved with the Internet group Anonymous, which have publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and...
. They also searched the house of and interviewed a 17-year-old from Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
possibly connected to the investigation. Scotland Yard later identified the man arrested as Yell, Shetland resident Jake Davis. He was charged with unauthorized access of a computer under the Computer Misuse Act 1990
Computer Misuse Act 1990
The Computer Misuse Act 1990 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced partly in response to the decision in R v Gold & Schifreen 1 AC 1063 . Critics of the bill complained that it was introduced hastily and was poorly thought out...
, encouraging or assisting criminal activity under the Serious Crime Act 2007
Serious Crime Act 2007
The Serious Crime Act 2007 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that makes several radical changes to English criminal law. In particular, it creates a new scheme of serious crime prevention orders to frustrate crime in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland, replaces the common law...
, conspiracy to launch a denial-of-service attack against the Serious Organised Crime Unit contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977
Criminal Law Act 1977
The Criminal Law Act 1977 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Most of it only applies to England and Wales. It is mainly significant because it defines the offence of conspiracy in English law...
, and criminal conspiracy also under the Criminal Law Act 1977. Police confiscated a Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
laptop and a 100-gigabyte hard drive that ran 16 different virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
s. Details relating to an attack on Sony and hundreds of thousands of email addresses and passwords were found on the computer. A London court released Davis on bail under the conditions that he live under curfew with his parents and have no access to the internet. His lawyer Gideon Cammerman stated that, while his client did help publicize LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, he lacks the technical skills to have been anything but a sympathizer.
In early September 2011, Scotland Yard made two further arrests relating to LulzSec. Police arrested a 24-year-old male in Mexborough
Mexborough
Mexborough is a town in the metropolitan borough of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, situated on the north bank of the River Don west of its confluence with the River Dearne...
, South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...
and a 20-year-old male in Warminster
Warminster
Warminster is a town in western Wiltshire, England, by-passed by the A36, and near Frome and Westbury. It has a population of about 17,000. The River Were runs through the town and can be seen running through the middle of the town park. The Minster Church of St Denys sits on the River Were...
, Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
. The two are accused of conspiring to commit offenses under the Computer Misuse Act of 1990; police said that the arrests related to investigations into LulzSec member Kayla.