Key Takeaways Anonymous is a loosely organized Internet group of hackers and political activists that began as a collective in on 4chan, an anonymous internet chat board. Individuals who wish to be recognized as part of the group in public wear Guy Fawkes masks in order to conceal their identities. Article Sources. Investopedia requires writers to use primary sources to support their work.
These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts. We also reference original research from other reputable publishers where appropriate. You can learn more about the standards we follow in producing accurate, unbiased content in our editorial policy. Compare Accounts. The offers that appear in this table are from partnerships from which Investopedia receives compensation.
This compensation may impact how and where listings appear. Investopedia does not include all offers available in the marketplace.
Related Terms What Is Hacktivism? Hacktivism is a social or political activist plan that is carried out by breaking into and wreaking havoc on a secure computer system. Bitcoin is a digital or virtual currency created in that uses peer-to-peer technology to facilitate instant payments.
Combating the Financing of Terrorism CFT Combating the Financing of Terrorism is a set of policies aimed to deter and prevent funding of activities intended to achieve religious or ideological goals through violence. Blockchain Explained A blockchain is a digital distributed, decentralized, public ledger that exists across a network. It is most noteworthy in its use with cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
What Is a Peer Group? A peer group refers to individuals or entities that have certain traits in common. Learn how investors use peer groups to find good investments. Capital Markets Group A capital markets group is a division within a larger company that uses its financial expertise to provide financial services to certain clients. Partner Links. Related Articles. Cryptocurrency Who Is Ross Ulbricht? Bitcoin How Bitcoin Works. I more or less abandoned everything I was doing for this. Trump, in their view, is uniquely qualified to bring these elites to justice.
In August, the social-media giant removed 1, pages, groups and profiles associated with the group. Aside from all that, Cottle was asked on Reddit what he hopes the next generation of hackers will tackle going forward. Shares of Nvidia Corp. Follow him on Twitter slangwise. ET First Published: Nov. However, both the group of people and the movement have changed over the years. Thousands of users were on these boards—almost all young men—but among them was a more die-hard band who hung out in the same chat rooms, feuded online, and met up in real life.
They called themselves Anonymous. The name was derived from the way 4chan presented usernames. Cottle was 20 and still living with his mother in Toronto. I would never work for the feds. Should I delete everything? But mostly he felt like a fraud. Like cruel older brothers, they often picked the easiest target they could find—younger kids. And Cottle became the de facto leader of Anonymous, a role he relished. We are Anonymous 4.
Anonymous is legion 5. Anonymous never forgives. Cottle and his friends also were the first to start using the Guy Fawkes mask. They chose it simply because they loved the movie V for Vendetta , a film adaptation of a dystopian-fiction comic book. Read: The misunderstood legacy of Guy Fawkes. The segment delighted Anonymous. Hacking was something its members did for their own amusement.
Now in the eyes of the media—and the government—they were a shadowy and powerful cabal, capable of anything. It was something people wanted to believe about them, something they could use. Anonymous spent much of harassing Hal Turner, a neo-Nazi radio host, not because the group was at all political during this period, but because Turner proved to be an easy target.
Each week, Anonymous would clog his phone lines, down his website, or order hundreds of pizzas to his house. But the fun ended abruptly when it hacked Turner so thoroughly that it discovered he was an FBI informant. After Turner, Anonymous needed a new target. They shifted to the Church of Scientology, a recurrent enemy of hackers and freedom-of-information activists since the early s.
The catalyst for the new operation was a video, the one made by Housh. It used the Fox news piece as inspiration, hinting that Anonymous was a powerful ring of international hackers. When the video went viral, enthusiasm hit an all-time high.
Anons flowed into the same chat rooms they had once used to coordinate raids, this time channeling their numbers into a series of street protests against Scientology in major cities around the world.
Anonymous accused Scientology of bilking its adherents with pseudoscience and of illegally silencing critics. Several hundred people attended a protest I reported on in New York, almost all of them dressed in Guy Fawkes masks.
For many, the cynicism of trolling was shattered when they realized they could effect change in the real world. To the surprise of even themselves, Anonymous had inherited a conflict that had been raging since the s. On one side were hackers who wanted to employ the internet as a tool for personal empowerment; on the other stood governments and corporations, who used it as a panopticon for personal-data collection.
Presently, the Anonymous movement split into competing factions of trolls and activists. Cottle led the trolling side, but his contingent soon lost control. The watershed moment came in late , when an Anonymous operation to support Julian Assange and WikiLeaks snowballed into a massive attack against PayPal and Mastercard for blocking WikiLeaks donations. Once again, following media attention, thousands of Anons flooded into chat rooms they had previously used to coordinate invasions into computer games, this time in an attempt to disable corporate websites.
Read: The radical evolution of WikiLeaks. Before long, Anonymous had uncovered plans for HBGary Federal, a security company; Palantir, the tech-surveillance giant; and the private security company Berico Technologies to embarrass WikiLeaks using Nixonian dirty tricks.
The story of the HBGary leak became front-page news.
0コメント