Major “hacktivist” groups LulzSec and Anonymous have teamed together to facilitate their newest effort, dubbed “Operation Anti-Security” or AntiSec, to draw together all groups of hackers and general Internet haymakers in order to systematically target and attack government and corporate entities in what LulzSec calls “immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011.”
LulzSec encourages in a post on PasteBin—a public text board—that any and all followers, friend or foe, “steal and leak any classified government information,” adding that the main targets of the operation are “banks and other high-ranking establishments.”
This is the first time the group has committed itself to any obvious and explicit goal aside from garnering “lulz” or humor for the sake of entertainment. The group made a standpoint early in its existence to suggest that their actions are devoted toward embarrassing the powerful and the rich and exposing how insecure their networks and measures to protect the digital information of the masses are.
This is also the first time the two widely publicized hacker groups, LulzSec and Anonymous, have collaborated and joined forces. Anonymous had stated previously that “LulzSec has nothing to do with Anonymous, apart that they sprang of the same base.”
Both groups are known for their high-profile hacks and Distributed Denial of Service attacks on major corporations and government websites.
Anonymous has always described their efforts as “peaceful protest” and acted in condemnation of Internet censorship and what they believe is the suppression of the freedom of speech.
In contrast, LulzSec is dedicated to producing “high-quality entertainment at your expense” and have breached the networks and databases of targets ranging from PBS to FBI-affiliates and leaked huge caches of personal data from tens of thousands of internet users.
“We do things just because we find it entertaining,” says LulzSec in another statement on PasteBin, “you find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it. We release personal data so that equally evil people can entertain us with what they do with it.”
AntiSec is being announced as an anarchic revolution of sorts. The overall goal is to bring utter transparency to the government through the use of digital force. The movement accurately represents the culmination of the wave of attacks that have occurred in the past few months by miscellaneous hacker groups, originating from the PSN Qriocity breach in April.
The U.S. government is now only beginning to take a hardline approach toward the long-existing threat of cyberwarfare after recent and sophisticated attacks on government contractors and cybersecurity companies.
In a recently released document titled “International Strategy for Cyberspace”, the government says that “when warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would any other threat to our country.”
This new conflict boiling into an “unremitting war” is not between foreign nations or religious zealots, nor will it be fought on battlegrounds made of dirt and dust. Instead, the battles fought will be based upon mathematical algorithms and programming code. It will be the struggle of cyber rebels and anarchist computer-hackers against their governments and the perceived threat of those “terrorists across the world [who] continue to dominate and control our internet ocean.”
