Anonymous hackers are a group dedicated to a kind of online activism known as hacktivism. This organized group considers itself a political activist and uses Guy Fawkes’ mask as a symbol of its message.
While the “Anon” group has no direct association with any particular online community, it maintains relations with sites like 4chan, Futaba, and others.
Some real-world anon hacks
- From 2003 to 2007, a good number of users of the online forum 4chan, with identical avatars flooded Habbo Hotel, a social networking site in Finland, blocking access to regular Habbo users. They did this to prevent the users from accessing the hotel pool and cited it was “shut down because of AIDS and failure.”
- In 2008, 4chan users were involved in another hack attack called Project Chanology. This ‘project’ saw 4chan users going on a planned attack targeting the Church of Scientology. Their attack was simple: they prank-called its hotline and sent out faxes with papers completely black with the intention of wasting ink. This also resulted in a DDoS attack on the websites.
- The Anon hacker group launched Operation Payback in 2010. It involved executing a DDoS attack which resulted in the shutdown of Aiplex’s website for a whole day. The group also proceeded to attack the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) using LOIC, and successfully crashed the two websites.
