Anonymous

We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.

They have good intentions.
Their methods are illegal.

Anonymous is an international hacking group which holds power over the Internet due to its massive size and contrasting anonymity. It is speculated that Anonymous began on the image board sites such as ‘4chan’, which gave birth to many popular memes such as ‘lolcatz’ and ‘rick rolling’.  Anonymous symbolically wears the Guy Fawkes mask, made famous by ‘V for Vendetta’, to hide their identity.

As a hacking community they have infiltrated all sorts of websites. Anonymous claim these attacks are the result of corporate greed, privacy violation and the like.  The best way to conclude Anonymous’ intentions is to understand what their hacks are; their operations usually consist of a DDoS attack (distributive denial of service), this makes the website inaccessible. In doing this they are not stealing any private information from those companies. This is not to say they don’t steal data, they stole information for Wikileaks in their campaign for freedom of information. When taken on an incident by incident basis, Anonymous can be seen in both good and bad light. There have been hacks for the purpose of taking down paedophile darknets, drug cartels, and uncovering all manner of criminals. On the other hand there have been attacks on tribute sites and the like.

‘Operation Occupy’ is real world protest run by Anonymous. Their mantra is ‘we are the 99%’ referencing the unbalance of wealth that has one percent of people extremely rich. There are ongoing protests in around 95 cities with people occupying business sectors. Any operation that has been wholly endorsed by Anonymous has been an act of good. But as almost anyone can join, this inevitably means people using Anonymous’ name in their own endeavors. Anonymous is proud just like anyone else, the difference is they have the ability to do something about it. They have the responsibility to set down strong rules to keep their members in check.

And plus, I wouldn’t want to tick off some Anonymous member that just happens to be roaming the school blogs in his spare time by giving them a bad rap now would I?

– by Ben Soltau, 10ENG