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How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

arstechnica.com

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Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#41

Post by fleitz »

DrStalker wrote: post #27
cookiecaper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but traditional media has a hard time grasping the concept. It's just a lot of directionless guys that latch onto whatever cause seems palatable at the time and requires no more effort than running LOIC/other simple DDOS programs. Basically the definition of script kiddies, there's just a large concentration of them on one message board system.

So, a human powered botnet that follows commands at random based on how much fun they are?

I believe that's the polite way of putting 'did it for the lulz'

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#42

Post by leon_ »

colanderman wrote: post #15

I'm astounded at both the CEO's (Aaron's) lack of basic grammar skills, and predeliction for "script kiddie" talk. How do you get to be CEO of anything when you communicate (even informally) at the level of an 8th grader? (edit: I meant Aaron; Penny was decently well spoken)

1. drink brain away 2. become "social media" expert 3. lie to get funding 4. ??? 5. ceo

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#44

Post by r00fus »

prpon wrote: post #34

A great read. It's amazing how Aaron Barr completely believed his hunches even when his programmer said that the data doesn't backup his analysis. He is a business man trying to get paid big bucks from FBI for his hunches.

Sadly, were he rewarded with a continuing money stream, he would likely justify the innocent names as "collateral damage" as the money would have been a mark of success.

Aaron Barr fancies himself a modern-day witch-hunter, and it's good he was hoisted on his own petard.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#45

Post by fleitz »

bdclimber14 wrote: post #11
wipt wrote: post #7

Why is it so hard for some people to grasp that Anonymous are just what they claim to be - everyone and yet no one person? There is no roster, no voting, but they are still organized. Maybe one could call it a mob mentality?

It's hard because corporate leaders have an incredibly difficult time organizing their own companies to achieve comparable feats to what Anonymous can do overnight.

You can actually use military techniques to analyze why this is. Anonymous operates inside the enemy ODA (Observe Decide Act) loop.

The ODA loop for a typical corporation is at least 5 people. Eg. from when someone observes something (anon is ddosing us) to when that information reaches someone who can act on it (the CEO) anonymous has already completed it's complete loop which is (post on IRC, have people read it and suggest action) the ODA loop for anonymous is on the order of 5 minutes, the ODA loop for a corporate CEO is probably more like 5 hours to 5 days.

Therefore anonymous will always be about 25 steps ahead of a corporate target. The primary advantage that comes from this is that anonymous appears to act 'randomly' which causes further stress on the enemy ODA loop and forces them to continually react which leaves the proactive party in control of the competitive landscape (battlefield)

If you study military genius you'll find that the most effective commanders were the ones that pushed command furthest down to the org chart.

We know that decentralized control is much more efficient than centralized control. Communism didn't lose because its a failed ideology or because its godless, it failed because it's command and control systems allocate resources poorly. They allocate resources poorly because of information asymmetry and the length of the ODA loop.

The important thing to take from this for software development is that your time from when you decide to implement a feature to when you deploy to production or get a product to market (AppStore,BestBuy,etc) is your ODA loop.

Also, for software watch what happens to your favorite webserver under intense load when you replace it's queue (FIFO) with a stack (LIFO). The LIFO drastically shortens the median response time.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#46

Post by shin_lao »

citricsquid wrote: post #2

Based on my own minimal experience, the majority of these IRC channels are just a small group of "Anonymous" doing whatever they want, different channels will get publicised at different times through different means, "Anonymous" doesn't exist in any way beyond being a label people use, I guess it could be compared to "emo" or "jock" in high school; they have no "leadership" but people join these groups and label the…

Q is probably a reference to Star Trek character's Q:

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Q

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#47

Post by masklinn »

DrStalker wrote: post #27
cookiecaper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but traditional media has a hard time grasping the concept. It's just a lot of directionless guys that latch onto whatever cause seems palatable at the time and requires no more effort than running LOIC/other simple DDOS programs. Basically the definition of script kiddies, there's just a large concentration of them on one message board system.

So, a human powered botnet that follows commands at random based on how much fun they are?

Yep, a lulz-driven notbot-net.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#48

Post by radu_floricica »

DrStalker wrote: post #4

Isn't anonymous less an organized group with leaders and more a bunch of people who hang out and occasionally someone says "hey, it would be cool if we all did " and whoever is listening joins in?

Power law still applies. Most likely 90% of serious action is done by the same 0.1% contributors (same as it is on HN or reddit or anywhere else).

It may be a real difference if the 0.1% can be easily replaced, Stand Alone Complex style. Say they're all arrested one day, and a month after something happens (Julian Assange is extradited, there's a revolution in Iran, whatever piques Anonymous' interest). There's a good chance many people at the same time will think that something needs to be done, see that nothing is happening, and do it. Not as good as the "old guard" maybe, but they'll probably try.

We can't really know how well this replacement mechanism works...

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#49

Post by fleitz »

Helianthus16 wrote: post #12
cookiecaper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but traditional media has a hard time grasping the concept. It's just a lot of directionless guys that latch onto whatever cause seems palatable at the time and requires no more effort than running LOIC/other simple DDOS programs. Basically the definition of script kiddies, there's just a large concentration of them on one message board system.

This is true, but doesn't mean there aren't coordinators, actually skilled hackers who embrace the directionlessness even as they give it direction. It isn't _just_ foot-soldiers.

Anonymous describes themselves best when they describe a hive. Yes, a hive has a queen but she lasts only as long as the workers feel she is productive.

When a hive reaches a certain size it will establish a new hive, it too will have it's own queen.

Members of the hive will give off pheromones to signal the other members. Not all will follow, some will, however what's important is that the more pheromones of a certain signal propagate the larger the response. The workers are controlled by themselves to a large degree and the queen is in place with certain ceremonial roles. (laying eggs)

The only reason anonymous is a difficult concept to grasp is that from the day we are born we are taught to respect and obey a hierarchy of authority. This authority exists only in the minds of those that believe it. When the last person stops believing it, it will cease to exist.

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