While most of our attention has been focused on the different shows over at Glenn Beck’s network GBTV, he’s got quite a lot else on his plate. Like The Blaze, book publishing, and his group discount site. In addition to all those, there’s also Mercury One, his charitable organization designed “to inspire, organize and mobilize individuals to improve the human condition.” With a huge “Restoring Love” rally coming up in just a few months, it’s time for the organization to ramp up the publicity, however, they’ve chosen a strange way of doing that; by releasing an enigmatic video that directly antagonizes the “hacktivist” group Anonymous.

The video, entitled “Anonymous for Good” and posted on Beck’s official site last night, features a direct imitation of the group’s logo and plays like a parody of Anonymous’ typical mission statement videos complete with a garbled, computerized voice. Here, however, the question mark in the logo has been replaced with a heart and the voice is explaining how Mercury One will fight back against the “evil” that has “had its way with this country and throughout the world.”

It’s not unusual for a start up to parody a known entity to get their name and mission out there, and Beck has made his feelings about Anonymous clear in the past. Also, Anonymous’ support for the Occupy movement and Middle East protests makes them a quick shorthand for the kind of thing Beck wants his organization to stand up against. Still, you have to think that antagonizing a group as powerful as Anonymous is kind of an unnecessary risk.

More to the point, I’m sure the multitudes of tech-savvy people that Beck has been hiring in the past year know about this risk. So why are they doing it? Don’t they know how much unwanted attention they can acquire? Or is that the point? I mean, this isn’t the first time we’ve wondered about the wisdom and motivation of Beck needling Anonymous.

Obviously, it’s respectable to show how unafraid one is in the face of criminal action. But, really, any possible gain that a young charitable organization could get from getting on Anonymous’ bad side seems pretty darn low to us. We can’t help but ask, “Why?” Lets hope they know what they’re doing.

Watch the video from Mercury One below:

Lyon spoke with one of the group’s members, who went by the codename “Troy”.

“There’s no specific person that talks for us,” Troy divulged to Lyon. “It’s more like a hive. An idea is brought up and whoever agrees with it, if the overwhelming majority of people agree with it, then we go with it.”

RELATED: Creepy Video Claims Hactivist Group ‘Anonymous’ Intends To Target Facebook

“Anonymous likens itself to the Air Force of the Occupy movement,” Lyon explains. “When they see evidence of what they believe is police misbehavior, Anonymous strikes back, releasing personal information about specific officers.”

Lyon revealed that the Department of Homeland Security has put out several alerts to law enforcement and corporate security focused mainly on the group’s hacking activities and the FBI has made more than a dozen arrests. “But there’s no indication that has cramped Anonymous’ style,” she says.

Baldwin asked Lyon if the group had any clear demands.

“They don’t really have an agenda necessarily as a collective. But some of the individual ‘anons’ we spoke to say their main goal is to keep people talking about it, to keep it relevant and to protect the human rights of the protesters. You saw in that video they’ve been releasing information, personal information for police officers they believe violated those rights and if you look at the more extreme side to Anonymous, Brooke, some of those “anons” are calling for a full-out revolution here in the United States similar to the ones you’re seeing over in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Watch CNN’s investigative unit shed light on the secretive hacktivist group below:

Members of the group Anonymous have been seen at the protests, and those who have work the infamous Guy Fawkes mask have been arrested due to an obscure New York law banning masked gatherings. But a few days ago, hackers managed to collect the personal information of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. So Homeland Security issued a warning to big businesses that they could be next.

While the DHS warning doesn’t mention Wall Street protests in particular, it did say that “publicized events” like Occupy Wall Street may motivate the group.

Nevertheless, the agency wouldn’t weigh in on the ways it might monitor Anonymous’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street.

“We don’t have any role in someone’s right to public protest,” said a DHS official.

One member of the protests quoted in the above article expressed his doubts at the effectiveness and outcomes of Anonymous’ actions, but it’s clear its members only represent a fraction of the protestors.

h/t NY Post

The YouTube video claims, “your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed” and urges people to “join the cause and kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy.” It also claims that Facebook has been selling information to U.S. government agencies and security firms that work with the governments of Egypt and Syria.

Many regarded the video with skepticism and looked to Anonymous’ Twitter to try and clear things up. That did not shed much light on the situation. This morning they tweeted:

No one can speak for the whole of #Anonymous. There are some anons who support #OpFacebook whilst others do not.

They then followed up with a series of tweets urging people to spread the news about Operation Facebook, including a link to this page that promises to provide more information on #OpFacebook. From it, I have gathered that we can’t really fight Facebook and the only way to support Anonymous is to watch their video enough times that it beats out Rebecca Black and that really cute cat in Japan.

To make things more complicated, two hours ago the official Anonymous account retweeted apparent Anonymous member @anonymousSabu (that’s a lot of anonymous in one sentence) who wrote “#OpFacebook is bullshit and does not exist”.

So, I’d keep November 5th open on your calendar just in case, but right now Operation Facebook seems to be a hoax with a very weird video. No one has their story straight right now. I guess that is the problem with being a member of a mysterious hacking group: being anonymous must make communicating really hard!

In the mean time, prepare yourself for the possible apocalypse of the social network by watching this well crafted video. Dramatic opening music, freakishly garbled voices and V for Vendetta references? Check.

Enjoy:

(h/t)

The site was hacked to show an image of the group’s logo, a man in a suit with a question mark in place of a head. below the image was a message written twice, once in Arabic and once in English:

To the Syrian people: The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side — tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become. We salute your determination to be non-violent in the face of the regime’s brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is next.

To the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be tried for treason. No outside enemy could do as much damage to Syria as Bashar Al-Assad has done. Defend your country — rise up against the regime! — Anonymous.

At this moment the website appears to be down.

In Syria, the violence has been continuing steadily since al-Assad began the crackdowns last April. The death toll at this point is enormous.

Below is a screen capture of the hack. Larger version found here.

(h/t Washington Post via NPR)

A special team of cyber crime specialists at Scotland Yard claims they’ve made a major arrest: a 19-year old they believe is “Topiary,” the online alias of a senior hacker for the group Anonymous. The Telegraph reports “he is currently being transported to a central London police station for questioning following a ‘pre-planned intelligence-led operation’.”

The Telegraph describes Topiary as major player in a series of cyber attacks by Anonymous and LulzSec:

Topiary has acted as a spokesman for both Anonymous and LulzSec, who between them have targeted the CIA, PayPal, Soca, Sony, News International and others in recent months.

LulzSec splintered from Anonymous in April but recently the two have acted together, including during an attack on the website of The Sun newspaper last week. They breached network security at News International to publish a false story claiming Rupert Murdoch had died of metal poisoning.

Deputy assistant FBI director Steven Chabinsky has called the group’s actions “unacceptable,” regardless of motivation:

We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable. [Even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it’s entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts.

Anonymous responded to Chabinsky’s comments, made on NPR, with an open letter:

Hello thar FBI and international law authorities,

We recently stumbled across the following article with amazement and a certain amount of amusement:

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555799/fbi-arrests-alleged-anonymous-hackers

The statements made by deputy assistant FBI director Steve Chabinsky in this
article clearly seem to be directed at Anonymous and Lulz Security, and we are
happy to provide you with a response.

You state:

“We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable,
[even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it’s entirely
unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts.”

Now let us be clear here, Mr. Chabinsky, while we understand that you and
your colleagues may find breaking into websites unacceptable, let us tell
you what WE find unacceptable:

* Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep
them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.

* Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking
advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for
federal contracts we all know they can’t fulfil.

* Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits
higher, while at the same time being deeply involved in governments around
the world with the only goal to infiltrate and corrupt them enough
so the status quo will never change.

These governments and corporations are our enemy. And we will continue to
fight them, with all methods we have at our disposal, and that certainly
includes breaking into their websites and exposing their lies.

We are not scared any more. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to
us as you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your
citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our
mission to help these people and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – you
can possibly to do make us stop.

“The Internet has become so important to so many people that we have to
ensure that the World Wide Web does not become the Wild Wild West.”

Let me ask you, good sir, when was the Internet not the Wild Wild West? Do
you really believe you were in control of it at any point? You were not.

That does not mean that everyone behaves like an outlaw. You see, most
people do not behave like bandits if they have no reason to. We become bandits
on the Internet because you have forced our hand. The Anonymous bitchslap rings
through your ears like hacktivism movements of the 90s. We’re back – and we’re
not going anywhere. Expect us.

Anonymous has linked to several PDFs through the group’s Twitter profile.

h/t FoxNews.com

FoxNews.com reports that the arrests are part of “an ongoing investigation” into Anonymous.

—

The FBI has searched homes belonging to suspected members of Anonymous, a group linked to various high-profile hackings. Ten agents raided a home in Baldwin, NY, as well as two others on Long Island and one in Brooklyn. The Long Island and Brooklyn raids are ongoing as of this morning.

In Baldwin, agents confiscated at least one laptop as they searched for computers and “computer-related accessories” belonging to Giordani Jordan. The equipment is thought to have been used in implementing denial of service attacks against a number of companies.

Anonymous (not to be conflated with Lulzsec, which has different, less politically-charged motivations for its hackings) notably launched “Operation Payback” late last year, acting in defense of WikiLeaks. At the time, the group wrote that recent media coverage of their actions had been, “at best, misinformed:”

We are not a terrorist organization or a group of “hackers” as governments, demagogues, and the media would have you believe. We are a diverse group that touches every aspect of philosophy, religion, and politics ever conceived by man. At this time, Anonymous, as a distributed consciousness, is focused on protesting peacefully for Freedom of Expression on the Internet. We ask the world to support us, not for our sake, but for your own. When governments control information they control you. We will resist until our dying breath. Pay attention citizens and governments of the world.

Update: The FBI is now executing warrants in California, checking in at several homes at 9 a.m. ET this morning.

h/t FoxNews.com

Host Jon Stewart put together a quick recap of the latest in cybercrime, and requested some tips from Hodgman, who began by pointing out that all hackers are different, but all respond very well to flattery. “Hackers are like snowflakes– no two are alike, and they want to destroy you.” Hodgman notes that he carries his mustache around to emulate the LulzSec logo, but only says that before whimpering, “please don’t hack me.”

Another handy way of protecting yourself from hackers? Counterfeit money to replace all the money they will steal when they hack into your bank account. Stewart was not entirely convinced by this method. Hodgman concluded noting that offense is the best defense, and given his powers to tap into cyberspace, something getting into the Internet itself and fighting the bad guys is the only way to do it.

The segment via Comedy Central below:

The group is taking credit for taking CIA.gov offline yesterday afternoon, although the agency has yet to issue confirmation of a hack. In addition, it appears that the official website of the U.S. Senate may have been hacked by the group this week for a second time.

The group announced its handiwork yesterday evening on Twitter:

While LulzSec’s actions do have a helpful side – reminding organization to step up their online security and tighten their code – All Things Digital’s Arik Hesseldahl points out that the group may be charged with having committed a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

h/t Techland

Gawker’s Adrian Chen, who covers this kind of thing all the time leading me to believe he has to change his passwords around 18 times a day, has this report:

“The group Lulz Security has taken credit for the hack. Last night, Lulz Security took over and defaced the LinkedIn accounts of 16 Fox Broadcasting employees and the Twitter accounts of two Fox affiliates, apparently to prove the leak’s validity. ‘Fox News 15 has decided to rape its own face. A sad day for our 25 viewers,’ read one tweet. They then tweeted a list of emails and passwords, which are mainly employees of Fox Broadcasting and local affiliates of Fox and other networks.

‘We invite the Internet to ravage the following list of emails and passwords (from a database within Fox.com) – Facebook, MySpace, PayPal, whatever you can get your hands on,’ the group wrote. ‘Take from them everything.’”

The tweet Chen mentions is still up 13 hours after being posted.

Face raping and all, that tweet is fairly family friendly compared to this one:

On the official Lulz Security Twitter feed, linked to in that tweet, the hackers brag about the leak, mock news organizations linking them to the group Anonymous, and egg on anyone using the information for nefarious deeds.

Gosh, with the Gawker hack, the Sony hack, and all the other hacks of the past few months, is there anyone out there whose personal information hasn’t been stolen yet?

It occurred during and interview with Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, a WikiLeaks supporter who Barr’s security firm attempted to intimidate. Towards the end of the interview, as Greenwald was talking, attentive viewers or people with really nice HD sets could notice that the image of a Guy Fawkes mask flashed over Colbert’s face for less than a second. The Guy Fawkes look is, of course, one that has been used as a symbol for Anonymous as a reference to the book and movie V for Vendetta. (Memo to Glenn Beck: Wael Ghonim also claimed V for Vendetta as an inspiration. Episode linking the uprisings to Anonymous, please).

Colbert has always been good at working with influential online communities. Just look at his love for Reddit. If Anonymous is a hornet’s nest, then this subliminal message could best be described as putting a big sign up saying “All hornets welcome!”

Check out the interview from Comedy Central below. The subliminal mask image occurs around the 3:20 point.

Originally, reports maintained that Anonymous had issued an open letter to the WBC on February 16th, informing the group that, while it had allowed WBC to spew their message of hate and intolerance because the group adamantly supports the right to freedom of speech, it could not sit idly by and allow them to do so any longer. According the letter:

The time for us to be idle spectators in your inhumane treatment of fellow Man has reached its apex, and we shall now be moved to action. Thus, we give you a warning: Cease & desist your protest campaign in the year 2011, return to your homes in Kansas, & close your public Web sites.

Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS: We will target your public Websites, and the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover. It is in your best interest to comply now, while the option to do so is still being offered, because we will not relent until you cease the conduction & promotion of all your bigoted operations & doctrines.

The WBC hit back by inviting Anonymous to “bring it,” this being, apparently, 2000, and telling the group that “Nothing will shut up these words – ever” as well as referring to Anonymous members as “girls,” this being, apparently, a junior high cafeteria in 2000.

Now, Anonymous has issued an open letter claiming that the original open letter had merely been a fabrication by the Westboro Baptist Church in an effort to garner attention and that, actually, many within Anonymous could not care less about the Church or its publicity-garnering antics. Writes Anonymous:

We know that YOU in fact posted the Open Letter supposedly from Anonymous.

We know that you thrive on attention.

We know that you are short of money.

We know that this is a trap.

We know how you work. You don’t give a flying fart about what your God thinks. But you know that putting God and Fag in a sentence together is guaranteed to make someone angry. You push it. You really push it. But you stay within the law. And then when some poor fool snaps, you sue them for infringing upon your rights.

Some of Anonymous thinks you’re the worlds greatest Trolls. This is bollocks. You’re in it for the money.

No doubt some of us will fall for it. But know this: most of us don’t give a damn. You are shamelessly riding on the /b/andwagon after Anonymous’ recent mass media coverage in order to get more publicity and more idiots to sue.

The group then followed up with a press release accusing WBC of orchestrating this feud in an attempt to collect IP addresses for an upcoming lawsuit should Anonymous’ members issue an online attack. It’s not a far-fetched claim by any means, given that Westboro’s founding member, Fred Phelps, is a disbarred lawyer and the group is quite well-informed about its legal rights, particularly where free speech is concerned.

Either, it’ll be interesting what, if anything, will unfold between two groups that are, often enough, both hated and feared as they each fashion themselves as advocates for free speech.

h/t Buzzfeed

The story of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is, by any measure, an enormous story, and with good reason. Any story that includes narratives such as treason, computer hacking, and freedom of the press deserves a ton of attention. Mr. Beck’s coverage, to date, has been opinionated, but also remarkably fair, going so far as to criticize the sexual misconduct charges against Mr. Assange. Earlier this week, however, Beck informed his audience about the “hactivists” who have supported WikiLeaks, a thread in this story which is best explained by someone more familiar with the Internet culture that spawned the “hactivists.” From Cole Stryker at Urlesque:

Glenn Beck recently declared that 5,000 (no idea where that number is coming from) “hacktivists” (lol) are fomenting pinko revolution by hacking into the networks of those corporate entities who would disassociate themselves from Wikileaks.

He quotes Coldblood, that geeky kid who appeared on Canadian TV last week, as a spokesperson for Anonymous. But, as I’ve explained, the 22-year old is no more a spokesman for Anonymous than your teenage son. Anonymous has no spokesman, no leadership, no structure. I would be surprised if a few dozen of them know how to hack anything, let alone 5,000. This is no cabal of Tyler Durdens. It’s not an underground arm of socialist interest groups.

Those unfamiliar with the depths of Internet sub-culture can be forgiven not knowing much about “Anonymous.” To be fair, the anonymous crowd-sourced set of vigilantes responsible for some of the most newsworthy stunts in Internet history is a hard concept to understand. But they’ve garnered well deserved mainstream attention of late because of theire recent attempts to disrupt any entity who is alligned with they see as the wrong side of justice over the WikiLeaks story (Operation Payback). Glenn Beck has taken an admirable whack at trying to explain to his audience something that verges on being inexplicable, though as is often the case, his explanation is almost certain to offend someone, somewhere.

This is a dangerous place to be with these individuals. Comments made by media figures about Anonymous, and their vigilante hacker brethren, should not be made lightly. Recently, Gawker Media’s network of websites received a remarkably embarrassing and potentially disastrous hack, that saw their personal email system, content management system and commenter database all compromised by a group of hackers that call themselves Gnosis. These hackers claim no affiliation with Anonymous, but did share with Mediaite the reasoning behind their hack: what they saw as arrogance towards the hacker community in comments made by Gawker Media’s founder Nick Denton.

This morning, news surfaced of a letter from Anonymous directed towards Mr. Beck regarding his coverage, which is a fascinating portrait of the paradox of being part of such a group. The letter includes “we are not an organization. We have no leaders. We have no official spokesperson,” and yet is signed “Anonymous.” Clearly a healthy dose of skepticism on these sorts of things is warranted, but the tone and nomenclature are consistent with other Anonymous correspondence. Therefore, given that Beck now has received what looks like a note from someone familiar with that world, and that Beck has already made a point of calling them out, one wonders if its just a matter of time before any of the Glenn Beck affiliated web properties (like GlennBeck.com or TheBlaze.com) are suddenly in the same position as Gawker.

The full text of the letter is below, followed by Mr. Beck’s initial report on Operation Payback.

RE: Recent comments concerning Anonymous.

Mr. Beck,

We have no problem with those who criticize us. We understand that freedom of speech includes the right to speak out in criticism of those whom you may not agree with. We have many critics, and we respect their first amendment rights.

However, in your recent comments, it seems that you and/or your editing team have mixed up a few details during your research on us. We at Anonymous wish to set the record straight, so that you and your audience will be better informed about us and our objectives. Hopefully, this will reduce some of the anxiety you may feel towards us in the process.

You see, Mr. Beck, we are not an organization. We have no leaders. We have no official spokesperson. We have no age, race, ethnicity, color, nationality, or gender. Anyone who claims to speak for all of us is, quite frankly, a liar. To be clear, the gentleman known as Coldblood was not sanctioned by anyone but himself to speak on our behalf.

Your attempts to formally link Anonymous to Wikileaks were misguided. We are not formally linked to Mr. Assange, to Wikileaks, or the break-off operation, Openleaks. To reiterate, we are not an organization of any kind.

You spoke of revolution as though it is necessarily a bad thing. Let us remind you that America was founded upon revolution. Furthermore, the world we live in today is the result of numerous revolutions that have occurred throughout human history – many of them being positive, and resulting in advancements for all of humanity.

You seem to imply that we are revolutionaries. We do not object to this – in fact, it pleases us.

Neither Wikieaks nor its founder have been charged with any crime in connection to any of the published leaks. Thus, we at Anonymous see any actions directed at silencing Wikileaks as an assault on our freedom of information and the freedom of those at Wikileaks to publish as they see fit.

Whether young or old, political or apolitical, moderate or hard-liner, the issue of freedom of speech and information affects us all. Please do not aspire to make the Wikileaks issue more divisive than it already is, Mr. Beck.

We embrace everyone from all walks of life, from all corners of the earth, to join us in our quest to protect and further enhance not only our rights to freedom of information and freedom of speech, but all of our human freedoms.

You are welcome to talk to us at anytime. We will answer any further questions you may have. After further dialogue, perhaps then you will see that you and we are not so different. Anonymous can be anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and that includes you and your audience as well, Mr. Beck. We simply wish to see the freedoms of all Americans and all citizens of Earth to be at the very least maintained, and wherever possible, strengthened and enhanced to their fullest extent.

Signed,

Anonymous

First and foremost, it appears that new Gawker Media passwords are secure, not available to the individual claiming responsibility for the security breach, at least according to Gnosis. As Mediaite reported earlier, when asked why Gawker was being subjected to a cyber-attack, Gnosis cited “arrogance” from management and staff with regard to the hacker community:

We went after Gawker because of their outright arrogance. It took us a few hours to find a way to dump all their source code and a bit longer to find a way into their database.

We found an interesting quote in their Campfire logs:

Hamilton N.: Nick Denton Says Bring It On 4Chan, Right to My Home Address (After
The Jump)

Ryan T.: We Are Not Scared of 4chan Here at 210 Elizabeth St NY NY 10012

I mean if you say things like that, and attack sites like 4chan (Which we are not affiliated to) you must at least have the means to back yourself up. We considered what action we would take, and decided that the Gawkmedia “empire” needs to be brought down a peg or two. Our groups mission? We don’t have one.

We will be releasing the full source code dump along with the database at 9PM GMT today. You are the only outlet we have told the release time.

When asked about further explanation about the specific attacks, Gnosis explained:

We cannot provide any more information as to how the attack was carried out, because this could be used against us.

We have been cracking the database for about 17 hours and have managed to retrieve 273,789 passwords. If our release schedule wasn’t so tight we could get 500,000+. Included in the dump are passwords linked to accounts from Nasa, about every .gov domain you could imagine and hundreds from banks. One can only pray that they do not use the same password everywhere. The actual database size is 1,247,897 rows, which is 80+% of their database.

(Private data redacted)

We have had access to all of their emails for a long time as well as most of their infrastructure powering the site. Gawkmedia has possibly the worst security I have ever seen. It is scary how poor it is. Their servers run horribly outdated kernel versions, their site is filled with numerous exploitable code and their database is publicly accessible.

We will be releasing the full source code to their site as well as the full database dump later today or tomorrow, when we get enough press to stir up the release. We will also be releasing a text file describing Gawkers numerous security failings.

Regards,
~Gnosis

Adding later in a follow up email:

The database is for the media more than anything. Releasing the source code to a site is all very well and will cause a splash, but
only niche users will be interested in viewing it and sharing it, because the average joe won’t really care about Gawkers (rather
interesting) PHP framework. However if we release the source with 1,300,000 emails and with a portion of them cracked it will (We hope) cause a bigger stir.

On an interesting side note there are 2650 users in the database using the password “password” or “querty”. Of these users one is registered under a .gov email address, 3 are from a .mil addres and 52 are from .edu addresses.

Finally, when asked if any future attacks were planned, Gnosis offered the following:

Nope, not right now. They didn’t like their frontpage being defaced with that post, so they have locked down pretty tight. We will still work on it for a while.

We don’t like being lumped with 4chan though, but I guess it was inevitable. People on twitter are saying “4chan’s Gnosis hacked Gawker”.

The email exchange came to us after our first report was published Saturday afternoon and was conducted with an individual using an untraceable email account. Also, Mediaite has shared some relevant information with Gawker sources to confirm the veracity of the hacker’s allegations, which in hindsight, have all been right on the money.

The hacking reports surfaced after a series of bizarre, suspicious tweets beginning at 3:30 today over the Gizmodo account. They explain that the emails and usernames were hacked and call to “support Wikileaks.” One last tweet may indicate why they chose Gawker: “I remember when Gawker.com told Anon that they were invincible and couldn’t be hacked. Well, you were wrong :)”. Joe Coscarelli at the Village Voice has screencaps of all the tweets, which have since been deleted. They are the only evidence that said emails, usernames, and passwords were taken as, in the event that someone did hack into the system, and didn’t just guess the Gizmodo Twitter account’s password, no one has exercised any liberties with them to indicate they are in no good hands.

If Anonymous did gain access to at least one nugget of the Gawker empire– or is even trying to– the operation would normally not seem so completely out of place, given the latter’s repeated mockery of their home turf, 4chan– and it wouldn’t even be the first time. But to attack Gawker in the name of Wikileaks, an organization which, despite their constant (and, let’s face it, kind of understandable) mockery of Julian Assange for being, among other things, a “sexual demigod,” a “nerdy sex god,” and a (probably sexy, god-y) “megalomaniac,” Gawker is not exactly what Wikileaks should consider a substantial enemy– nor have they behaved with the kind of animosity against Assange or Wikileaks that would make hacking into their system a strong statement in favor of their cause. We have reached out to Gawker for comment, but have yet to receive a response, and will update accordingly.

[Screencap via]

4channers, you see, are a formidable bunch. In Malcolm Gladwell’s terms, they are “influencers,” hubs at the center of many spokes that know how to exert power in every direction.  Anonymous, the crowdsourced vigilantes who have pulled off stunts as varied as punking Scientology, uploading lots of porn to YouTube, and supporting the Iranian demonstrators, have a strong presence on 4chan, though they are not strictly affiliated with the site. In April, 4chan users famously hacked the Time 100′s online poll to make moot, the site’s owner, the most influential person in the world. In a fascinating account of the hack that speaks volumes about 4chan, Paul Lamere writes:

Ultimately, this hack involved lots of work and a little bit of luck. Someone figured out the voting URL protocol. A bunch of folks wrote various autovoters, which were then used by a thousand or more to stack the vote in moots favor. Others, sprinkled the spam urls throughout the forums tricking the ‘competition’ into voting for moot. When Time.com responded by trying to close the door on the hacks, the loose collective rallied and a member discovered the ’salt’ that would re-open the poll to the autovoters. The lucky bit was when Zombocom discovered that no matter what he did, he wouldn’t get banned. This opened the door to the fine grained manipulation that led to the embedding of the Message.

At the core of the hack is the work of a dozen or so, backed by an army of a thousand who downloaded and ran the autovoters and also backed by an untold number of others that unwittingly fell prey to the spam url autovoters. So why do they do it? Why do they write code, build complex applications, publish graphs – why do they  organize a team that is more effective than most startup companies? Says Zombocom: “For the lulz”.

The Internet runs on lulz, the lulz of a few. LOLcats started on 4chan; so did “Chocolate Rain” and the Rick Roll; so did those fake motivational posters; so did Candlejack and ‘so I heard you like Mudkips’ and some awful racist memes that thankfully didn’t make it to the big leagues. You might like to think that memes, those collective ideas or jokes that everyone suddenly has or tells at the same time, are democratic, that they just randomly sprout up from anywhere and from anybody like some goofy in-joke that catches. But that’s rarely how it is. So many have been carefully planted, nurtured in secret, incubated in Hell’s hatchery — thought up by a bunch of creative, remorseless kids on 4chan.

The video comes with the following text:

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

~George Orwell

“You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won’t help, but that is no excuse, you must still act.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

“He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither”

~ Ben Franklin Hello World. We are Anonymous. What you do or do not know about us is irrelevant. We have decided to write to you, the media, and all citizens of the free world to inform you of our intentions, potential targets, and our ongoing peaceful campaign for Freedom of Expression. Anonymous is peacefully campaigning for Freedom of Expression everywhere, in all forms, for all platforms.

The recent news of our efforts have been, at best, misinformed. We are not a terrorist organization or a group of “hackers” as governments, demagogues, and the media would have you believe. We are a diverse group that touches every aspect of philosophy, religion, and politics ever conceived by man. At this time, Anonymous, as a distributed consciousness, is focused on protesting peacefully for Freedom of Expression on the Internet. We ask the world to support us, not for our sake, but for your own. When governments control information they control you. We will resist until our dying breath. Pay attention citizens and governments of the world.

History is full of examples that show that governments can change when people stand united.

As an example in recent history: During the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1960s access to many businesses were blocked as a peaceful protest against segregation. In their efforts, the protesters of the time managed to make drastic changes to police and governments by refusing to be silenced.

In the spirit and memory of that movement and many others we will refuse to be silenced. We will protest!

It is here that we proclaim: Any individual, organization, corporation, and/or government entity which supports Freedom of Speech and a Free Internet is an ally of Anonymous. If you work to suppress Freedom of Expression and a Free Internet your efforts will be halted. Where others have made this promise and failed, we make this promise and aim to keep it for everyone. We would like to ask that you as a citizen, organization, media entity, or government do the same by joining us.

Signed,

Anonymous

The debate over the actions of Julian Assange have been hotly discussed in recent days, often in the most hyperbolic terms. The status quo have predictably labeled him a terrorist and enemy combatant, but libertarians and extreme leftists, who both share a deep distrust of governments and secrets, seem to agree that Assange should be labeled a hero.

Operation Payback is a loosely organized effort that is reported to have been responsible for attacking several websites of corporate institutions who have stopped supporting WikiLeaks efforts, namely Mastercard, Visa, Amazon, Paypal’s Blog and Swiss based Postfinance.

Watch the video from Anonymous below:

It’s worth noting, mainly, because it exposes the hypocrisy at work here:

Amazon used to host WikiLeaks’ website in the United States, but shut it down last week, saying it had violated terms of service by publishing material it did not own and which could cause harm.

Since it’s the same material, and Duthel doesn’t “own” it any more than Assange did, there appears to be a major contradiction there. It’s also a nifty workaround for Paypal, et al, to profit from the Wikileaks material, while maintaining a public stance against them.

Tapper reports in his Political Punch blog:

Hackers in London apparently affiliated with “Operation Payback” – a group of supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks – have tried to shut down SarahPac and have disrupted Sarah and Todd Palin’s personal credit card accounts.

“No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange’s antics,” Palin emailed. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.”

Palin has criticized Wikileaks founder Assange, writing on Facebook that his “past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?…Assange is not a ‘journalist’ any more than the ‘editor’ of al-Qaeda’s new English-language magazine Inspire is a ‘journalist.’ He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.”

This is not the first time that Ms. Palin’s personal Internet accounts have been breached by a hackers as her email account was hacked into during the 2008 presidential election. Developing.

Update #3, 4:30pm: “Glenn Beck murder” and “Glenn Beck rapist” are now top suggestions when you do a Google search for Glenn Beck.

Reddit readers may have noticed a storm of recent posts getting a massive number of up votes (like this one) with some variant of the question “Did Glenn Beck Murder and Rape a Young Girl in 1990″? According to this site, which has emerged as a hub for the meme, the whole thing started a mere 4 days ago on a Fark thread. They’ve since Jokerized Beck and flooded sites like Yahoo! Answers, YouTube, and Twitter with the question.

People will ask the question and not answer it, insisting that Beck “prove that he didn’t;” supposedly, this parallels Beck’s argumentative style. The bottom of glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com reads, “Notice: This site is parody/satire. We assume Glenn Beck did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990, although we haven’t yet seen proof that he didn’t. But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.” Really, though? It all comes across as a malicious, masterfully executed prank whose pranksters were grasping for a higher political justification.

Still, expect to see more of it. This image from Beck’s Encyclopedia Dramatica page, featuring the Anonymous suit in front of an American flag with the words “The 19/90 Project” in front of it (below),  suggests that the libelous Beck meme may just be getting started. The YouTube video also has an Anonymous icon, and the poster complains that YouTube has frozen his view count, which could mean coordinated blasts of traffic.

Anonymous has an outsized presence on the Internet, thanks to sheer numbers, dedication, and l33t hacking skills. When they set themselves upon going after a target, like Scientology, they’ll swarm like piranhas until they get bored and move on to something else. This time, Glenn Beck may have found himself in their crosshairs.

Update 12:30pm: A few more images associated with the campaign. Note the dates: all of these were created just a few days ago and have an astonishing number of responses.

Above: A dubious-looking poll on Twiigs.com.

Below: the anti-Beck site is the #4 topic on Reddit this week — and it was just posted yesterday.

Update 2, 2:30 pm: a commenter who seems familiar with the matter writes that while a fringe of Anonymous may be involved, the majority of the group isn’t behind it. I’ve also removed a reference to 4chan which didn’t say that 4chan was behind the campaign, but in retrospect was somewhat misleading.

Update 3, 4:30pm: “Glenn Beck murder” and “Glenn Beck rapist” are now top Google suggestions when you search Glenn Beck.

Finally, as Mediaite commenter m points out, there’s also a faked mugshot of Beck and a faked Durham police report from 1990.

(h/t The Stranger’s Slog)