Anonymous collective has quite an indifferent profile in comparison to some other hackers.
Some people praise their hacks and some hate them. Anonymous collective is known for launching several attacks on several leading names on the web. The most recent one among them is a hack on one of the disliked extremist group of Westboro Baptist Church.
The attack was conducted in response to the protest launched by the church against Sandy Hook Shooting in which 20 children died at young age. Anonymous leaked the personal information of the church’s members online.
This attack came through just a week before when Mcafee launched its report on the Anonymous collective standing in the year 2013. The reports said the group would certainly be at a decline due to its unclear and uncoordinated attacks, which made the group unpopular:
‘Added to this, the disinformation, false claims, and pure hacking actions will lead to the movement being less politically visible than in the past. Because Anonymous’ level of technical sophistication has stagnated and its tactics are better understood by its potential victims, the group’s level of success will decline. However, we could easily imagine some short-lived spectacular actions due to convergence between hacktivists and anti-globalization supporters, or hacktivists and ecoterrorists.’
Anonymous collective is not a political hacking group, Mcafee report distinguishes this particular aspect. So, some of its attacks look mindless i.e. the attacks laid on U.S. government agencies and Syrian defense ministry. One of the Norton’s writer says, Anonymous collective was a small group doing low level hacks, but over the course of time they have changed their course of action and begin to launch bigger attacks which don’t make sense.
The groups most significant hack came about 12 months ago when the group hacked the Stratfor which revealed a data of 5m emails between Stratfor and its clients through WikiLeaks. This particular attack laid to government agencies taking strict actions against the group.
This leaded to an arrest of two of the members of the group namely: Barrett Brown and Jeremy Hammond. Both of them were found to be involved in the Stratfor attack. These arrests took place with the help of a hacker who was also part of the group by the name of Sabu. Later it was revealed that he was the informer of FBI.
Well, we have to wait and see how much McAfee report proves to be right in the year 2013. But, the report has highlighted some other aspects too. Such as rise of mobile hacking and rise in cyber crimes in form of political hacks taking place quite successfully on daily basis.
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