How Anonymous And Hacktivists Shocked The World In 2013 ?
1. Anonymous Hacks FBI Cybercrime Conference Call
The LulzSec gang announced its retirement in June 2011, and while some alleged members, such as Jake Davis — accused of being the group’s spokesman, “Topiary” — were arrested, at the beginning of 2012, many participants appeared to be still at large.
Come February 2012, elements of Anonymous even took down the CIA’s public-facing website, and leaked an FBI conference callin which investigators coordinated Anonymous and LulzSec participants” arrests. Curiously, however, key details — such as the alleged hacktivists’ names — had been blanked out of the audio file that was ultimately released.
2. Stratfor Hack Upends Private Sector Intelligence Provider
Also in February, Anonymous announced the release of a trove of emails and personal data stored by Strategic Forecasting, better known as Stratfor, which is an intelligence contractor. A member of Anonymous — who turned out to be LulzSec leader Sabu – reported that the plaintext emails and customer information had been obtained by exploiting known vulnerabilities in the Stratfor network. Ultimately, the breach exposed personal information on 860,000 Stratfor customers, 60,000 credit card numbers and a massive trove of emails between Stratfor and its sources.
