HBGary
Smellyman
Asia Posts: 4,524
Anybody following this story?
It is utterly fascinating what this company went through to bring down wikileaks and supporters of wikileaks.
Possibly involving levels of Government, a prominent law firm and a large US Bank (possible BoA). Their Big mistake? Going after Anonymous, the Internet hacktivists, who ended up penetrating and exposing all of this.
There are many stories about this out there.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/how-one-security-firm-tracked-anonymousand-paid-a-heavy-price.ars
Colbert did a good bit on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZVL24rGY0&feature=related
But within a day, Anonymous had managed to infiltrate HBGary Federal's website and take it down, replacing it with a pro-Anonymous message ("now the Anonymous hand is bitch-slapping you in the face.") Anonymous got into HBGary Federal's e-mail server, for which Barr was the admin, and compromised it, extracting over 40,000 e-mails and putting them up on The Pirate Bay, all after watching his communications for 30 hours, undetected. In an after-action IRC chat, Anonymous members bragged about how they had gone even further, deleting 1TB of HBGary backup data.
They even claimed to have wiped Barr's iPad remotely.
The situation got so bad for the security company that HBGary, the company which partially owns HBGary Federal, sent its president Penny Leavy into the Anonymous IRC chat rooms to swim with the sharks—and to beg them to leave her company alone. (Read the bizarre chat log.) Instead, Anonymous suggested that, to avoid more problems, Leavy should fire Barr and "take your investment in aaron's company and donate it to BRADLEY MANNINGS DEFENCE FUND." Barr should cough off up a personal contribution, too; say, one month's salary?
It is utterly fascinating what this company went through to bring down wikileaks and supporters of wikileaks.
Possibly involving levels of Government, a prominent law firm and a large US Bank (possible BoA). Their Big mistake? Going after Anonymous, the Internet hacktivists, who ended up penetrating and exposing all of this.
There are many stories about this out there.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/how-one-security-firm-tracked-anonymousand-paid-a-heavy-price.ars
Colbert did a good bit on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGZVL24rGY0&feature=related
But within a day, Anonymous had managed to infiltrate HBGary Federal's website and take it down, replacing it with a pro-Anonymous message ("now the Anonymous hand is bitch-slapping you in the face.") Anonymous got into HBGary Federal's e-mail server, for which Barr was the admin, and compromised it, extracting over 40,000 e-mails and putting them up on The Pirate Bay, all after watching his communications for 30 hours, undetected. In an after-action IRC chat, Anonymous members bragged about how they had gone even further, deleting 1TB of HBGary backup data.
They even claimed to have wiped Barr's iPad remotely.
The situation got so bad for the security company that HBGary, the company which partially owns HBGary Federal, sent its president Penny Leavy into the Anonymous IRC chat rooms to swim with the sharks—and to beg them to leave her company alone. (Read the bizarre chat log.) Instead, Anonymous suggested that, to avoid more problems, Leavy should fire Barr and "take your investment in aaron's company and donate it to BRADLEY MANNINGS DEFENCE FUND." Barr should cough off up a personal contribution, too; say, one month's salary?
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