47 
While shells and interceptor missiles started flying between Israel and Gaza, Anonymous did what it does best: swore vengeance against a superpower. It had some swagger at first. But as the days go by, we’re seeing a weak, confused Anon, not a group of Internet freedom fighters.
If you need proof, just look at their sad, confused chatroom.
In the hacker brigade’s own words, “November 2012 will be a month to remember for the Israeli Defense Forces and internet security forces. Israeli Gov. this is/will turn into a cyberwar.” That’s a stern threat. And so far, an almost completely hollow one.
Anonymous has never been a well-run organisation—it’s at its best and most fundamental when it isn’t really organised at all. That’s what used to make it so dangerous; thousands upon thousands of hiveminded hackers and hack-minded who would DDoS on command and break website security for the cause. Emerging from this mess was LulzSec, an elite and independent Delta Force of Anons, commanding respect among sympathisers and fear among corporations. They got things done—giant things, like embarrassing major credit cards, dumping gigantic data leaks like clockwork, and even knocking down the CIA‘s website.
And then everyone went to prison.
Today, Anon lacks the talent and semi-cohesion it once boasted across the net, and its most recent online crusade is an embarrassing reminder. This is less a war than the hacker equivalent of egging someone’s house and then smoking weed behind a Greggs.
What’s the collective accomplished so far in its anti-IDF campaign?
- Anonymous defaced or deactivated over 600 websites belonging almost entirely to Israeli small mum and pop businesses, without any clear connection to the IDF’s campaign against Gaza. Pretty much anything with a .il domain suffix. Some notable takedowns include a small psychological therapy practice, and a company that provides Jeep tours. Anon claims to have punted the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs via DDoS, but the site wasn’t down for any appreciable time—a pattern across the non-pissant attacks the group took responsibility for.
- A dump of personal information—”OVER 3000 ISRAEL SUPPORTER HOME PHONE WORK ALSO US SENATORS.” It’s hard to say what exactly the hell that means.
- Over 2,000 email addresses and passwords of ordinary nobodies associated with an Israeli real estate website, leaked, without purpose or meaning.
- The official site of Israel’s President, Shimon Peres, does look to be down—an attack Anon of course says is their doing. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would’ve been a more desirable target.
In other words, not much. If this were a hacker collective under any other name, we’d hardly take notice. Where are the shocking DDoS maneuvers? Where are the defaced homepages of sites people might actually visit? Where are the hijacked Twitter accounts?
But it’s not like the hackers aren’t trying—sort of. Their official IRC is a strange mix of gravitas and the scene when a 4th-grade teacher leaves the room and puts one of the kids in charge. Paranoia is rampant (though there surely are Feds monitoring the place), trolling is incessant, as is antisemitism, all-caps tirades, confusion, deliberate misinformation, and platitudes. You’d never mistake an Anonymous chatroom for the Oxford Union, but in the past, there was at least an air of cooperation—as if the group more or less agreed on an agenda and had the capacity to pull it off. But OpIsrael is rudderless.
With no Sabu figure, and little moderation, any jackass is free to pop in and derail.
Derail what exactly? A lot of network naiveté.
Some second guessing.
Frequent lies.
This.
Confusion.
Cluelessness.
Widespread cluelessness.
People screaming over each other, cluelessly.
Yeah.
Desperate attempts to organise.
Meanwhile, #OpIsrael’s ostensible main target remains untouched.
A feckless, hamstrung Anonymous isn’t anything new, post-Lulzsec. Anyone with the brains and bravery to do something like hack a major government military contractor or trounce Sony is either in the hands of the cops, or afraid of winding up there. But with so much big, brazen talk surrounding this campaign, you have to wonder how much longer Anonymous will be able to glide on bluster and reputation. Or whether there’s a new Sabu out there somewhere about to actually pound the IDF online.
Photos by lanych/Shutterstock, Steve Snowden/Shutterstock
Good article.
Wha…wha…there are comments on a Sam Biddle article that don’t read “Sam Biddle’s an Apple-loving PR machine”? The world is coming to an end, I tell you.
Sam has written a good article, It deserves to be praised, just as his usual output doesn’t. It’s called positive reinforcement.
Darrell Jones: Supernanny
Somebody’s got to keep you kids in line
That programme would consist purely of Darrell going into peoples homes and chastising them for their choice of OS. Which, to be fair, could be quite amusing.
I would watch that
“iOS?! What the FUCK are you doing feeding your son that locked-down piece of crap? Don’t you know that children are scientifically proven to be smarter if they grow up in the evergreen glades of Android?”
“hotmail?! nobody uses hotmail anymore! I’m signing you up to Gmail …and you may as well set up G+ whilst your at it. If you don’t I’ll have to put you on the naughty step”
“While we’re at it, Google Drive is the only thing you’re allowed to use from now on, none of that nasty Office stuff”
GOOGLE WILL REIGN
Are you out of your mind?
last time I looked google docs didn’t support a reference/citation management database. Say what you want about Microsoft word but at the press of a button it will insert my 300+ references at the end of my dissertation in a manner that requires zero tweaking and save me literally hours of work.
Of course it could also be that there is no clear good/bad side to this and that siding with terrorists goes against the grain of the majority of sane people, even dickheaded script kiddies. But yes, the power of Anon has been frequently blown up in the media for political purposes (So that governments can get more powers to protect us from this “dangerous menace”) but the unvarnished truth Is that Anon is mostly little kids who think participating in a DDOS makes them some kind of superhero and probably couldn’t give a coherent explanation of the issues involved in the current fighting.
“This is less a war than the hacker equivalent of egging someone’s house and then smoking weed behind a Greggs.”
AHHAHAHHA
I assume this sentence has been modified for the UK site, unless Greggs have launched a US expansion, which I, for one would approve of.
Right you are.
“This is less a war than the hacker equivalent of egging someone’s house and then smoking weed behind a Denny’s.”
Shame, I was hoping you could now get a hot sausage roll in New York.
My bet is that Sam Biddle is Jewish.
Sam You fail epically officially
Sam Biddle Of Gizmodo Dances To ‘Nigga’s In Paris’
http://youtu.be/_jtmFlUg56w