One of the co-founders of infamous hacking group Anonymous has revealed the inner workings of the organization.
There are plenty of shadowy groups out there, but aside from the Illuminati, Scientologists, and The Simpsons' Stonecutters, Anonymous is arguably the most mysterious. The group of internet hackers are immortalized by their V for Vendetta-inspired masks and cyberattacks launched against governments and corporations. Anonymous first surfaced back in 2003 on 4chan, and while it had largely gone to ground by 2018, it reemerged in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.
While Anonymous come a long way from being listed on Time's 2012 ranking of the "100 most influential people" in the world, it's found a new place in today's tech-savvy society.
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Exposing the inner workings of Anonymous, co-founder Gregg Housh has taken us behind the curtain in a new documentary called I Was There When Anonymous Really Started.
Explaining how Anonymous evolved from a simple trolling chat room to a global organization that tackles everyone from the Church of Scientology to neo-Nazis, Housh has robbed Anonymous of its anonymity.
Starting out as tiny online group of just 10 people in a US chatroom, Housh says it's grew to include thousands of members, with some 'now in positions of power' that range from state representatives to government advisors.
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Speaking to the Daily Mail, documentary producer Joshua Tanner Murphy said: "Given how secretive the movement has been historically, our documentary team was shocked at how much of an open book Gregg was."
While Anonymous started out by just trolling each other, its first real target was a neo-Nazi radio host called Hal Turner, who once held up a noose during a CNN interview. One Anonymous member broke into Turner's emails and exposed that he was an FBI informant who was exposing others to spare himself from jail.
As membership grew, Housh reiterated: "They didn't feel bad about joining' because this was a bad person they were going after."
When Anonymous targeted the Church of Scientology and repeatedly reposted a video about Tom Cruise in 2008, recruitment ballooned to 10,000 members in 42 countries. Housh says he suddenly thought: "We've got an army. What do we do with it?"
Housh also recalled when someone from IT security company HB Gary Federal claimed to have a list of Anonymous members and their phone numbers attached. When Anonymous returned the favor and hacked HB Gary, it found that the data was for people who'd never been Anon members. Instead, the security company's emails suggested it was creating VPNs for the US Air Force and was trying to 'sway people's views of America' with fake social media profiles.
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Remembering the glory days, Housh says: "That's really the big start of all-out hacktivism."
As for Anonymous today, he reminds us: "They're in state houses as state representatives and aides in Congress, some even running for congressional seats. They're in positions of power at corporations. They're journalists all over the place."
When asked again who is Anonymous, Housh concluded: "So the answer to 'who is anonymous today' is it's anyone who says they are. We are literally everywhere."
Just remember, Anonymous is always watching.