The Man Who Went To War With Anonymous - And Lost
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Hi, i'm really levy. Welcome to sab militias life.

Back when you were in school, did you ever get to sign a group project, then end up doing out of the work? Among the vast trove of stolen documents published to wik leaks, there is a powerpoint about wik leaks itself titled the week league threat. IT details what the organization is and what makes IT so powerful, with an emphasis on details that don't painted in the best light.

Like Juliana sanger alleged six crimes, his minions, supporters, and that it's, quote, not in a healthy position right now. After a dozen slides, the presentation turns to what can be done to take which leaks down. Suggestions include, quote media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of relax activities, sustained pressure, there's nothing for the phonetics but creates concern and doubt among moderates.

Feed the fuel between the feeling groups this information create messages, round actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization, submit fake documents, and then call out the error cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on documents submitted. This would kill the project and quote, the presentation was co authored by three government technology contractors, hb gary federal, bar rico technologies and Peter heels plentier. But after researching this episode, IT just seems so obvious that all the work in this group project was done by iron bar.

Bars, handsome guy, physically fit, tattoo s like Brown eyes, stronger and slicked back, black hair covered with a patel amount of grey at the end. He's a vet. Having completed only two semesters of college before joining up with the U.

S. Navy in his youth, IT was there that he developed his computer skills as signals intelligence officer, specializing in analytics. Now he had the kind of service career most soldiers could only dream of deployed for a dozen years, and countries like japan, spain and all over europe.

When he wasn't on warships after retiring, he got a job with the military contractor in north stop women than in two thousand and nine security consulting named greg hugging, and recruit him to help fund a government cybersecurity company, hb. Gary federal, as the journalist palmi awesome describes, you know, a book, we are anonymous, a major source of research for this episode. Bcn vote relished his new job.

At one point during his first month, he couldn't sleep. For three nights in a row, he sent emails to hugging, and in the middle of the night, his mind racing with new ideas for government contracts. But even after a whole year, only one of those ideas was really making the company any money.

The regular social media training sessions that bar would host for corporate executives for twenty five thousand dollars. He would teach you in your company how to gather information about people, quote specific techniques that can be used to target, collect and exploit targets with laser focus and vote through websites like facebook, linton and twitter. And he was confident.

At a conference hosted by the department of justice, he claimed that the techniques had one hundred percent success rate. In late twenty ten, his course cut the attention of a often hunting and Williams, which represented major organizations like the U. S. ChAmber of commerce and bank of america.

Some of their clients, he turned out, had a real interest in what bar was claiming expertise in bank of america, for example, and reason to believe that the website week weeks was soon going to publish a large chunk of its sensitive and valuable lead. Maybe social media sleuthing can help them catch these modern day cyber bank crosber bar, put together some grand ideas for counter offensive. And before his presentation, he researched hunton and Williams.

His own staff dinging up whatever information he could find about them to prove the effectiveness of his approach. IT didn't work, though the deal fell through. With hb gary federal nearing total failure, barn needed a way to more effectively sell his message to demonstrate how he could help clients gather real valuable intelligence on important targets through social media to prove himself to save the company.

IT was then, with little more to lose, that the cyber security guards inside his car from the shadows, the perfect target for an iron bar Operation, announced itself, and he started celebrity. On december eighth, two thousand and ten, around twelve hundred hackers worldwide charged up a program on their computers called the low orbit ion cannon by using specific command line premature. They each connected to a specific internet reate chat or irc server.

In doing so, they were effectively registered ing themselves to about that. At that point, a leader coordinating the campaign began to send commands to the specific I. R.

C. Channel everyone was connecting to. The commands were designed to responsive all of those users. Collective computing powers, sending massive amounts of traffic to servers belonging to master card VISA and paypal.

IT was only the latest cell in a broader novel conflict between institutional powers and gilla internet activists that began weeks earlier when week league had published two hundred and fifty one thousand two hundred and twenty seven U. S. Diplomatic cables dating all the way back to nineteen sixty six.

Cable gate, as IT was called, was like a cyber security terrorist attack, positioning week league as a clear enemy of the U. S. state.

As a consequence, major payment companies lined up to block all channels for its funding retaliation. Freedom of information absolutists around the web teamed up to teach those companies and lesson Operation payback. They combine forces we are the law orbit iron kennon then performed distributed nail of service attacks.

Such a scale is to temporarily shut down master cards and visas websites and slow down paypal. We will fire at anything or anyone that tries to sensor week leagues, including multi billion dollar companies such as paper. The hackers who called themselves anonymous wrote online twitter, you are next for censoring hashtag week lix discussion.

The major shit storm has begun and put iron bar one slide week leaks when IT released video of U. S. Gung ships killing waiters, photographers in iraq, for example, demonstrating the unjust carelessness of his military. But after cable gate, the veteran changed his view. He expressed his feelings with emails with colleagues reported later on by our technical governments .

and corporations should have a right to protect secrets and sensitive information that could damage their Operations. I think these groups are also saying that there should be free game as well. And and I disagree. Hence the two hundred fifty thousand cables, which was bullet shit. Society needs some people in the know.

and some people not. Besides, when he leaves, he took average with the hackers who claimed to defended IT when .

they took down master card. Do you think they thought, alright, win one for the small guy? The first thought through most their mouth contented minds, was a rush of power. That's not ideal.

It's not that he cared so much for CoOperations, br said, but that he saw through the hackers promoted moral code to their true motives.

to whose evil U. S. government. Wick leagues, anonymous. It's all about power. The wick leagues and anonymous guys think they're doing the people justice with investigations and education, exposing information on targeted organizations. B. S, it's all about trying to take power from others and give IT to themselves. I follow one law, mind.

And what was his life telling him?

Now, these folks, these sheep, believe that all information should be accessible B S. And if they truly believe IT, then they should have no problem with me gathering information for public distribution.

He came up with a plan to a sticking to the power hungry hackers and save his company. At the same time, he would do what the all mighty U. S. Government couldn't and unmask anonymous.

I am going to focus on outing the major players of the anonymous group. I think, after all, no secrets, right? We'll see how far I get.

He began to frequent the online chat rooms where anonymous members hung out using the handle cog. And not, as he explained to colleagues.

I ve developed a persona that is well accepted within their groups and want to use this and my real persona against each other to build up press for the talk.

The duck he's referring to would be in two months time at a conference in san Francisco called, besides.

i'm going to tell a few key leaders under my persona that I ve been given information that is so called cyber security expert nant iron bar will be briefing the power of social media analysis and is part the talk, will be dissecting the anonymous group as well some critical infrastructure and government organizations. I will prepare a press sheet for Karen to give to dark reading a few days after I tell these folks under the persona to legitimize the accusation. This will generate a big discussion in anonymous chat channels, which are attended by the press.

In case you didn't follow, the idea was that is cargan iron bar would inform select members of anonymous about an upcoming talk about them at a conference in send from cisco. At this point, the talk wasn't public knowledge. Then he would inform the media to get some buzz going. After that, surely cog non would have earned the respect of these fellow hackers for having found out about the talk in advance and warning the community. And once word spread in online hacker circles.

this will then generate press about the talk, hopefully driving more people and more business to us. But IT will also make us a target.

In online chat rooms, cog annon was an eager, youthful new rick route. He used of the hacker lingo like they speak, the spelling of words using numbers and symbols. And he was ready to hack some corporations. Meanwhile, the real world iron bar was diligently documenting the hundreds of other hackers in these chat rooms he observe, which were most active, and in particular, what times of day those users would log off. When the user he was tracking went offline, he would quickly switch over to facebook, where he friended dozens of people who had expressed public support for anonymous.

His idea was that if a particular facebook account regularly came online at around the same time an anonymous reen name went offline, IT might demonstrate a link between a real person and an online persona, like if on wednesday, thursday and friday, hacker named ran levy sucks exited anonymous chat rooms at three forty five, three fifty six and seven thirty P M G M T. And then nate Nelson poked up online on facebook a few minutes later. Each time bar would figure that nate was probably relevant. sucks. And though hackers were less likely to publish lots of personal information online, most of them would at least leave some clues behind allowing him to clean information about them and their networks.

Hackers may not list the data, but hackers are people too, so they associate with friends and family. Those friends and family can provide key indicators on the hacker without them releasing IT.

The security expert who got paid tens of thousands of dollars to teach social media solution to CoOperations, was confident in his techniques. A programmer he worked with was the first person to really chAllenge him on IT in one exchange from january nineteen, two thousand eleven.

For example, the programmer pushed back on bars assumption that he could fair useful intelligence by comparing facebook users friendlies to members of a facebook group. For example, one which supports anonymous parts of the conversation that follows are reduction from public records. No.

I won't. IT will tell you how mindless their friends are at clicking stupid shit that comes up on a friends page, especially when they first joined facebook.

what? Yes, I will. I'm running through alysa on the end of group right now. And I definitely.

would you keep assuming you're right and basing that assumption of of guilt .

by association? No, it's about probability based on frequency. Come on your way, smarter math than me.

right? Which is why I know your numbers are too small to draw the conclusion, but you don't want to accept IT. Your probability based on frequency right now is a gut feeling. Gut feelings are usually wrong.

The argument was triggered by bars idea to connect facebook users, groups and friends lists. But it's really a much broader debate. The programmer is trying to get bar to understand that he just doesn't have enough data or good enough data to be as confident as he is. That is entire methodology isn't rigorous enough to draw any meaningful conclusions about real people's connection with anonymous bar, whose stated his career on this strategy is upstate. Yeah.

your gut feelings are awesome, plus scientifically proven that gut feelings are wrong by real scientist types on .

the gut feeling thing. Dude, I don't just go by gott feeling. I spend hours doing analysis and comes to conclusions that I know can be automated. So put the toko dout and get to work. I'm not doubting .

that you're doing analysis. I'm doubting that statistically that analysis has any mathematical weight to backed. I put IT at less than point one percent chance. That is right. You're still working off of the idea that .

the data is accurate in another exchange when bar references his and court advanced and lida techniques, the programmer calls him out on IT.

You keep saying things about statistics and analytics, but you haven't given me one algorithm or S Q L query statement.

Bar wasn't hearing IT. You just need to program as good as I analyze. He told his programmer.

The programmer later voice his concerns to a different official at H. B. Gary federal.

He's on a bad path. He's talking about his analytics and that he can prove things statistically, but he hasn't proven anything mathematically, nor has he had any of his daughter voted for accuracy yet. He keeps briefing people and giving interviews. It's irresponsible to make claims, charge accusations based off of a guest from his best gut feeling when he has even told me that he believes his god. But more often than not, it's been proven wrong.

Another colleague pleaded with the bar that quote, you could end up accusing a wrong person, or you could further enrage the group, or you could be wrong and he blows up in your face and hb gery face publicly, and cold bar wouldn't listen.

On friday, february fourth, two thousand and eleven, the financial times published an exclusive story, quote, an international investigation into cyber activists who attacked businesses hostile to week league is likely to yield arrests of senior members of the group after they left clues to their real identities on facebook and in other electronic communications, IT is claimed. Iron bar said he had collected information on the core leaders, including many of their real names, and that they could be arrested if flaw enforcement had the same data input. Even some colleagues who had previously expressed concerns were now buzzing over the good press.

We should post this on the front page throughout some tweet hugging route. Hb gary federal sets a new bar as a private intelligence agency. The panel bar is intent l well that the same day h bgi got a call from the FBI, they wanted to meet as soon as possible to discuss the findings, but not everyone was sweet.

I feel his arrogance is catching up to him again, and that has never ended well for any of us.

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On the evening bars financial times, puff peace was published. Tea flow, uh, skilled but modest hacker, created a closed online chat room and invited three people to join. There was topiary, a relatively unskilled hacker, but had become well known in the anonymous community, thanks to his cleverness and curious.

Then there was sub, the cockie but talented one who usually spoke in streets slang. And the artist of the group was ka, a bubbly and whip smart hacker who claims to be a sixteen year old girl. SHE even claimed keller was her real name.

IT was a kind of brag that even if authorities who knew her first name, but I still wouldn't figure out who he was, none of the four members of this makeshift council knew one another other identities, and a couple hadn't even encounter one another before. But through their combining powers, flow hoped they could do something about this iron bar guy. Exactly how much of a threat he posed was unclear.

In the financial times, he claimed to have uncovered personal information belonging to what he called a core ten or so members of anonymous, plus other data mapping the group's internal structure. If that we're true and bar shared that information with the public and law enforcement, this seemed to be his intention than anonymous. And those few members, in particular would be in deep trouble.

The thing is, ananimous really didn't have any core leaders or any kind of high article structure. If bar was wrong about that, was he wrong about the identities he uncovered? Would he be endangering innocent people, or have he stumbled into some right answers? They couldn't take any chances to arguably the best hacer of the group.

Can the website belonging to H B. Gary federal, he discovered that he was served by a third party publishing system. That system had an obvious S Q L injection vulnerability.

IT was trivial to exploit. Inside the company's website, sample picked up three long aften amErica strings associated with the email account passwords used by iron bar and two other executives. There were md five hashes and effective means of turning a password into something totally ineligible. Neither sub nor his colleagues could crack them, but after posting them to a speciality web form has killer dot com.

Random hackers from around web managed to do IT in just a couple of hours time with bars, password, he buffer thirty three sub and his buddies had full access to his work email t flow, the organizer downloaded to his own server, everything bar had ever sent or received, and compiled IT all into a trent file. Meanwhile, like their own personal T V show, the hackers watched in real time as bar hugging and and they are equally unaware. Colleagues celebrated good press from the financial times, and they discouraged through bars email history for equally entertaining nuggets of information.

IT didn't take long before they found some of bars into on their group A, P, D, F, with a brief description, what anonymous was. It's history of cyber attacks and some miss lenise note taking. They figured out that the bar was using facebook to try to identify hacker's real identities, and the results demonstrated how the strategy was going.

His list of using names alongside the real life identities didn't seem so rigorous. IT was clearly unfinished, and subway, his friends weren't even acknowledged this whole time while he was selling talk, speaking fights and bragging in the press, iron bar had basically nothing with their identities secured and a gold mind of access to exploit and data to leak. The only matter left to discuss was when to punish iron bar and how the hacker is debated with guilty channon folder.

What happened to iron bar in hb gary federal next isn't disputed. The reports of the order and timing of events very here is the best we can do in reconstructing the timely bars. Saturday began without any fan fair, quiet as he hung out with his family and set off a few work emails from his iphone.

He didn't know that he was being well and thoroughly pond, but he was smart enough to check hb gary federal website. According to his account, he wasn't actually surprised by what he found, a surgeon traffic exceeding what one could reasonably expect, just from a positive article did us. He wrote to his colleagues promising to quote, pick the gloves off.

They think all I know is their I R C. names. I know they're real left ing names.

Karen, I need you to help moderate me because I am getting angry. I'm plenty on releasing a few names of folks that are arrested. This battle between us will help spur publicity. Anyway.

in place of hb, gary federal website was alone. Note now the anonymous hand is bit slapping you in the face IT should IT would appear. The security experts are not expertly secured.

IT ended with the group's model. We are anonymous. We are a legion. We do not forget, we do not forget, expect us bar logged into a fake twitter account. He used to track anonymous and reached out to commander X, A person he thought was central to what he envision as the rubb's higher ho structure pleading command x.

this is my research. I'm not onna release names. I merely doing security research to prove the vulnerability of social media. So please help. And or whoever else is hitting our site to stop .

here though, bars phony research failure. Oh, not my doing, commander x replied. He wasn't in charge of the attack because he wasn't a leader of anonymous because anonymous didn't have leaders, as bar had so confidently claimed in the press command, their x left IT off.

If IT is some of your guys, i'd just want to make sure that they don't get too aggressive.

Commander xx asked which website was being attacked, then replied ominously, quote, I warn you that your vulnerabilities are far more material. One, look at your website locates all of your facilities. You might want to do something about that just being friendly and.

The following day, february six, was super bowl sunday. The hacker has decided to start the day by having some fun. IT was around eight in the morning on the east coast.

When carg and non logged onto the anana s instant messaging channel. Quickly, he received a message. IT was from the rector top area, evidentially.

There was an important washington, D. C. Based mission in the works. I take IT from your host that you are near where our target is topia.

I rote 8 not realizing that they'd connected him with his cock， and on account wondered how top iri knew that he was in the area. Be careful, he may get suspicious quickly. A hacker rode in a separate chat where members of gathered to left over top.

I iris gg, another time, i'd laugh so hard if he sends an email about this guys. One member ask, is this really happening? Because this shit is awesome.

They toyed with the prey until the role board. Then around midday, they decided IT was time. Br was on his couch wearing A T shirt and jeans when a thought crossed his mind.

His iphone hadn't buz for a while, usually IT pinked constantly with new emails, especially, you'd figure, when his company was under attack by the world's largest activist collective, he pulled out to the phone and refreshed his inbox, cannot get to make verify password bar, went into his settings and reentered his password. Kib four thirty three. No luck has also some route.

Quote, a tickling anxiety called up his back as he realized what this meant and called. He ran upstairs to his home office, said his laptop opened up facebook and couldn't log in twitter. No luck. Not yahoo either.

He was even locked out of his world warcraft account, turned out that sample four cakes had tested kib four thirty three on other websites, discovering that the so called cyber security expert was using the same password for all of these accounts, so subtle, locked him out of all of the, at the same time, he was trying every possible means of getting into his account. Barr noticed that his wifi router was lighting up like a Christmas tree. They were penetrating his home network.

Something will be happening tonight. Topia, I wrote to cogan on shortly there after indicating that worse was to come. How available are you throughout the evening? Though he didn't yet know IT, north of forty thousand of iron bars.

Details were then being uploaded to the public torrent website parade. The archive included not only embarrassing emails among colleagues, but non disclosure agreements classify the documents and the other sensitive information relating to government agencies and multi national corporations. Soon there will be available for public consumption during the super ball bar, logged into his now altered carbon account and face the wave of insults in the vision.

Well, aon top, I added, thanks for taking part in this little mini social test to see if you run to your company with news about a not you did we reach IT? We left. He passed for a moment. Die in a fire. You're done.

In the hours and days that followed, iron bars, phone number, home medals and the social security number were posted to social media as a sub head break to his fellow hackers. Quote, we have everything from his social security number to his career in the military, to his clearances, to how many shits a day he takes. And quote, in the hours that followed came a flood of prank calls and unsolicited pizza delivery and visit from two strangers.

Someone tried to take pictures through his windows, and many online threatened him, and even his children taking no chances born, his wife packed suitcases, rab the kids and temporarily lift home. Meanwhile, representatives of hb gary federal entered anonymous chat rooms and attempted to negotiate with their conquers. Bar was working alone.

They said they couldn't hire him because he owned part of the company. IT couldn't have come at a worst time for H. B. federal. Really mean, it's dying embers.

While bar was attempting to save IT with some press attention, the company was trying to sell for a cost of two million dollars following the attack. Obviously, the buyers redecked, a company representatives, told the financial times how in all the incident cost hb gary federal and its parent company, H. B.

Gary, millions of dollars. I wish I had been handled differently, SHE lamented. While hb gary federal was slowly being put, the rest and its clients worked to pick up the pieces. Those members of anonymous who orchestrated the downfall rejoiced.

But IT won't be long before day two had the day commander X, T, flow top, eri, ki, ela and sub would all be arrested at various point between june and september two thousand eleven. Dedicated malicious ous life. Listeners will remember sub as hecker, monseer or the protections.

New yorker, who is, much as any member can lead anything, effectively ran the famous laws. Second movement, which in a rush of fifty days attacked oranienburg SONY to P B. S, to the CIA top eri.

Jack Davis was just eighteen years old when he span a web for iron bar, and Frankly, he didn't look one day older and that he did his hacking from a black leather gaming chair in the island of yell, part of the shatter and thisa ds in archipelago, the northeast coast of scotland. Facing up to ten years in prison in two thousand thirteen, he only ended up serving thirty eight days. Kaga, the teenage girl who liked to chat about teenage girls kind of things like her job at a saloon and sale.

Maybe seating was creepy enough. A twenty four year old men named ryan air ode, a veteran of the british military, he lived in south yorker. He was tried alongside his colleagues, topiary and t flow, and ended up with the heftiest jail sentence of the bunch, thirty months.

The flow was the real sixteen year old of the group, born in baghdad before moving to london at eight five moto. Far the some would, even after his twenty months jail sentence, go on to earn a PHD. And forbes is famous annual thirty under thirty list in the technology category for his contribution to uncovering government surveilLance.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was commander X, A nearly fifty year old men named Christopher dian. He used to describe himself as the leader of anonymous, which may be why bar thought that too. In fact, he was basically homeless.

After posting bail, he fled to canada and was only arrested in twenty twenty one when a group of mexican law enforcement agents rest up as civilians gained entry into the strange community where he was living in mexico city. And what of iron bar? Following his public humidities two weeks after the conference where he once planned to unmask anonymous, he resigned from H.

B. Gary federal. He quickly picked up work at the chief data officer of a new defence contractor, where he continued his work in social media analysis, authoring three petts and leading the development of a quote. A unique social media analysis platform focused on providing context to content through innovative approaches to digital life pattern analysis, and quote never change, iron never change.

that's IT for this episode thank you for listening did you notice that the corner character's voice the programmer who called out iron bar for his list and instead of data wasn't a i voice i used one of eleven labs synthetic voices it's a little experiment and doing trying to see how AI voices could fit in the context of podcast i see a lot of talk online about how artificially generated podcasts like that of google notebook lym b service will soon take over the podcasting world in the storm making people like myself absolute well what could i say AI is definitely going to change our lives and it's definitely possible that i need to quit podcasting one day and return to being a soft engineer not a bad thing really i love being an engineer but right now not too worried a i content the texts or the cast or whatever is currently very mediocre if i would have used IT as is to write a malicious slife script you'd be very disappointed and soon of IT but i do see a great potential for creators such as myself in tools like eleven labs synthetic voices and also a i generated background music for videos and podcasts i've been in podcasting since two thousand and seven great early days and adding multiple voices and great music to a podcast has always been a challenge for independent creators like myself i mean i want to show to sound great and feel like it's professionally produced and it's not an easy thing to do on a budget so what do you think about the programmer's synthetic voice is IT convinced ing enough should i use more such voices in the show let me know what you think on twitter at at an levy r a n l e v i or on linked in and i'd love to hear your thoughts malaise life is produced by bi media this epo de was written by the nelson related by me with the sound designed by shelly gua our website is militia that life you can follow us on twitter at malicious life thanks to cyberia on for underwriting the broadcast less more cybercrime that come 拜拜 今天 music muk music muk music muk music muk music。