New Book: Assange solicited Anonymous group to hack Icelandic government sites, instigate uprising
For those of us who follow Anonymous, Wikileaks and Occupy, the connections between the three are not news. We’ve been watching the connections for a long time.
Finally, however, Julian Assange will be called out very publicly on at least one of his less than savory actions to more than just the Anon/Wikileaks/Occupy watchers.
Parmy Olson, who has been writing on Assange, Wikileaks and Anonymous for Forbes for some time, is coming out with a new book, “We Are Anonymous”. Olson as a longtime watcher will likely have many interesting observations. In one of the most interesting so far, Olson details Assange meeting online with Lulz Sec.
Lulz Sec was a small hacking group, a part of Anonymous, who had been involved in multiple hacks against government and corporate websites. These efforts included stealing credit card information as well as government and business information which they later leaked onto the internet.
After Lulz Sec attacked the CIA.gov website, Assange posted a supporting tweet on twitter, according to Olson. He later deleted the tweet, but reached out to Lulz Sec privately. He and a Wikileaks staff member known as “q” met in an IRC channel with Topiary and Sabu of Lulz Sec.
At first, Topiary was nervous. Here was Julian Assange himself, the founder of Wikileaks, reaching out to his team. He couldn’t think why he wanted to talk to them. Then he noticed what q and Assange were saying. They were praising Lulz Sec for its work, adding they had laughed at the DDOS(distributed denial of service) attack on the CIA. With all the flattery it almost felt like they were nervous.
Sabu told Assange that his crew was up for taking out “traditional government targets”.
Q went on to explain why he and Assange were reaching out to Lulz Sec-they wanted help infiltrating certain government and corporate websites in Iceland. They had reasons for wanting retribution on Iceland:
A young Wikileaks member had recently gone to Iceland and been arrested. Wikileaks had also been bidding for access to a data center in an underground bunker but had lost out to another corporate bidder after the government denied them the space. Another journalist who supoorted Wikileaks was being held by authorities. Assange and q appeared to want Lulz Sec to to try to grab the e-mail service of government sites then look for evidence of corruption or at least evidence that the government was unfairly targeting Wikileaks. The picture they were trying to paint was of the Icelandic government trying to suppress Wikileaks’ freedom to spread information. If they could leak such information, they explained, it could help instigate an uprising in Iceland and beyond.
This was not a deal out the goodness offered without exchange. Q was offering to give Lulz Sec a spreadsheet of classified government data, a file called RSA 128, which was encrypted and needed to be cracked. Q explained they had computers at MIT working on it for two weeks but hadn’t cracked it yet.
Topiary confessed to Assange that they had been behind the HB Gary hack, which thereafter resulted in a leak of 75,000 emails, including personal emails. Assange told them they could have structured the leak better.
Topiary and Sabu invited the Wikileaks pair over to Sabu’s server and created a channel for them. Q said he wished they could help the group more obviously with things like servers but that they didn’t want to link Wikileaks too obviously to Lulz Sec. The team received links to 2 government websites and one company website to the rest of the team for which they were to find ways to get into their networks and grab their emails.
What Assange didn’t know was that Sabu, by this point, was working with the FBI as an informant and likely all this was being monitored.
Anonymous/Cabin Cr3w member, @It’sKahuna, arrested
John Anthony Borrell III, aka @It’sKahuna on Twitter, was arrested by the FBI and charged with two counts of computer intrusion in violation of 18 U.S.C.§1030(a)(5)(A).
These charges concerned hacking a Utah Police Chiefs’ website as well as the website of the Salt Lake City Police Department in January 2012.
Borrell, 21, was allegedly part of “Cabin Cr3w”, a hacker sub group of Anonymous which has been responsible for the online attacking of law enforcement agencies, sometimes in reaction to various Occupy related police confrontations.
Police were able to link Borrell through connections to work and neighbors’ IP addresses. They also were able to obtain information from Twitter which included his picture sent to another person in anonymous.
Borrell is just one of many recent Anonymous arrests. Recent arrests included “Sabu”(Hector Monsegur), who became an informant for the FBI, and “wormer”(Higinio Ochoa)(who was also a member of the “Cabin Cr3w”).
Borrell is also noted in the FBI complaint as offering to become an informant for them.
See full indictment and complaint here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/89670544/Indictment-and-Complaint-against-Anonymous-hacker
Borell was arrested March 20 and has been detained in Ohio. Each count carries up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Authorities in early February had said the hackers who attacked the Salt Lake City Police Department website gained access to citizen complaints about drugs and other crimes, including phone numbers, addresses and other personal data of informants.
The police website was just recently restored after additional security measures were added.
Anonymous was also involved in an attack on the Boston police in retaliation for “police brutality at OWS,” an apparent reference to the Occupy Wall Street movement. The message also promised “there is plenty more mayhem to deliver.”
HT to @TomRyanBlog for indictment/complaint.
