Five alleged members of the hacker group Anonymous have been charged with recent cyber attacks, including the leak of over 25 million emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor. Anonymous is a loose international coalition of hackers that conducts cyber assaults for political protest, though they have no central leadership. The arrests are related to the Stratfor leak where stolen emails were provided to Wikileaks, revealing information about government attacks on Wikileaks and Julian Assange. One arrested hacker had previously become an FBI informant, leading the agency to claim it has broken the back of Anonymous.

1. W H A T ’ S H A P P E N I N G , W H O I S I N V O L V E D
A N D W H A T ’ S A T S T A K E ?
Cybersecurity

2. Alleged Anonymous hackers charged
 Article appeared in Washington Post, 3/12/2012
 5 hackers charged with recent cyber-assaults
 Core members of Anonymous
 Fellow hacker Hector Monsegur (―Sabu‖) turned
confidential informant
 FBI says distrust has ―broken the back of the
collective‖

3. Stratfor leak
 Arrests related to recent cyber-assault on
Stratfor, a private intelligence company
 Stratfor provides ―geopolitical analysis‖ to
corporate and government clients
 Hackers provided stolen emails to Wikileaks
 25 million Stratfor emails published on Wikileaks
detailing government attacks on
Wikileaks, Julian Assange
 Stolen emails also reveal how Stratfor runs its
business

4. Anonymous
 International ―hacktivist‖ group
 Loose coalition, no central leadership
 Members communicate on multiple
imageboards, Internet forums, wikis, and
Internet Relay Chat networks
 Hackers used pseudonyms and are located
around the world
 Image from Wikipedia Commons, author Vincent Diamante, originally posted
to Flickr.com

5. Anonymous Activities
 Conduct cyber-assaults as a means of political
protest
 Often targeting anti-digital piracy groups
 Steal data and disrupt websites
 They have hacked the Wall Street Journal and
crashed the CIA website
 Currently threatening ―Operation Global
Blackout‖ to take down Facebook or the entire
Internet

6. Ties between Anonymous and Wikileaks
 Wikileaks has access to mainstream media
 Information stolen by Anonymous hackers fed to
Wikileaks for media coverage
 ―The two have long been something like
partners-in-crime, with the leaderless hacktivist
collective Anonymous having attacked enemies
of WikiLeaks in the past — but WikiLeaks always
remained carefully removed.‖
Washington Post, 2/27/2012

7. Cyber-assaults beyond Anonymous
 CBS 60 Minutes Segment: Cyber War: Sabotaging
the System broadcast June 13, 2010
 ―Could foreign hackers get into the computer
systems that run crucial elements of the world's
infrastructure, such as the power grids, water
works or even a nation’s military arsenal, to
create havoc? They already have. Steve Kroft
reports.‖
 Our electronic Pearl Harbor occurred in 2007;
government and military data compromised by
unknown foreign government

8. Other Recent Cyber-Assaults
 Significant cyber-assaults happen daily
 Sony – Caused Playstation Network outage and
customer data breached
 Google – Chinese hackers accessed U.S.
government gmail accounts
 RSA – Issues security tokens, related to
Lockheed Martin breach
 Epsilon – Marketing company, several million
names and email addresses compromised

9. US Government Response
 NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence
 A public-private collaboration for accelerating
the widespread adoption of integrated
cybersecurity tools and technologies
 Unite the knowledge of the government with the
know-how of the private sector to improve our
nation’s cybersecurity