Operation Anti-Security, also referred to as Operation AntiSec, is a series of hacking attacks performed by members of now-defunct hacking group LulzSec, the group Anonymous, and others inspired by the announcement of the operation.

Background

The LulzSec hacking group formed on 15 May 2011 and came to national prominence after hacking the websites of the Public Broadcasting Service, Sony, and the United States Senate. ^{[1] [2]} Initially, the group claimed to hack "for the lulz" and to enjoy the chaos that follows their intrusions. ^{[3] [4]} However, on 20 June 2011, the group announced that they were teaming up with hacking collective Anonymous for a series of attacks they dubbed Operation Anti-Security or Operation AntiSec. The press release accompanying the beginning of the operation called for supporters to steal and publish classified government documents under the name AntiSec. Major banks and corporations were also mentioned as potential targets. ^[5] Though LulzSec disbanded as a group on 26 June 2011, members have been reported to be continuing the operation from within Anonymous. ^{[6] [7]}

The groups involved claim that the operation aims to protest government censorship and monitoring of the internet. ^[8] LulzSec members also mentions ending what they believe are corrupt racial profiling and copyright laws as a goal of the operation. ^[9] The War on Drugs has also been given as a reason for particular hacks. ^[10] In contrast, USA Today described as cyberwarfare targeting governments and large corporations. ^[11]

LulzSec activities

LulzSec launched the first attacks of the operation against the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the national law enforcement agency of the United Kingdom that handles cybercrime. The group launched a distributed denial-of-service attack against the agency's website on 20 June, taking it offline for only a few minutes. ^[12] On the same day, they knocked the website of the Jianhua District in Qiqihar, China offline. ^[13]

On 23 June, the group released a large cache of documents taken from the servers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The release, titled "chinga la migra", roughly translating to "fuck the border patrol", including email addresses and passwords and hundreds of documents marked "sensitive" or "for official use only". ^[14] The group claimed that they did so in retaliation for the passage of Arizona SB 1070, a law they saw as leading to unjust racial profiling. ^[15] Arizona complained that the release of officer identities and the personal information of their families could put them and their families in danger and gave those exposed security protection. In response, they mobilized the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center and locked remote access of Department of Public Safety email accounts. ^[16]

On 25 June 2011, the group released what they described as their last dump of the operation. The release contained a large amount of information from varied sources. Included was information from numerous companies, including half a gigabyte of data from telecommunications company AT&T and IP addresses from Sony, Viacom, Disney, EMI, and NBC Universal. ^{[17] [18]} The AT&T portion included information pertaining to the release of the 4G LTE, 90,000 personal phones used by IBM, and the development of the iPad 3. ^{[18] [19]} It also contained over 750,000 usernames and password combinations, including 200,000 from hackforums.net, 12,000 from the NATO online bookstore, 500,000 from the online video game Battlefield Heroes, 50,000 from various video game forums, and 29 from Irish private investigation company Priority Investigations. ^[18] Finally, an internal manual for AOL engineers and a screencapture of the United States Navy website navy.mil after being vandalized. ^[18]

On 22 June, an offshoot of the group calling themselves LulzSecBrazil took down the website of the Government of Brazil, brasil.gov.br, and the President of Brazil, presidencia.gov.br. ^{[20] [21]} They also targeted the website of Brazilian energy company Petrobras. ^[22] On 24 June, they claimed to publish access codes and passwords to the Petrobras website along with personnel profiles. However, the company denied that any information had been stolen, and the group removed the claim from their Twitter feed a few hours later. ^[23] The group also published the personal information of President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff and Mayor of São Paulo Gilberto Kassab. ^[24]

Anonymous activities

On 27 June 2011, Anonymous published information relating to the Cyberterrorism Defense Initiative's Security and Network Training Initiative and National Education Laboratory program, or Sentinel program, an operation run by the United States Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency. The hack included information that the agency distributed in 2009 and contained resources on publicly available hacking software, a list of Federal Bureau of Investigation bureau locations, details on counter-hacking tools, and form letters that law enforcement agencies used to obtain user details from internet service providers. ^[25]

On 28 June, the group released the second collection of documents stolen from the Arizona Department of Public Safety during Operation Anti-Security. Dubbed "Chinga la Migra Communique Dos", or "Fuck the Border Patrol Message Two", the data file contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, internet passwords, and social security numbers of a dozen Arizona police officers. It also contained the emails, voicemails, chat logs of some of them; in at least one instance it included sexually explicit photographs from one of the officer's girlfriends. ^[26] Anonymous also claimed that the documents included officers forwarding racist chain emails, evidence of K-9 unit officers using percocet, and a Fraternal Order of Police member who is also a convicted sex offender. ^[26] Anonymous noted that their motivation stemmed from a desire to make police officers "experience just a taste of the same kind of violence and terror they dish out on an every day basis." ^[26]

On the same day, the group released information obtained from various government sources. Government data from Anguilla, passwords from servers belonging to the Government of Brazil, the users of Zimbabwe government websites, and data from the Municipality of Mosman council were included. ^[27] The Mosman council dump included mainly publicly available information from the website as well as a not-publicly-available prototype version of the website that had not yet been launched. ^[28] They claimed to also have access to all Zimbabwean government websites ending in gov.zw. ^[27] Most of the information and control were given through SQL injection. Anonymous claimed they targeted Brazil for its what they saw as data manipulation and Zimbabwe for the controversial 2008 Zimbabwean presidential election. ^[29] They also gained control of a website belonging to the Government of Tunisia. They replaced the webpage with a graphic representing Anonymous with text reading "The Internet is the last frontier and we will not let corrupt governments spoil it. We are Anonymous, We are LulzSec, We are People from around the world who are stepping in the name of freedom". ^[30] The release also included a file containing internal mapping of Viacom servers as well as passwords and data from umusic.com, a website of Universal Music Group. ^[29]

On 1 July, Anonymous once again targeted Arizona law enforcement by publishing a number of backdoors that could be used to access Arizona police servers to Pastebin. Arizona was forced to pull many websites offline for a time. ^[31] Websites affected included those of the Department of Public Safety and Mariposa chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. They also claimed to have found "anti- Muslim" emails during the attack. ^[32]

On 4 July, Anonymous released a document containing 27 administrative usernames and passwords from an Apple Inc. system used to operate online technical support follow-up surveys. ^{[33] [34]} The encrypted passwords were taken from an SQL database. ^[35]

On 3 July, Anonymous hacked into the database of the Democrat Party of Orange County, Florida. They published a partial membership list and a handbook for precinct committee members. ^[36]

Actions by other groups and individuals

The original announcement of Operation Anti-Security included a call from LulzSec to spread the name "AntiSec" through physical graffiti. ^[11] A few days after, a number of locations in Mission Beach, San Diego were vandalized with pieces of graffiti reading the phrase. ^{[37] [38]}

On 4 July, the Fox News Twitter feed was hacked and false tweets reporting that President of the United States Barrack Obama has been shot three times and killed were sent from the account. ^[39] The Script Kiddies, a group with close ties to Anonymous including two hackers with former membership in the group, claimed responsibility for the attack and hoax. The group claimed that the action was in the name of Operation Anti-Security and that they would continue looking to expose information on corporations "to assist with antisec." ^[40] The United States Secret Service is investigating the incident as a threat on the President. ^[41]

On 4 July, someone going by the name f1esc posted a file to The Pirate Bay containing 600 megabytes of information described as national "AU election data" and labelled with the tag #Antisec. In reality, the data concerned the 2011 New South Wales state election and was taken from a government website designed to provide election results where the data was publicly available, and the data proved freely accessible information instead of a hack. ^[42]

References

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