Anonymous operating system prompts security warnings

More than 26,000 people have downloaded an operating system which members of the Anonymous hacker group claim to have created.

The software is based on a version of the open-source operating system Linux and comes outfitted with lots of website sniffing and security tools.

The "official" Anonymous group has distanced itself from the software.

In a widely circulated tweet, AnonOps claimed the operating system was riddled with viruses.

Tool box

The operating system is available via the Source Forge website - a well-known repository for many custom code projects.

The 1.5GB download is based on Ubuntu - one of the most popular versions of the Linux operating system. The software's creators say they put it together for "education purposes to checking the security of web pages (sic)".

It asked people not to use it to destroy webpages.

Soon after the operating system became available, the AnonOps account on Twitter posted a message saying it was fake and "wrapped in trojans".

The creators of the OS denied it was infected with viruses adding that, in the world of open-source software, "there were no viruses".

Code check

After downloading and running the software, Rik Ferguson, director of Trend Micro's European security research efforts, said it was "a functional OS with a bunch of pre-installed tools that can be used for things like looking for [database] vulnerabilities or password cracking".

It also included tools such as Tor that can mask a person's online activities. In many ways, he said, it was a pale imitation of a version of Linux known as Back Track that also comes with many security tools already installed.

Mr Ferguson said he was starting work to find out if there were any viruses or booby-traps buried in the code.

Graham Cluley, senior researcher at hi-tech security firm Sophos, wondered who would be tempted to use it.

"Who would want to put their trust in a piece of unknown software written by unknown people on a webpage that they don't know is safe or not?" he asked.

He warned people to be very wary, adding that some hacktivists keen to support the work of Anonymous had been tricked earlier in the year into installing a booby-trapped attack tool.

"Folks would be wise to be very cautious," he said.

UFC President Hacked After Going toe-to-toe with Anonymous

Summary: Anonymous took control of UFC's Web site briefly and that led to UFC President Dana White calling them 'terrorists.'

In a recent interview, mixed-martial arts chief Dana White suggested that members of the hacktivist group Anonymous were "cowards" and "terrorists."

White, who helped found the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which nation's largest promoter of mixed-martial arts fights, then engaged alleged members of Anonymous in a debate via Twitter about his support for the controversial and now dead Stop Online Piracy Act and the morality of hacking sites as a political statement.

According to a report, Anonymous got the final word. Shortly after the debate, someone posted to the Internet White's social security number, mobile phone number, address and for a brief period his wife's name.

White is only the latest copyright owner or public figure to see their personal information posted to the Web as part of hack attacks launched by Anonymous. The group is accused of circulating personal information belonging to Jeff Bewkes, CEO of media conglomerate Time Warner, and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

The attacks began when Anonymous hacked into UFC's Web site a week ago and briefly redirected traffic to a site associated with the group. That's when White made his comments about cowards and terrorists. On Thursday evening a Twitter debate ensued between White and @YourAnonNews, a Twitter account closely associated with Anonymous.

The debate was heated for a while but then both sides seemed to agree to disagree and that was it. Or at least that was it until White's personal information was published.

This is what White told MMA Fighting which seemed to draw the ire of Anonymous: "The way this whole thing has gone down, them hacking our site is the best thing they ever could have done for us. Because what that does is, now, you look like terrorists and now a lot of people who were afraid of you now hate you. Is this bill (SOPA) perfect? No. No bill is perfect. I think this thing started off with the right idea. Stealing is stealing.

You can read the entire Twitter debate here.

Anonymous inventing its own DDos tool

Anonymous may abandon its current DDoS tool LOIC and develop a more powerful replacement to protect hackers from detection. LOIC was effective in Operation Payback, but it's also the reason hackers have been identified and arrested.

The new tool, supposedly called #RefRef, will use Javascript and SQL to attack a target website and use the site's own processing power against it. RefRef will be platform independent so it can be used off any device that supports Javascript including mobile phones.

Anonymous reportedly tested #RefRef against PasteBin, which was not too happy with the effectiveness of the test. A 17 second test crippled the website for 42 minutes. The hacker group is supposedly gearing up to release the LOIC replacement this September.

Anonymous, LulzSec Urges Paypal BoyCott, Condemns FBi Raids

Anonymous is seriously lashing out today at the FBI and especially at PayPal, urging users of the electronic payments site to empty their accounts.

We encourage anyone using PayPal to immediately close their accounts and consider an alternative. The first step to being truly free is not putting one's trust into a company that freezes accounts when it feels like, or when it is pressured by the U.S. government. PayPal's willingness to fold to legislation should be proof enough that they don't deserve the customers they get. They do not deserve your business, and they do not deserve your respect.

Join us in our latest operation against PayPal - tweet pictures of your account closure, tell us on IRC, spread the word. Anonymous has become a powerful channel of information, and unlike the governments of the world, we are here to fight for you. Always.

The group wants supporters to empty their accounts and avoid using the payment service in protest against the prosecution of a university student who allegedly participated in denial of service attacks against PayPal last year. Mercedes Haefer, a 20-year-old journalism student at the university of Nevada, is among around 14 people facing hacking charges punishable by a sentence of up to 15 years imprisonment and a fine of $500,000. It has been alleged that Haefer had used her home PC to attack PayPal's systems.

In response, Anonymous and LulzSec put out a statement calling for a boycott of PayPal, as the first phase of #OpPayPal.

In recent weeks, we've found ourselves outraged at the FBI's willingness to arrest and threaten those who are involved in ethical, modern cyber operations. Law enforcement continues to push its ridiculous rules upon us - Anonymous "suspects" may face a fine of up to 500,000 USD with the addition of 15 years' jailtime, all for taking part in a historical activist movement. Many of the already-apprehended Anons are being charged with taking part in DDoS attacks against corrupt and greedy organizations, such as PayPal.

What the FBI needs to learn is that there is a vast difference between adding one's voice to a chorus and digital sit-in with Low Orbit Ion Cannon, and controlling a large botnet of infected computers. And yet both of these are punishable with exactly the same fine and sentence.

In addition to this horrific law enforcement incompetence, PayPal continues to withhold funds from WikiLeaks, a beacon of truth in these dark times. By simply standing up for ourselves and uniting the people, PayPal still sees it fit to wash its hands of any blame, and instead encourages and assists law enforcement to hunt down participants in the AntiSec movement.

Quite simply, we, the people, are disgusted with these injustices. We will not sit down and let ourselves be trampled upon by any corporation or government. We are not scared of you, and that is something for you to be scared of. We are not the terrorists here: you are.

Anonymous is now claiming through its Twitter account that PayPal has lost more than 9,000 account in just a couple of hours. The group also claimed that PayPal had taken down its Web page where people can cancel their accounts, though the site seemed to be up and running normally.

WikiLeaks was quick to crow that Anonymous' campaign dealt a "$933M stock crash" this morning for PayPal parent eBay. Shares in eBay did drop about 3 percent at the market open, but have since recovered somewhat.

PayPal was not immediately available for comment, according to CNET's reporter.

Last December, PayPal released to WikiLeaks all existing funds in its account up to that time but cut off the ability of the whistleblowing site to receive future funds from supporters via its PayPal account.

By caving into the law enforcement establishment in freezing the WikiLeaks account, PayPal doesn't deserve the business or respect of its customers, says Anonymous.

In recent weeks Anonymous and LulzSec have rarely stayed with the same target for more than a day at a time, so it will be interesting to see how long #OpPayPal lasts or how it evolves. Security firm Panda has already spotted chatter suggesting a move towards illegal tactics is already being discussed, at least.

LulzSec, Anonymous pose big challenges says Former DHS chief Chertoff

Former Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said combating groups like LulzSec and Anonymous pose a unique problem for law enforcement because “the big challenge is attribution.” However, it’s possible that the U.S. government could find itself in a cyberwar with a network.

Chertoff, speaking in New York at a lunch hosted by Opera Solutions, an analytics company, gave a talk largely on cybersecurity. He noted that the U.S. needs to form a cyberattack doctrine that outlines all the nuances of attacks and various degrees of response.

The hardest part—given the high-profile attacks from leaderless groups—is finding the right actors involved. “Do we respond if we don’t know who had bad intent, but can locate the server that is a weapon against us? Do we take out the server in real life or cyberspace? There’s not going to be a clear line and we may take that server out in physical and cyber domains.”

The big question with dealing with hactivists is finding the line where an attack moves from a law enforcement issue to an act of war. Chertoff said that the government would be reluctant to respond to someone “defacing a Web site or stealing data even sensitive data.” But a loss of life could turn an attack into an act of war.

One hypothetical scenario posed by Chertoff was an attack on air traffic control that led to the loss of life. “We are at war with a terrorist network today so we can be at war with a network. When attacks moves from criminality to something that warrants a military response depends,” he said. “This is going to be very fluid.”

Chertoff’s talk was notable because it opened the door to a point where a cyberattack could lead to a response to take out a server. Welcome to the new world.

Other key items from Chertoff:

• Analytics will play a key role in security as the never-ending flow of data will be utilized by both the private sector and government in cooperation.
• He said it was unclear whether the “huge rash of stories about cyberattacks” meant an “increased appetite for these type of intrusions” or just more attention paid to cybersecurity.
• The government needs to create a doctrine on what would be an act of war in the event of an cyberattack. This doctrine would revolve around the following:

1. Determining what attacks are most important and have degrees of response.
2. Consider the vector of attack. Network attacks are the most common, but the supply chain may be more important, said Chertoff. “The big issue we have to be concerned about is the supply chain. The ability to check every chip is not practical. How ensure ourselves that we have hardware and software we can trust? We do need to manage the risk,” he said.
3. Dealing with all kinds of actors. What’s the response against a hactivist, a kid or government?

Spanish Police Arrest Suspected Hackers Linked To Anonymous: AnonOps vows revenge

Three people suspected of being involved in attacks against websites belonging to Sony, Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia, Italian energy company Enel, and the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia, and New Zealand have been arrested in Spain. All three were claimed to be the leadership of hacktivist organization Anonymous in Spain.

The individuals are accused of performing and organizing large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that took their victims' Web servers offline. The detainees were also claimed to have attacked the websites of Spain's Central Electoral Board on May 18, and later the sites of the Catalan police and the UGT trade union.

The arrests were made after investigation work by the Brigada de Investigación Tecnológica (BIT), the cybercrime division of Spain's civilian police force. With these arrests, Spain joins the UK, US, and Netherlands in having taken police action against Anonymous members. During the investigation, more than 2,000,000 lines of IRC logs were examined to track down the people involved.

The three were arrested in Almeria, Barcelona, and Valencia. One of those arrested was said to have set up an IRC server in their home, and this server was used by all three to coordinate their various hack attacks. Those attacks were DDoS attacks, performed using Anonymous' preferred LOIC tool; LOIC has an automatic mode that uses IRC for command and control. Also found were malware creation tools and WiFi cracking software; two of the people arrested apparently had no Internet connection themselves, instead depending on the WiFi connections of others.

Though Sony was one of the organizations victimized by the hacktivists, the official statement issued by the police did not indicate any suspicion of involvement in the hacks that forced Sony to take Playstation Network offline for weeks, nor the subsequent hacks made on Sony Web properties by LulzSec. Rather, the three hackers appear to have been involved with the denial of service attacks of early April. Vocal Anonymous faction AnonOps has long denied that Anonymous had any involvement with the broader, more serious attack against Playstation Network.

When news of the arrests became public, AnonOps was swift to issue a warning to the Spanish authorities: Expect us.

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