The effect of Anonymous on Wikileaks, Tunisia & the world

Anyone who is a loyal reader of MyCE news knows that Anonymous has played a pivotal role in rallying individuals all over the world to join in the fight against government oppression and censorship with the WikiLeaks scandal, the revolution in Tunisia, and in earlier Operation Payback missions. Though mainstream press coverage of the groups influence has been sparse after Wikileaks-related DDoS attacks died down, Reuters put out an article this week highlighting the group’s activities and how they have affected these world events.

In their feature article entitled In the chatroom with the cyber guerrillas, reporters Marius Bosch and Georgina Prodhan discuss the history of this type of digital activism, and go inside Anonymous iRC chat rooms to see how Anon communications work.

“Global chaos is not Anonymous’ aim,” the article states. “As the WikiLeaks and Tunisia cases show, the group targets specific institutions and its attacks are designed to temporarily delay more than destroy. Think of them not as acts of cyber war but as high-profile guerrilla strikes.”

Such strikes not only took down the websites for MasterCard and PayPal when they refused to process transactions related to WikiLeaks, but also took down several Tunisian government websites at the height of that nation’s recent revolution as citizens began protesting in the streets. Thousands of Anons from around the world took it upon themselves to fight for the people of Tunisia and even discouraged locals from taking part due to the danger of government persecution. “If you are Tunisian, do not participate in the DDoS attack,” One Anon warned on a communications channel. “Chances are that you will get traced and arrested. Unless you have means to conceal your IP and know what you are doing, do NOT attack.”

Even without the power of the few hundred Tunisian residents who downloaded the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), Anonymous had plenty of activists with their sights set on the Tunisian government. According to security expert Barrett Lyon, there was anywhere between 500 and 10,000 computers taking part in the attacks at any given time.

“This time last week, ex-Tunisian Ben Ali president didn’t think he’d be running for the hills, with Anonymous activists on his heels, “ Jon Newton of P2PNet writes. “There’s no doubt about it. The bastions of corporate and government dominance are being battered down by People to People Power.”

Now, the Anons are banking on their growing numbers to keep them safe from any legal action. “Imagine tracking 9,000 plus computers across the planet for an arrest,” an Anon by the name of Calgarc said in response to a question about covering their tracks.

Bosch and Prodhan point out that this type of “digital activism” is not new. They cite politically-fueled DDoS attacks on Philippine and Estonia government websites in the mid 2000’s, and even against the Church of Scientology in 2008. It is clear, however, that Anonymous support is growing, with over 100,000 copies of the LOIC tool downloaded from sourceforge.net since November.

So, even though you may not be hearing a lot about Anonymous right now, don’t think that their power is waning. Rest assured that we’ll likely hear from them again soon when they decide which injustice they want to fight against next.