Weird hacks from Anonymous
The hacktivist group Anonymous has been active for a while now and has been involved in several major hacking activities, which according to them are the means to protest against the injustice of the various government organisations.
Some of their weird hacks include:
#OpSony
On 2nd April 2011, Anonymous attacked the website of Sony. It further led to a series of attack against the company and affected their websites and the PlayStation Network. The attacks were in response to the legal action taken by Sony against George Hotz who wrote application enabling users of PlayStation to install local software on their gaming consoles.
Email leak of Bank of America
Anonymous leaked thousands of internal emails from Bank of America on the website bankofamericasucks.com after these emails were given to them by an Employee of BoA who was working with the bank for 7 years. The leak was aimed at exposing the unfair and corrupt practices of the bank for mortgage, as alleged by Anonymous.
Operation Payback
WikiLeaks created a storm by leaking millions of top secret files of the governments worldwide. In an attempt to stop WikiLeaks from doing it, the US government took action against the WikiLeaks founder and whistle blower Julian Assange. This also resulted in several online service providers that were earlier being used by WikiLeaks from stopping providing service to them. These included PayPal, Visa and MasterCard. Anonymous, in support of WikiLeaks, attacked the websites of these companies and brought down the services of Visa and MasterCard on 8th December 2010.
Attack on HBGary Barr
The attack was a retaliation to the claim of the cyber-security company HBGary Barr, that it had infiltrated Anonymous. Anonymous hacked the website of the company and posted a letter on its homepage. Anonymous also leaked the company’s internal emails and details of the CEO Aaron Barr.
Attack on YouTube
YouTube suspended the account of one of the members of Anonymous who uploaded music videos on his channel. In retaliation, Anonymous requested its members to attack YouTube by creating fake accounts and uploading porn videos.
