‘Anonymous’ Warns NATO: ‘This Is No Longer Your World’

(techland.time.com) … NATO’s report, issued last month, warned about the rising tide of politically-motivated cyberattacks, singling out Anonymous as the most sophisticated and high-profile of the known hacktivist groups:

“Today, the ad hoc international group of hackers and activists is said to have thousands of operatives and has no set rules or membership. It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths. The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted,” the report read, also asking, “Can one invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty after a cyber attack? And what response mechanisms should the Alliance employ against the attacker? Should the retaliation be limited to cyber means only, or should conventional military strikes also be considered?”

In response, Anonymous issued a lengthy statement (Google-cached version; the site is having server issues currently) that says, in part:

“We do not wish to threaten anybody’s way of life. We do not wish to dictate anything to anybody. We do not wish to terrorize any nation.

We merely wish to remove power from vested interests and return it to the people – who, in a democracy, it should never have been taken from in the first place.

The government makes the law. This does not give them the right to break it. If the government was doing nothing underhand or illegal, there would be nothing ’embarassing’ [sic] about Wikileaks revelations, nor would there have been any scandal emanating from HBGary. The resulting scandals were not a result of Anonymous’ or Wikileaks’ revelations, they were the result of the CONTENT of those revelations. And responsibility for that content can be laid solely at the doorstep of policymakers who, like any corrupt entity, naively believed that they were above the law and that they would not be caught.

A lot of government and corporate comment has been dedicated to ‘how we can avoid a similar leak in the future’. Such advice ranges from better security, to lower levels of clearance, from harsher penalties for whistleblowers, to censorship of the press.

Our message is simple: Do not lie to the people and you won’t have to worry about your lies being exposed. Do not make corrupt deals and you won’t have to worry about your corruption being laid bare. Do not break the rules and you won’t have to worry about getting in trouble for it.”

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/06/10/anonymous-warns-nato-this-is-not-your-world/#ixzz1TdJbdt5N

Anonymous: A Message To NATO

Anonymous Hacked NATO

(pcmag.com) Anonymous said Thursday morning that it had breached the databases of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and was sitting on about 1GB of data.

“Yes, #NATO was breached. And we have lots of restricted material. With some simple injection. In the next days, wait for interesting data,” the group tweetedvia the @AnonymousIRC feed.

The group said it “cannot” publish most of the data because that “would be irresponsible.” This morning, it did post a link to a restricted NATO PDF, which Anonymous said related to the outsourcing of a communications and information system in Kosovo in 2008, but the doc crashed because of too many connections. Last night, it posted a 2007 document about a similar IT project in Afghanistan.

A NATO spokesman told the Telegraph that it is investigating the claims.

The move comes about two months after NATO called out Anonymous in a draft general report about information and national security. That report noted that “Anonymous is becoming more and more sophisticated and could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files.”

NATO pointed to Anonymous’ February hack of HBGary Federal, which happened days after the firm’s then-CEO Aaron Barr told the Financial Times that he knew and planned to expose the identities of leaders behind the Anonymous collective. The subsequent Anonymous attack resulted in the defacing of Barr’s online networking profiles and exposure of 71,800 e-mails at AnonLeaks, prompting Barr’s resignation.

“It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths,” NATO concluded. “The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted.”

In response, Anonymous said NATO and HBGary Federal were corrupt. “If the government was doing nothing underhand or illegal, there would be nothing ’embarassing’ about Wikileaks revelations, nor would there have been any scandal emanating from HBGary,” Anonymous said at the time. “Our message is simple: do not lie to the people and you won’t have to worry about your lies being exposed.”

Anonymous also warned NATO not to “make the mistake of challenging Anonymous.”

The organization apparently did not heed that warning in Anonymous’ eyes. “Hi NATO. Yes we haz more of your delicious data. You wonder where from? No hints, your turn. You call it war; we laugh at your battleships,” Anonymous tweeted later this morning.

Read more: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388823,00.asp