The beauty of the hacktivist group is that you can cut off its arm and another will regenerate.
Years back, a group calling itself Anonymous first struck. It busted out a bunch of documents from the rather powerful Church of Scientology. I didn't think much of it at the time and I reckoned the Church would sue someone and its poor members would feel the wrath of the justice system in America. You know, like the student who shared 30 songs and now owes $675,000 for copyright violations.
I figured somehow Anonymous would be tracked down and jailed or tortured or killed by a drone. Something bad would happen. Surely, the Anonymous crowd was doomed.
But no.
Over the years, one or two members have been arrested for this or that, but the core group prevails. And who knows the core group? One guy? A gal? A team? Putin? Blofeld? The Basque Separatists? Fired engineers from a think tank? Older guys? Kids? Twenty-somethings? Who?
That's the intriguing beauty of it. Nobody knows. In fact, the group could be imaginary or an idea that hackers fall back on based on some secret agreement.
Its most recent exploits leaked a boatload of Justice Department memos and hacked of various Chicago websites. I doubt this is coordinated by a central authority. It seems that people who do these attacks and call themselves Anonymous just "know" what to do. There is a perceived right and wrong and, to be honest, it is not that hard to spot which is which.
Did the WikiLeaks release of thousands of govenment cables do any real damage to anyone or kill someone? No. It embarrassed a lot of people. From the government's perspective, that's bad, but from the public perspective, it's good. With everything classified as secret nowadays, we no longer have any idea if we are being ripped off by our elected officials.
But let me get back to the issue at hand. Will Anonymous ever be caught, stifled, or shut down? If so, will something else rise in its place?
I personally think it is a phenomenon here to stay. It's not your typical script kiddie operation that gets caught because a guy brags about his feats in an IRC chat room, not realizing he forgot to route through some proxy and is there naked, IP address exposed. With Anonymous, we see no gloating. It's serious hacking with the credit going to the nebulous group.
So, what can a government of corporations do to stop these guys? Everyone is vulnerable.
First, ask yourself why you are vulnerable. It's likely because you've stupidly put everything on a worldwide network that is open—wide open. Cloud services will actually make this sort of thing easier and our government itself is adopting cloud services as a way to save money (as if it is actually into saving money).
I said it before and I'll say it again. If you do not like this sort of thing, cut off Internet access. Of course, nobody will do that. People will just fight and fight.
I suppose the good news is that Americans will get a closer look at where our tax dollars are being spent. This will never end, so just sit back and enjoy the show.
You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.
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