'Anonymous': How dangerous is hacker network defending WikiLeaks?

Yet Operation Payback's "anonymous" global call to action to avenge Mr. Assange and to keep WikiLeaks information flowing free onto the Internet, has resonated and apparently garnered considerable firepower from both individuals and botnet operators in a number of countries, say Internet security experts.

Operating on the model of inciting to action like-minded individuals – a so-called "hive mind" approach according to the group's literature – Anonymous has a track record of several years of Internet-based protest attacks and pranks on those it deems to have opposing values. Previous Anonymous targets include a white supremacist website, an alleged Internet child predator, YouTube, and the Church of Scientology, according to published reports and experts who have studied the group.

"This group has a history of tongue-in-cheek attacks and pranks," says Patrick Underwood, a University of Washington researcher on online communities including Anonymous. "It is called anonymous because it really is. You have a small group that communicates entirely anonymously. Someone basically says 'We should give this thing a name, make some flyers put up on the [Internet] bulletin board saying, 'This is what happened. We think it's wrong. If you want to do something come to this website and we'll do something about it.' "

Hacktivism – the use of nonviolent albeit illegal digital weapons toward political ends – is hardly new either. Nor is defacing websites, denial of service attacks, and the hacking and sabotage of computer systems – all things hacktivists specialize in doing.

"One thing that's new about the Anonymous group is that they're not a group in any formally designated sense," says Ted Welser, a sociologist at University of Ohio who studies online communities. "This is more of an amorphous community. They post comments on sites like 4-chan where anyone can show up. The handle is anonymous for everyone. It includes teens and older, hugely varied, people with some sort of technical skills, from college-age kids to 14-year-olds in their parents’ basement."

"If you go online and join in an operation and help the cause, if you act under the umbrella of Anonymous, or if you show up for an event, then you are 'Anonymous,' " says Gregg Housh, an unofficial spokesman for Anonymous and co-creator in 2008 of one of the Anonymous forums, WhyWeProtest.net.

By day he is a technician manager at Boston company Geek Choice. By night, he goes by the title of "activist associated with Anonymous." He is very careful to mention that he has not participated in any of the DDoS attacks.

A global mission

Anonymous activists are chatting back and forth on the Internet Relay Chat system, he says. At one point Wednesday, he says, everyone began saying hello from their respective country, giving a sense of the global nature of the mission.

"You saw this list of the world," Housh says. "Every continent but the frozen one seems to be in that channel."

But to some observers, however, what's happening with Operation Payback may be more about a growing mob or vigilante mentality on the Internet – even if it pulls in idealistic people with a notion that the Internet needs to be free.

Anonymous is urging others to join in taking action – without thinking too deeply about the ethics or consequences, say those who have observed the workings of the group on websites and chat forums.

"The people doing this say they're ticked off, that they want to do something, that these people are bad, so I'm going to do a DoS attack," says David Dittrich, an expert in denial of service attacks at the University of Washington. "But this is the way a mob operates. No way can it be ethically justified and it just feeds on itself through anger and agitation. It may be anonymous now – and it may get bigger – but it can't end well for people who do this. Someday they may kick the wrong hive."

Monitor staff writer Stephen Kurczy contributed to this article.

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