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Hissyspit

(45,788 posts)
Wed Feb 5, 2014, 12:46 AM Feb 2014

War on Anonymous: British Spies Attacked Hackers, Snowden Docs Show

Source: NBC News

War on Anonymous: British Spies Attacked Hackers, Snowden Docs Show

BY MARK SCHONE

A secret British spy unit created to mount cyber attacks on Britain’s enemies has waged war on the hacktivists of Anonymous and LulzSec, according to documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and obtained by NBC News.

The blunt instrument the spy unit used to target hackers, however, also interrupted the web communications of political dissidents who did not engage in any illegal hacking. It may also have shut down websites with no connection to Anonymous.

According to the documents, a division of Government Communications Headquarters Communications (GCHQ), the British counterpart of the NSA, shut down communications among Anonymous hacktivists by launching a “denial of service” (DDOS) attack – the same technique hackers use to take down bank, retail and government websites – making the British government the first Western government known to have conducted such an attack.

The documents, from a PowerPoint presentation prepared for a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV, show that the unit known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, boasted of using the DDOS attack – which it dubbed Rolling Thunder -- and other techniques to scare away 80 percent of the users of Anonymous internet chat rooms.

The existence of JTRIG has never been previously disclosed publicly.

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/war-anonymous-british-spies-attacked-hackers-snowden-docs-show-n21361

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Thinkingabout

(30,058 posts)
1. How many really think the NSA is continue to operate in the process used prior to June 2013?
Wed Feb 5, 2014, 01:09 AM
Feb 2014

Doubt they are still running those operations, so what information may have been gathered is not the way the NSA runs today.

A Simple Game

(9,214 posts)
8. I don't think they have changed their agenda, what makes you think they changed?
Wed Feb 5, 2014, 04:32 PM
Feb 2014

They are in business to steal commercial information, embarrassing information on other countries, friend and foe, and gather personal information on the general public, I doubt anything has changed.

You didn't think they were ever in business to thwart terrorism did you?

Thinkingabout

(30,058 posts)
10. Oh, really, I wonder why wonder boy has not put out this information. My point was
Wed Feb 5, 2014, 05:13 PM
Feb 2014

they have changed their mode of operation procedure, do not use the same procedures they have used in the past.

 

rhett o rick

(55,981 posts)
2. Some among us are oblivious to the war that's being waged all around us.
Wed Feb 5, 2014, 01:17 AM
Feb 2014

This OP discusses one of the more important battle fields. The plutocrat's hackers vs. the People's hackers. The plutocrats of course have all their wealth behind them plus the government's resources. The People's hackers have liberty and freedom behind them.

loudsue

(14,087 posts)
3. Anonymous has all my love and admiration behind them. To me, they are the hope
Wed Feb 5, 2014, 02:05 AM
Feb 2014

for the rest of us against the very crooked power brokers.

Blue_Tires

(55,445 posts)
11. Then of course there are the freelancers, and the 'war' gets a million times murkier...
Wed Feb 5, 2014, 06:01 PM
Feb 2014

It's not quite the sharply-defined "good guys v. baddies" as we would all hope -- Most hackers are more likely to be motivated by money, not politics....

And I'd personally hesitate before calling anonymous "good," or on the side of "the people"...Anonymous operates independently and does what it wants...Sometimes their acts happen to serve the public interest, and sometimes they don't...

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