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Anonymous hackers deface Syria’s Ministry of Defense website

Andrew Couts
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In protest of the brutal tactics of Syria’s government, members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous have defaced the website of the Middle Eastern country’s Ministry of Defense, causing the site to completely shutdown on Monday.

The group posted the following message on the website:

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“To the Syrian people: The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side – tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become. We salute your determination to be non-violent in the face of the regime’s brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is next.

“To the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be tried for treason. No outside enemy could do as much damage to Syria as Bashar Al-Assad has done. Defend your country – rise up against the regime! – Anonymous”

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Anonymous also replaced the official homepage with one featuring the group’s logo, along with images that link to videos of Syrian police and military brutalities and examples of citizen unrest that continues to enveloped the oppressed country. At the bottom of the page, Anonymous provided links to its various Facebook pages and Twitter profiles.

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As The Next Web reports, the source code for the webpage says the URL was “seized for the people by Poppy,” who was presumably the Anonymous member responsible for the defacement, though there has been no official word from any of the official Anoymous outlets that this is the case.

Anonymous, along with its partner in cyber-protest, Lulz Security (LulzSec), have been involved in an increasing number of politically motivated hacks. Just this weekend, members of Anonymous and LulzSec released a 10GB cache of documents that reveal personal information about police officers from more than 50 law-enforcement agencies across the United States.

Entitled “Shooting Sheriffs Saturday,” the data dump contains more than 300 email accounts, police training videos and the identities of individuals who submitted information to authorities via a supposedly anonymous tip system.

The data breach follows the arrest of alleged LulzSec member Jake Davis, 18, by British police, who is said to go by the handle “Topiary.”

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Topics
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With Lulz Security now on permanent hiatus, fellow hacker group Anonymous has filled in the gap with the release of a "counter-cyberterrorism" manual from the US Department of Homeland Security. According to ABC News, which was first to sort through the 650 MB file posted to MegaUpload, the release was originally thought to have come from a certain private security firm whose website went offline soon after Anonymous released the data. It was later found that the information actually comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which originally produced the "Counter Terrorism Defense Initiative" training program in 2009. Accordring to the program's website (which has since been taken offline), the "SENTINAL" program — short for "Security and Network Training Initiative and National Education Laboratory" — "is a national initiative to educate technical personnel in cyberterrorism response and prevention." The program was intended for employees of "public safety, law enforcement, state and local government, public utilities, colleges and universities, and health care providers." And it "focuses on enhancing the prevention, preparedness, and response capabilities of local, state, tribal, and rural public safety jurisdictions."It does not appear that the release contains much that wasn't already publicly available on the Internet. It does, however, provide a list of all the Federal Bureau of Investigation office locations throughout the United States. Other contents of note include stock letters for officially requesting user information from Internet service providers, and various hacking and coutner-hacking tools. In short, there's really nothing much here that a determined person couldn't have found without hacking a single thing.
Regardless of the value of the release, the action shows that the hackers are far from finished. This release is part of the "AntiSec" (anti-cybersecurity) campaign launched by Anonymous and LulzSec (before it disbanded). According to @AnonymousIRC, a 100,000-follower strong Twitter feed that reports on the group's escapades, "all @LulzSec members" are onboard with the #AntiSec campaign. While LulzSec claims that it planned from the beginning to remain a coherent group for 50 days before splitting up, some believe the hacker sect called it quits after a rival gang of hackers, A-Team, released what it claims are the identities and online properties of all of LulzSec's members.

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Sony PS3 hacker George ‘GeoHot’ Hotz ‘works for Facebook’
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Just when you thought the massive hacker stories were over for the evening, another twist comes in: Hacker George 'GeoHot' Hotz, who recently settled a lawsuit with Sony for publishing a PlayStation 3 crack online, now works for Facebook, according to various sources. His exact position with the company is unclear, but he may be on a the development team tasked wit building the social network's rumored new iPad app.
The rumor of Hotz's break into "legitimate" product development comes first from jailbreak hacker Joshua Hill (aka p0isixNinja), who said in a recent interview that Hotz had made the move. Hill reportedly challenged Hotz to a iPad 2 jailbreak duel. (Both hackers come from an iOS-cracking background.) Hotz declined, saying that he wanted to remain out of the attention of the media after the debacle with Sony.
Gabe Rivera, creator of news aggregator Techmeme, said that he noticed on Hotz's Facebook page a message that reads, "Facebook is really an amazing place to work…first hackathon over." Hotz reportedly published that post on June 17, but he is said to have worked at Facebook since May.
Hotz has become somewhat of a symbol for the hacking community. Hacktivist group Anonymous launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Sony in April as retribution for suing Hotz. Coincidentally or not, the DDoS onslaught came at the same time as a monstrous breach of Sony's PlayStation Network put the personal data of as much as 100 million people worldwide at risk.
Those hacks became the preface to an ongoing campaign by Lulz Security, who hacked Sony in a variety of ways. The group later went on to attack everyone from PBS to the CIA. By chance, LulzSec announced tonight that it was disbanding, and would never perform another cyberattack under the LulzSec pirate flag again. There is so far no evidence that GeoHot going corporate has anything to do with LulzSec's sudden death.
Watch the interview with Hill and Craig Fox, founder of My Great Fest jailbreak convention:

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LulzSec and Anonymous unite for Operation Anti-Security
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Despite some speculation about an alleged rift between hacktivist groups LulzSec and Anonymous (which was swiftly denied), the two underground organizations have teamed up to take on the lack of government transparency. According to a LulzSec press release, the two will declare “immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011.”
Dubbing their effort Operation Anti-Security (#AntiSec for Twitter purposes), LulzSec and Anonymous will unite forces to expose faulty handling of user data or poor security measures. While the two groups both have similar operations, their targets and public profiles differ. Anonymous has a business-oriented approach and tends to hack oppressive governments or reportedly corrupt businesses; LulzSec, on the other hand, openly mocks its victims and doesn’t shy away from showmanship. It also makes no qualms about punishing vulnerable sites simply for their lack of security measure. Regardless of who exactly is behind these sects, security firm and government websites (which have frequently been at their mercy) should take notice. “Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments,” the statement reads.
These groups aren’t all talk. Gaming companies' web properties aren’t the only ones affected by the hackers, and the likes of the CIA and security firm HB Gary have also been successfully infiltrated. The site for UK-based Serious Organised Crime Agency was taken down earlier this morning, which LulzSec claimed responsibility for. It has since been restored.
A new era of Internet warfare has been ushered in by these hacktivist groups, and they’ve proven that hardly anyone is safe. How long these operations will last is unknown, and both groups largely claim they genuinely want to bring attention to Web privacy issues as well as the insecure sites consumers put their faith and personal data in. “Do you feel safe with your Facebook accounts, your Google Mail accounts, your Skype accounts? What makes you think a hacker isn’t silently sitting inside all of these right now, sniping out individual people, or perhaps selling them off? You are a peon to these people. A toy. A string of characters with a value,” LulzSec says. “This is what you should be fearful of, not us releasing things publicly.”

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