Anonymous

Easily recognizable by their Guy Fawkes masks, one of the most active online hacking groups is known as Anonymous. They officially labeled themselves in 2008 for their first political move as a hactivist group. They posted a video threatening the church of Scientology and eventually mobilized a group 10,000 strong to gather in the streets to protest of the church's attempt to censor the Internet. The message and unification of the group was swift and successful (Paganini). The group's main method of hacking, as used in this initial protest, is know as distributed denial of service (paganinip). This isn't a very complex attack method - it is simply bombarding or "pinging" a particular web page frequently in order to overwhelm the page with traffic. The effect is blocking the online information of the target from all other Internet users.

But who is the "they" behind this powerful hactivism group? Here again we face the issue associated with online anonymity - an aspect of the Internet allowing the members and leaders of different operations to alter constantly. While the group is protected from prosecution, they subject others to the justice of the multitude. So far the group has been able to reveal personal information such as social security numbers, addresses, emails, cell phone numbers, etc. in order to threaten their targets. The ethical dilemma continues as the group watches...