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"Security Expert" takes on 4chan, check out his twitter

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G

Guevara

Member
What’s it like being the victim of an attack by Anonymous? Pretty unpleasant. Aaron Barr found that out yesterday when members of the loosely-knit online group of campaigners hacked into his Twitter account, brought down his company’s Web site and put more than 50,000 of his personal emails online.

Barr is the CEO of a tiny software security firm HBGary Federal based in Washington D.C., and had recently been perusing Facebook and IRC (chat) channels under a fake alias to gather covert research on Anonymous. Then he (sort of) took his findings public: Barr was quoted in the Financial Times a few days ago as saying he had uncovered names of senior figures of Anonymous, and denying he would deliver them to the police.

Still, several members of Anonymous didn’t like the story. As the Super Bowl was getting underway last night, a subset of the group posted Barr’s cell, home address and social security number through his own, hacked, Twitter account. He has yet to regain control. Read the full story of the attack here.

One of the five Anonymous members carrying out the attacks (it doesn’t take many) told me they were galvanized after finding out from Barr’s emails that he had, in fact, been planning to meet the FBI this morning and was planning to try and negotiate a sale of his information on Anonymous; namely, a 23-page document purporting to show names and addresses of Anonymous members.

The Anonymous member said they had recovered the document, but instead of destroying it, posted a link to it on Barr’s Twitter feed, saying the names were nonsense.

Barr counters that it’s not his real research. “It’s an old copy of my research document. It’s not the current copy. Like any research it gets more accurate.” He also denies that he was planning to try and sell personal information on Anonymous to the FBI, which has an open investigation into the group. “I did have a meeting with them this morning,” he says. But while it probably had something to do with the FT story, he adds that he didn’t know what it was to be about. “They called me.”

Why did he talk to the Financial Times in the first place? Barr says he had been preparing to give a talk at the B-Sides security conference in San Francisco on Feb. 14 about information security in social media, and he wanted to drum up some publicity ahead of time to help spur the debate.

“Do I regret it now? Sure,” he says, with a short laugh. “I’m getting personal threats from people, and I have two kids. I have two four-year old kids. Nothing is worth that.”

The threats have come through Facebook including one commenter who wrote: “I’m gonna find out all the people that you know and cause them pain. Death is too good for you.” Last night Barr also received about half a dozen phone calls to his cell. He only answered one of them – a woman who quickly hung up. The rest were voicemails: “They didn’t actually speak,” he says. “One was singing something. Some of them just hung up. One guy just had weird noises in the background.”

To his credit, Barr did not expect Anonymous’ reaction to be quite so ferocious. “I had expected some potential retribution,” he says. “I knew some folks would take my research as some kind of personal attack which it absolutely was not. I thought they might take down our Web site with a DDos attack. I did not prepare for them to do what they did.”

For now Barr is working on damage control to his reputation as well as trying to make sense of what’s happened. “I just feel a bit exhausted by the whole thing,” he says. His biggest problem is the thousands of personal emails that have been released into cyberspace.

“I’m going to contact people I’ve exchanged e-mails with and just tell them what’s going on. The rest I’ll deal with as it comes,” he says.

Barr adds that Anonymous is also not quite done with him. “They’re trying to pop my home router. I’m watching IP traffic and they’re trying to get my home box,” he says. “So I just unplugged it.”
Click to expand...
Forbes
Check out his twitter, lol
His website is now just a networksolutions "Coming Soon" page, but was this manifesto for a while
 
MisterHero

MisterHero

Super Member
regarding the last message on the twitter, "shoe on head" is a GAF meme

GAFers aren't supposed to harass people! =(
 
M

Messypandas

Member
MXwr1.jpg


got me
 
G

Guevara

Member
Too Long, Won't Read Version:

  1. Computer Security CEO Aaron Barr tells the Financial Times that he is infiltrating 4chan
  2. Barr prepares document to sell to the FBI that names names
  3. 4chan steals the document from Barr's server and distributes it freely, claiming it was garbage anyway
  4. 4chan also distributes a huge volume of Barr's personal and professional emails
  5. 4chan also hacks Barrs twitter
  6. Barr still doesn't have control over his email or his twitter accounts
 
bengraven

bengraven

Member
MisterHero said:
really? goddamit

I thought it started in that one thread
Click to expand...

It's actually more of a YTMND thing.

And remember, there are few memes that were ever actually started on GAF.
 
P

Pai Pai Master

Banned
Am I missing something? Why do so many refer to 4chan as "Anonymous" as if it's some sort of serious organization? Do they not realize that they are the same thing and that most of these people are just internet trolls who like to fuck with people?
 
A

antonz

Member
makes sense they have to save face after the issue with Th3J3st3r and a few of their goons getting busted in the UK because of Th3J3st3r.
 
P

Pinko Marx

Banned
I lol'd at "senior members of anonymous".

Pai Pai Master said:
Am I missing something? Why do so many refer to 4chan as "Anonymous" as if it's some sort of serious organization? Do they not realize that they are the same thing and that most of these people are just internet trolls who like to fuck with people?
Click to expand...

Thanks to the Scientology protests and the Wikileaks buisness, those not in the know now see anonymous as some sort of "hacktivist" group or someshit.
 
I

itxaka

Defeatist
Guevara said:
Too Long, Won't Read Version:

  1. Computer Security CEO Aaron Barr tells the Financial Times that he is infiltrating 4chan
  2. Barr prepares document to sell to the FBI that names names
  3. 4chan steals the document from Barr's server and distributes it freely, claiming it was garbage anyway
  4. 4chan also distributes a huge volume of Barr's personal and professional emails
  5. 4chan also hacks Barrs twitter
  6. Barr still doesn't have control over his email or his twitter accounts
Click to expand...


Also their webpage was hacked.
 
E

ElectricBlue187

Member
Even shorter version: dude claims to be a security expert who has leet hax to find anon but apparently isn't smart enough to use a strong password and he's also a liar who wanted attention
 
S

SouthernDragon

Member
Hey, look, there's a pre-internet mentality and a post-internet mentality. Those with a pre-internet mentality try to put 4Chan and its anonymous crew into a box they can identify. "Internet terrorists" "hackers" "hierarchy of Anonymous" ect.

If anything, they're just a group of tech savy gangmembers, if I had to describe it to someone not innately familiar with the internet. The security dude intruded into their territory.
 
Z

ZephyrFate

Banned
Anonymous is, at its core, just a group of underground hackers with a bunch of tech knowledge. Their 'threat level' is hilarious because they're almost purely a reactionary force. In other words, it's pretty foolish for people to go after them.
 
M

MThanded

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
MisterHero said:
regarding the last message on the twitter, "shoe on head" is a GAF meme

GAFers aren't supposed to harass people! =(
Click to expand...
not even . lol
 
DietRob

DietRob

i've been begging for over 5 years.
bengraven said:
It's actually more of a YTMND thing.

And remember, there are few memes that were ever actually started on GAF.
Click to expand...

We have airplane/sunset.gif.

That is ours right, right?


On topic posting of the SS # jumped way over the line. The letter posted on their website was ether though.
 
P

Pinko Marx

Banned
ZephyrFate said:
Anonymous is, at its core, just a group of underground hackers with a bunch of tech knowledge.
Click to expand...


Wrong again. They're really just a buncha suburban white kids, sitting in mom's basement, fapping to dickgirls and other alternative types of porn, and occasionally hacking someone that dares speak foul of them on the internet.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
The only GAF meme that I ever to my knowledge broke out to anywhere else was "I don't know how much you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert)..."

*sigh* Anonymous...bunch of whiners in basements.
 
Z

ZephyrFate

Banned
Pinko Marx said:
Wrong again. They're really just a buncha suburban white kids, sitting in mom's basement, fapping to dickgirls and other alternative types of porn, and occasionally hacking someone that dares speak foul of them on the internet.
Click to expand...
Oh okay, because suburban white kids can take down multiple websites that claim to have strong security.

Either they're just really lucky with their targets being completely inept or they have some hacking knowledge.
 
A

antonz

Member
ZephyrFate said:
Oh okay, because suburban white kids can take down multiple websites that claim to have strong security.

Either they're just really lucky with their targets being completely inept or they have some hacking knowledge.
Click to expand...
Well most of anonymous are scriptkiddies for sure. There is of course talented people who know more then pushing start on a script but they are far smaller in number.

The whole reason Anonymous has declared war on the UK now is because a bunch of script kiddies got caught when a real hacker infiltrated and edited the script most popularly used and changed it to report their ip address as they script attack
 
F

Ferrio

Banned
So his big plan was just to go into irc channels? Wow... glad we need security experts to figure out tactic.

Wonder if this will affect his company's buisness.
 
J

Jangocube

Banned
Pinko Marx said:
Wrong again. They're really just a buncha suburban white kids, sitting in mom's basement, fapping to dickgirls and other alternative types of porn, and occasionally hacking someone that dares speak foul of them on the internet.
Click to expand...

Mmmmmmm, racism.
 
P

Pinko Marx

Banned
ZephyrFate said:
Oh okay, because suburban white kids can take down multiple websites that claim to have strong security.

Either they're just really lucky with their targets being completely inept or they have some hacking knowledge.
Click to expand...

You said at the core. The core people that you could say are apart of "anonymous" are just random kids that like laughing at silly shit on the internet. Of course some of those are hackers with some tech knowledge, the others are just goons that download programs like LOIC and DDOS whoever they're told.

Jangocube said:
Mmmmmmm, racism.
Click to expand...

Apart of a balanced internet argument.
 
H

hydragonwarrior

Member
XD I still remember "put shoe on head", although I can argue that I began that saying on the livejasmin chatrooms which then spread all around ytmnd - but who cares, that was a fun night lol
 
C

ConfusingJazz

Member
Pai Pai Master said:
Am I missing something? Why do so many refer to 4chan as "Anonymous" as if it's some sort of serious organization? Do they not realize that they are the same thing and that most of these people are just internet trolls who like to fuck with people?
Click to expand...

Because not all of 4chan takes part in Anonymous activities, nor is all of Anonymous in 4chan.
 
V

vordhosbn

Banned
What's the point in hijacking his twitter account? They might humiliate him, but wouldnt' that just push him to give the info to FBI?
 
T

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Corran Horn said:
I would correct you but I need some milk first.
Click to expand...

Oh god, I was gonna comment with that old commercial. :lol
 
E

Enco

Member
Any news with 4chan in makes me sad.

I long for the day when all the assholes who fap to it are put behind bars where they belong.
 
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