Hackers? Heck, no, they're 'anti-corruption hactivists'

The hacktivists have struck again, and they were especially busy on Monday.

By now, almost everyone has heard of the alarming Fourth of July prank by a group called Script Kiddies, which hacked the Twitter account of Fox News to create fake posts about the assassination of President Barack Obama. The same day, Apple was also threatened with attack when a group called Anonymous tweeted that the tech company was on its watchlist.

Additionally, Anonymous is continuing its cyberwar against Orlando , a city in Florida, by shutting down government sites to protest a new city law that prohibits charitable organisations from serving free food to the homeless without a permit.

And on Sunday, the hackers also appear to have hit home: India’s National Security Guard (NSG) reportedly  experienced an attack on its website.

A larger wave of activism

These campaigns all appear to be part of a wave of internet activism by hackers flying under the pro-government transparency and anti-corruption banner known as anti-security, or “antisec.” These tech whizzes are loosely organised under various and ever-shifting alliances and names that emerge from a leaderless web collaborative known as Anonymous.

Lulz Security (aka LulzSec), an Anonymous off-shoot, became the first to get the public’s attention this spring when it began garnering headlines for its merry yet disruptive online pranksterism, hacking into the websites of Sony, the Central Intelligence Agency, the International Monetary Fund, and the Arizona state government. In some cases, sensitive and personal consumer information were put at risk. But soon after law enforcement seemed hot on the trail of LulzSec in late June, it announced the end of its 50-day anti-government rampage.

In its farewell, the group wrote that it hoped it had sparked a movement.

According to the press release :

…behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. … We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we’ve gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming,  and not to mention humbling. Please don’t stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.

It did seem to prime the pump for the more recent attacks. But as an activist group operating under an anarchistic structure, there’s plenty of squabbling within the antisec movement itself. According to The New York Times, this nebulous group of hackers are even turning against each other , and they may eventually snitch on each other to law enforcement.

They are also not above ego-driven online jabs at each other. A group named the A-Team for example, wrote last month that the core members of Lulz Security “lack the skill to do anything more than go after the low-hanging fruit,” the Times reported.

The latest on Fox News

Monday’s hack of the Fox News Twitter account was particularly notable because it involved such serious allegations on a national US holiday.

The US Secret Service said it is investigating the incident and @foxnewspolitics feed, where the fake tweets originated, has been scrubbed of the offending posts.

Meanwhile, a college journalist named Adam Peck from Stony Brook University’s Think Magazine in New York has emerged as one of the few in the US to allegedly  make contact with the Fox News hackers.

Peck was online when the Script Kiddies initially took control of the Fox News Politics feed, and provided links to the hacker collective’s web site. The Script Kiddies also said it would entertain online interviews.

Using AOL Instant Messenger, the college journalist began corresponding with someone who identified as a Script Kiddies representatives. Though Peck was never able to confirm the identity of his source, he wrote that he “firmly believes” that he was speaking with the real deal; numerous mainstream media outlets have since quoted Peck.

The supposed representative of Script Kiddies told Peck that the group was motivated to attack the media site because it was “looking to find information about corporations to assist with antisec. Fox News was selected because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting.”

Peck thus concluded that Fox News was targeted not because of their conservative political leanings but because “they represent corporate America,” according to the author.

And if there’s one thing that Monday’s Fox News hack made clear, it’s that we can expect more of the same from the antisec movement.

“It will be a never-ending battle,” the Script Kiddies representative  told Peck. “The names change from time to time like LulzSec and Anonymous or Script Kiddies. But their (sic) will always be a group of people that need to stand up for everyone else and attempt to keep the government in balance with it’s people. Without groups like Anonymous, what is there to prevent corruption?”