Its roots are in online pranksterism: The group sprang from a message board called 4chan-the same anarchic forum that produced harmless Internet memes like Rick rolling and LOLCATS.īut a faction from the board started using more aggressive means to stir up trouble, like baiting and harassing obnoxious YouTube users. In fact, Anonymous has more in common with the Dadaists than it does with run-of-the-mill cybercriminals. If anything can be said definitively, it's that Anonymous embodies a culture of creative disturbance-the pursuit of chaos, justice, retribution, and having laughs-or 'lulz,' after the 'laughing out loud' acronym 'LOL.' 'Beyond a foundational commitment to anonymity and the free flow of information, Anonymous has no consistent philosophy or political program,' writes Gabriella Coleman, a McGill professor who's spent years studying Anonymous. The first rule of Anonymous is (surprise) anonymity-a rejection of personal fame. Here's what we do know: Anonymous isn't a centralized organization, but a nebulous collection of cells and splinter groups that co-ordinate their efforts, to varying degrees, in online chat rooms. But is it an agitprop activist group? A genuine security threat? An occasional cover for government meddling? Or just an anarchic idea gone viral? Anonymous has shut down the Vatican's website, taunted cabinet ministers, released hacked e-mails and inserted itself into national debates. So here's a primer, in 26 steps, on some of the big questions facing the world of cybersecurity-and what you can do to keep from becoming a casualty.Ī is for Anonymous The only thing that Anonymous generates more than headlines is confusion about what it is. And, dear reader, you need to know the basics of this epidemic we can't just rely on IT to take care of it. It's a wild, unpredictable space, where hardly a week passes without word of an attack on a newly targeted organization (Sony? NASA? The NDP?) for motives that are financial, political or just plain inscrutable. Cybersecurity is no longer just a game of cat-and-mouse played with recluses who, by the dim green light of their computer screens, try to infiltrate mainframes. Anything you communicate to anyone who's not in earshot is data.Īnd wherever there's a flow of data, there's someone who wants to bend it to suit their own ends. Your location at this very moment is data: Your phone is tracking it, and your car is probably tracking it too.

Citizens have turned their social lives into data.

Businesses have turned their property into data, their processes into data, their money into data. Governments moving online deliver their most critical services as data. The pacemaker can talk to a regular BlackBerry, and to the world beyond. Two years ago, a company called Medtronic unveiled a pacemaker that can be monitored via the tiny device's wireless connection.

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