Anonymous Must Evolve Or Break Down, Say Researchers

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.darkreading.com/advanced-threats/167901091/security/vulnerabilities/232900561/anonymous-must-evolve-or-break-down-say-researchers.html

By Robert Lemos
Contributing Writer
Dark Reading
April 19, 2012

SOURCE Boston -- Boston -- Anonymous is a complex and chaotic movement: 
It is the heroic free speech efforts that helped protesters in Tunisia 
and Egypt; it is the lulz -- oddball, and sometimes vicious, pranks -- 
pulled to prove a point; and it is the AntiSec movement that compromises 
companies and critics to show that no one is beyond reach.

But Anonymous is also a brand, and one that is in danger of being 
overwhelmed by its own chaotic nature, argued two security professionals 
in a keynote at the SOURCE Boston conference this week. Brian "Jericho" 
Martin, a former hacker and current security expert, and Josh Corman, 
director of security intelligence at Akamai Technologies, have studied 
Anonymous for the past year and believe that the movement could easily 
degenerate into chaos and cause a lot of collateral damage in the 
process.

Instead, they are hoping -- and through an article series, offering to 
help -- the metagroup evolve into a better and more focused, Anonymous.

"Anonymous as they are is a crude blunt weapon; they don't do a lot of 
good, and they make a lot of noise," Martin, who works for Tenable 
Network Security, told conference attendees. "So why don't you want a 
better Anonymous that is more efficient, gets stuff done, and most 
importantly, creates less collateral damage."

Anonymous evolved from a meme on 4Chan, a bulletin board that allowed 
anyone to post images. Many of the board's anonymous members would band 
together to conduct one-off operations, including a series of pranks 
against conservative radio host Hal Turner, which escalated into 
denial-of-service attacks and eventually the leak of documents that 
identified Turner as an FBI informant.

[...]


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