The United States is currently dealing with civil unrest across dozens of states, and just when the secrets of the police force and the government were revealed, the infamous group Anonymous made a return exposed more people of immoral acts.
Anonymous has been quiet for years, but the killing of George Floyd has forced the group to immerse from the shadows and fight back against the injustice committed by those in power, including President Donald Trump, supermodel Naomi Campbell, Ivanka Trump, Will Smith and the British Royal Family.
Who is Anonymous?
Anonymous is a group of hackers that has no leadership and no face. Their tagline is "we are legion", referring to their large numbers of members. The group does not have a central command structure so anyone can just claim that they are part of the "hacktivist" group.
This also means that they do not have a single agenda, and they respond to a wide number of injustices in the system. Generally, they are activists who are aiming at those who are accused of immoral acts and abuse of power. They hijack websites, release documents, and hack accounts.
The symbol of the underground organization is a Guy Fawkes mask, which was made famous through the movie "V for Vendetta."
What actions have they taken?
The organization has conducted numerous cyber-attacks in relation to the George Floyd protests. The website of the Minneapolis police department was temporarily taken offline over the weekend in a DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attack. It is a form of cyber-attack that floods a server with data until it can no longer keep up and it eventually stops working.
The attack is the same when websites go offline if too many people logs in at once. Another attack linked to Anonymous was the database of passwords and email addresses that were hacked from the system of the police department. But there is evidence that the police servers have been hacked.
In fact, Troy Hunt, a researcher, stated that what happened may have been due to the older data breaches. On the social media platform Twitter, there are unverified posts that caught the attention of netizens. The posts showed police radios being interrupted by music, thus preventing them from communicating with each other.
Anonymous reveals
However, there are experts that suggest that it is not a hack, it could be a result of a stolen piece of hardware that is being controlled by the protesters who are on the scene.
Aside from the disruptions on websites and communication lines, the activists also posted accusations against President Donald Trump from years back, including his connection to child sex offender Jeffery Epstein and how he ordered for him to be killed.
Documents of a civil court case were also posted that stated that Trump and Epstein raped a 13-year-old girl and the case was dismissed even before the accuser went to trial. In 2014, members of Anonymous took action in response to the shooting of Micheal Brown.
A protest erupted in Ferguson, Missouri and Anonymous threatened the city if there are protesters harmed. The organization disabled the website of the city and disrupted the communications at the city hall. In the same year, they declared war on the Ku Klux Klan or KKK, and they released the personal details of the members online.
