http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/28/anonymous_australia_posts_data/

I watched this TED video a couple weeks ago, and had a similar thought.

Well except the Aussie break was before the data retention law. But it’s not a stretch to see some sort of breach. To me it would be more something that an insider would do like BManning, but either scenario will do what is needed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18577609

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9354188/LulzSecs-Ryan-Cleary-admits-hacking-into-CIA-and-the-Pentagon.html

Ryan Ackroyd’s evidence will take over 3,000 hours to review alone.

Here is the release from them with the details.

http://pastebin.com/T1LHnzEW

So what is Darknet?

Here is what I know of it, darknet is a collection of sites / DB’s and information that is only accessible on the TOR network.  To call some of this shady is an understatement.  This information is not indexed by any search engine, and is only available to you if you have a direct link.  There is a couple wiki sites that I have seen that collected these links, categorize them and post them.  This is exactly what Anon went after, this is an excellent place for people to go that want to share bad things like CP.

You can access if you know what you are looking for, but I am not comfortable in posting this information.  Once you see something it can’t be unseen.

1) Revenge, maybe they DID know who it was running the group and they were attacking the servers out of self preservation and just stumbled across the information that was released.

2) Protection of innocent people, they attacked HBGary Federal to stop the release or convince them to stop the release of incorrect names, and just stumbled across the information that was released.

I think a combination of the two is more of what really is going on, from all of the stories I have linked here and read it appears that he did have a few of the names right, and I have even seen the mention of a family member or girlfriend being named along with some people that are way off the mark.

So what really was the motivation of the attack?  While the information that was released was great, it was an accident, if there was a good password policy going on this may not have happened and the site just would have been defaced.  Or was it the intent from the begging to take them down and rootkit.com was just low hanging fruit along with all of the emails?

It does get the mind working.

They are being charged using the “Computer Misuse Act” (UK), the act was originally put in place in 1990, and it looks like they are using amendment 36: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/48/section/36.

I wonder how Anonymous was promising that no one would be prosecuted for these actions, most countries have laws in place to prosecute individuals that do these, I know that the UK, US, Japan all have laws just to name a few.

I would not want any of these charges.

(6)A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable—

(c)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or to a fine or to both.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12299137