Showing posts with label Web And Social. Show all posts

How To Unlock Google Maps’ New Hidden Driving Mode

Call it a bug or an updated feature of the Google maps, now with the updated version of Google maps, without entering the destination, Google maps will suggest you things like nearby hotels, gas stations etc. This feature has not been released publicly but it is expected to come to your mobile soon.
Earlier we had to use the ‘Nearby’ feature on Google maps to find hotels, gas station, restaurants and such public facilities. It would be surely nicer if we see these things as live as traffic updates on the Google maps. Looks like Google maps designer have heard our uneasiness and they have already integrated a special driving mode into the Google map but it is still not known to many of us.
You can enter this driving mode whether you have a destination in mind or not. So, now the artificial intelligence system of the Google Maps will suggest things like traffic incidents, nearby restaurants, gas stations, and more based on your usual driving route.
However, you will first need to update to the latest version of Google Maps (v. 9.19) to activate this feature and follow the following steps —

How To Unlock Google Maps’ New Hidden Driving Mode

  • Open Google Maps on your device.
  • Navigate to Settings in the slide-out panel on the left side of the app.
  • At the bottom of the settings list, select “Sign out of Google Maps.”
  • Tap the Multitasking button on your phone and swipe away Google Maps.
  • Re-open Google Maps.
  • Open the slide-out navigation panel on the left side of the app.
  • You should now see a “Start driving” button on the list of options.
  • Navigate to Settings and sign back into Google Maps.
It might happen that the steps to activate the Driving Mode may vary from one device to another, however, above mentioned steps are the most common steps using which many users were able to activate it. This may be a hidden feature Google may not have meant to release publicly, or it may simply be a bug that it’s not available without workarounds.
This may be a hidden feature Google may not have meant to release publicly, or it may simply be a bug that is unavailable without workarounds.

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Java Ruled 2015 As The Most Popular Programming Language


TIOBE Index findings reveal that Java was most popular language of 2015, closely followed by C.

Java is the most popular programming language of 2015 according to the TIOBE Index. For the uninitiated, the TIOBE index is an established ranking system used to measure the popularity of programming languages. And according this Index, 2015 was Java’s year, closely followed by C.               Read Also: The Top 21 Programming Languages of 2015

Another finding revealed by the index was that in addition to being the most popular programming language, compared to last year, Java also recorded the biggest ranking change with a 5.94% growth.

C had gained popularity at the expense of Java for past three years. Java, which was most popular in the 2000s, has again come to forefront due to Android ecosystem.  Java’s popularity has surged once again after Android-based smartphones have started dominating the mobile market.
Read Also: 5 reasons why you should learn to code
Another programming popularity tracking index, PYPL also declared Java as the most popular programming language but its data showed that Python was steadily gaining over Java with a growth of popularity of 1.1%, compared to Java’s 0.4%.




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602 Gbps DDoS Attack On BBC Proves That 2016 Isn’t Going To Be Any Different


D-DOS attacks are one of the biggest enemies of a website admin. The year 2015 saw an unprecedented growth in the number of DDoS attacks. Along the similar lines, Arbor Networks recorded an attack peaking up to 334 G-bps. Well, things aren’t looking good in 2016 as a hacktivist group has taken the responsibility of the D-DOS attack on BBC website that peaked up to 602 G-bps.
On New Year’s eve, the BBC website and i Player service went down due to a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. The attack peaked up to 602 G-bps, according to the claims made by the New World Hacking group, who took the responsibility of the attack. In another recent attack, the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s main campaign website was also targeted by the same group.
Earlier BBC announced that the service failure was due to some technical failure. Later it rephrased that the New World Hacking group took the responsibility just to “test its capabilities.”

602 G-bps – Largest DDoS Attack in History

DDoS attacks are conducted by flooding a web server with a torrent of traffic. These attacks are widely popular and often used by hackers with an aim to bring down the websites. For more, read our guide to know how DDoS attacks work.
The BBC websites including the Player on-demand service suffered at least three hours outage on Thursday due to the DDoS attack.
This group is calling itself a hacktivist group whose main target is ISIS.  One of the members of the group – calling himself as Ownz – has told ZDNet their real motives.
Read the statement here:
We aren’t really attention seekers, then again this attack was only a test of power, but we didn’t take down BBC because they had ISIS members on the site. We took down BBC as a test of our power. We use these attacks on ISIS mostly. 
David Marcus, VP of Facebook Messaging Products
The hacking group called this just a “start of a new year.”
The group also sent a screenshot of a web interface that was allegedly used to launch these attacks. The picture indicated an attack peaking up to 602 Gbps.
If this attack size is proved to be true, it would easily surpass the past record for the largest DDoS attack of 334 Gbps in 2015 recorded by Arbor Networks.
Detailing the attack, Ownz said that they have their own ways to bypass the security layers of the Amazon Web Services. He said:
The best way to describe it is we tap into a few administrative services that Amazon is use to using. The [sic] simply set our bandwidth limit as unlimited and program our own scripts to hide it.
We have contacted the Twitter handle of the New World Hacking group for more details and we’ll be updating the article as we get some update.

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Website Security

Web Security Terms and Jargon

Have you ever attempted to understand all that technical jargon that goes along with web security? Some of these technical websites, while extremely important, can be almost impossible for most people to understand. The easiest solution is to click away and figure out that you will deal with any security issues as they happen. Of course, this is not the best approach at all. This article will hopefully help simplify some of the basic terms so that you can look into this topic more deeply.

URI – Uniform Resource Identifier

This is the address of your website, or the portion that shows up in the browser bar. When someone enters the first part of the address the search engines start their search. This address is then appended with additional information to deepen the search into any website.
It is the code that is added to the URI that is important when it comes to web security. You can add all kinds of elements to the main address, including links to images, elements and frames. If a hacker can override these and add things to your HTML code, you have no idea where your site might point to. Or more importantly what it might show to a visitor, parts or files of your website that you do not want exposed.
Next we will look at the types of attacks your site might experience:
  • SQL Injection – This is when an SQL command is sent to your server via the URI or through a form field.
  • Cross Site Scripting or XSS – this is one of the most common forms of attacks. The hacker uses a JavaScript code and embeds it into a document. This is done by adding a new field to the end of your URI.
  • Path Traversal – this is a function that you do not want to allow on your server. It would allow people to find all your folders on your server. You can imagine what they would do if they had this type of access.
  • Cross Site Request Forgery – the best way to describe this is by allowing information to be sent into your database. This is done by forms. Potentially it can allow any form of attacker to get access to private information such as payment and banking details.
  • Remote File Inclusion or RFI – this happens when a flaw in your website allows a hacker to add a code from another server to run on your server.
  • Phishing – this is a method that fools people into entering personal information into a bad website.
  • Clickjacking – this uses CSS and inline frames and gets people to click something without them realizing what or where they are clicking too.

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Device That Adds A Touchscreen To Laptops

AirBar is a slim USB peripheral that attaches to the bezel of a laptop and adds a touchscreen functionality to a display. Once you’ve plugged it in, it blankets a display with “an invisible light field”.
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It doesn’t require any special software to work, as long as it’s connected to a Windows 7, 8, or 10 machine — or a Chromebook — it’ll work. Support for Macs is coming.
http://amadahmad.blogspot.com/
Also it doesn’t matter what you touch the screen with. You don’t have to use a special stylus, it even senses a touch while wearing thick work gloves. Anything that breaks up the light field will do the touch.
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It’s a pretty slick device, and pre-ordering one will only set you back $49. Unfortunatelly, you can’t attach it to any display and turn it into a touchscreen, because at the moment it only works with 15.6-inch laptops.
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The Worst Hacks of 2015



Last year we witnessed some of the most shocking cyber attacks ever, with North Korea allegedly hacking Sony over the release of a dumb comedy movie to unknown hackers spilling the private nude pictures of dozens of celebrities. For some, it was the year hacking truly became the norm.
But somehow, 2015 was worse. Hacking and data breaches weren’t just the norm, but they reached far and wide, hitting victims of all kinds, from regular consumers, to government employees, and even children and cheaters. It seemed like no one was spared.
We’ve decided to look back to 2015 and revisit not only the worst data breaches, but those that pushed the boundaries and redefined the world of information security. In no particular order, here’s our list.
Israel Government Allegedly Hacks Kaspersky Lab
In the last few years, the Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab has helped uncover some of the most secretive and high profile government-led cybe rattacks and espionage operations ever, from the landmark Stuxnet to Flame, Red October, and those of the Equation Group. This year, the tables turned when Kaspersky Lab announced it had been hacked by a group of government-sponsored hackers, likely from Israel (though the firm avoided to pointing fingers, the malware used was attributed to Israel in the past). The attack on Kaspersky didn’t spill a lot of confidential data, but it was a sign of things to come: a future where malware hunters are targeted by the own spies they’re trying to uncover, using more than just intimidation tactics.
The Massive Breach at OPM, The Hack That Keeps on Giving
In May, the agency that handles practically all US government employees' data revealed it had been the victim of a month long intrusion, and that hackers had taken the personal data of around 4 million people. That was bad enough, but it turned out the breach was much, much worse than OPM let on.
For starters, hackers (likely Chinese) actually stole the personal information of at least 20 million people, including the fingerprints of 5.6 million people. But we later also learned that the personal data stolen wasn’t just stuff such as date of birth and names, but the intimate personal details of millions of government workers, including those holding security clearances. The stolen data included information on their sex lives, drug abuses, and debt—all information that could be used to blackmail them and even blow their cover. Oh, the OPM hack even involved White House correspondents.
Vigilante Hacker Hits Italian Spyware Vendor Hacking Team
In early July, the usually-quiet Twitter account of the controversial surveillance tech vendor Hacking Team got its name to “Hacked Team,” and started tweeting screenshots of internal emails, as well a link to more than 400 gigabytes of data.
“Since we have nothing to hide, we’re publishing all our emails, files, and source code,” read the tweet.
As it turned out, the company had been hacked by a hacker only known as PhineasFisher, the same mysterious vigilante who hacked Hacking Team’s competitor Gamma International in 2014. The files exposed Hacking Team’s shady customers, including Sudan and Bahrain. Thanks to the cache of internal emails and files, among many things, we also found out how someone stole the company’s equipment in Panama, how its software targeted porn sites’ visitors, and how the company could turn off customers’ spyware infrastructure thanks to a backdoor.
Think of the Children: Toymaker Gets Hacked, Loses Parents’ and Kids’ Personal Data
An anonymous hacker found a way into the servers of the multinational toy company VTech, which makes internet-connected toys. The hacker was able to access the personal data of almost 5 millions parents and 6.3 million children, including their names, home addresses, passwords, and even selfies and chat logs. The data, however, was never published online. The hacker told Motherboard that all he wanted was expose and denounce VTech’s poor security practices. As a result of the hack, the company had to take down its online services, two US senators put into question VTech’s security and privacy protections, and a 21-year-old was arrested in the UK.

“If T-Mobile can’t guarantee my Social Security number’s safety, it shouldn’t ask for it.”

Hackers Steal Social Security Numbers of 15 Million T-Mobile Customers
T-Mobile revealed in October that hackers had gained access to a server of the giant data broker Experience, getting their hands on around 15 million Social Security numbers. The third-most popular mobile phone carrier in the US tried to deflect the blame on the data broker, which was the one actually hit with the breach. But as Motherboard managing editor (and data breach victim) Adrienne Jeffrey argued, “If T-Mobile can’t guarantee my Social Security number’s safety, it shouldn’t ask for it.”
Hackers Dox Cheaters And Embarrass Infidelity Giant Ashley Madison
A mysterious group of hackers calling itself the Impact Team broke into Ashley Madison, a successful and infamous website that promised discreet affairs for married men and women. A few weeks later, the hackers released a large data trove revealing all the names of the sites’ users, as well as internal emails. The hack exposed the service’s many lies, from the faulty paid service to "full delete" an account, to its alleged army of fake women accounts. The hackers claimed it was an easy hack, saying “nobody was watching” despite the fact that emails showed the site administrators knew it was a target for cyber criminals. Most of all, the hack exposed its users secret lives, leaving some of them in despair over what to do. At least three users committed suicide, countless users got blackmailed, and some were publicly outed and doxed. Months earlier, hackers also stole data from hookup website Adult-Friend-Finder, exposing almost 4 million users and their sexual preferences.
The Massive Healthcare Data Spillage
2015 was the year of the healthcare breach, with 55 recorded ones and a whopping 100 million records stolen. The biggest one was the one suffered by the provider Anthem, which lost almost 79 million records. But there were other attacks against other big providers such as Premera and Blue Cross Blue Shield.


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Tired With Slow WiFi? Your Good Old FM Is Here To Help You

 Facing slower WiFi speed due to network congestion and signal interference is a very common problem. However, researchers have found a way to use FM Radio signals to solve this problem.
Living in a crowded neighborhood can seriously affect your WiFi speed. For those who don’t know, you and the people living around you, have a limited wireless frequency channels that are used by the WiFi networks to move the data. So, if there are more people around you using WiFi, there are good chances that the networks will overlap and kill your speed.
This is a very common problem, specially if you are living in a apartment. To solve this problem, Aleksandar Kuzmanovic, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, is trying something new.
He describes the root cause of this problem as none of the WiFi devices have a reference point about the activities of the other WiFi devices. This lack of coordination and timing creates trouble, that results in poor WiFi performance.
To enable the devices to communicate with each other, researchers have developed the first system for WiFi devices that coordinates without any human involvement and operates over FM frequency.
Sharing the information via RDS (Radio Data System) data of FM, WiFi networks can operate with coordination. Talking to All Tech, Kuzmanovic says, “Devices are able to detect that there is this particular repeating structure and hence they are all able to independently come to the conclusion that hey, this must be the beginning of this particular RDS signal sequence that’s repeating in time.”
Thus, the RDS signals act like a clock for WiFi devices that harmonizes the operations of multiple devices. In a recent research paper, the researchers called this technique Wi-FM and outlined one possible scheduling algorithm.
Kuzmanovic expects his idea to be further used and spread by the industry giants like Google and Apple in their operating system.


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The UN Agrees To Keep Internet Free And Open For The Next 10 Years

The United Nations wants to keep the internet open and free for at least until the next decade. How successful will it be to keep the internet open and not revise the internet policies for next ten years? Know what UN thinks about the freedom of information and what could be the future of the internet.
Just like the TCP protocol, the backbone of the Internet, which is unbiased, the United Nations wants the same way to keep the internet open and free for at least until the next decade.
In 2005, for the first time, the internet policies were laid out before over 190 UN representatives from different countries around the world at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The purpose of the summit was to take a ten years review of the internet policies. In 2015, reviews of the internet policies are being said to have been successful by internet freedom advocates. And it was declared that the internet should remain in the hands of the private sector.
This meeting for internet governance was held at the perfect time as different governments across the world are making moves to crack down on internet freedom. Some of the recently seen moves by different governments are China blocking Wikipedia, banning of Tor and free wifi in France after Paris attack,Internet neutrality etc. Against its open nature, some governments have also shown interest in localizing the internet. They have proposed stricter measures against internet borders and state-centric policies to ISOC. This might present a contradiction to the global internet phenomenon. Localizing the internet would impede the global development of the internet and internet might get fragmented.
However, arriving at this decision was not so easy. The decision came after a lot of debate over days by the UN representatives. Apart from the inputs from the members of WSIS, input from a variety of government representatives and non-governmental stakeholders, including internet freedom non-profit the Internet Society (ISOC) was also considered. Following which, the UN published a resolution document which covers the main four pillars of the  information society. These four main areas are internet accessibility, human rights and free speech, internet governance, and internet security.
The document released is supposed to be just considered the ‘Outcome of the meeting’, it is still not legally binding. But, it sets up the way for the internet governance for the next ten years until next meeting is held. A focus was also set on the commitment of multi-stakeholder model of internet governance and renewal of the Tunis Agenda. Tunis agenda was a consensus made in 2005 that called for lightweight internet governance and the creation of the Internet Governance forum, an annual multi-stakeholder meeting on internet policy.
Constance Bommelaer, senior director of global internet policy at ISOC said:
As the internet has come to affect all the layers of our life, we must decide, how do we build an informational society, and what are the founding principles we want to organize this society on?
Despite the positive outcome of the meeting, it is expected that there would be a pull up in the local internet security because of the terrorism hitting up the world virtually through the internet.
So, what do you think? Shall the internet be open free for global access or shall it be modified according to the local political and information society consensus?

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How Much Time is Spent on Social Media?


Do you often find yourself browsing your favorite social media sites when you know you could be doing other things? You’re not alone.
According to recent studies, the average American spends 18% of their time online browsing social media sites. The most popular social media sites are the obvious platforms – Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter, in the order of the amount of time that people spend on those sites every month.
What this means for your business is that you can leverage the time spent on social media sites to increase engagement with your target audience. Post an interesting and informative link related to your niche even if this is something that is independent of your website. Create an amazing blog entry for your website that makes it easy for people to share on their walls will help spread the word about your business and what it does. Whenever somebody shares your posts, you’re receiving free advertising!
Sharing things on Facebook and Twitter is the obvious way to tell people about information important to your niche, or your industry. YouTube videos doing the same will fare ever better. Videos are incredibly effective for creating that engaging content that can mean the difference between a high bounce rate and getting visitors who stick around for a while because they like what they see. YouTube is considered “social media” because it’s very easy to create brand-new videos and share or embed them on Facebook, Twitter and your own blog. By utilizing video in your social media campaigns, potential customers see who you are and they can really see how your products and services work and get a feel for your business as a whole.
The fact is, your buying audience spends an enormous amount of time online, and a good percentage of that time is spent researching products and services, looking at reviews, and essentially seeking referrals from those they know and trust. Increasing your businesses social media presence will find your at the center of where your online audience “hangs out”, and is a natural fit for just about any businesses marketing plan.
By keeping your posts, images and videos relevant, entertaining, and informative, you’ll gain the greatest reach with your content. Utilizing social media platforms to the betterment of your bottom line is not difficult, but it does take consistency and a bit of knowledge regarding the different available platforms. Hiring a social media manager can help shorten the learning curve for a business that feels overwhelmed with this task.
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What Is Anonymous And How Big It Is?



Anonymous is a decentralized hacktivist group that has been into existence since 2003. It is hard to predict the actual size of the group as most of its activities are not commenced in the daylight. Yevgeny Golovchenko, a research student at the University of Copenhagen, did make his efforts to approximate the number of members in the group.
Anonymous, a self-declared collective that has been associated with taking down government websites and fighting ISIS. This question – how big is Anonymous? – is still uncertain as the actual size of the widely distributed group, or a “movement” as it is called now, is hard to predict. And we can’t rely on mere calculations regarding the actual number of members who title themselves as Anonymous.
The collective group has been working on a global platform and the Anonymous members are referred to as “Anons”. LulzSec, founded in May 2011 and AntiSec. which came into existence in June 2011, are two well-known subgroups to Anonymous. Another associated group GhostSec has been in the news after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
An aggregate sack of flesh – meshed together by wires transistors and Wi-Fi signals – replete with miles of tubes pumping blood, pounds of viscera-filled with vital fluids, an array of live signalling wires, propped up by a skeletal structure with muscular pistons fastened to it, and ruled from a cavernous dome holding a restless control centre, the analog of these fabulously grotesque and chaotically precise systems that, if picked apart, become what we call people.
— this is Anonymous as described by Gabriella Coleman, Professor at McGill University and an anthropologist. She has been a regular observant and a media commentator in accordance to various operations by Anonymous.

The Initial Imprint (2003-2013)

In 2003, the very first sightings of Anonymous’ activities were images posted by unknown users tagged as Anonymous on the /b/ board of 4chan website, and they become quite popular. Further, their operations advanced to raiding websites, one famous case was of a Finnish social network website Habbo Hotel, where they blocked access to regular users, given the reason, “closed due to fail and AIDS”.
The users at 4chan started the use of IRC (internet Relay Chat) to play offline pranks as the internet traffic exploded on 4chan. Such acts did attract media attention – a news report was aired on KTTV, a Los Angeles-based unit of FOX network, branded Anonymous as “domestic terrorists” and “internet hate machine”.
In their initial days, Anonymous all was all about mass pranks, trolling events and actions against the internet communities who supported anti-piracy acts. Encyclopedia Dramatic, that came into existence in 2004, served as a platform for the satirical motivations fulfilled by Anonymous.
It was in 2008, when Anonymous tasted the very first bite of hacktivism. Operation Chanology or Project Chanology, a protest against the Church of Scientology was initiated which included a series of digital attacks. 4Chan users were involved in acts of prank-calling Church’s hotline, repeated DDoS attacks, and sending black faxes that led to wastage of ink cartridges, all as a retaliation to the copyright infringement letter published by the church, after a video featuring “Tom Cruise practicing Scientology” surfaced on a blog named Gawker on January 15, 2008.
Eventually, their engagement with the Church of Scientology faded down and the group’s activities nowhere to be noticed by the start of 2010. It was in September 2010 when Anonymous got an opportunity to fine tune their hacking muscles, launched a DDoS and took down the website of Aiplex Software. Aiplex was an Indian company which partnered with film studios and specialised in launching DDoS attacks against websites like The Pirate Bay, which hosted pirated content.
Subsequently, the websites of the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) were also taken down as the part of the protest against the anti-piracy norms. An operation titled “Payback Is a Bitch” launched on September 19, 2010, in which the Mustafa-Al-Bassam( Known as Tflow) and other Anons hacked the website of the anti-piracy group, Copyright Alliance. The following statement was issued after the takedown:
Anonymous is tired of corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people’s rights to spread information, but more importantly, the right to SHARE with one another. The RIAA and the MPAA feign to aid the artists and their cause, yet they do no such thing. In their eyes is not hope, only dollar signs. Anonymous will not stand this any longer. The websites of Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, the U.S. Copyright Office, a British law firm ACS: Law, and many more, were taken down as a part of the Payback operation.
The horizon of the Payback operation was expanded to include “Operation Avenge Assange”, which was in response to the boycott of WikiLeaks by various companies like Amazon, Paypal, MasterCard, and VISA, as the consequence of classified cables concerning the U.S. government were released by WikiLeaks. DDoS attacks were launched against Paypal, PostFinanace and EveryDNS, who denied service to WikiLeaks. The attack also included the website of U.S. Senator Joe Leiberman, who supported the denial of access against WikiLeaks.
In 2009, YouTube allegedly suspended the account of a user Luckywes1234 for having abusive languages in some videos. As a protest, Anonymous in collaboration with eBaum’s World declared March 20, 2009, as the YouTube Porn Day and uploaded numerous videos featuring “hank panky acts”. They repeated the same in 2010.
The succeeding years marked the commencement of Operation Tunisia (2011), which was to support the Arab Spring movements. It also included defacing Tunisian government websites led by various Anons like Sabu, and providing protected access to normal internet users with the help of a script written by Tflow. Another protest, Operation Egypt, was carried out in order facilitate access to websites banned by the government, which was done in collaboration with an activist group called Telecomix.
Another major protest which gained worldwide recognition, included compromising user data of over 100 million Sony accounts, all done in retaliation for making efforts to prevent the hacking of PS3. The attack led to the close-down of Sony’s Play Station Network and Qriocity services for about a month.
Aside of their online presence, Anonymous has also presented themselves in the real world. It was on November 5, 2013, when numerous Anonymous protesters wearing Guy Fawkes Masks, gathered in 400 cities around the world for the commencement of Million Mask March.

Recent Work of Anonymous:

Anonymous and its Anons have continuously signified their presence through various operations and protest actions they’ve conducted from time to time. But in the last couple of years, there is no doubt about the fact that Anonymous has matured from a mere prank-playing group, no matter ISIS calls them idiots, but they’ve imparted their efforts.

#OpOK (2013)

This initiative was focused on helping the victims of Oklahoma Hurricane Sandy disaster in 2013. A widespread mission was initiated which included gathering any sort of information that could be used to identify and find lost victims.
This is an urgent message concerning the absolutely devastating impact of the tornadoes that left a trail of destruction through Oklahoma on 5/20/2013. A new Anonymous operation is being launched known as #OpOK in an effort to assist with the clean-up/recovery effort. There is no limit to who you can help or what you can do… however we ask that you please do something.

#OpSafeWinter

Another operation led by Anonymous, which concerned the homeless people on the streets. The aim of the mission was to raise awareness among various social welfare groups so that any sort of help could be provided to the homeless people.
Laurine Murphy writes for the DailyDot,
“Do something amazing this winter… that’s the point.”
So said the administrator of @OpSafeWinter, the Twitter account heading up public relations for Anonymous’ most ambitious project for 2013 and 2014. We spoke to the Anonymous member via Twitter direct message for an exclusive interview on the umbrella project dubbed #OpSafeWinter. The goal is to get Anons and “civilians” out into the streets all over the world to save lives by giving the homeless and the critically poor the tools they need to survive at least one more season.

Michael Brown & Tamir Rice Shootout (2014)

Anonymous did admit their protest in the two police shootouts, one of Michael Brown, an African American in Ferguson, Missouri and another of Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio. They launched new twitter handles and threatened to take down federal websites if any of the protestors was harmed by the police. In the Tamir case, Anonymous used Been-Verified to disclose the phone number and identity of the involved police officer.

#OpCharlieHebdo (2015)

On the cold day of January 7, 2015, 12 people were shot dead in a death massacre at the office of Charlie Hebdo. Anonymous having intentions to completely “erase” ISIS from the internet, released a video through their Belgian YouTube account in which they promised a response to “al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists”. In the video, a man wearing the Guy Fawkes Mask was quoted saying, “We are declaring war against you, the terrorists”, in an electronically distorted voice.

#OpCyberPrivacy (2015)

Another act of vengeance covered in the protest list of Anonymous was in response to the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015 or C-51 Bill passed by the Parliament of Canada which accorded more powers to the Canadian Intelligence Agencies in order to fight terrorism. They claimed the responsibility of defacing federal websites on June 17, 2015.
A snippet from the video,
Greetings citizens of the world, We are Anonymous. This is Operation Cyber Privacy. This statement is an urgent call to action. As indicated in our most recent video, we have joined forces with Operation C51, as well as our comrades in France, the UK, and beyond. As part of this union, we are calling for a global March of solidarity with Operation C51 on May 30th. Multiple cities in Canada and the United States have already established protests, and you can join them by contacting us on Twitter. If you can’t find a protest in your area – organize one.

#OpKKK (2015)

In this operation, Anonymous announced the revelation of about 1000 names and emails concerning the members of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and its affiliates. They said in a press release, “You are terrorists that hide your identities beneath sheets and infiltrate society on every level. The privacy of the Ku Klux Klan no longer exists in cyberspace.”
On November 2, 2015, a list of 57 phone numbers and 23 e-mails was published, but Anonymous denied involvement in the same by a tweet made through @Operation_KKK, “#ICYMI #OpKKK was in no way involved with today’s release of information that incorrectly outed several politicians.”

Anonymous Vs. ISIS

Apart from their numerous take-down events from time to time, the hacktivist group has also been in the news for their worldwide cyber-attacks against the Islamic State. The collective also announced its offensive hacking motives to kill ISIS online.
One of the recent attacks was a couple of weeks ago, in which they hacked an ISIS propaganda website and trolled ISIS by posting Viagra ads concerning to a company CoinRx, which promotes itself as the “#1 Bitcoin online pharmacy”. The following message was displayed on the website,
Too Much ISIS. Enhance your calm. Too many people are into this ISIS-stuff. Please gaze upon this lovely ad so we can upgrade our infrastructure to give you ISIS content you all so desperately crave.
The credit for hacking the ISIS Darknet website was bagged by GhostSec, a scion to the Anonymous collective formed to declare a war against ISIS. GhostSec came into light after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks and claimed to have taken down thousands of ISIS twitter accounts and websites. However, they’ve cooperated with the intelligence agencies in the name #OpISIS, but eventually, it was known that their operation backfired a little bit as most of the Twitter account they closed belonged to normal people, not the ISIS.
Anonymous chose December 11, 2015, as the “Anti-ISIS day of Rage”. On this day, the collective has planned to fill the feed of ISIS Twitter handles with pictures of dead ISIS terrorists. This step of Anonymous is being seen as the continuation of its efforts to attack ISIS in response to the Paris attacks.
Greg Housh is one of the public-ally known Anonymous members. These days he is sort of semi-retired from his hacking stuff. Talking to The Washington Post, he told more about what Anonymous is and how it operates.
Housh said that everyone loves to call it “hacking”, but Anonymous also does tons of “research, identifying and monitoring everything out there that ISIS might use to communicate and recruit, and trying to get those channels shut down, be it Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, telegram channels”.
Replying to a question – If you report ISIS accounts, and social media companies shut them down, won’t they just open others? – Housh said that it’s very hard to get followers on Twitter and influencing people once again is difficult.

#OpParis (November 2015)

Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go.
A declaration made by Anonymous after the series of bomb attacks of the city of Paris in November 2015. The hacktivist group was quick to issue a warning to its long-time foe ISIS. The group released two videos that warn ISIS and ask them to “expect a total mobilization on their part.”
Anonymous has already leaked more than 1000 ISIS Twitter Accounts as a part of the #OpParis campaign.

How big is Anonymous?

It is a well-known fact that Anonymous is not a registered organisation nor they’ve any formal structure to account for their operations. Making assumptions about the actual size of the decentralized group spread all around the world only contributes to a vague notion.
However, a commendable effort was made by Yevgeny Golovchenko, a research student at the University of Copenhagen. In a study conducted about six months ago, Golovchenko did arrive at a conclusion only to fathom that the actual size of the collective is far more than what the world has perceived.
On March 29, 2015, Golochenko used a software called Netvizz to harness all the public-ally available data referring to the probable connections possessed by Anonymous on the internet. It was a collection of 2,770 Facebook pages with 51,764 connections gathered after Golovchenko manually trimmed down from a set of 5,470 Facebook pages with 123,625 connections via likes. It is the “absolute minimum size of the page network”, as assumed by the research student.
One could argue that getting Likes is easier for 2,770 pages than for instance 1 page. Hypothetically, the same person could have “Liked” most of the Anonymous pages – although such an endeavor would take hours if not days. Similarly, the same person can use more than one account to Like pages or even Facebook bots. For this reason, the 22.5 million Likes do not necessarily represent 22.5 million people. These challenges occur when counting the number of Likes for any page on Facebook. However, even if only a third of the Likes represent actual Facebook users, the network is surprisingly immense – even to the members of Anonymous who have commented on this paper’s results. Only few mainstream media can match the movement’s enormous internet infrastructure.
— explained Golovchenko.
For the trimming operation, Golovchenko chose three criteria, one of which was to be fulfilled by a page in order to associate it with Anonymous:
  1. Direct association with the movement (“We are Anonymous“)
  2. Direct promotion of the movement’s cause
  3. Use of symbols that characterize the movement
According to Golovchenko, a mere display of the Guy Fawkes Mask is not a criterion enough to qualify as an Anonymous page, the V for Vendetta fame mask is quite popular among the general public.
David Gilbert writes for the IBTimes,
Having gathered all the data, the graduate student set out to visualize his finding, with each point (node) in the graph representing a Facebook page that is associated with Anonymous. If page A gives page B a Like, they become connected with a line. The node size represents the amount of Likes received from others in the network. Colours show different communities.
Analysis of the data shows that while Anonymous really is a global movement, regional groups typically connect with other groups in that region (Europe, Asia, Africa) and while much of the media attention is focused on Anonymous in the US, there are also major nodes in places like Germany, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Brazil and Canada.

Final Words:

The group or movement titled as Anonymous is in existent since 11 years and has been subject to a worldwide criticism by various federal organisations. They describe themselves as “an internet gathering”, and collectively work on various social issues. The notion, whether they’re right or wrong is only a perception that needs to be individualized. And the fact that they’re working against numerous terrorist activities, should be praised for the unintentional efforts they’re contributing.
As far as the legality of their acts is concerned, it is the decision of our lawmakers, whether they put aside a sincere group of people working for social issues, or they coordinate their operations with Anonymous and make this world a better place.
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