Reuters fired Matthew Keys, its former social media editor, today soon after Keys was charged with aiding hackers in accessing his previous employer’s computer systems.

“Keys is no longer with the company, effective today,” David Girardin, a spokesperson for Reuters, told VentureBeat in a phone conversation.

The Department of Justice indicted Keys last month, after uncovering chat logs where Keys allegedly identified himself as “AESCracked.” In that conversation, an Anonymous hacker asked AESCracked for help getting access to Tribune Company’, Keys’ former employer and parent company of the LA Times. AESCracked, who may or may not be Keys, supplied the credentials. The hacker then defaced the LA Times, changing a story to say, “House Democrats told to SUCK IT UP,” and “CHIPPY 1337.” Shortly after being indicted, Keys wrote a post on his Facebook wall denying the claims against him.

“Just got off the phone. Reuters has fired me, effective today. Our union will be filing a grievance. More soon,” tweeted Keys. At the time of the indictment, Reuters had suspended Keys with pay.

Girardin declined to comment on whether Reuters was concerned about a retaliation from Keys given the nature of the case against him, or if Reuters is doing anything extra to protect its systems.

“It’s my understanding that Reuters did not agree with some of the coverage I did on my own during the Boston Marathon events from last week,” Keys told Politico. “And they have a specific set of reasons for the termination which I don’t agree with and the union that represents me does not agree with. We are in agreement, the union and myself, that I have done nothing wrong, that the basis for the termination is incorrect and doesn’t hold any water.”

Matthew Keys image via Matthew Keys’ Tumblr

Anonymous, the unorganized hacker organization that has attacked everyone from North Korea to SendGrid to you name it, decided it needed better news capability than Your Anon News, which currently depends on Tumblr and Twitter, can provide. So Your Anon News decided to crowdfund a new Anonymous news agency via Indiegogo … which was then promptly DDOS’d by — presumably — Anonymous.

Of course, when I’m saying “it decided,” that’s not strictly accurate. Your Anon News says it supports Anonymous, but is not officially speaking part of Anonymous. Realistically, however, no one is officially a part of Anonymous, and the edges of the unorganized organization are so frayed as to make it impossible to determine who or what actually is part or not part of it.

In any case, some in Anonymous decided the Indiegogo campaign was not kosher and promptly went nuclear, kicking off a Distributed Denial of Service attack on all of Indiegogo to disrupt it.

UPDATE: Yesterday’s DDoS attack was on the Your Anon News campaign (ow.ly/jLaxS). We don’t yet know who the attackers were.

— Indiegogo (@Indiegogo) April 4, 2013

Indiegogo has fought through the attack, and the campaign, far from being disrupted, has been very successful. With 12 days left in its campaign, Your Anon News has raised $9,857, almost five times its original $2,000 goal. Apparently, the crowd is beating the bullies.

One funny note: As TechCrunch’s John Biggs notes, the Your Anon News contribution perks are lame in the extreme — buttons, mugs, and T-shirts. In other words, just the same as every other campaign’s.

Why not be a little creative?

For $1,000, we’ll hack the Department of Justice. For $5,000, the FBI. And for a platinum-level contribution of $10,000, we’ll hack the CIA and finally reveal the truth about Area 51.

Now that would be something more interesting.

Here’s Your Anon News contribution-seeking video, which sounds like it was narrated by a Mac’s text-to-speech:

Anonymous has compromised North Korea’s state-run news agency Uriminzokkiri’s website and social networks days after the hacktivist group declared open season on the country.

Anonymous’ efforts are in part due to the North Korea government’s (led by dictator Kim Jong-Un, parodied above) oppressive stance on allowing citizens to access the Internet, among other things. But the hacking was probably sparked by North Korea’s recent threats to attack the U.S. and South Korea.

The Uriminzokkiri website appears to be experiencing a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack (DDoS), and the country’s official Twitter account now features a “Tango Down” avatar and has stopped tweeting. Anonymous also compromised the country’s Flickr account, and it uploaded a handful of images poking fun at Jong-Un.

While North Korean government doesn’t deserve an ounce of sympathy, I really don’t see the relevance of this attack on its online presence. The government already doesn’t allow citizens to get on the web, and the country isn’t exactly sociable with the majority of the international community. The attack also comes a month after Google chairman Erik Schmidt met with Jong-Un about opening up the Internet for the greater good — something that seems to have made at least a slight impact. Still, when you treat you’re citizens like crap, you’re asking to be bullied by groups like Anonymous.

Via The Guardian; Photo via Anonymous

The hacktivist collective Anonymous once again shined a light on a dark corner of society by raising awareness of the Myanmar genocide under the moniker Operation Rohingya on Sunday.

The Rohingya people of Myanmar Burma in Southeast Asia face religious and governmental persecution; the 800,000 Rohingya people living in Myanmar are classified by the United Nations as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities. They are a Muslim population in the state of Rakhine and a minority to the Rakhine Buddhists that occupy that area.

Unrest in the area came to a head in June 2012 when clashes between the two communities killed an estimated 80 people and displaced thousands more.

Journalist Heather Marsh alerted Anonymous to the Rohingya’s persecution and has been working to raise awareness for months.

“I want to show Burma and the multinationals and governments making deals with Burma that we can see them, we know what’s going on, or we will find out, and there will be no more silent genocides in the world,” she said in an interview with VentureBeat.

“I want to show them the people of the world care more for humanity than they think we do and we will not tolerate massacres like this anymore.”

Yesterday, Anonymous released a video highlighting the plight of the Rohingya people and going into graphic detail of their suffering.

“They are subject to torture, gang rape, starvation, slave labor, and [are] forced to reside in the most dire camps in the world,” group members said on the video. “Some call these refugee camps, but they are actually concentration camps.”

The planned #OpRohingya encouraged people to shed light on this issue by tweeting and sharing information about the genocide.

Anonymous released their “TwitterStorm” package on Pastebin.com and encouraged people to post detailed information about the suffering in Myanmar. The package included sample tweets, links to photos and video, and included the Twitter hashtags #RohingaNOW and #OpRohinga.

According to Anonymous reps, the goal was to “Raise awareness in social media for the international panic required to save the Rohingya people.”

Along with the social media firestorm, the hacktivist group began a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) campaign against Myanmar government websites (.gov.mm) to protest against the discrimination of the Rohingya people. Fifteen government websites were hacked on Sunday and are still inaccessible.

The campaign to raise awareness of the Rohingya’s suffering comes on the heels of American technology companies champing at the bit to enter the mobile technology market in Myanmar.

Last Friday, Google executive Eric Schmidt visited Myanmar and spoke about technology entrepreneurship at the Myanmar Information and Communication Technology Park in Yangon and met with senior government officials, according to the New York Times.

Google is not the only company looking to tap into the country. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a partnership with Cisco to set up two Cisco Networking Academies in Burma. Earlier this month, a USAID-led technology delegation with representatives from Cisco, Google, HP, Intel and Microsoft visited the country to promote technology and entrepreneurship as well.

A former military regime prevented American companies from operating in the country, but as of the end of last month, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would issue a general license to Myanmar’s biggest banks, opening the doors for new business.

As this country gains more international attention and assistance in the business sector, perhaps other social issues will come to light.

Anonymous’ TwitterStorm unleashed upwards of 24,000 tweets per hour, according to hashtag.org. The Twitter searches #RohingaNOW and #OpRohinga are populating regularly, and the hacktivist organization is still encouraging the posts.

Image credit: fotostory / Shutterstock.com

Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys was indicted for allegedly giving hackers access to the servers of his former employer, the Tribune Company. Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, which the Anonymous hacker subsequently defaced.

According to the indictment, Keys allegedly chatted with an Anonymous hacker and offered credentials to log into the Tribune’s servers after the hacker explained that system administrators had caught and blocked him. Keys identified himself on the chat as AESCracked. After supplying the access, the hacker then defaced a feature story in the LA Times, changing the headline, the byline, and the sub-headline to include variations on the name “CHIPPY 1337.” He also edited a line to say, “House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer sees ‘very good things’ in the deal cut which will see uber skid Chippy 1337 take his rightful place, as head of the Senate, reluctant House Democrats told to SUCK IT UP.”

Today’s indictment is new, but allegations against Keys have been around for awhile. As Gizmodo pointed, Sabu, the reported “Anonymous leader” who worked with the FBI to take down a number of key figures in the loose organization, accused Keys of being involved in the hack two years ago.

He tweeted, “AESCracked/Matt Keys was former producer for Tribune sites. Gave full control of LATimes.com to hackers.”

According to the indictment, Keys could face up to 10 years in jail, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.

hat tip Politico; LA Times hack image

Catch it while you can: The official Burger King Twitter account has gone up in flames and is now promoting Big Macs and bath salts — as well as the #LulzSec hashtag.

UPDATE: Around or before 11 a.m. Pacific Time, the @BurgerKing account was suspended by Twitter. McDonald’s reps tweeted, “We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.”

And you thought today was gonna be a slow news day.*

The first non-kosher tweet was posted around 9 a.m. Pacific Time. With the fast food chain’s Twitter icon changed to the McDonald’s signature golden arches and the username changed to McDonald’s, the account posted, “We just got sold to McDonalds! Look for McDonalds in a hood near you @DFNCTSC.”

In case you were curious, @DFNCTSC is a dummy account with no picture, following no users and posting no tweets.

Since 9 a.m., the Burger King account has been retweeting other users’ observations on the hack and making references to various street and prescription drugs being used in and sold by the chain. Not exactly comedy gold, but it’s still early out here on the West Coast.

The hack was carried out for reasons as yet unknown and allegedly by members of Anonymous, the vigilante Internet hacker/script kiddie free-for-all-slash-freedom-fighting-collective. We have no idea what they want, but #OpMadCow is apparently underway. We’ll keep you updated when we know exactly what #OpMadCow is all about and exactly what Burger King did to piss off the underbelly of the Internet.

We’re also particularly looking forward to Burger King’s eventual reaction; let’s see how long this takes and where the fast food chain will find its voice. The last post to the BK Facebook page was a coffee promotion four hours ago; its last Google+ post was yesterday; the company’s website hasn’t posted a press release since last week; and there is no official Burger King blog.

Looks like the BK social media team is out to lunch. Hah! Puns.

*Be not deceived; it’s still an incredibly slow news day, hence our posting on the childish outbursts of a hacked fast food chain’s Twitter account.

hat tip: memetics wizard Greg Voakes

image credit: xnextbigthing/DeviantArt

Following reports that hacktivist group Anonymous broke into the Federal Reserve and stole personal information for 4,000 bank executives, the Fed announced today that it has, in fact, been breached.

“The Federal Reserve system is aware that information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

The Fed went on to explain that the hack did not affect any “critical operations” and the hole that originally let the attackers in has since been patched and is “no longer an issue.”

Anonymous published information for these banking executives over the weekend by placing a file on the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center .gov website. It further distributed the information — which include phone numbers, login credentials, and names of bankers — on a new Twitter account called OpLastResort.

OpLastResort represents a new effort by the hacktivists to gain computer crime law reform following the suicide of Aaron Swartz, who is known as a cofounder of Reddit. Swartz was being prosecuted for downloading millions of JSTOR articles using MIT’s network. Anonymous also reportedly hit MIT calling for the same reform. The university admitted today to experiencing three separate attacks since Swartz’s death.

Anonymous also claims it has a “warhead,” or important file of information, from the Department of Justice. It threatens to release this so-called warhead should the reforms not to pass.

hat tip Reuters; Federal Reserve image via Shutterstock

MIT acknowledged it has been experiencing a series of distributed denial of service attacks since January 13, a day after coder and activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide.

Swartz faced heavy punishment, including jail time and a $1 million fine, for siphoning off millions of JSTOR documents using MIT’s network. In the aftermath of his January 11 suicide, Anonymous, a hacktivist group, claimed to attack MIT’s system in retaliation. Anonymous’ weapon of choice is usually a DDoS attack, which overloads servers with traffic, causing them to shut down, and defacement of websites.

MIT says the attacks caused those on the school’s networks to lose Internet connectivity and delay emails.

On the first January 13 attack, Anonymous defaced MIT’s network, saying Swartz’ prosecution was a, “grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for — freeing the publicly funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it.”

MIT explained in a blog post that its systems were shut down on January 13, followed by an email outage “lasting four to six hours” five days later. Then, on January 28, MIT experienced more delays in its email service, and found the MIT website inaccessible from outside the campus.

Whether all of these attacks were associated with Anonymous is unknown, though the connection between MIT, Swartz, and the attacks is obvious.

MIT says it has “taken several measures, such as installing filters to block problematic traffic or content.”

MIT image via Shutterstock

While many companies fear hactivist entities like Anonymous, some, like Whitehat Security, can actually thank them for creating a big need for security technology services. Whitehat, which claims to be the first software-as-a-service option for application security, raised $31 million fourth round of funding today.

“Back in 2011, starting with the Sony breach, organizations like Anonymous and Lulzsec began kind of a systematic campaign. That really raised awareness in the industry,” said chief executive Stephanie Fohn (pictured above) in an interview with VentureBeat. “That is very important to us. We are growing very quickly.”

The funding was led by JMI Equity, with participation from existing investor IGC (Investor Capital Group).

Whitehat Security was focused on protecting web applications first, and now mobile applications. Web applications can be popular points of entry for a cyber criminal. This is because many big enterprises, and even small to medium-sized businesses, have online presences that can span for thousands of web pages. Some of those pages eventually go un-monitored or get forgotten, so the source code can become weak and go without updates for long periods of time.

“Organizations today are saying, ‘Hey, I just can’t rely on focusing my resources on my most valued sites, I have to look across all 1,000 sites that I own,’” said Fohn.

The company’s product, Sentinel Services, monitors your web applications and source code continuously to spot vulnerabilities and tell you where they are.

After hacker groups Anonymous and Lulzsec started what the security industry called a “hack a day” in 2011, the demand for Whitehat’s products spiked, as did its need for capital. So, the company went out in search of funding and brought $31 million back, compared to an $8 million round in 2011, a $7 million round in 2008, and a previous total of $6.2 million made up of two different rounds.

Whitehat Security plans to use latest funding to expand internationally, hire on the sales side, and build out more support for its mobile application monitoring products.

Whitehat Security was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. with offices in the U.K. and Singapore. Today’s funding brings the company’s total to $53 million, from Horizon Ventures, Altos Ventures, Garage Technology Ventures, Startup Capital Ventures, JMI Equity, Investor Growth Capital, and a number of angels.

Stephanie Fohn image via Whitehat Security

While the Super Bowl distracted many people yesterday, hacktivist group Anonymous released a file reportedly containing personal information on over 4,000 U.S. bank executives.

Anonymous posted the file to the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center’s .gov website. It lists phone numbers, log in credentials (through the passwords are hashed), and IP addresses for 4,000 banking officials who are identified next to each piece of information, according to ZDNet. The data dump is part of a new operation called “OpLastResort” that calls for computer crime prosecution reform.

It was also posted to Pastebin, an Anonymous-favorite content sharing website.

Earlier this month, Anonymous also hacked into the Department of Justice and defaced the website of the United States Sentencing Commission in the name of Aaron Swartz. Credited with cofounding Reddit, Swartz recently committed suicide while facing heavy sentences for stealing a large amount of files from JSTOR using MIT’s network. Anonymous threatened that unless we have some sort of reform on how these types of crimes are prosecuted, the group will release a “warhead” of information stolen out of that hack. What is in the warhead is unknown; Anonymous said it didn’t want to ruin the speculation by hinting at what it is.

Whether Sunday’s dump and this threat are connected is unknown.

The hack was further announced on the OpLastResort Twitter page, which will likely become a bull horn for Anonymous’ computer crime reform actions.

Piggy bank image via Shutterstock

Anonymous, spurred by the suicide of coder and activist Aaron Swartz, reportedly hacked into the Department of Justice’s computer systems and stole what it is calling “multiple warheads.” That is, a number of files that the U.S. government wouldn’t want revealed.

Swartz committed suicide earlier in January while facing a up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine for siphoning off nearly five million JSTOR articles through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s network. He had a total of 13 felony charges against him. Anonymous is calling for a change in the justice system and says situations like Swartz’s promote “outdated and poorly-envisioned legislation, written to be so broadly applied as to make a felony crime out of violation of terms of service, creating in effect vast swathes of crimes, and allowing for selective punishment.”

The group claims it has a number of files that it hopes not to have to use and hacked into the Department of Justice’s United States Sentencing Commission overnight to announce the grab. Anonymous says it will not ruin the speculation by saying what the documents hold, but it will release redacted sections to reporters who provide a secure means of communication, starting as early as today.

“Suffice it to say, everyone has secrets, and some things are not meant to be public,” the group said in its statement.

Anonymous also pointed out recent reports of Red October, cyber-spying malware that targeted a number of governments around the world, particularly in Eastern Asia. It also mentioned the recent outcries around a major vulnerability in Java, saying:

“None of this comes of course as any surprise to us, but it is perhaps good that those within the information security industry are making the extent of these threats more widely understood. Still there is nothing quite as educational as a well-conducted demonstration.”

This is perhaps a hint that Anonymous used the Java exploit to enter the DoJ’s systems. It might also just mean the group is showing off its own hacking prowess — well, if it provides anything to substantiate the supposed lifted files.

via Gawker; Anonymous mask via Shutterstock

The hacktivist group Anonymous defaced the web site of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for its role in the events that led to the suicide of online activist Aaron Swartz.

The cyber attack, as reported by Cnet, came just hours after MIT president Rafael Reif said the school would investigate MIT’s involvement in the events that led to the prosecution of Swartz, a Reddit co-founder who killed himself on Friday. He was arrested in July 2011 and accused of hacking MIT’s network in order to download almost 5 million documents from JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers. If convicted, he could have faced $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison.

Swartz committed suicide, the Wall Street Journal reports, just days after prosecutors refused to accept a plea bargain that didn’t include jail time.

The Anonymous message (posted above) said that the government’s prosecution of Swartz, whether it contributed to his suicide or not, was a “grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died fighting for — freeing the publicly funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it.”

Anonymous called for a reform of computer crime laws, copyright and intellectual property laws, and a renewal of a commitment to a “free and unfettered internet.”

The video game business never has a year without controversy. 2012 was no different in that respect. But the different ways that game companies could get into trouble and draw mass market attention were surprising. The age-old controversies about sex, violence, and other cultural insensitivities surfaced again this year. But game publishers also had to deal with the consequences of being hacked, violating the government’s concerns about military security, and upsetting fans by failing to live up to games-as-a-service obligations in free-to-play games.

Sometimes, the controversies brew up from the bottom as unintended consequences. At other times, it seems like the controversies are intentionally manufactured for marketing reasons, so that the game can rise above the noise and catch the public’s attention. But that’s a double-edged sword, as such marketing can turn off as many consumers as you attract. Whether the controversies are accidental or intentional, it’s clear that when you create entertainment for the public, there are so many ways to get into trouble. Please vote in our poll for the top game controversy, and leave a comment if you like.

Video games take the heat for Newtown shooting

The horrific shootings at Newtown left 20 children and seven adults dead. Though it happened late in the year, this incident revived concerns over excessive violence in video games. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games were protected under the First Amendment. But calls for regulation and studying of a possible link between games and violence went out again in the wake of the shooting. The anti-game-violence crowd got help from an unexpected corner, as the National Rifle Association blamed the shooting on violent video games (and called for armed guards at schools). Greg Fischbach, former chief executive of Mortal Kombat publisher Acclaim Entertainment, predicted that the consequences of the shooting will play out over years for the game industry.

Ex-Navy SEALS disciplined for consulting on Medal of Honor Warfighter

Electronic Arts touted the fact that former elite soldiers gave it advice in the design of its realistic combat shooter Medal of Honor Warfighter. But the company failed to go through the proper channels in getting permission from the government for the consulting. As a result, the Department of Defense punished seven active-duty Navy SEALs who consulted on the game. The SEALs had two months of pay docked and received letters of reprimand. More were under investigation.

Among those who consulted was Matt Bissonnette, who was part of Seal Team 6 team that killed Osama Bin Laden. EA said that it wasn’t aware of any rules that required EA to vet the game with the DoD. It wasn’t clear if any military secrets were improperly divulged in the game. Bissonnette also got into hot water for co-writing the nonfiction account of the raid that killed Bin Laden in the book, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden.

Copycatting called out

Zynga has long been accused of copying other game designs. Electronic Arts finally sued the company this year for allegedly copying The Sims Social with the launch of Zynga’s The Ville people simulation game. EA claimed that Zynga’s team copied many details of The Sims Social. Zynga denied outright copying, and it noted that EA’s SimCity Social was similarly a copy of Zynga’s own city-building game, CityVille, and that CityVille itself has only passing resemblance to EA’s SimCity games on the PC.

In response to similar allegations of copying in a bingo game, Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, claimed that his company has re-imagined past games by making them more social. The result is those games become more popular than ever thanks to sharing with friends on Facebook. EA said that it had to stand up for the industry to stop the rampant copying. Complicating the matter was the fact that The Ville’s designer, Mark Skaggs of Zynga, used to work at EA, as did many other Zynga executives. The issue of copying came up again as Spry Fox sued 6waves for copying not the look of its game, but the game play. That lawsuit was settled. But the EA-Zynga dispute is still pending.

The courts have been clear on the subject. Making a new game in an existing genre isn’t a violation of copyright law. But taking someone’s computer code and claiming it as your own is illegal.

Talent raiding wars

Related to the copycat allegations, big companies also went to war over talent raids. After Zynga hired an EA executive, Zynga alleged that EA’s chief executive John Riccitiello proposed an anti-competitive no-hiring pact or he would threaten litigation. Zynga claimed that was the real reason for EA’s copycat lawsuit. Meanwhile, Kixeye CEO Will Harbin made a hilarious video lampooning Zynga and EA as part of a campaign to recruit talent. But then Zynga sued Kixeye for stealing a game designer. Zynga alleged that Alan Patmore took 763 confidential documents with him when he started his new job at Kixeye. But Harbin blasted Zynga for lashing out while it was “burning to the ground and bleeding top talent.”

Apple cracks down on bot marketers

Early in the year, Apple quietly prohibited mobile game companies from using bots and other marketing tactics that artificially boosted games in Apple’s rankings of its top-performing apps. Animoca alleged that Apple unfairly cracked down on its Pretty Pet Salon game and that communication from Apple was sparse. Our own investigation found that the secrecy around the crackdown left a lot of developers wondering what was OK to do and what wasn’t when it came to marketing games. Game developers feared that if everyone used unfair marketing tactics, then legitimate high-quality apps might never get noticed. But one thing was clear. If you used too many incentives, Apple would start paying attention. Late in the year, Tapjoy again learned a tough lesson about being too aggressive with incentives, this time with web-based offers that apps linked to from within Apple apps. Neither Apple nor Tapjoy elucidated on the matter, leaving developers in the dark.

Hackers disrupt online games

Anonymous taught Sony a big lesson last year as it hacked into both the PlayStation Network and disabled the network for 77 million registered users who could no longer access their online games. It also attacked Sony Online Entertainment. This year, hackers were back with more attacks. Gamigo got hacked and lost control over 8 million email addresses and passwords for its users. And 11,000 Guild Wars 2 players also had their passwords stolen. Zynga’s YoVille social game saw disruption for 1,000 fans after some players began using a vulnerability to steal belongings from other accounts. Game companies that get hit by hackers will find out that consumers will blame the company for lax security as much as they will blame the hackers.

Fan revolts hit Mystery Manor

Game Insight had a tough time dealing with fan outcry after it decided to take away some perks offered to players of the game. Game Insight made the iOS version of Mystery Manor: Hidden Adventure, which was enjoyed by as many as 20 million registered users. The hidden object game was a free-to-pay title where users could play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. But Apple banned a practice that the game had previously allowed: letting friends obtain and trade gifts with other players inside the game. Game Insight had to scramble to comply with the rules and fans objected. A second fan revolt erupted with a second service disruption. Fair warning. Fan revolts are going to be common if game developers decide to change long-standing online games or discontinue them altogether.

Sex chat brings down Habbo virtual world

A British TV station dealt Habbo a severe blow when it blew the lid off a sex chat culture within parts of the virtual world, which has more than 250 million registered users. During the scandal, retailers stopped carrying prepaid cards for Habbo and an investor pulled its support from the company. Habbo had measures in place to stop sexual predators, but it shut down the service to deal with the new allegations. The company reviewed its chat records and found 3.7 percent of members were engaged in inappropriate chat. By the time that Habbo went back online with new measures in place, it had lost about 35 percent of its membership. Chief executive Paul LaFontaine pledged to redouble efforts to protect kids and win more of those users back.

Ex-OMGPOP ignites debate about refusing to work for Zynga

OMGPOP’s Pictionary-style mobile game Draw Something gained a huge number of users early this year, prompting Zynga to buy the New York game company for $180 million. But Shay Pierce, one of OMGPOP’s employees, wrote a blog post about how he didn’t want to work for Zynga, which he viewed as completely antithetical to his professional and creative values. Then OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter tweeted that the one employee who didn’t accept a job with Zynga (Pierce) was the “weakest” one. But Pierce didn’t miss out on much. Draw Something lost millions of users and Zynga had to take a write-off of $95 million because of the diminished value of the mobile game. Zynga’s stock price also cratered as it announced two quarters of weak earnings in a row.

EA and Activision Blizzard spar over Infinity Ward

In 2011, Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts squared off over the departures of the founders of Infinity Ward, an Activision-owned studio that built the Call of Duty franchise into a billion-dollar machine. Two co-founders were fired from Infinity Ward as they prepared to exit and set up Respawn Entertainment, a new game studio funded by EA. The lawsuit was headed for a trial this year. Just before the trial, EA and Activision settled the case. But not before there were some interesting disclosures about Project Icebreaker. Activision executive email records showed that executives were hunting for dirt on the co-founders as a pretext to fire them. Activision denied the characterization of the emails.

Mass Effect 3′s ending fiasco

Fans were in an uproar after they played through the entire Mass Effect trilogy, only to be disappointed by the uninspired ending of Mass Effect 3. The fan reaction was so intense that Electronic Arts’ BioWare division decided to come out with an enhanced ending to satisfy gamers. And not long after that, BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk decided to retire from their top positions at EA.

Here’s our poll.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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One of Anonymous’ most active Twitter handles, YourAnonNews, was temporarily suspended by Twitter today, sending the Twittersphere into an uproar.

Anonymous is a loose group of “hacktivists,” or cyber vigilantes who break into computer systems to make a political statement, as opposed to hacking for financial profit. A number of its members communicate through Twitter, boasting about their latest “operations” and successful hacks. Oftentimes they post links to Pastebin where personal information is listed about their targets.

A Twitter spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email, “We don’t comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.”

The Twitter account has since been restored. YourAnonNews tweeted, “Ohai,” and “BREAKING: We’re back motherfuckers.” It claims a picture was behind its suspension. The picture likely contained personal information about individuals associated with the Westboro Baptist Church — an organization Anonymous is fighting due to its controversial protests of Sandy Hook vigils. YourAnonNews tweeted out a picture of the email it received from Twitter stating:

“Your account has been suspended for posting an individual’s private information such as private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents.”

Twitter’s terms of service state that it can shut down an account if it “doxes” people, or steals and publishes social security numbers, email addresses and passwords, home addresses, phone numbers, and any other type of personal information.

Gawker pulled out this section of Twitter’s terms of service: “You may not publish or post other people’s private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.”

A number of Twitter users are angry over the YourAnonNews account suspension, calling it censorship.

Anonymous head image via Shutterstock

A hacker associated with attacks that took down PayPal’s website in 2010 convicted of “conspiracy to impair the operation of computers” in the U.K. today. This comes soon after three of his cohorts pleaded guilty to the same.

Christopher Weatherhead was arrested in November 2011, nearly a year after Anonymous waged a war on PayPal and other websites that had cut off donations being sent to whistle-blower website Wikileaks. The site published U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010, causing a media uproar and some payment companies to block off access to Wikileaks’ donations channels. These payments companies included Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal — all of which Weatherhead is convicted of “impairing.”

Also on this list are the British Recorded Music Industry, Ministry of Sound, and the Internatinoal Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

“A self-styled ‘hacktivist’, Weatherhead and his fellow conspirators targeted companies in the music industry involved in combating internet piracy and companies that had stopped processing online donations to WikiLeaks,” said Russell Tyner, Crown advocate for the CPS Organized Crime Division in a statement. “Their campaign of attacks cost these companies over £3.5 million in additional staffing, software and loss of sales”

The other hackers who pleaded guilty were Jake Birchall, Ashley Rhodes, and Peter Gibson in January 2012, March 2012, and July 2012 respectively.

hat tip Bloomberg; Anonymous image via gaelx/Flickr

Where political discord exists, Anonymous will be there. The hacktivist group went after Israeli websites last night after the Israeli Defense Forces began live-blogging and tweeting its attack on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Anonymous, which often makes its point by taking down websites, aimed distributed denial of service attacks what it claimed to be 40 Israeli websites, according to the New York Times. A DDOS attack knocks a website offline by sending a rush of traffic to the site’s servers, eventually causing it to overload and collapse. The group posted about its efforts on Pastebin, where Anonymous often announces and updates the public on its attacks, in a post called “OpIsrael.”

“Anonymous does not support violence by the IDF or by Palestinian Resistance/Hamas,” the group said in the announcement. “Our concern is the for the children of Israel and Palestinian Territories and the rights of the people in Gaza to maintain open lines of communication with the outside world.”

The New York Times notes that while Anonymous claims to have taken down up to 40 websites, it was likely only successful in taking down a few.

The Anonymous action might have also stemmed from IDF’s use of social media during its attacks. Yesterday, the defense force used its blog to post videos and photos of the attacks, including a video that reportedly shows a car carrying Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari being blown up. IDF later tweeted a photo of Jabari with the word, “eliminated” superimposed over him.

Today, IDF added a Foursquare-like badge system to its blog, supplying “IDF ranks” for different levels of interaction a visitor has with the site.

Anonymous image via Shutterstock

If you looked at a graph of denial of service attacks, you’d likely see a hockey stick of growth in 2011, according to research by DDOS-protection company Prolexic.

Denial of service attacks work by flooding a website with as much traffic as possible, eventually causing it to overload and shut itself down. It has become a favorite tactic among hacktivists, such as Anonymous, which have used DDOS attacks to take down websites such as the CIA’s and The Pirate Bay.

Prolexic says between the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2010, DDOS attacks increased eight percent. However, when the company looked at the fourth quarter of 2010 and 2011, there was a 153 percent uptick. Dramatic, no?

Prolexic also realized that hackers preferred to attack web applications in 2010, but now they’re targeting the actual infrastructure, the network, to take down a website. In 2011, the average DDOS attack lasted 80 hours, at 185,404 packets per second, according to Prolexic’s research.

This season, Prolexic is particularly concerned for online retailers — particularly those without physical locations. Minutes offline can definitely impact a business’ bottom line, especially as we come closer and closer to days like Black Friday and the holiday season in general.

The company also provides a “DDOS downtime cost calculator” that shows businesses how much one of these attack would cost them.

DDOS image via Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Updated at 3:30 p.m. PT with Amazon’s response.

A member of hacker collective Anonymous who previously claimed to take down GoDaddy and Facebook has now claimed responsibility for today’s big Amazon’s EC2 cloud outage.

The Amazon outage caused headaches for many large and small web services, including Reddit, Airbnb, Flipboard, GetGlue, Heroku, and Coursera. Amazon blamed the issues on “degraded performance for a small number of EBS volumes in a single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region.”

Amazon flat-out said the claims of an attack were untrue. “This is not accurate,” an Amazon spokesperson told Venturebeat via email. “An attack did not happen on Amazon EC2.”

Anonymous Own3r, a purported member of Anonymous, said he or she was the one who caused a major service disruption of GoDaddy in September and an outage of Facebook in parts of Europe in October. Both GoDaddy and Facebook claimed that both events were due to internal problems, not an outside attack. Now there’s a third company on Anonymous Own3r’s list.

Anonymous Own3r posted several tweets in poor English, claiming responsibility for an attack on Amazon EC2:

Based on the available evidence, we find the hacker’s claims to be extremely suspect and we believe Amazon. The primary outlets for Anonymous to spread its message on Twitter, @YourAnonNews, @AnonymousIRC, and @AnonOps, have said nothing about today’s Amazon outage. On top of this, both Facebook and GoDaddy claimed there were no outside attacks involved with their recent outages.

This pattern makes it look like Anonymous Own3r is simply claiming responsibility for any outage happening on the web. Of course, we can’t be 100 percent certain that Anonymous Own3r isn’t involved because Anonymous is a purposely fractured organization and major companies don’t want to admit when they’ve been successfully attacked.

Anonymous image via liryon/Flickr

Anonymous and Wikileaks have seemingly broken a longstanding partnership after Wikileaks put up a paywall over a number of leaked documents on its website.

Wikileaks is a driving force behind “transparency” in the world, often obtaining private or confidential emails, documents, and other communications, to show how politicians and other world leaders actually operate. One of the most famous leaks, known as “Cablegate,” was when Wikileaks got its hands on some U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010. The cables revealed information about the U.S. and the war in Afghanistan as well as other current events.

Today, those who tried to access Wikileaks’ documents were interrupted by a splash page that could not be closed. The page had a video about President Obama and called for the visitor to either donate to Wikileaks or share the video on Facebook or Twitter. Doing one of those three actions would remove the splash page, giving access to the documents.

As Wired notes, the “paywall” wasn’t up on all of the leaked documents that Wikileaks hosts, but just the fact that it exists caused Anonymous to sever its ties with the organization.

“We have been worried about the direction Wikileaks is going for a while. In the recent month the focus moved away from actual leaks and the fight for freedom of information further and further while it concentrated more and more on Julian Assange,” said Anonymous in a statement. “It goes without saying that we oppose any plans of extraditing Julian to the USA. He is a content provider and publisher, not a criminal. But Wikileaks is not — or should not be — about Julian Assange alone.”

Anonymous went on to explain that it realizes the paywall can be circumvented by disabling Javascript but is angry because the “casual user” won’t realize that.

You can read Anonymous’ full statement on Pastebin.

After Cablegate went public, Anonymous defended Wikileaks by attacking a number of payments companies after they cut off donations to the leaks website. PayPal and Visa were among those attacked.

Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange was recently granted asylum by Ecuador and resides in the country’s embassy in London. Assange was arrested in the U.K. for sex crimes he allegedly committed in Sweden. He was to be extradited to Sweden but called for asylum when the country couldn’t promise he wouldn’t be further extradited to the United States for Cablegate.

“The conclusion for us is that we cannot support anymore what Wikileaks has become — the One Man Julian Assange show,” Anonymous continued. “But we also want to make clear that we still support the original idea behind Wikileaks: Freedom of information and transparent governments. Sadly we realize that Wikileaks does not stand for this idea anymore.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last week Anonymous claimed it plucked 12 million unique identifiers associated with iPhones from an FBI laptop. Today, however, a Florida publishing company says it was actually its servers that were hacked, according to NBC News.

On September 4, Anonymous announced that it stole 12 million UDIDs after hacking into what seemed to be a poorly protected FBI agent’s laptop. The group released one million of those numbers as proof that it had actually obtained them. The incident raised questions of government surveillance and what the FBI would be doing with all those UDIDs (which on their own don’t provide give any personal information such as credit card numbers or passwords).

Quickly following the hack, both the FBI and Apple responded. The FBI said it had “no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.” The agency went on to call the claims “totally false.”

Apple later said it hadn’t given the FBI any of the UDIDs and that the FBI had not requested any of them.

According to NBC News, publishing company Blue Toad said it ran the publicly available UDIDs against its own database and found they matched up with 98 percent accuracy. That was enough to convince the small company that its own servers had been hacked, and it has called foul on Anonymous’ claims. The company says it has already reached out to law enforcement but does not plan on contacting those who may have been affected.

As per its website, Blue Toad lets people publish content such as a magazine to a catalog or brochure using its technology. It also works with app development.

“As an app developer, BlueToad would have access to a user’s device information such as UDID, device name, and type,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told NBC News. “Developers do not have access to users’ account information, passwords, or credit card information, unless a user specifically elects to provide that information to the developer.”

via NBC News; Anonymous image via skenmy/Flickr

Anonymous member Topiary, otherwise known by his real name Jake Davis, is out on bail and not allowed to use the Internet. He’s probably not even allowed to look at the Internet, and I bet there are people out there who would like him not even think about the Internet — but let’s not go down that Orwellian path.

He is blocked from what we see as an avenue to free knowledge and understanding. How does he feel? “Fulfilled.”

The young hacker, who was allegedly involved in the attacks on HBGary and Westboro Baptist Church recently plead guilty to “computer misuse under the banners of ‘Internet Feds”, ‘Anonymous’ and ‘LulzSec’. He also faces an extradition to the U.S. for similar crimes.

But, according to a blog post he wrote for The Guardian, he seems calm having shed the constant humming and interruptions — the side-effects of the Internet. Calm, while wearing an ankle bracelet, and awaiting a sentence that could include jail time.

It is not so much the sudden simplicity of daily life – as you can imagine, trivial tasks have been made much more difficult – but the feeling of being able to close my eyes without being bombarded with flashing shapes or constant buzzing sounds… Sleep is now tranquil and uninterrupted and books seem far more interesting.

He continued:

Our lives are compressed into short, advertisement-like bursts or “tweets”. The constant stream of drivel fills page after page, eating away at our creativity. If hashtags were rice grains, do you know how many starving families we could feed? Neither do I – I can’t Google it.

Topiary goes on to encourage “those in a similar situation,” to take a week off from the Internet as well. Perhaps this is a shout out to fellow Anonymous members, or other hackers, but it’s a thought we all could consider.

via The Guardian; hat tip Gizmodo; Anonymous image via liryon/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple responded today to the hack on 12 million UDIDs, or the unique number associated with iOS devices, after hacker collective Anonymous said the bounty was stolen from an FBI laptop.

“The FBI has not requested this information from Apple, nor have we provided it to the FBI or any organization. Additionally, with iOS 6 we introduced a new set of APIs meant to replace the use of the UDID and will soon be banning the use of UDID,” said Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerri in a statement to All Things D.

Yesterday, Anonymous released one million of the stolen UDIDs and promised that it could release the other 11 million. The group, which is known for hacking in the name of a political or moral position, claimed the loot was lifted from a laptop owned by an FBI agent. The hackers allegedly were able to access the data through a vulnerability in Java.

The FBI followed the hack with its own statement yesterday, saying “there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.”

The agency also tweeted about the issue, calling Anonymous’ statements “totally false.”

ESET researcher Stephen Cobb wrote about the hack this morning, saying he found his wife’s information in the released one million UDIDs, which can be accessed following instructions Anonymous posted in Pastebin. Cobbs says that he sees “no evidence” that Apple’s security has been breached and thinks the data might not be FBI-based either.

“Of course, the interwebs are abuzz with speculation about government surveillance, but the file could also be from an ad agency or data broker,” said Cobb in a blog post. “Right now I am not too concerned that this particular group of hackers has the data. They seem determined to use it to make a point, not a profit.”

via All Things D; Tim Cook image via igrec/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says hacker group Anonymous is lying about retrieving 12 million UDIDs, or the unique identifiers associated with Apple mobile devices, from an agency laptop.

This morning, the hacker collective released one million UDIDs along with usernames, addresses, phone numbers, and other pieces of personal information. It reportedly did this by exploiting a vulnerability in Oracle’s Java, which has been having problems of its own lately, to access a computer allegedly owned by an FBI agent. But the federal agency does not agree.

“The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed,” the FBI said in a statement. “At this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.”

The agency also tweeted about the incident saying, “Bottom line: TOTALLY FALSE.”

It’s understandable that the FBI would be up in arms about this one. If Anonymous’ story is true, it raises the question as to why an FBI agent would have this many UDIDs on a laptop, and why the data on that laptop wasn’t otherwise secured. It also nods at the growing concern over surveillance of U.S. citizens, a hot topic at conferences like Def Con where one former National Security Agency employee said the majority of us are under watch.

One Anonymous bull horn, AnonymousIRC, tweeted, “You know you’re doing something right if @FBIPressOffice throws caps at you on twitter to deny an #Anonymous statement,” followed by, “What a day. @FBIPressOffice screaming in caps at us while @AdrianChen is wearing a tutu. Really need more of those. #ForTheLulz.”

In its press release regarding the hack, Anonymous said it would not answer any press questions unless Gawker writer Adrian Chen wore a tutu and put a shoe on his head for the Gawker home page. As you can see, he took one for the team.

FBI Image via JLaw45/Flickr

Hacker group Anonymous targeted United Kingdom government websites today in a show of solidarity with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is holed up at the Ecuardorian embassy in London, hoping to flee the U.K. for fear of being extradited to Sweden and then the United States.

The hacker collective, famous for using distributed denial of service attacks to make a political point, allegedly attacked the U.K. Justice Department website, along with the British Prime Minister’s website “Number 10.” Other reports indicate the group has also attacked the Department of Work and Pensions. Anonymous used the hash tag “#OpFreeAssange,” referencing the founder of Wikileaks who is supposed to be under house arrest in the U.K. for sex-crime allegations in Sweden.

Earlier today, one Anonymous bullhorn on Twitter, @AnonIRC said, “The website of the UK Ministry of Justice is down: http://www.justice.gov.uk/  #OpFreeAssange”

Another, @YourAnonNews, tweeted, “The second victim seems to be offline –> http://www.dwp.gov.uk/  #OpFreeAssange #Anonymous. Gov. of UK Expect Us!”

After being arrested and let out on bail, Assange escaped to the Ecuadorian embassy before authorities could extradite him to Sweden. The Latin American country granted Assange political asylum last week, saying his human rights were in danger. Officials in Ecuador spoke with Sweden but were not able to get assurances that Assange would not be extradited from there to the United States, where he faces bigger charges for the leak of many U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010.

As of now, the U.K. Justice department website is still down, though Number 10 and the Department of Work and Pensions websites are up.

This morning Assange gave a speech from a balcony at the Ecuadorian embassy. He urged the U.S. to end its “witch hunt” against Wikileaks. He said that the U.S. is at a juncture: “Will it return to and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark?”

hat tip The Register; Julian Assange Anonymous image via Takver/Flickr

The dust from SOPA and PIPA is settling, but the hacker community knows that it canbe kicked up again at any moment. In the run up to WCIT, the World Conference on Telecommunications, former ICANN chief executive Rod Beckstrom called for the hacker community to protect the Internet from regulation.

“It’s not merely that everybody should be able to communicate with everybody else at any time, it’s that people actually want to,” said Dan Kamisky at the Def Con conference in Las Vegas. “It’s not just a reconfiguration of government, it’s a reconfiguration of human social behavior.”

WCIT will be a seminal moment for the Internet. There, the International Telecommunications Regulations will be decided — a document that will touch all Internet users whether they know it or not. According to Beckstrom, the Internet needs to be an organized chaos. And to keep the Internet free and open for all, hackers across the world need to start talking to their lawmakers.

“We should not move our nation of the Internet from a multi-stakeholder model, which includes all voices, to a process that only includes one,” said Beckstrom at Def Con.

Beckstrom believes the Internet should remain open, global, neutral, governed by multi-stakeholders (which does include governments), with little regulation. The only way to make this happen is to communicate with legislators, and more importantly, learn how to explain technology in simple terms.

The panel used SOPA as an example of this. When the bill surfaced, many attacked supporters of SOPA and PIPA — both verbally and with a variety of DDOS and other offensive techniques. Acts such as these, and simply the anger with which SOPA was met may have intimidated policymakers into being mute, afraid to ask the right technical questions.

Akamai director of security intelligence Josh Corman fears lawmakers will be scared into making “stupid policy decisions” while reacting to malicious hacks and other public displays of infection. For him, tyranny breeds chaos, which breeds tyranny. Because of this, hackers don’t just have a responsibility to talk with lawmakers, but with those in the community who may be using malicious attacks.

“Don’t judge them,” said Corman, “Mentor them.”

Two U.K.-based youngsters believed to be a part of the LulzSec hacking group pleaded guilty to attacking the CIA website, the U.S. Air Force Agency website controlled by the Pentagon, along with a slew of others in a U.K. court today.

Cleary, 20, pleaded guilty, along with fellow LulzSec member Jake Davis, 19, to two counts of “unauthorized act or acts with intent to impair or with recklessness as to impairing, the operation of a computer or computers” per the U.K. CyberCrime Law. That is, the two admitted to using distributed denial of service attacks to take down a number of websites including  that of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency website. A distributed denial of service attack, or DDOS, shuts down a website by blasting packets of information in the thousands to overload the server, eventually causing the system to crash. We’ve seen hacking groups such as LulzSec and Anonymous use this tactic to take down, and occasionally deface websites.

Cleary also pleaded guilty to aiding an attack on the U.S. Air Force Agency website.

Davis was a well-known figure around the LulzSec/Anonymous community codenamed “Topiary.” His arrest spurred a number of these attacks done for the “Free Topiary” cause. If convicted, the two face up to 25 years in jail.

Other websites mentioned in the case included Westboro Baptist Church, HBGary, and PBS. The hack on Westboro Baptist Church stirred the pot when a hacker called into a live interview with one of the church’s leaders and hacked the website on the spot. The hack of security company HBGary was also a headliner, when the group took down the site and posted 71,000 company e-mails to the Web.

Cleary and Davis, however, are both pleading not guilty to counts of stealing proprietary information during these hacks and publishing them. Other arrested members, 25-year-old Ryan Ackroyd (otherwise known as lolspoon, or Kayla) and an unnamed 17-year old, plead not guilty to DDOSing. The two will be tried in court on April 8, 2013.

Cleary was originally arrested a year ago in June 2011 for violation of the Computer Misuse Act. He was taken by the Metropolitan Police to a central London station while police searched his house, finding “a significant amount of material.” He was recently indicted by the United States for his hacking activities, though it is reported that the U.S. will wait until after the U.K. proceeding to take further action.

via The Telegraph; LulzSec image via openfly/Flickr

Eager content-deprived pirates were flummoxed on Wednesday by the news that The Pirate Bay had been taken offline by a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

While suspicions were almost immediately leveled at the hacktivist group Anonymous, The Pirate Bay quickly denied the group’s involvement.

But one decidedly anti-Pirate Bay hacker named “Nyre” who is taking responsibility, ZDNet reports.

“The Pirate Bay was a press-release website for Anonymous, then I had a idea, why not take it down? Why not make it impossible for Anonymous?” Nyre said in a post on PasteBin titled “The Reason“.  (Nyre, was, of course, slightly off-base with his assessment. The Pirate Bay and Anonymous aren’t exactly allies, having disagreed on a variety of fronts.)

Nyre initially said his intention was to keep the site down for a week, but the hacker didn’t quite meet his ambitions.

So, to recap: The Pirate Bay wasn’t taken down by Anonymous. It was, however, taken down by a rogue former agent of Anonymous, who now hates Anonymous and Pirate Bay equally, more or less. It’s a narrative that James Bond creator Ian Flemming would be proud of.

As for The Pirate Bay itself, the site is celebrating its return with a special phoenix-themed home page. Let the piracy re-commence.

Hacker photo via Shutterstock

A high-ranking member of Anonymous recently revealed that the group has access to every classified database in the U.S. But what’s more interesting is the way Anonymous obtained this information.

“It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if,” Anonymous member Christopher Doyon, (a.k.a. Commander X) told Canadian publication the National Post in an interview. “You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems.”

Doyon is currently wanted by the FBI, facing a 15-year prison sentence for his participation in assaulting the official Santa Cruz, Calif. website after government officials forcibly removed a homeless encampment from the courthouse steps. More or less, he brands Anonymous as one of the most powerful organizations on the planet because of its access and unwillingness to yield to authority. And while Anonymous’ effectiveness can’t be doubted at this point, I tend to associate the word “organization” with any group that has a clear structure of power and communication.

However, when every member of your group is either wanted or being closely monitored for information on the whereabouts of each member, it makes it sort of difficult to develop any such order. Besides, the very structure of Anonymous is inimical to any kind of central control. That’s not stopping Doyon, who has set up shop in Canada, which he brands as a safe haven for Anonymous and sympathetic to Anonymous’ cause.

In the interview Doyon says:

“We have a lot of contacts in the Canadian government. We were well prepared when I came here, we have an underground railway, and safe houses in Canada. We might be wrong, but our understanding is that the Canadian government is about equally concerned with Anonymous and the United States. Their approach will be: ‘Step lively, don’t stay long, and you’ll be fine.’ So we’re in negotiation with several countries in Europe to try to get a permanent political asylum situation set up for myself as well as for any other Anons and information activists who might need it. … It’s too bad Canada will not find the political courage to protect information activists from America like they did in the ‘60s with the draft dodgers. That’s the reality of it, but they will probably not actively seek to track me down.”

Giving anonymous political asylum in any of the European countries would be an interesting development, but also one that I don’t see happening anytime soon. While the U.S. is the country most actively pursuing Anonymous, it certainly isn’t the only one. Any country that allowed this activity to continue happening would be branded as an enemy of the state.

Photo via Pedro Rufo / Shutterstock

Ohio resident John Anthony Borell III is being tried today for two counts of felony computer intrusion after hacking into Utah law enforcement websites in January.

Borell was recently arrested after Federal Bureau of Investigations agents found him using Twitter and Internet Relay Chat logs. The investigation was spurred by two tips sent in to tips.fbi.gov and ic3.gov that stated Borell was a member of hacking collective Anonymous. It also provided a number of pseudonyms he was associated with including Kahuna, TehTiger, and anonJB.

The indictment states that Borell used the SQL Injection technique to access and take down the websites utahchiefs.org and slcpd.com (Salt Lake City Police Department). The FBI found Twitter direct messages and tweets in which Borell admitted to taking down the websites. Further proof of his identity was found when the FBI looked through chat logs in IRC. There, Borell explained that his father was an attorney and was advising him against talking to the FBI. Agents searched Ohio-based attorneys and found two local attorneys named “John Anthony Borell Esq.”

He had also been in contact with Sabu, Anonymous’s once bullhorn, turned FBI informant.

Borell hacked these websites in order to make a statement about copyright infringement and the current Megaupload case. After hacking utahchiefs.org, Borell tweeted, “Whoever removed the Megaupload image from http://utahchiefs.org and replaced it with their nick when I hacked it for a purpose. Fuck OFF.”

According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, Borell has pleaded not guilty to the two charges. But a guilty conviction could put him in jail for 20 years, and hit him with a fine of $500,000. A trial is tentatively scheduled for June 25.

Indictment and Complaint against "Anonymous" hackerhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/89670544/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list

Anonymous image via Shutterstock