Anonymous Hacking continues

The holiday week saw the resurgence of the online vigilante group Anonymous. Their latest operation, Operation Lulzxmas, sought the attacks on major firms such as strategic intelligence company Stratfor, Mastercard and government websites around the world. Operatives within the group called the Christmas weekend release of data pertaining to customers of security firm Stratfor one of the biggest actions the group has ever accomplished. The goals according the Anonymous spokesman Berrett Brown is to reveal major players that have “conspired against Wikileaks and other activist groups.”

The second is to use the credit card information gathered from its top executives and use it to donate funds to charities. “We steal from the rich & give to the poor, taking from the 1% and giving to the 99% and giving Santa Claus a break,” as one hacker described it when interviewed on the mission of #Lulzxmas. Members of the internet community would ask what they would like for Christmas and with funds generated from the hack many of them received what they asked for in forms of “iPads mostly but also iPhones. We gave away PS3′s VPS Servers & gift cards, just to name a few.”

The attack on Stratfor is only the latest in a continuous set of hacks targeting supporters of what Anonymous calls “colossal attackers on freedom and the flow of information.” As the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed through Congress and Senate, activists opposing the legislations have embarked in similar operations to expose congressman and corporate sponsors that supported the bills.  The next step according to one hacker is Operation #FireSale, which is set to target “everything to do with the media. We’re going to take over and hijack T.V. and radio shows, hack media and news websites.”

So are these guys Santa Clause or the Grinch? You’ll have to be the judge.