Hackers, Cyber War, and Faux Heroes

The group calling itself, Anonymous, recently hacked Stratfor, a  corporation specializing in strategic intelligence analysis.  The hackers made off with 90,000 credit card numbers and the personal identity information belonging to people who pay for Stratfor’s highly regarded work.  George Friedman owns Stratfor.

To make matters worse, hackers claiming affiliation with Anonymous have threatened retaliation against victims of the theft who are speaking to the media or protesting the action of Anonymous on Facebook.  Anonymous says it will spray the personal information of these people all over the internet.  Furthermore, the hackers say they will steal $1 million and donate the money to various charities.

The age of the Faux Hero is upon us.  To many here in America, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Anonymous are heroes.  A similar ethos can be detected in the ranks of Occupy Wallstreet; a mere instinct of rebellion, anarchy, arrogance and envy.  Many who idolize Assange and Manning believe quite deeply in a world of black helicopters, Twin Towers immolated by Bush administration zealots, and Federal Reserve connections to the Bavarian Illuminati.

Essentially, the above noted micreants and OWS are considered by some to be revolutionaries fighting against the New World Order.  As with the Jacobins in the French Revolution, those taking part in the Occupy Wall Street movement emphasize the “right to eat” over the right of merchants to earn money.  Also mimicking the French Revolution is the utilization and exploitation of the underclass in order to solidify political power.

In a previous post I compared Assange to Robespierre.  The Anonymous group dons the Guy Fawkes mask as its mascot.  Interestingly, Fawkes could be considered somewhat of a right-wing religious zealot, something I’m sure most in Anonymous would be averse to.

Bradley Manning, a troubled soldier who hated the Army, violated the oath he took and motivated by spite, launched thousands of classified documents into the greedy hands of Bill Maher’s IT clone, Julian Assange.  The argument that everyone has a right to this information is absurd.  The information is not legislation, but in many cases communication between individuals that contains the names of people who would be endangered if revealed.  Releasing this information also provides our enemies with clues to our military’s intentions.  George Washington would not have revealed his plans at Valley Forge in the name of transparency and Operation Overlord was one of the most secretive undertakings in history.  Anyone releasing the Plans to Overlord would have spent a very large amount of time in prison.

I recently completed a college class titled Cyber Warfare.  For those not familiar with the concept, cyber warfare is defined as the use of computers, digital mediums, and the internet for the purposes of damaging, stealing, or disrupting the critical infrastructure, banking systems or military of a state.  While doing research for the class, my computer became infected with malware from sites critical of Vladimir Putin and more recently, my personal information and email address were stolen from Stratfor’s data base by the loose conglomerate calling itself Anonymous.  Fortunately, I do not pay for Stratfor’s services, so Anonymous was not able to get any of my banking or credit card information.  I have been receiving emails that are clearly from malicious actors who obtained my email address from the public forums on which Anonymous posted tens of thousands such addresses.

Personally, it wouldn’t bother me a bit if one of Anonymous’ hackers got liquefied in a drone strike.  At the very least I would like to see many of these hackers’ computers destroyed in a cyber counter strike.  It’s only fitting.  But the fact that Anonymous and other organizations hide under a veil of false heroism, a myth of modern day Robin Hood pilfering will probably keep such criminals, malcontents and sociopaths in business for a while.

Still, I can hope that the last thing some of these idiots hear is the dull buzz of a Reaper drone.