Turnabout 3
Though I do think that much of what Anonymous does is the internet equivalent of toilet-papering someone’s yard, it is difficult not to take a perverse delight in their eavesdropping on the eavesdroppers.
Unfortunately for the cybersleuths, the hackers were in on the call too — and now so is the rest of the world.
Anonymous published the roughly 15-minute-long recording of the Jan. 17 call on the Internet on Friday, gloating in a Twitter message that “the FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.”
February 4, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Strictly speaking it draws out the claim beyond the tensile strength of the actual recording. The first four minutes are jokes about Sheffield between what sounds like a very young FBI man and a Metro police fellow. Then there’s a bit og going on about a twit named Ryan Cleary, a petty hacker in England and his analyzed hard drive which will apparently be enough to send him over. There’s no real strategizing about bringing down a hacking group, just the trading of trivial notes of notes of some people who have either already been arrested or who will be, sooner or later. And no one works up much of a sweat over it. A lot of it could be fairly characterized as idle water cooler talk among the insiders.
February 4, 2012 at 11:34 pm
This actually fits right in with my TP analogy.
Great tittering amongst the neighbors, annoyance and extra work for the homeowner, and no real or lasting results except for the odd square of paper clinging to a branch.
February 5, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Yeah. My hunch is that the conference number was not obtained through any great legerdemain. It may have been given to someone who has already been arrested and turned as an informant and this particular line used for not much very critical. Such informants would be counted on to be untrustworthy and perhaps that would even be of some benefit to those feeling they were eavesdropping on something special. I do know from personal experience that the government does, from time to time, have conference calls with people from industry on security matters and sometimes the untrustworthy among those given the opportunity allow others to snoop.