Hacking Activists Announce New Alliance

Two major hacking collectives have announced they've forged a partnership. Anonymous and LulzSec say they are targeting high-profile classified information.

The two groups do not carry out hacking in order to make money, either by stealing card details or selling bogus security software. Instead, they carry out a blend of hacktivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism), attacks made for a political purpose, or simply for amusement.

The Anonymous group has carried out several politically-motivated operations in recent months. Among its most famous activities have been attacks on the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church and the scientology movement. (Source: wikipedia.org)

LulzSec has come to prominence this year, with it's most prominent targets being Sony (though it wasn't responsible for the main attack on the PlayStation Network) and a business that works in conjunction with the FBI on cyber security. It also carried out an attack on the PBS website, posting a fake news article that proclaimed deceased rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were alive in a small New Zealand town. (Source: cbsnews.com)

"Antisec" Offers Two-For-One Hacking

The two groups have now formed a partnership for a joint campaign known as Operation Anti-Security, or simply "antisec."

The campaign is billed as aiming to expose corruption and stop personal privacy being "overrun by profiteering gluttons." A statement says the "top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. [The] prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments." (Source: crn.com)

While the main goal of the groups appears to be to hack into sites and get hold of sensitive data that can be made public, they acknowledge that in some cases the only effective tactic will be distributed denial of service attacks: automatically flooding a website with requests until it is forced offline.

Alliance Unwelcome News for Security Firms

The partnership will be unwelcome news for security officials. There had been reports that Anonymous and LulzSec members had been engaged in an online feud with on another, but that now appears to have been either overstated or an outright hoax.

Not all online activists seem to be backing the antisec movement, however. A new blog claims to have gathered information about the identity of LulzSec members and some of the details have reportedly been passed on to law enforcement officials. (Source: blogspot.com)