by fiddler
Last Saturday, an article in the Financial Times featured Aaron Barr of cybersecurity firm HB Gary Federal, boasting that he had discovered the identities of key members of the hacking collective that calls itself Anonymous.
Any cybersecurity firm worth its salt should realize that this action would result in a reaction, and should create protocols and take precautions to avoid them.
Hmm. Apparently not.
In short order, Anonymous hacked them, printed “Fail” across Barr’s photo, wrote him a scathing letter to accompany it, and released a compilation of 40,000+ of the company’s files and memos to the public. Some of these concerned a presentation prepared for Bank of America last December on how the bank could protect itself against Wikileaks.
One of HB Gary Federal’s bright ideas? Target Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, who is also a New York Times best-selling author and attorney. Why? On the grounds that because Greenwald wants to make sure Bradley Manning isn’t being mistreated and Manning is accused of leaking files to Anonymous, Greenwald therefore must be part of Anonymous.
Wrong.