Who Are The Most Notorious Hacking Groups?
The hacking group known as Lizard Squad has been making quite a nuisance of itself, claiming responsibility for both an attack on the Malaysia Airlines website, that resulted in users being redirected to a page bearing the headline "404 – plane not found", and an alleged DDoS attack on Facebook that temporarily took the website offline.
Facebook has denied being hacked, claiming the 40-minute outage was due to a change that affected its configuration systems. Meanwhile, Malaysia Airlines assured customers and clients that its website had not been hacked, and that only the domain name – www.malaysiaairlines.com – had been temporarily redirected to another site.
Lizard Squad is a group of hackers that has gained notoriety for attacking a number of major technology companies including Sony, Microsoft and Facebook. The group first came to the world's attention in August 2014 when it began attacking a range of online games, including League of Legends and Destiny. This was followed by more high-profile attacks on Sony's Playstation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live in August and December. Lizard Squad appears to have a particular vendetta against Sony. In August 2014, for example, Lizard Squad tweeted a threat against an airliner on which Sony's president of online entertainment was travelling. The plane ended up making an emergency landing. The group also claims to have affiliations with the Islamic State (ISIS). During the Malaysia Airlines website attack, it described itself as the "Cyber Caliphate" (the hacking wing of Islamic State). It also planted the ISIS flag on Sony's servers in August. While the motivation behind Lizard Squad's attacks may appear to be political, however, the main purpose is to publicise the group's hacking tool, known as Lizard Stresser. It is thought the link to ISIS could therefore be a ploy to get more coverage by the media.
Anonymous is perhaps the most notorious of all hacker groups. It is a decentralised online community of tens of thousands of anonymous 'hacktivists', who use their combined computer skills to attack and bring down websites as a form of protest. The group became known for a series of attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites. It has attacked the Pentagon, threated to take down Facebook, threatened Los Zetas, the Mexican drug cartel, and declared war on Scientology. In 2010, Anonymous launched Operation Payback, after several companies including Visa, MasterCard and PayPal refused to process payments to WikiLeaks. It also publicly supported the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, attacking the website of the New York Stock Exchange.
Since 2009, dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyber attacks, in countries including the US, UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Turkey. Anonymous generally protests these prosecutions and describes these individuals as martyrs to the movement.
LulzSec (an abbreviation of Lulz Security) was originally formed as a spinoff from Anonymous, following the HBGary Federal hack in 2011. It consisted of seven core members, and its motto was: "Laughing at your security since 2011". The group's first attack was against Fox.com, leaking several passwords, LinkedIn profiles, and the names of 73,000 X Factor contestants. It went on to compromise user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011, and take the CIA website offline in the same year. LulzSec gained attention due to its high profile targets and the taunting messages it posted in the aftermath of its attacks. Some experts characterized its attacks as closer to Internet pranks than serious cyber-warfare, but the group itself claimed to be capable of stronger attacks. In June 2011, LulzSec released a '50 days of Lulz' statement, in which it announced the operation was disbanding. However, the group committed another hack against newspapers owned by News Corporation on 18 July, defacing them with false reports of the alleged death of Rupert Murdoch.
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is a group of computer hackers who claim to support the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It mainly targets political opposition groups and Western websites including news organisations and human rights groups. It is suggested in US intelligence circles that SEA is actually Iranian. In addition to the defacement of high profile websites the SEA is thought to carry out surveillance on the location and identity of ant-- Assad activists and this monitoring isthought to include foreign ais workers.
