There’s already been one book written all about the loosely-knit “hacktivist” collective Anonymous, but another is on the way.
This one will be authored by two former members. It will concentrate largely on one of the group’s less well-publicized break-ins into defense systems security company HBGary Federal, and it will discuss the social revolutionary aspirations of a certain subset of Anonymous-affiliated activists focused on the Middle East and North Africa.
On Tuesday, The New York Observer broke the news that former Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown and outed member Gregg Housh are shopping around a book they co-authored on their perspective of Anonymous’s activities, called Tales From Inside The Accidental Cyberwar.
Scant details have emerged about what the book will actually be about, aside from Housh’s comments to The Observer that it’ll “detail the origins of his involvement with Anonymous, and explain what they do in a way that will reach a wide audience, as opposed to a technical manual,” and that Housh set out to write “a page-turner.”
TPM’s Idea Lab can now provide more concrete details about the actual subjects of the book direct from coauthor Barrett Brown.
According to Brown, the HBGary Federal hack and Anonymous’s support of the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, Yemen and Egypt “will be taking up more space than most other issues.”
That hack of government computer security firm HBGary Federal and its parent company HBGary, conducted over a three-day span between February 5 and 7, was conducted in retaliation to boasts by HBGary Federal’s CEO Aaron Barr in The Financial Times that he had identifying information on the group’s leaders that could lead to their arrests. The FT reported that Barr would present the information he had obtained on Anonymous at the 20th RSA Conference in San Francisco, an annual gathering of computer security firms and experts.
Instead, Anonymous struck back, hacking HBGary Federal’s and HBGary’s websites (despite Barr’s pleas to get them to stop) and stealing over 70,000 confidential emails from Barr’s inbox and those of other HB Gary employees, including correspondences with defense contractors and government officials. The hackers also defaced the websites and Barr’s Twitter account with profane tweets and tweets containing his personal information.
Humiliated and shaken-up after reportedly receiving death threats, Barr pulled out of the RSA conference and then resigned from HBGary Federal entirely, though he is still active on Twitter. Meanwhile, his company suffered a fatal blow to its reputation and has since been dissolved, though parent company HBGary recently told the Sacramento Bee that its business is stronger than ever thanks to the name-recognition it gained from the hack.
Meanwhile, the hack also resulted in the splintering-off of a separate hacker group from Anonymous called LulzSec, which went onto to hack multiple targets throughout the year, including the websites of Sony and FBI-joint venture InfraGuard, but which has since “disbanded.”
Brown, who “left” Anonymous in May in a highly-publicized divergence over the groups ultimate aims, has spent the past several months since trying to follow the trail of one strand of information gleaned from several emails obtained by Anonymous in the HBGary Federal hack and posted online here. Specifically, Brown has been intrigued with emails relating to an ambitious Department of Defense social media surveillance and control program codenamed ROMAS/COIN.
In a lengthy post on his Project PM wiki published in July, Brown highlighted emails between HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr and an executive from defense systems contractor TASC (formerly owned by Northrop Grumman) that reinforce earlier reports that the scope of the government’s ambitions in the area of digital surveillance were was vast, encompassing not only the ability for intelligence workers to create and operate numerous “sock puppet” online identities to infiltrate groups like Anonynous online, but also that a joint-venture of defense and technology companies lead by TASC including such big names as Google and Apple were all collaborating on an effort to wrestle the contract for the program away from Northrop Grumman.
“The Romas/COIN report itself summarizes everything I’ve learned about Apple and Google’s work with HBGary and TASC in attempting to win the COIN contract,” Brown told Idea Lab via email. “The e-mails above represent pretty much the total of what I’ve found on those connections. There are likely to be others among the rest of the 70,000 HBGary e-mails, just as there are undoubtedly more that provide further clues on Romas/COIN which I’ve yet to come across. One of the reasons for putting this out to report was to prompt other media outlets to continue digging on this and other issues.”
An HB Gary spokesperson told Idea Lab via email that it “is not involved in ROMAS/COIN,” and that “I can say that much of what was speculated by Anon/LulzSec was incorrect.”
Google has categorically denied any involvement in the program, though it refused to comment on the record to TPM’s Idea Lab.
TPM’s Idea Lab has also reached out to the Department of Defense and Apple regarding the emails and will update when we receive a response.
Despite the fact that “split,” from the group, Brown also told TPM’s Idea Lab that he’s been working with “Tunisian Anons” through Project PM to get progressive party leader Ahmed Najib Chebbi elected president in the Tunisian elections in October.
Brown sees himself, and Anonymous’s grander potential, as that of modern day social revolutionaries. As he told TPM’s Idea Lab via email:
“In the long term, I’d like to see a loose network of independent, borderless civic groups arise and serve as a counterbalance to state power – and a competitor for the loyalty of those who would otherwise give up that loyalty to whatever nation-state they happen to be born to. Obviously, many others have been seeking the same thing for generations, but the information age is making such a development gradually more viable.”
All of this will likely be detailed in the book.
That’s a marked difference from the “other” Anonymous tome out now, Cole Stryker’s Epic Win For Anonymous: How 4Chan’s Army Conquered the World.
Stryker’s book, published on September 1, aims to tell the story of how Anonymous originated on the website 4chan.org, covering the site’s “transformative cultural impact, and how it has influenced–and will continue to influence– society at large.” It has received markedly negative reviews from Anonymous members and Amazon customers.
Stryker first came to the idea to write his book at his former job, AOL web trends blog Urlesque.
He even interviewed Housh for the book, a point which has lead to a public spat between the two on the (web)pages of The Observer, with each accusing the other of being wrong about Anonymous and ill-respected by current members of the group. Basically, a tit-for-tat on who’s book will be the more authoritative and authentic.
Correction: This post originally misspelled the company name “Northrop Grumman” as “Northrop Grummond.” It has since been corrected. We regret the error.
