The founder of the international hacktivist group Anonymous has revealed the existence of this highly secretive group for the first time in a newly released documentary.
Gregg Housh described the organization’s rise from an online chat room for trolls to a vigilante group exposing neo-Nazis and taking on the Church of Scientology.
What began as a small online trolling group of just 10 people in the US has grown into an international organisation of thousands of members, some of whom are “now in positions of power,” from state representatives to government advisers.
Anonymous is known for its masks and secrecy when carrying out high-profile attacks that are often motivated by social or political issues. The organization began in an online chat room in 2006.
Gregg Housh, the founder of international hacker group Anonymous, has revealed the truth about the highly secretive group for the first time in a newly released documentary.
Anonymous is famous for its masks and secrecy when carrying out high-profile attacks that are often motivated by social or political issues.
“Given how secretive the movement has historically been, our documentary team was surprised at how open Gregg was,” said Joshua Tanner Murphy, the documentaries The producer told DailyMail.com.
Housh started the group in an online chat room from his basement in 2006 and intended it to be used solely as an online technology forum where each person would remain anonymous.
For about a year, it was just users trolling each other, years before trolling became commonplace, until they were confronted by someone they thought deserved to be threatened: Hal Turner.
Turner was a neo-Nazi radio host who once held up a noose in a CNN interview and said: “This is a symbol of justice and you’re going to see a lot more of this in the United States.”
They targeted Turner because he was the kind of person who could be goaded into responding. But an Anonymous member went into his emails and discovered that Turner was an informant cooperating with the FBI and was snitching on other neo-Nazis to stay out of jail.
At that point, more people started joining the cause. “They didn’t feel bad about joining,” because it was a bad person they were going after, Housh said.
In June 2009, Turner was sentenced to 33 months in prison for threatening to assault and kill three federal judges over a firearms ruling.
The organization’s first major foray into hacktivism came in its war against the Scientology religion, after a video of Tom Cruise promoting the group was posted online in 2008.
Global protests escalated around the world as thousands of Anons planned to demonstrate in front of Scientology buildings at 9 a.m. local time.
Anonymous spent its early years trying to “figure out what power we have, the same power that a teenager goes through in life.”
This led the cyber group to find its way into hacktivism by using hacking techniques to support a cause or make a statement.
The organization’s first major foray into hacktivism came in its war against the Scientology religion, after video In 2008, a photo of Tom Cruise promoting the group was posted on the Internet.
The video was quickly deleted, but Anonymous found it and reposted it online.
A person with the username Dojo commented on the Anonymous site that reposting the video was costing the Scientology organization a lot of money and that the media wanted to report on it.
“We were asked to write a press release,” Housh said.
Anonymous made a video message a Scientology that was launched on January 21, 2009 at 10:20 p.m.
Before Housh knew it, the video was all over the news and Anonymous had grown from a few hundred users to 10,000 in 42 countries and 143 cities.
Suddenly, Housh recalled thinking, “We have an army. What do we do with it?”
Pictured: Gregg Housh leading Anonymous against Scientology in 2009
One day, Housh was watching the news and saw Tory Magoo, a former Scientology member turned critic, dancing and singing in front of the Scientology building in Boston and making anti-Scientology comments.
He reposted the video on the Anonymous site and wrote: “This is what it would look like if everyone came out.”
His comment sparked a global outcry as thousands of Anons planned to demonstrate outside Scientology buildings around the world at 9 a.m. local time.
Housh called costume shops to find the cheapest mask that people around the world could afford to protect their anonymity and discovered they all had one thing in common: Guy Fawkes from the movie ‘The Fifth of November.’
Thousands of people showed up wearing masks to protest in front of Scientology buildings and prevent the organization from recruiting members. Eventually, Scientology buildings were forced to close.
Housh called costume shops to find the cheapest mask that people around the world could afford to protect their anonymity and discovered they all had one thing in common: Guy Fawkes from the movie “The Fifth of November.”
A year later, an Australian man logged into the Anon chat room to ask the organization for help against the local Senate, which was planning to pass a censorship law to make pornography illegal on the premise that women with small breasts would turn men into pedophiles.
Within hours, Housh received a call from an anonymous senator asking what they should do to stop Anonymous from publishing his emails.
He said he did not threaten the senator when he told him the emails would not be leaked until the bill was passed.
The next day, the vote did not take place and Housh received a call from the senator thanking him for not releasing the emails.
But it wasn’t until Aaron Barr, who worked for HB Gary Federal, claimed he had a list of anonymous usernames with names and phone numbers associated with the organization’s leaders, that the organization really took off.
HB Gary is a cybersecurity firm that helped protect the US government, but when Anon hackers accessed the system, they realized the names were not of Anon members. but they were data from innocent people who had never been part of the group.
HB Gary’s emails revealed he was creating VPNs for the US Air Force to create fake social media profiles in other countries to “influence people’s opinion of the United States.”
“That’s really the big start to full-blown hacktivism,” Housh said.
‘They sit in statehouses as representatives and congressional aides, some even running for congressional seats.
‘They are in positions of power in corporations. There are journalists everywhere.
“…So the answer to the question ‘who is anonymous today?’ is anyone who says they are. We are literally everywhere.”