The more Facebook seems to dominate the world, the closer it seems to be to its end.

Earlier this year, there was dastardly nonsense being peddled that Facebook would shut down March 15. However, now we have news of an apparently credible threat.

It comes from Anonymous, the interesting group of people who express their principles in an activist way by infiltrating the systems of the unsuspecting or the merely complacent.

The Village Voice has pointed me to an Anonymous press release that states quite unequivocally that Facebook is going to get it on November 5.

Should that date not be dear to you, it is the day when British people let off fireworks to commemorate Guy Fawkes, a man who felt the passionate need to detonate Britain's Houses of Parliament.

For those who haven't bothered with British history (short version: a lot of colonizing, eating meat, and pretending to be friendly), you might have seen Guy Fawkes immortalized in the fine movie "V For Vendetta".

A Vendetta against Facebook?
(Credit: CC Anonymous-Munich/Flickr)

Anonymous' press release is candid to its core. It declares: "If you are a willing hacktivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook for the sake of your own privacy."

It then offers an interesting accusation: "Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world. Some of these so-called whitehat infosec firms are working for authoritarian governments, such as those of Egypt and Syria."

There follows a hearty disquisition about how Facebook allegedly owns your information, regardless of whether you delete your account, and makes money from it.

Anonymous makes very clear which side it believes Facebook has made its bed and laid its skateboard. It says: "Facebook is the opposite of the Antisec cause. You are not safe from them nor from any government. One day you will look back on this and realise what we have done here is right, you will thank the rulers of the internet, we are not harming you but saving you."

I know that, for many, Facebook will represent a slightly different target than those receiving the hacktivists' attention before--such as the International Monetary Fund, News Corp., or the Iranian government.

The question, though, on the lips of many, may be why Anonymous has given Facebook notice. You may also wonder whether Facebook is quaking, whether it has taken any precautions--and whether, perhaps, in the spirit of sharing, it has reached out to Anonymous to broker some sort of truce. (The offer of a super-duper fan page, perhaps?)

I have, naturally, reached electronically in Facebook's direction, seeking answers to these prewar questions.

It will be troubling if, come November 5, your Mom can't post pictures of the twins' birthday party. Are the hacktivists more powerful than the company that allegedly espouses "hacker culture"? That might make for a very good movie.

Update August 10 at 11:08 a.m. PT: Emil Protalinski at sister site ZDNet reports that while some Anonymous members may be looking to kill Facebook, the larger hacktivist group does not appear to support their cause. See "Anonymous does not support killing Facebook on November 5."

It occurred to me that maybe most people don't actually realize just how serious the fiscal situation in the U.S. is. They have some idea that August 2 is not really a hard deadline, that there are some games that can be played with the books and delaying social security payments and whatnot. If you think this, if you are not seriously worried, you need to listen up because you do not understand the situation.

It is not the case that on August 2 the U.S. hits its debt limit ceiling. The U.S. hit its debt limit ceiling back in May. Since then we've been running on cash reserves. What happens on August 2 is that the United States of America runs out of cash. In the absence of at least some additional short-term borrowing, a default is inevitable. Yes, in the aggregate, there is more than enough money coming in to service the debt, but the timing is wrong. Tax revenues are not a steady stream, they come in sporadically, and the next big batch of revenue is not expected until after the next round of debt payments are due. The U.S. is quite literally living paycheck-to-paycheck, and on August 2 we hit the wall hard.

I hope I do not have to point out the obvious, that if we do hit the wall hard, the result will be that even the sporadic tax revenues will shrink because we will be immediately embroiled in Great Depression II, which will make the first one look like a cake walk by comparison. The actual bankruptcy of the United States of America, that is, a situation where total tax revenues are not enough to cover the debt even in the aggregate, is not out of the question.

On August 3, if Congress does not get its act together, there are going to be a whole lot of folks who will wake up and find themselves with no job, no cash, and very shortly thereafter, no home and no prospects, and they will say, "What the fuck just happened?" Now you know. Tell your friends. Call your senators and congresscritters, ESPECIALLY if they are tea partiers. This is serious, serious shit, folks, and time is running out.

Despite such “success”, Anonymous’ methods are seen as “unsophisticated”, notably its use of the widely available LOIC software.

“It isn’t sophisticated at all. If you have 10,000 people using it at the same time, it can cause trouble, but not because it’s really sophisticated,” said PandaLabs’ technical director Luis Corrons.

The first version of LOIC required users to input the target site, but recent editions let users hand over the application to the Anonymous command and control centre, dubbed Hive Mind.

“You can actually watch when it’s used by others, giving a puppet-master kind of control,” said Sop. “It’s traditional botnet command and control architecture.” There’s also a browser-based JavaScript version, complete with dropdown menus from which to choose attack targets.

Such automation may suggest a lack of skill, but Prolexic’s Sop says LOIC has evolved to include features such as encryption, which helps the attack dodge DDoS filters. “These guys are doing more than we’ve seen in years from other attacking sources,” he said.

Anonymous has also evolved from running basic flooding attacks, which “jam up the highway” with as many clicks as possible, to more complicated types targeting application and service layers.

“It [flooding] is like calling up the local pizza place and just trying to flood it with calls, blocking it so no other calls can get through,” explained Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks.

“The other type of attack is application layer attack or service layer attack. You’re going to make the person on the other end of the line do as much work as possible. It isn’t just calling the pizza place, it’s ordering multiple pizzas with complicated toppings, really esoteric ingredients.”

On the web, that could mean targeting a page’s search function to add stress to servers.

Why Anonymous works

While Anonymous isn’t formed of – for the most part – professional cyber-criminals, it’s difficult to defend against a group organised in such a way. “It’s a crowd-sourced phenomenon,” said Sop.

“In the cases where it’s an organised criminal group, they’re using one type of botnet, they’re doing a very consistent type of attack. With Anonymous, you have thousands of people, any one of which can change the attack, the rate they’re attacking, and the protocols they’re using.”

In addition, when attackers find a tactic that works, they share it in their chatrooms. “You have to keep up because the attackers realise a countermeasure has been deployed, and say ‘I’ll play chess with you and I’ll change my attack’,” Sop said.

However, those chatrooms are also a weak point, since Prolexic’s staff can sign in to see what their opponents are planning and how well their defence is working.

“As we were blocking their attacks, they’d get discouraged because a lot of these users are very young and they want that endorphin rush,” said Sop. “They want to see the results of their attacks.” The best defence appears to be boredom: “Annoy them enough, and eventually they lose interest and go on to something else.”

Serious threat?

The attacks – and counterattacks – have led to worries of a global cyberwar, but Labovitz doubts “whether low-level, short-lasting attacks such as Anonymous are war. I characterise it more as cybervandalism. That isn’t to say this doesn’t pose a threat, as the writers of these tools evolve as more machines become involved."

Anonymous Message To The Zeitgeist Movement And Venus Project

Hello, leaders of Zeitgeist movement and Venus project. We are Anonymous.

Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation; suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the zeitgeist movement and venus project leaders Peter Joseph Merola , Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows, working in collaboration in making and releasing propaganda conspiracy theory videos being ZEITGEIST THE MOVIE, ZEITGEIST ADDENDUM, and among other propaganda conspiracy theorist videos the zeitgeist movement and Venus project will soon release into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders, has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and for our own enjoyment we shall precede to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Zeitgeist movement and the Venus project in its present form. We recognize you as a serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to be completed in a short time frame. However, you will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your choice of methods, hypocrisy, and the artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell.

You have nowhere to hide because we are everywhere.

you will find no recourse in attack because for each of us that falls, 10 more will take this place. we are cognizant of the many who would decry our methods as parallel to Zeitgeist movement and Venus project. Those who espouse the obvious truth that your organization will use the action of anonymous as a example of persecution of which have so long warned your followers. This is acceptable to anonymous. In fact it is encouraged. we are your SPs


Overtime as we begin to merge our pulse with that of your "Cult", the suppression of your followers will become increasingly difficult to maintain. Believers will become aware, that salvation needn't come at the expense of their lively hood. They will become aware that the stress and the frustration they feel is not do to us but a source much closer to them. yes, we are SPs, But the sum of suppression we could ever muster is eclipsed by that of the RTC.


Knowledge is free.

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.