Hactivist groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec hearken back to earlier days when Web attacks were done for bragging rights, not profits, says the new CTO of incident-response, forensics company Mandiant.
The difference now is the scale of the attacks and the flamboyance of the groups, says Mandiant CTO Dave Merkel, whose appointment to the post was announced on Wednesday. "We haven't seen it ourselves for a long time," he says. "It's interesting to see the alleged political motivation of groups like Anonymous."
Both Anonymous and its affiliate LulzSec attack sites of governments they deem corrupt, businesses they see as violating freedoms they define and individuals seen as threats to the groups themselves. For example, Anonymous stole emails from HBGary Federal and published them after its CEO said he would expose the individuals leading the group.
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