TWO
Operation Israel
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“If the government shuts down your Internet, shut down your government.”
~~ Anonymous Egypt
Thursday - November 15, 2012 approx. 12:15 AM ET - "Safe House" Fredericton, New Brunswick - CANADA
The early North Easter had struck New Brunswick with a sudden fury that didn't surprise me. I was after all, born and raised right next door in the State of Maine. But nothing had prepared me for the brutal Maritimes winter. I had fled the Toronto winter to the comfort of a "safe house" owned by none other than OpNoPro, who some of my readers may remember from my first book. From the moment of my arrival, OpNopro and I had happily been turning his living room into an Anonymous Command Center. With the two oldest known Anons under one roof, we were both delighted at the prospect of setting up to cause as much coordinated trouble as possible while I was visiting.
Both OpNoPro and I were night owls by nature. We tended to stay up all night hacking away and sleep until noon. It was late at night, and while OpNoPro relaxed watching a movie on his PC, I was in an IRC chat with a bunch of Anons - some of whom were veterans of the original Freedom Operations in 2011. With no particular Operation happening, we were sitting around telling the newer Anons old war stories about the original Freedom Ops. Suddenly someone new appeared on the server. The person was obviously from the Middle East, and we would soon learn he was a 15 year old Palestinian living in Gaza. And he was single-handedly, in less than two minutes - about to set Anonymous at total war with Israel.
FreePalestine2012: I am a Palestinian in the Gaza Strip. We need the help of Anonymous. I was told to come here and ask.
Commander X: You can ask. But you should be aware Anonymous is no one's personal army. There is no guarantee we can help you.
AnonVen0m: Maybe start at the beginning and just tell us what's up FreePalestine2012.
FreePalestine2012: Israel is about to begin a new bombing campaign in Gaza. We can already hear the planes and helicopters above us. And a few minutes ago they dropped flyers warning they were going to turn off the Internet in Gaza.
Commander X: Well fuck me....
CosmoKid: Pics or it didn't happen kid. Snap a shot of the flyer and upload it.
FreePalestine2012: Already done, here's the link. --> CLICK HERE
AnonVen0m: It legit says they're going to shut off the Internet. Fuckers....
There was almost a half minute of silence in the IRC as everyone absorbed both the news, and the uncanny fact that it came during a discussion about the original Freedom Ops. But I didn't even hesitate for a moment. I like so many other hackers in the world longed for a reason to go at Israeli cyberspace over their deplorable treatment of the Palestinians. While the others processed the idea, I spent that thirty seconds, no joke - registering the Op Israel Twitter account (@Op_Israel), which persists to this day. I knew the moment to hold Israel to account had finally arrived. I had already been in too many of these epic and historic moments not to realize this.
Then in a furious and synchronized way that Anonymous is occasionally capable of working, the entire IRC channel burst into action according to a tried and true template called the Freedom Ops. First, an encrypted collaborative pad was set up so that some of us could quickly draft a press release on behalf of Anonymous. A URL was registered and a website set up almost immediately. Within two hours of the young Palestinian's visit, the media was already writing about us, and bombs were already falling on Gaza. And one of the single most titanic cyber conflicts in history was engaged. The first media reports mentioning Anonymous were out in hours, and before any of us got any sleep that night it was dozens of reports and the Twitter account had seven thousand followers! The high-impact video was breath-taking, and followed the general script of the press release - which had become customary in these Ops.
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Anonymous Operation Israel - Press Release
Thursday - November 15, 2012 2:00 AM ET USA
Greetings World --
For far too long, Anonymous has stood by with the rest of the world and watched in despair the barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment of the Palestinian people in the so called "Occupied Territories" by the Israel Defense Force. Like so many around the globe, we have felt helpless in the face of such implacable evil. And today's insane attack and threatened invasion of Gaza was more of the same.
But when the government of Israel publicly threatened to sever all Internet and other telecommunications into and out of Gaza they crossed a line in the sand. As the former dictator of Egypt Mubarack learned the hard way - we are ANONYMOUS and NO ONE shuts down the Internet on our watch. To the IDF and government of Israel we issue you this warning only once. Do NOT shut down the Internet into the "Occupied Territories", and cease and desist from your terror upon the innocent people of Palestine or you will know the full and unbridled wrath of Anonymous. And like all the other evil governments that have faced our rage, you will NOT survive it unscathed.
To the people of Gaza and the "Occupied Territories", know that Anonymous stands with you in this fight. We will do everything in our power to hinder the evil forces of the IDF arrayed against you. We will use all our resources to make certain you stay connected to the Internet and remain able to transmit your experiences to the world. As a start, we have put together the Anonymous Gaza Care Package - http://bit.ly/XH87C5 - which contains instructions in Arabic and English that can aid you in the event the Israel government makes good on its threat to attempt to sever your Internet connection. It also contains useful information on evading IDF surveillance, and some basic first aid and other useful information. We will continue to expand and improve this document in the coming days, and we will transmit it to you by every means at our disposal. We encourage you to download this package, and to share it with your fellow Palestinians to the best of your ability.
We will be with you. No matter how dark it may seem, no matter how alone and abandoned you may feel - know that tens of thousands of us in Anonymous are with you and working tirelessly around the clock to bring you every aid and assistance that we can.
We Are Anonymous
We Are Everywhere
We Are Legion
We Do Not Forgive
We Do Not Forget
To the oppressors of the innocent Palestinian people, it is too late to EXPECT US
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Anonymous Global - www.AnonymousGlobal.org
Videos -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHzMB4vnqW8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoVsMbqnNwg
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I worked until dawn, OpNoPro at a desk beside me, set up at his living room coffee table. And the blizzard continued to pile up snow at truly amazing rates. I suppose spending my first full winter in Canada in New Brunswick was as close to my native upbringing in Maine as you can get outside the USA. As the first dull light of day trickled in through the curtains, and our Twitter follower count topped ten thousand (in six hours), the first wave of cyber attacks on Israel cyber space began.
It started as a trickle, but around my third cup of coffee I had to turn to OpNoPro for help in simply tweeting and cataloging the attacks they were coming in that fast. Dozens of cyber attacks, launched by hackers from all over the world long frustrated that they could not strike at Israel for its injustice against the Palestinians. Clearly the Press Release, video, website and social media presence, thrown together so hastily just a few hours before - was having a profound, one could argue - geo-political, effect. The reaction from the Global Collective was brutal, and visceral. It reminded me of chub being thrown into a pool of piranha fish. As bombs rained down on Gaza, Anonymous was systematically dismantling Israel's cyberspace. It was breathtaking the speed with which Op Israel took hold, both in the main stream media, and within the Global Collective of Anonymous. Clearly, Anons around the world were starved to go after this particular adversary - and the veterans of the Freedom Operations had just given them a way. Within hours of a brave young fifteen year old Palestinian kid venturing into an IRC chat room filled with Black Hat hacktivists and asking for help, Anonymous had turned the world on its ear.
As Noon approached, an exhausted OpNopro finally went to go get some sleep. Myself, I was too stunned and excited to get more than an hour or so. Buried under a solid three feet of freshly fallen snow outside, I continued to catalog all the successful cyber attacks, and tweet them out to a voracious media. I also cataloged and tweeted the media's response to what Anonymous had done - thus creating the all important propaganda feedback loop that can fuel any protest, online or in the streets. Hundreds per hour continued to pile onto the Op Israel Twitter account. Finally after waiting what seemed like an eternity we had a newly translated and updated Anonymous Care Package. It was essential to the plan we cobbled together with the young Palestinian kid - whom we had conveniently turned into a media hero. He now had his own website VOX Palestine, and he would be responsible for getting as many Palestinians as possible in Gaza to download this special Care Package. It was essential that as many people as possible had the software tools like the MeshNet programs if Israel made good on cutting off the Internet. Those tools, and the enclosed instructions to the Palestinians (in their own language), was how we would regain Internet contact with them should the worst happen.
The Anonymous Care Package also contains a wealth of other useful information, from first aid to how to make cheap but effective gas masks out of old soda bottles. While much of it had primarily been designed to support protesters in a hostile environment, and not people getting blasted with F-16's from the air - it nevertheless contained a wealth of welcome information and tools. I spent most of the evening and late into the night fielding interviews from mainstream media, who could not publish on Op Israel fast enough. After nightfall, when I could take no more and turned it over to a newly awakening OpNoPro, we had logged over ten thousand cyber attacks on Israel cyber space costing the Israeli economy an estimated one billion dollars. We had nearly twenty thousand Twitter followers, and I went to sleep contemplating the thin line between cyber activism and cyber warfare.
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Friday - November 16, 2012 approx. 4:00 AM ET - "Safe House" Fredericton, New Brunswick - CANADA
I remember strange facts. And I remember clearly giving up on counting every single cyber attack at around the seventeen thousand mark. After that we have only the guestimates of the White Hats who were left to clean up our mess and comment on the wreckage we had wreaked upon Israel. Palestinian hackers, who had unilaterally decided they were Anonymous Palestine - were causing mayhem from within the Gaza Strip even as bombs fell all around them. And countless Black Hats from all over the world were piling online and training their scanners on Israel cyber space. It was a free-for-all, plain and simple.
Once you've launched an Op this huge, there comes a point where all your preparations are done, all your best plans put into play - and then you just sort of ride the wave and work the media. For myself, the task of feeding a voracious mass media with interviews from "Anonymous Operation Israel" was becoming an all-consuming job. Meanwhile, just as we saw in the previous Freedom Operations, people began to form working groups to concentrate on particular areas of support for those being bombed in Gaza. This time around was slightly different than the so-called "Arab Spring" Freedom Ops Anonymous did, in that we were not supporting an active street revolution, but rather a besieged civilian population. One thing we used is live streaming. We assisted and promoted roof-top webcams placed there by Palestinians to live stream to the world the wanton and brutal destruction by Israel Defense Forces. A few of these live streams became quite famous, and many had very brilliant and witty rolling commentary. Working groups also monitored connectivity in Gaza, posting the status.
Meanwhile within Gaza word of Anonymous and its involvement in the conflict had spread like wildfire through the population. The hackers were fighting for them! And while this had little or no impact upon their immediate dilemma, they took huge comfort in this. For the first time in history, the Palestinians were not facing the brutality alone. Their gratitude was some of the most deep and gracious we had seen yet in these Freedom Operations. It first began on the live streams, the commentators going on and on about Anonymous - reporting and repeating reports on the cyber-attacks, spreading links to the Anonymous Care Package, and generally cheering for us and thanking us in equal measure.
But while the Palestinians cheered Anonymous on, those in other quarters were beginning to express serious concern in the western Main Stream Media. In less than 48 hours Anonymous hackers from around the world had caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to the Israeli cyberspace. These attacks were far from limited to only government and armed forces servers, although almost all of that category were taken offline pretty fast. The attacks had now mushroomed to include any Israel owned networks, and any nation or corporation appearing to support Israel. And the Zionist forces were beginning to form up a defense. Pro-Israel hacker groups began to surface claiming they would defend against Anonymous, and even take the fight to us. But unlike some of the other pro-regime hacker groups, such as the very clever and competent Syrian Electronic Army or the Iranian Cyber Army (who famously tore us to shreds in Behind The Mask), the Israeli hackers simply weren't up to the challenge of either defending from, or attacking us. Even with the obvious assistance of both Mossad and the CIA, these hackers for Zionism never managed to become a factor in the unfolding conflict between Israel and Anonymous.
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Saturday - November 17, 2012 approx. 7:00 AM ET - "Safe House" Fredericton, New Brunswick - CANADA
The attacks on Israili cyber space had now become so intense that the traffic in and out of the entire country was begining to slow to a crawl. Just as I was sitting down with my first coffee of the day, I got a ping on PM in the IRC. It was from a screen name I had been seeing a lot of in the past few days, but had yet to meet. I flipped open the tab.
Tr1cK: Hello.
Commander X: Hi there.
Tr1cK: It's great to finally meet you. I need a favor.
Commander X: Yeah I've seen you and your Crew about, good meeting you as well. What can I do for you?
Tr1cK: I need access to the invite-only IRC channel #hack
Tr1cK had been around for about a year. He began as a regular Anon, and then formed his own Crew called Team Poison. Team Poison sometimes flew the Anonymous flag, and other times had no problem going toe to toe with us. Tr1cK was a natural leader, young, brash, and real good at hacking. In the creation of Team Poison he was beginning to show his distinctly Muslim roots, as his Crew had a serious mid-eastern feel to its online rhetoric and iconography. It didn't surprise me at all that they would take a place on the front line of this particular battle, and I had no problem plugging them into the ad hoc c&c IRC channel. I flipped open a tab, contacted the #OpIsrael channel admin and asked for an invite code. Flipping back to the PM tab with Tr1cK in it, I shot the code.
Commander X: So there you go. Anyone you trust in your Crew is welcome. I hope we can chat again soon, let me know if you need anything else.
Tr1cK: Thanks X, it's appreciated. Time to kick some Zionist ass!!
Commander X: Indeed!! Happy hunting.
Thus would begin a friendship that would last for the next three years. We'll get to why it ended later in this story. What is important to remember now is that Tr1cK was a decent and honorable cyber warrior who ran an honest Crew, and from this day when I met him we became fast friends and close comrades in the fight.
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Tuesday - November 20, 2012 approx. 5:00 AM ET - "Safe House" Fredericton, New Brunswick - CANADA
It was a crystal clear, sunny, and cryogenically cold day. Not that you could see much, as the continuous snowfall for the past week had left OpNoPro's first-floor apartment essentially buried beneath meters of the white stuff. My first Canadian winter was....not starting off all that great. But thanks to my old comrade, I was at least warm and well fed, and I had a friend to sit with me as we waged cyber war on Israel.
The days were a blur of information. Taking reports of bombing runs and civilian and journalist casualties in Gaza, pushing them back out through our own propaganda channels. Setting up and pushing out rooftop live streams and other natively created media. And obviously the cyber attacks were a phenomenon unto themselves they had reached such an insane crescendo it was beyond surreal. We were now approaching fifty thousand successful cyber attacks on Israeli cyberspace, and well over a billion dollars in damage. In all the history of Hacktivism, there has never been a strike this intense or punishing against any target, much less a Nation State like Israel. And for the first time, we were hearing reports of Israeli pundits asking openly if the bombing of Gaza should not be stopped - in part because of the punishing cyber attacks and the damage they were causing to the Israel economy.
OpNoPro and I had fallen into a working pattern, combining our efforts to try and manage what had become one of the historically largest and most epic Anonymous Operations to date. For myself, I was beginning to wonder where this was all going. Clearly the Israelis planned on bombing Gaza for quite awhile longer, and in fact had said as much publicly. And the government was beginning to make some frightening statements vis a vis Hackers and the cyber campaign against them. Mossad was a vicious organization, and easily had enough reach to come after me here in Canada. And unfortunately my direct involvement in Anonymous Operation Israel was not a very well kept secret. Was Op Israel going to be one of those rare Anonymous Ops that became in essence perpetual, like Op Syria or Op Bahrain? If so, it would be a cyber battle fought in waves, with lulls of inactivity in between. So when did Operation Israel begin to....die down a little? Surely it couldn't go much longer at this intensity, or Mossad would start hunting us down one by one! All these things were on my mind when I got a ping to go to a very secret IRC back channel for an emergency meeting of the Op Israel managers.
Commander X: Yo what's up, what's the crisis?
Donatello: We have some respected Palestinian activists who want to have a few words with us. You're the last to show, so I'll give them the floor.
FreePalestine2012: I will be quick, we thank you so much for meeting with us. First, on behalf of all Palestinian people we want to thank Anonymous. No one in the world has ever stood for us before as you have, and we will never forget this.
Commander X: Thank you. Just make sure to have our backs when the shit goes down here in the West.
FreePalestine2012: We will! And now we have a favor we must ask of you. In a few hours it will be announced to the world that a cease-fire has been negotiated between Hamas and Israel. The negotiations took place in Egypt. It will be announced in 36 hours. We would like to request that Anonymous and the hackers respect the cease-fire as well.
YDT10: Well shit....
Commander X: That....has never been done before. I'm not sure we have that sort of Command & Control over such a huge Global Collective. Most of the thousands of Hacktivists involved aren't even Anons!
Donatello: We have to try, Palestinians are dying. We must give this peace a chance.
YDT10: How??
Commander X: Donatello is right, we have to try. We'll come up with a plan.
FreePalestine2012: Thank you comrades. All of Palestine thanks you. Finally, we are not alone.
Great. Now all we had to do was the impossible, put the jinn back in the bottle. Historically, all Anonymous Ops prior to this had ended one of a several ways. Either an objective was achieved, or the Op faded as it became apparent the goal would not be met, or the Op turned into a Mexican standoff like it has in Syria or Bahrain - where neither side will back down. Stopping an active Op from the top down for non-linear political reasons like this had never been done, and I would have assumed it to be impossible until today. This was especially true of a massive historic global hacker feeding frenzy like this Op had turned into. Today, we had to make the impossible a reality, the Palestinians were counting on us. But how?
Over the next few hours we slowly devised not only a sketch of a plan, but we recruited some help. Several Crews came together and were tasked with identifying and contacting as many other allied and non-allied Crews that were engaged in Op Israel as they could, as quickly as they could. They were to nicely as possible request that they stand down no later than Noon ET tomorrow. The heads of the more....rational, of the Black Hat Crews were invited to a secret encrypted collaborative online "pad", a place in cyberspace where many people could work on a single document and even chat separately. That document could be saved in multiple formats by anyone with access to the pad. Over the course of the day, the following document was drafted:
Anonymous Operation Israel - Communique
Wednesday - November 21, 2012 3:00 PM ET USA
Greetings World --
For the past week, we in Anonymous have come together with many other allied cyber-activist groups from around the globe to conduct Operation Israel. Our mission was three-fold, and clearly stated: to do everything in our power to keep the innocent people of Gaza connected to the world, to interfere with the brutal aggression aimed at them by the IDF - and to help give a voice to the voiceless. We feel that we have succeeded in these goals.
We are gratified and immensely relieved, as is everyone in the world - to hear of the announced cease-fire between Hamas and the IDF. No one in the world desires a just and lasting peace more than Anonymous. While we in the collective have no problem interfering in war, we do NOT believe it is productive to interfere with peace. We will therefore stand down immediately from all further cyber attacks upon the IDF or Israel so as not to risk this delicate and perilous cease-fire arrangement. Likewise, we encourage all those cyber groups who have joined with us to also cease and desist now from aggressive acts, and give this cease-fire a chance. We ask this NOT on behalf or for the benefit of either the government of Israel, or Hamas - but we beg it of you on behalf of the innocent people of Gaza, that they may no longer be slaughtered with impunity.
But let no one misunderstand us. Anonymous will continue to monitor the Internet and other communications lines into and out of Gaza. We will continue to watch closely BOTH sides in this war. And we will continue to advocate by all peaceful means at our disposal for a just and lasting peace for Palestine and Israel, as well as the entire world. We will be vigilant, we will be active. Operation Israel is NOT going anywhere, and the innocent people of Gaza will never be alone again. Let this Operation be an object lesson to any government or entity anywhere who believes they can turn off the Internet...
We Are Anonymous
We Are Legion
We Do Not Forgive
We Do Not Forget
EXPECT US
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Web Site - www.OperationIsrael.tk
Anonymous Global - www.AnonymousGlobal.org
Op Israel Communique - http://bit.ly/Qv9yBC
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I maintained a closely held list of the E-Mail addresses of many hundreds of journalists from around the world. The list actually began as a gift from Barrett Brown when he departed as Spokesperson for Anonymous. By dinner the above rather....historic, Anonymous release - was in the E-Mail inboxes of hundreds and hundreds of journalists and reporters all around the globe. The media began publishing on it immediately, and I mean almost instantly. Before the list had been completely sent the first articles based on the PR were appearing in my RSS feed. As midnight approached, dozens of media outlets had already reported at length on the Press Release, and the corresponding video we had quickly produced using the PR as a script.
My Crew and the other Crews who were working on nailing down the cease-fire Crew by Crew, hacker by hacker - had reported back. It seemed that all those who were powerful enough to matter had agreed to adhere to the cease fire and quit by Noon tomorrow. Some few had even enthusiastically offered to act as enforcers and literally shut down anyone who refused to obey the cease-fire. We said gee thanks, but - ermmmm....we got this. Unbelievably, it looked like our audacious plan was actually going to work.
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Tuesday - November 21, 2012 approx. 2:00 AM ET - "Safe House" Fredericton, New Brunswick - CANADA
It's not often that an Anonymous Operation ends this way, definitively and successfully. Operation Egypt comes to mind, the celebration both in Tahir Square and in Hackerdom was a day long. But somehow this Op seemed to fit the bill, so even though we had been working hard since dawn and it was passed midnight, OpNoPro and I decided to cook steaks, drink wine, and get stoned. It was in the afterglow of that delicious meal, kicking back and enjoying the victory - when it happened. And this was hands down the best moment of Anonymous Operation Israel, and indeed one of my coolest memories in Anonymous, period.
The various multitude of Crews were well aware that they had about ten hours left to hack Israel cyber space, and were taking advantage of this to get some last licks in. And then it happened, in the blink of an eye. A hacker Crew hijacked the Twitter account of the Vice Prime Minister of Israel. Within moments the AVI and background pictures were changed, and the account began tweeting gruesome pictures of civilian casualties interspersed with pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas propaganda. And from a propaganda stand point, especially at this stage of the cyber conflict - it was essentially a coup de grace against Israel. The utter embarrassment of the double blow of the damage done financially and the propaganda coup of Anonymous seeming at least to have dominated both cyber space and information space, was the final kick in the teeth to Israel. No one would ever forget this Operation. But the real kicker was Twitter tech support. I remember telling OpNoPro no way the account would remain in the hackers hands for more than a few minutes. They kept tweeting on it until dawn, long after dozens of media reports about them taking it had already been published.
As Noon approached, both OpNoPro and I having taken a quick cat nap behind our computers, I was sweating - literally. Would the cyber cease fire hold? The whole way it had ended last night, there was a lot of blood in the water of cyber space - would the piranhas stop feeding? I found myself wishing I believed in a god so I could pray to it now. By 1:00 PM we knew we had done it. The media agreed and they were reporting on not only the Hamas/IDF cease fire, but mentioning the fact that Anonymous had also stood down. Somehow we had achieved the impossible. We had brought Israel to its knees in cyber space, and helped to stop a war. Approximately seventy-five thousand successful cyber attacks and over two billion dollars in damage in a week. And we had managed not to lose control of the largest and most destructive hacker army ever assembled in the history of the Internet. We will never know how many more days or weeks of bombing Israel had planned for the already devastated Gaza, but it's safe to say they were actually just getting warmed up. But the fact is that even if all Anonymous did was shave one hour, or one day, off the planned operation by the IDF - then we saved countless Palestinian lives in a very direct way that was wholly new in the history of the Anonymous Global Collective. The gratitude of the Palestinians, which continues to this day - is something that will always bring tears to my eyes for as long as I live. It was the most cathartic moment for me as an Information Activist to see real proof that information could really and truly trump kinetic force. My ideas on what Anonymous might one day achieve went up several notches after Anonymous Operation Israe