Anonymous And Ex-Anonymous Hackers Wage A War Of Identification

Anonymous and the group calling itself Backtrace Security seem to be engaged in a campaign of mutually-assured anonymity destruction.

As promised, Backtrace Security, a group of pseudonymous hackers formerly associated with the hacker collective Anonymous, published files earlier this week on BacktraceSecurity.com containing what the group says are identifying details and communication records of members of Anonymous. One file contains the chat logs of several members discussing operations like the attack on security firm HBGary and Gawker. Another PDF includes a spreadsheet of more than 70 pseudonyms of users in Anonymous along with names, addresses, email addresses and other details.

Then Anonymous fired back. A Twitter user associated with Anonymous with the handle TreehouseJen published a link to a page on the document site Pastebin that claims to reveal the identities of Backtrace’s members–three individuals’ names, addresses, phone numbers, and even YouTube videos revealing voices and faces.

I couldn’t confirm the details in either the document claiming to identify Anonymous members or the one claiming to identify Backtrace’s members, so I won’t publish or link to either.

Late last week, a Backtrace spokesperson  that the group of former Anonymous hackers seed saiks to identify Anonymous’ members and put an end to the group “in its current form,” which Backtrace argues is a betrayal of Anonymous’ more fun-loving, destructive and nihilistic roots.

But Anonymous members claim that much of the information released by Backtrace is wrong.  ”About 95% of what was in their file was false, and the 5% that was correct, was put out there way before they came around,” one Anonymous who goes by Anonbrat wrote to me in an email.

“#Backtrace has been #backtraced ouch. What a #fail seriously,” twittered another Anonymous member with the username SabuAnonymous. “Not only did you get all your dox wrong. But you ended up getting doxed too.” (Translated from Anonymous-speak, “dox” are documents, and “doxing” is the practice of revealing someone’s real-life details, usually for the purposes of harassment.)

But another member of Anonymous tells me that no one in Anonymous can say for sure whether the documents are wrong, given that the group knows each other only by pseudonyms. “Seeing as we’re all Anon to each other (for the most part) I couldn’t honestly tell you what’s fake and what isn’t,” he said.

Backtrace, for its part, also denies that many of the details released about the anti-Anonymous group are correct. “Some is real, some is fake. They made up a lot of addresses and phone numbers,” says the Backtrace spokesperson who goes by the name Hubris. “They’re grasping at straws. I hope they have fun with it.”

In this “doxing” war, the stakes are likely much lower for Backtrace than they are for Anonymous, given that Backtrace doesn’t seem to have been linked to anything illegal. Anonymous’s operations, on the other hand, have involved hacking companies like HBGary and Gawker, taking down the websites of PayPal and Mastercard, and threatening the Marine officials responsible for detaining alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning.

That means Backtrace probably only risks harassment if its identities are revealed, while Anonymous risks legal repercussions. Backtrace’s Hubris tells me that the group has shared its data on Anonymous with the FBI, but an FBI spokesman told me that the agency wouldn’t confirm or deny any investigations or comment on sources of information.

If Backtrace’s members do receive harassment from Anonymous in their personal lives, Hubris says the group will at least have distracted Anonymous from its other operations. “The whole point is that they stop what they’re doing, and focus on us,” says Hubris. “I’d rather have them focus on us than the troops on the ground. It’s a fucking honor to take that fire.”

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