by Aman Gupta | Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons | 3 March 2015
Although the morality of black hat hacker groups is always in question, their actions have made the Internet the way it is today — by breaking it on several occasions. Maybe that is why it is important to remember them — especially because they brought PlayStation (PSN) down during the examinations so we were forced to study. Here are some of the most popular groups:
Anonymous
Anonymous has become a symbol of revolutions. Hacktivists or — as members of Anonymous like to call themselves — Anons, with their universally-recognised logo, made some unforgettable breaches and hacks in the last few years. One may say Anonymous is different from all the other black hat groups included in this list; they support critical social movements such as WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring in 2011. Anonymous brought down websites, such as PayPal’s, that helped the US government suppress WikiLeaks. During the Arab Spring, they provided uncensored and untraceable Internet services to the people of Tunisia. The group also supported movements like Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Central, and have been vocal about the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the Gaza war, homophobia and, child pornography.
However, the most prominent and well-known hack by Anonymous has to be the PlayStation Network Hack (which, by the way, has been hacked by almost every group on this list. Seriously Sony, get your security in order!). When Sony stopped the “jail-breaking” of PlayStation, Anons retaliated by compromising over a hundred million PlayStation accounts (including credit card details) and shutting down the system for over a month.
LulzSec
Unlike Anonymous, LulzSec, formed by ex-Anons, had the ideology of having fun and causing mayhem — and mayhem did they cause. Their first hack was on FOX News Channel wherein they stole login IDs and passwords of several thousand people, LinkedIn profiles of numerous employees and planted fake news articles on their website. Thereafter, LulzSec became more and more mischievous: hacking and releasing information of countless PSN users (yet again), a porn website and Bethesda Game Studios, the creators of Skyrim. Nevertheless, the most devious thing that LulzSec or in fact any black hat group has ever done has to be the “Titanic Take-down Tuesday”, wherein the group took down four major websites at the request of their fans because THEY CAN. The members of LulzSec initiated bot and DDOS attacks on Minecraft servers, League of Legends, Escapist, and FinFisher. It is really impressive how they brought all of these website and game servers down all in one go. Before they disbanded, the group has also had some ‘trysts’ with official government websites that include but are not limited to the CIA, the US Senate, and the British NHS.
Lizard Squad
Notorious for its hacks against the most beloved networks, PlayStation and Xbox Live, Lizard Squad came into light recently with their day-long DDoS attack that took down the entire Internet of North Korea. Two days later, Lizard Squad stuck to its word and disrupted the PlayStation and Xbox Live networks yet again ON CHRISTMAS, ruining the mornings of all those who had just unwrapped their new consoles. Fortunately, Kim Dotcom, founder of MegaUpload and an avid gamer himself, came to rescue when he offered Lizard Squad 3,000 accounts on his encrypted storage service Mega to halt the attacks. Yup, the real superheroes of the world are not buff and don’t wear tights. Lizard Squad, like most black hat groups, has a sense of humour. When they hacked the Malaysian Airlines website in early January, they redirected the homepage to a website carrying the title “404 – Plane Not Found”. However, in their short history, they have also made several false accusations including a bomb threat, finding Taylor Swift’s nude photographs and claiming to shut down Facebook, Instagram, and Tinder.
UGNazi
UGNazi, the only group that have not brought down PSN on this list, rarely makes headlines but never fails to send a message. When the US Congress was fighting for stricter anti-piracy laws, i.e. SOPA and PIPA, they attacked the website of the Ultimate Fighting Championships for supporting those acts. Not only did they make attempts to hack the CIA and the US Department of Justice, they were also responsible for leaking sensitive information of the Washington Military Department and the Wounded Warrior Project. UGNazi has shut down and defaced several companies’ websites including WePay, Six Flags, and 4chan.
Aman Gupta
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