They’re still around; dormant. A sleeping giant.
They will come when we call.
They fizzled out, members probably moved on to various other groups and projects, while the rest simply went on with their lives. A danger of being decentralized is losing all of your momentum.
A danger of being decentralized is losing all of your momentum.
fediverse growth nervously sweats
Trust me bro.
The other commenter is more right, anyway. A lot of the dudes got arrested. I think the chances of that are low here, for now.
all of the people who were part of Anonymous who were worth a damn at hacking back in the day work for the state department now. The movement could very likely have been a psyop, given how many high-level hackers from that era there are on government payroll.
I stand in solidarity with the gay furry hackers.
A lot of the actual, serious ones that knew what they were doing got caught. Some went to lulsec to be jerks with no agenda and were caught by the Feds. All that was left were script kiddies that downloaded the Low Orbit Ion Cannon and used scripts they find online. Then they left or were overtaken by alt right idiots.
The original Anonymous are in their 30s and 40s by now. Everyone ages out.
What about Kiwi Farms?
They shrunk their breakfast sausage product line and focus on grass fed meats.
Omg LOIC… I was trying to think of that name a few weeks ago and just couldn’t remember. That was fun.
I think the serious ones that didn’t get caught are now working in red team penetration testing, which is an industry that’s been growing exponentially since the years Anonymous did a lot of their big stuff
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IIRC it spammed websites with traffic, didn’t conceal your IP at all, and some people got arrested for using it to make some websites go down for a very brief period. Basically a way to use people who didn’t know what they were doing as cannon fodder
Yep, that’s exactly what it did. Maybe there was a way to do it, say if you had a VPN, but people picked up pretty quick to ban a single IP.
lol your VPN company is going to kick you the instant you turn on LOIC through them. Your packets wont even get to the target site because you are basically attacking your own VPN.
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It pioneered DDoS attacks so, uh, yeah
Where did they get the name LOIC from in the first place?
The only place I am aware of, that uses this name, was the Unreal Tournament 2004.
I think you’ve found your answer.
90s script kiddie here - a bunch of the shit you can do as a minor with low/no consequences becomes SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS as an adult with assets. It’s just not worth the risk to keep dicking around with things that might land you in prison or cost you everything you have.
The delicious irony is that they now get to live in the world they helped create.
This is the truest answer thus far.
Their parents kicked them out of their basements?
Hacking got harder, and the enforced penalties for getting caught became a lot more severe (in the west at least). This meant that most hackers aren’t doing it for luls but for serious business.
They got got -> https://archive.org/details/weareanonymousin0000olso_l5h7
I think that’s a book I have been searching for a long time since I first read it in a library a good time ago
It is a good Cyber-thriller.
Curious to know what answers you were looking for here OP. What makes you think they aren’t doing these things but stopped identifying themselves as such? Also some dialogue is required about the myriad of things ‘Anonymous’ took responsibility for but were never adequately confirmed as objectively true–and more importantly, what is accomplished with this last feat? I believe the answer you seek lies in these depths
They (I use that term to mean the average 4channer) were co-opted by alt right propaganda.
Most neckbeard, incel, Andrew Tate followers are what Anon originally was. We just lied to ourselves that it wasn’t really racist and that we were fighting a good fight.
Now, its a bunch of sad lonely people that found acceptance in intolerance and hatred.
Well that is kind of depressing.
The chaff can’t perceive the wheat.
But its backed by real hard facts and sourced from one of the smallest neckbeards ever.
I don’t think people who refer to “Anonymous” are referring to “the average 4channer”.
“They” got over it, as most people do, and moved on. Remnants still remain, but they were unified due to a critical mass of dissent.
Don’t expect to see anything like it again until another critical inflection point. Just know that, if you do, shit’s prolly in a bad place…so…
Yes, things are pretty peachy in the world right now.
That’s the spirit.
If you’re interested in detail, I can recommend this book: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ncGVPtoZPHcC.
archive.org link for those who try to avoid Google services
(courtesy of [email protected] who also posted this)
I remember when the owner left and it was all bots overnight
Owner of what?
Angry and nihilistic teenagers used to have tech skills and laptops. Now they have iPads and TikTok.
how is this so true lol
I wonder how true that is. Curious to know
I actually teach teenagers programming and 3D modelling. The past 5 years has been the first decline in tech literacy I’ve ever experienced between generations. My personal theory is that only the gamers actually have computers at home now. Everyone else only use their smartphones, and that only gives a negligible increase in tech literacy compared to using a computer.
Yeah but this also has to deal with how many pc gamers there are per generation. So what you’re saying is gen z and alpha has less pc gsmers.
In my experience it has more to do with how much less frequently issues happen and/or how often you need to go manually move files/folders around. Just not nearly as much need imo.
Similar situation with mobile devices, I remember rooting/roming/jailbreaking being much more common in the past.
Yeah devices are really easy so they just work out of the box. Unless you seek out challenges and issues, you’ll probably be computer illiterate.
Yes, computers in their various forms are now so user friendly (and often locked down, because fuck you) that you don’t learn much using them. The golden age for learning tech on the fly seems to have been 1990-2010 or so, because computers were both accessible and still had exposed inner logic.
I think the dawning of the Chromebooks was really a huge sign. Sure you could install Linux on some of the early models. But then Google just caught on to this and decided to take even that away. So now you had all of these Chromebooks that can only ever run ChromeOS and whatever Google approved that could run on them. You just can’t do jackshit with them because they were also online-only.
And those were pushed onto everyone, particularly schools.
As a angry, nihilistic teenager: very fucking true. I am literally the only techy guy in my posh bullshit private international school (in Europe so affordable). The only other dude who uses Linux (I’m using that as a bare minimum for “techy”) isn’t into programming or reverse engineering shit even remotely. I’m all alone (apart from all my non-technical friends). I suppose that’s where the nihilism comes from…
We’ve drastically simplified and made tech accessible to everyone with a smartphone, you no longer need computer skills to get on the internet to shop or participate in social activities. Kids use apps’ platforms for the things we had to build and host ourselves 20y ago.
I wish I was alive back then where you guys had to build everything yourself. Go on irc and stuff. Sounds cool
I’ve recently switched to Linux (I use arch btw) and it feels like I’m living the early days of the ever expanding internet again.
Probably helps that I had to join IRC again for support, instead of Discord.
What is a computer?
Stop all the downloadin’!
Help computer
Anonymous basically became a US intelligence front around the Arab Spring.
Is there some individual news story this relates to?
Kinda figured they got caught and either went to prison or got recruited.