We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

by Parmy Olson

  He was soon spending many hours every day immersed in the so-called Deep Web, the more than one trillion pages of the Internet that cannot be indexed by search engines like Google. As well as dynamic Web forums, much of it is illegal content. William trapped himself in a daily digest of images of gore, horrific traffic accidents, and homemade porn, all on the family computer. When some of the more depraved images would flash up on the screen, William would panic and quickly close the browser window. Somehow, though, he’d stumble upon them again that night. And then again the following night. At around fifteen, he finally found 4chan, the website that would become his world for the next few years.

  Many people who involve themselves in Anonymous claim to have first found it through 4chan. This was the case for William and Topiary, who both discovered the site at the same time, in 2005. Already that year, the tagline “We are Legion” was appearing around the Internet. Tripcode users on 4chan were rare. A year after Shii wrote his essay, forced anonymity had become widely accepted on the image board. Anyone deemed a tripfag was quickly shot down and mocked.

  4chan was booming, a teeming pit of depraved images and nasty jokes, yet at the same time a source of extraordinary, unhindered creativity. People began creating Internet memes—images, videos, or phrases that became inside jokes to thousands of online users after they got passed around to enough friends and image boards. Often they were hilarious.

  Alongside gore and videos of abuse, pictures of naked women and men, and anime characters, there were endless photos of people’s cats. In 2005, users on /b/ had started encouraging each other to put funny captions under cute cat photos on Saturdays (or what became known as Caturday). These so-called image macros, photographs with bold white lettering at the top and a punch line at the bottom, eventually led to the LOLcats meme. It was the first of many memes to find mainstream popularity outside of 4chan, ultimately spawning other websites and even books.

  Thousands of image macros were made and then posted to 4chan and other image boards every day. A few went viral, turning into phrases repeated by millions of others for years afterward. One person who made an image macro that turned into a well-known meme was Andrew “weev” Auernheimer. A former hacker and Internet troll, he had found a stock photo of a man raising his fist in victory in front of a computer. He typed the words “Internet is serious business” over the photo. The meme is now even past the point of cliché as an online catchphrase.

  Weev claims to have been in the same online discussion in which the word lulz was born. In 2003, a forum moderator on another site was commenting on something funny when he suddenly typed “lulz!” Others in the chat room started repeating it, and it spread from there. “It was far superior to lol,” Weev later remembered. Eventually, “I did it for the lulz” or just “for the lulz” would become a symbol of Internet culture and Anonymous itself, as well as an ever-popular catchphrase on 4chan.

  Though the site often seemed superficial and crass, 4chan started developing a dedicated following of passionate users. It became the biggest of the Web’s English-speaking image boards, and its users accepted one another not despite their offensive desires and humor but because of them. One attraction of /b/ was that, like some secret club, it wasn’t advertised anywhere. People came via word of mouth or links from similar sites, and they were urged not to invite those who wouldn’t fit in with the culture. These people were called “newfag cancer.” This was why numbers 1 and 2 of the so-called 47 Rules of the Internet, thought to have originated from discussions in 2006 on /b/ and real-time chat networks, were “Don’t talk about /b/,” and “Don’t talk about /b/.”

  4chan’s constituents soon developed their own language, with phrases like “an hero,” which meant to commit suicide. This phrase came into use when some MySpace users set up a tribute page for a friend who had committed suicide. One of them, probably meaning to type the phrase “he was truly a hero,” instead wrote, “he was truly an hero.” It soon became a trend on 4chan to describe someone as “an hero”—before it morphed into the verb form: “I’m going to an hero.” There was also “u jelly?,” a way of asking if someone was jealous, and “cheese pizza,” or “CP,” slang for child porn. More shrewd 4chan users would start discussion threads about literal cheese pizza, including photos of pizzas, and add hidden links to a child porn archive within the image code—accessed by opening the pizza images in a text program instead of an image viewer.

  The /r/ board stood for requests, for anything from pictures to advice on what to do about being dumped. Pr0nz, n00dz, and rule 34 meant porn. Rule 34 was another one of the 47 Rules of the Internet, which simply stated: “If it exists, there is porn of it.” So /r/ing rule 34 on a female celebrity meant requesting porn, perhaps digitally altered, of a singer or actress. “Moar!” meant more, and “lulz” of course meant fun at someone else’s expense, typically through embarrassment.

  The original posters, or OPs, to each thread were the sole semblance of hierarchy in an otherwise anarchic community. Still, they could only ever expect irreverent responses to their posts and, more often than not, insults. “OP is a faggot” was a generic response, and there were no exceptions. Racist comments, homophobia, and jokes about disabled people were the norm. It was customary for users to call one another “nigger,” “faggot,” or just “fag.” New 4chan users were newfags, old ones oldfags, and Brits were britfags, homosexuals were fagfags or gayfags. It was a gritty world yet strangely accepting. It became taboo to identify one’s sex, race, or age. Stripping 4chan users of their identifying features made everyone feel more like part of a collective, and this is what kept many coming back.

  A source of the most unpalatable stories and images users could find, /b/ was called “the asshole of the internet” by Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED), a satirical online repository of Internet memes that had the look and feel of Wikipedia, but was far ruder. Like the users’ anonymity, /b/ was a blank slate with no label—the users had complete freedom to decide the content and direction it took. Over time, regulars, who called themselves /b/rothers or /b/tards, created their own world. One of the more common threads people started posting on /b/ (besides pr0nz) was titled “bawww.” Here users appealed to the sympathetic side of 4chan, with titles such as “gf just dumped me, bawww thread please?” posted with the photo of a sad face. This was the rare instance where /b/ users would offer sincere advice, comfort, or funny pictures to cheer up the OP. There was no way to tell for sure, but the types of people who were hanging out on 4chan appeared to be tech-savvy, bored, and often emotionally awkward. By the time Anonymous started grabbing the world’s attention in 2008, most people who supported Anonymous had spent some time on 4chan, and it is said that around 30 percent of 4chan users were regularly visiting /b/.

  When William first came across 4chan, he had already seen much worse at sites like myg0t, Rotten, and the YNC. But he lingered on /b/ because it was so unpredictable, so dynamic. Years later, he would marvel at how he could still be surprised each day when he opened up /b/, now his home page. Browsing was like a lottery—you never knew when something salacious, seedy, or funny would pop up. There was something unifying about its utter nihilism. As the media and other outsiders started criticizing what /b/ users got up to, many felt a sense of righteousness too.

  There were still two big no-no’s on /b/. One was child porn (though this is disputed by some hardcore users who like the way it puts off the newfags) and the other was moralfags. Calling someone a “moralfag” on 4chan was the worst possible insult. These were visitors to /b/ who took issue with its depravity and tried to change it or, worse, tried to get /b/ to act on some other kind of wrongdoing. They knew that hundreds of users on /b/ would often agree en masse about an issue on a discussion thread. And sometimes they would not just agree on an idea, they would agree on an action. Though /b/ was completely unpredictable, sometimes its users seemed to be contributing to a kind of collective consciousness. They created jokes together, hit out at OPs they didn’t l
ike together. Like it or not, moralfags would eventually take advantage of this ability to act in sync by persuading /b/ to join protests.

  What /b/ eventually became most famous for was how a poster could inspire others on the board to gather together for a mass prank or “raid.” Someone would typically start a thread suggesting an issue that /b/ should do something about. The refined way to coordinate a raid was never to suggest one directly but rather to imply that a raid was already about to happen. “Hey guys should we do this?” was almost always met with “GTFO” [get the fuck out]. Whereas “This is happening now. Join in” would appeal to the crowd. If a poster had prepared an image with instructions, like a digital image with instructions on how to join in, it was more likely to have staying power because it could be posted over and over.

  There was no exaggerating the speed of /b/. The best time of day to get attention, when the United States was waking up, was also the worst, since this was when your post could get lost in the deluge of other popular posts. You would start a thread with one post at the top, then refresh the page after ten seconds to find it had been pushed from the home page to page 2. The threads were constantly swapping places—once someone contributed a comment to a thread, it would come back to the home page. The more comments, the more likely it would stay on the home page and attract more comments, and so on. A raid was more likely to happen if lots of people agreed to take part. But it could be manipulated if a small group of four or five people suggested a raid and repeatedly commented on it to make it look like the hive mind was latching on. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn’t. It was a game where seconds counted—if the original poster couldn’t post for two minutes, the chance could be lost and the hive mind would lose interest.

  Another reason to stick around: /b/ was an endless source of learning, whether it was how to prank pedos or unearth someone’s private data. Soon enough, the /r/ requests for porn weren’t just for celebrities but for the n00dz of real-life girls, exes, or enemies of /b/tards. As they took up the challenge to sniff out homemade porn, /b/ users taught one another best practices—for instance, how to find a unique string of numbers from each Facebook photo URL, or website address, and use that to access someone’s profile and their information. The methods were simple and crude. The kind of skilled hacking used by cyber criminals or the folks who attacked HBGary Federal was often not needed.

  From age eighteen onward, William began filling a collection of secret folders on his family computer with homemade porn and information about people, including suspected pedophiles and women he’d met online. Soon he was encouraging other newfags to “lurk moar,” or learn more on 4chan. He created another hidden folder called “info,” where he would save any new techniques or methods for his snooping, often as screencaps, for anything from hacking vending machines and getting free Coke—posted in “Real Life Hacking” threads—to bringing down a website. The /rs/ (rapid share) board, which compiled links to popular file-sharing sites, became a source of helpful, free programs like Auto-Clicker, which could help swing an online poll or spam a site. Lurk long enough, he figured, and you could get access to almost anything you wanted.

  William was primarily attracted to women. But lurking on 4chan he noticed other users saying they were swaying into bisexuality or even homosexuality. A recurring thread ran along the lines of “How gay have you become since browsing /b/?” Many male heterosexuals who visited /b/ found their reaction to gay porn went from negative to indifferent to positive. William didn’t feel himself becoming gay or even bi, but he’d come across so much male porn over the years that it was no longer a turnoff. You could almost call it penis fatigue.

  William’s morals were also becoming increasingly ambiguous as he constantly watched and laughed at gore, rape, racism, and abuse. Everything was “cash” or “win” (good and acceptable). /b/tards knew the difference between right and wrong—they just chose not to recognize either designation on 4chan. Everyone accepted they were there for lulz, and that the act of attaining lulz often meant hurting someone. It was no wonder that a future tagline for Anonymous would be, “None of us are as cruel as all of us.” William’s increasing ambivalence over sex and morality was being multiplied on a mass scale for others on 4chan and would become a basis for the cultlike identity of Anonymous.

  William’s online vigilantism meanwhile became his full-time job. It was fulfilling and effective. He didn’t need to hack people’s computers to get their private data—he just needed to talk to them, then employ the subtle art of “social engineering,” that fancy way to describe lying.

  Once William had peeled himself out of bed on that chilly February afternoon, he had something to eat and found his way back to the family computer. As usual, he opened up his Internet browser, and 4chan’s /b/ popped up as the home page. He clicked through a few threads and after a few hours stumbled upon the photo of a girl. Black hair partly hid her green eyes and a bewitching half smile. The photo had been taken from above, the customary self-portrait for teenage girls. The original poster wanted /b/ to embarrass the girl by cracking into her Photobucket account, finding several nude photos, and sending them to her friends and family. Clearly there was some sort of grudge. “She’s a bitch, anyway,” he said, adding a link to her Facebook profile. This was the sort of thing William would do to someone all the time, but the OP had vastly misunderstood /b/.

  /b/ users, for a start, wanted more for their time than just n00dz, which were already the biggest commodity on 4chan. More importantly, an OP must never believe he had /b/ at his mercy. Within minutes, his post had accumulated more than a hundred comments—almost all saying “NYPA” (not your personal army)—along with a few other insults.

  William said the same, but he was also intrigued. He clicked on the girl’s photo again and decided he had nothing to lose by pursuing a night of fun and justice. It was now 1:00 a.m. on a Saturday. Neighbors strolled home from local bars outside as William sat, legs splayed in front of the old computer in his family’s kitchen, occasionally running a hand through his ragged hair.

  He clicked on the Facebook link and saw another photo of the girl; in this one she was sitting on a brick wall in colorful dancer’s leg warmers, scowling at the camera. Her name was Jen, and she lived in Tennessee.

  William signed into Facebook with one of his stock of twenty fake profiles. Almost all were fake women. It was much easier to collect friends on Facebook if you were female, and having friends was crucial for a profile to look real. His main fake Facebook account had around 130 friends who were real people. To collect them, he would pick a location like Chicago, then add local guys. If they asked who “she” was, William would claim to have just moved there. Most of the other fake accounts were throwaways, in the sense that most of the friends were other fake profiles of /b/ users. He would collect the friends on /b/ itself, via the occasional thread titled “Add each others’ troll accounts here!” The fake users would connect on Facebook and write on each others’ walls to make their profiles look more realistic. William would add profile pictures and faked “vacation photos” by downloading whole folders of photos of a single female from online photo repositories or 4chan itself, or by coercing a girl into giving him her photos. Facebook would sometimes delete “troll” accounts like these, especially if they had inane names like I. P. Daily. (William lost about two accounts a month this way.) But real-looking accounts could last for years. This time around, to speak to Jen, he was using a key account populated by real people, under the name Kaylie Harmon.

  He took a screenshot of the 4chan post with the girl’s photo. Then under the guise of Kaylie, he typed out a private message on Facebook to Jen. Anyone on Facebook can send a private message to another user, even if they aren’t connected as friends. “Look what someone’s trying to do to you,” he said, attaching the screenshot from 4chan. He signed it “Anonymous,” as he often did to frighten his targets.

  Jen’s reply was almost instant. “OMG. Who is this? How did you ge
t my Facebook??” she wrote back.

  “I’m a hacker,” William replied, lying. “I’m going to hack your Facebook and pictures on Photobucket. No matter how many pictures you’ve got online I’ll make them all public.” He kept his answers short and ominous.

  “What do I have to do to stop this?” she asked, apparently desperate not to have her photos published. William smiled to himself. Years of raiding girls’ Web accounts had taught him this meant she definitely had nude photos she was willing to bargain with.

  “Give me the nude photos of yourself and I’ll stop everyone else hacking you,” he said. “There’s dozens of other people trying to hack you as we speak.”

  Having no reason to believe he was lying, Jen consented and sent him the relevant login details. “Take what you want,” she said.

  There were maybe three hundred photos in Jen’s Photobucket account, mostly of her with friends and family, holiday snapshots on the beach, a group of family members giving the thumbs-up at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant. And about seventy nude photos. One by one, William started downloading each one to his personal collection of homemade porn.

  “Done,” William told Jen on Facebook’s chat feature. “Glad you went along with this. It could have been a lot worse.” He advised her to tighten her privacy settings on Facebook and get rid of her security question. The security question, which websites will use to help you recall a lost password, will be along the lines of “What was your first pet’s name?” William would have only needed to engage her in small talk to find out the answer, then retrieve her password if he wanted—but this time he was warning her of the ruse.