Timeline of events associated with Anonymous


is a decentralised virtual community. They are commonly referred to as an internet-based collective of hacktivists whose goals, like its organization, are decentralized. Anonymous seeks mass awareness and revolution against what the group perceives as corrupt entities, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Anonymous has had a hacktivist impact. This is a timeline of activities reported to have been carried out by the group.

2007

  • January: Radio host Hal Turner sued several online groups, alleging Anonymous "posted unauthorized copies of his radio shows online, attacked server so as to make it unavailable, and placed unauthorised orders for goods, services and merchandise from third parties in name." The case was dismissed in December for lack of response.
  • December: A man was arrested in Toronto on charges of luring a child under the age of 14, attempting to invite sexual touching, attempted exposure, and other charges. Police stated that Anonymous, a cyber-vigilante group which trolls for pedophiles and then "outs" them, had targeted the suspect before law enforcement was involved, and cautioned that such interference could impede official investigations.

    2008

  • January 14: Anonymous declared war on the Church of Scientology and bombarded them with DDoS attacks, harassing phone calls, black faxes, and Google bombing.
  • February–December: Known as Project Chanology, Anonymous organized multiple in-person pickets in front of Churches of Scientology world-wide, starting February 10 and running throughout the year, achieving coordinated pickets in over 100 cities, thousands of protestors, and wearing Guy Fawkes masks.
  • March 28: The Epilepsy Foundation's forum was salted with posts displaying flashing computer animations with the intention of triggering seizures in photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics. There was some evidence pointing to Anonymous, but Anonymous named other likely culprits including the Church of Scientology seeking to discredit Anonymous.
  • June: Anonymous claimed responsibility for attacking and defacing websites and forums of SOHH and AllHipHop, causing the sites to temporarily shut down. They also stole personal information about SOHH employees.
  • September 16: Anonymous declared they hacked the private email account of Sarah Palin. An individual was convicted and sentenced to a year in federal prison.

    2009

  • January: Anonymous targeted California teen McKay Hatch who runs the No Cussing Club, a website against profanity. Hatch's home address, phone number, and other personal information were leaked on the internet, and his family received hate mail, obscene phone calls, bogus pizza deliveries, and pornography through the mail.
  • June: Anonymous and Pirate Bay set up a website for Iranians to communicate and coordinate online for the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests and the Iranian Green Movement by bypassing the government's internet censorship in Iran.
  • September 9: Anonymous temporarily shut down the website of the Prime Minister of Australia with a denial-of-service attack as a warning in protest against the government's plan to filter the internet.

    2010

  • January: Anonymous attacked websites of the governments of Tunisia and Zimbabwe over censorship issues related to WikiLeaks.
  • February 10: Anonymous conducted DDoS attacks against a wide range of Australian government servers in protest of proposed internet filtering legislation which would block some pornography. Australian anti-censorship groups complained that the attack only hurt their cause, and Australian government members dismissed the attack and said that they would just restore the service when the attack finished.
  • July: Anonymous flooded the Oregon Tea Party's Facebook page when they found out that OTP had been using part of Anonymous' slogan, "We Are Legion". OTP surrendered, apologized and recanted.
  • July: In response to Chelsea Manning's imprisonment and treatment after leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, Anonymous threatened to disrupt activities at Marine Corps Brig, Quantico by cyber-attacking communications, exposing private information of personnel, and other harassment methods. Military spokespersons responded that the threat has been referred to law enforcement and counterterrorism officials and requested an investigation.
  • September: Anonymous targeted major pro-copyright and anti-piracy organizations, law firms, individuals, and entertainment industry websites in retaliation for DDoS attacks on torrent sites.
  • December: Anonymous started DDoS attacks on websites of companies who had withdrawn banking facilities from WikiLeaks including Amazon, PayPal, BankAmerica, Swiss bank PostFinance, MasterCard, and Visa. Over the next year, dozens were arrested and several convicted for their part in the operation.
  • December: Anonymous promoted sifting through WikiLeaks to identify potentially overlooked cables, making short videos covering the topic, and flooding the internet with them.

    2011

  • January 3: Anonymous got involved during the Tunisian Revolution and engaged in DDoS attacks on key Tunisian websites—including the president, prime minister, ministry of industry, ministry of foreign affairs, and the stock exchange—taking down at least 8 websites and defacing several others. Anonymous distributed information and scripts to help Tunisians bypass government censorship, and Anonymous' own website also came under DDoS attack.
  • January 9: Anonymous hacked and defaced the website of Fine Gael, an Irish political party.
  • February 5–6: The CEO of security firm HBGary announced they had successfully infiltrated Anonymous. In retaliation, Anonymous hacked and vandalized the company's website, took control of the company's e-mail, and took down the phone system. Anonymous also hacked the CEO's Twitter account and doxed him online.
  • February 16: Anonymous engaged in a flame war with Westboro Baptist Church, resulting in a DDoS attack on WBC's godhatesfags.com website.
  • February 27: As part of the 2011 Wisconsin protests, Anonymous knocked offline the website for the Koch brother's Americans for Prosperity.
  • March 14: Anonymous threatened to release Bank of America emails purported to show evidence of fraud in the force-placed insurance market. The emails were alleged to have come from a former employee of a subsidiary to Bank of America.
  • April: Anonymous attacked Sony websites in response to the lawsuit Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. v. Hotz, resulting in the 2011 PlayStation Network outage.
  • June 6: Anonymous claimed to have hacked India's National Informatics Centre in support of Ramdev, defacing it.
  • June 12: Anonymous claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack of the website of the National Police Corps of Spain, asserting it was a legitimate form of peaceful protest in retaliation for the arrest of three individuals alleged to be associated with acts of cyber civil disobedience attributed to Anonymous.
  • June 15: The group launched DDoS attacks on ninety-one Malaysian government websites in retaliation for their censoring of websites.
  • June 20: Members of the group took down the websites of the Orlando, Florida Chamber of Commerce and inserted a message into the website of the Universal Orlando Resort requesting that users "boycott Orlando". The group did so in response to the arrests of members of Food Not Bombs for feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park against city ordinances. The group had planned and announced the attack on their IRC channel. The group has vowed to take a different Orlando-related website offline every day, and have also targeted the re-election website of Mayor of Orlando Buddy Dyer and the Orlando International Airport. A member of the group left a Guy Fawkes mask outside of the mayor's home; the police are treating the picture taken of the mask as a threat against the mayor. On July 11, the group took down the website of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando and the Rotary Club of Orlando.
  • June 20: Operation AntiSec — The group collaborated with LulzSec to hack the websites of a number of government and corporate sources and release information from them. As well as targeting American sites, Anonymous also targeted government sites in Tunisia, Anguilla, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Turkey, and Australia. On July 21, Anonymous released two documents allegedly taken from NATO.
  • June 28: Anonymous announced that within the next 24 hours, it would hack into the website of the Knesset, the legislature of Israel, and knock it offline. It was stated that the planned attacks were a response to alleged hacking attacks by Israeli intelligence such as the Stuxnet virus, a computer virus which allegedly was created by Israeli and U.S. intelligence and targeted the Iranian nuclear program.
  • August: Someone announced "Operation Facebook", an alleged plan to take down Facebook on November 5, 2011. It was an attempted revival of an earlier OpFacebook that was also abandoned.
  • August: Operation BART — After Bay Area Rapid Transit shut down cell phone service in an attempt to disconnect protesters from assembling after a police shooting, Anonymous sent out a mass email/fax bomb to BART personnel and organized multiple mass in-person protests at the network's Civic Center station. Anonymous also hacked the BART website, and released the personal information of 102 BART police officers, as well as account information for about 2,000 customers.
  • August: Dubbed "Shooting Sheriffs Saturday," Anonymous hacked 70 law enforcement websites and released 10 GB of leaked emails, social security numbers of police, training files, informant information and other information.
  • August: Anonymous hacked the Syrian Ministry of Defense website and replaced it with an image of the pre-Ba'athist flag, a symbol of the pro-democracy movement in the country, as well as a message supporting the 2011 Syrian uprising and calling on members of the Syrian Army to defect to protect protesters.
  • August 17: Anonymous organized efforts against the Vatican's websites, coinciding with World Youth Day 2011. Hacking was unsuccessful and a two-day DDoS attack failed to slow the website.
  • October: Operation DarkNet — Anonymous DDoSed 40 child porn sites, published the usernames of over 1500 people frequenting one of those websites, and invited the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Interpol to follow up.
  • October 6: Op Cartel — Anonymous claimed Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas had kidnapped one of the group's members, demanded the hostage be freed, and threatened to publish personal information about members of the cartel and their collaborators in politics, police, military, and business. The website of Gustavo Rosario Torres, a former Tabasco state prosecutor, was defaced with a message suggesting his involvement with the organization. Anonymous claimed in early November that the victim had been freed, but reporters did not find evidence of Anonymous involvement and noted a lack of details and police reports. The Veracruz state attorney general couldn't confirm the kidnapping.
  • November 7: Anonymous threatened to take down the websites of the Muslim Brotherhood, and on November 12 the Muslim Brotherhood announced that four websites were temporarily taken down by a DDoS attack.
  • November 22: In response to the UC Davis pepper-spray incident, Anonymous released the personal information of the officer that pepper-sprayed protestors.
  • December 24: Anonymous claimed they stole thousands of e-mail addresses and credit card information from security firm Stratfor. The hackers included Jeremy Hammond, who worked with Anonymous to release Stratfor's 5,543,061 emails to WikiLeaks. The emails revealed Stratfor's surveillance of groups such as Occupy Wall Street and protestors of the Bhopal disaster.