General Firm hacked by ‘Anonymous’ plotted against WikiLeaks on bank’s behalf: report

Three data intelligence firms concocted a plan to attack WikiLeaks on behalf of Bank of America, according to a published report.

The three firms, Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal and Berico Technologies, planned to "disrupt" Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald's support of WikiLeaks, create a disinformation campaign to discredit the secrets outlet, sow discord among WikiLeaks volunteers, and use cyber attacks to target the website's infrastructure.

The proposed assault on WikiLeaks, The Tech Herald reported, was revealed after the "non-group" of hacktivists known as "Anonymous" gained access to more than 44,000 emails from HBGary Federal's COO, Aaron Barr, after he said he had identified "core leaders" of the group. Barr also said he had information that could potentially lead to their arrest. The emails were released to the public in a 4.71 gigabyte Torrent file.

The emails show the proposal was developed at the request of the Hunton and Williams law firm, which had a meeting with Bank of America on December 3 to discuss legal action against WikiLeaks.

Do you want to know Moar?

the "report"

not really anything surprising.. but I am curious as to what exactly would be illegal? just a disinformation campaign doesn't seem like it would be

as far as cyber attacks, good luck doing anything to anonymous/wikileaks..

A 4.71 gigabyte torrent file, that's some extreme metadata!

oO Paying for cyber attacks on a website sounds pretty illegal to me Oo

He should sue the shit out of that bank.

he kinda reminds me of Warai Otoko from GitS: SAC

GooS said:

A 4.71 gigabyte torrent file, that's some extreme metadata!

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I've seen/downloaded 50+GB torrents

In fact, I have one right now that's 54.5GB.

4.71GB torrent files are actually really common. Many movies are about that size. Games as well.

Bank of America using three intelligence firms to attack WikiLeaks

You would almost need to be disconnected from the Internet to not know about Aaron Barr, the CEO of HBGary Federal, feeling the wrath of Anonymous after Barr told of his intentions to expose the leaders of Anonymous at an upcoming Security B-Sides conference. But today, WikiLeaks published a document called "The WikiLeaks Threat" [PDF] which revealed two other intelligence firms, besides HBGary, were working to develop a strategic plan of attack against WikiLeaks on the behalf of Bank of America.

When I saw that, I wanted to relate what I saw in the proposal.

"The WikiLeaks Threat" outlines a plan by three private data intelligence firms, Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies, which were hired to effectively combat and attack WikiLeaks. The intel firms were "acting upon request from Hunton and Williams, a law firm working for Bank of America." According to The Tech Herald, "Hunton and Williams were recommended to Bank of America's general council by the Department of Justice. Hunton and Williams would act as outside counsel on retainer, while Palantir would take care of network and insider threat investigations. For their part, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal would analyze WikiLeaks."

The Bank of America drama started when The New York Times wrote that Assange said he planned to "take down" a major American bank and use data off an executive's hard drive to reveal an "ecosystem of corruption." At that point, Bank of America began an internal investigation, "scouring thousands of documents," and looking for any systems that had been compromised with the help of consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. The NYTimes reported that the Bank of America "has also sought advice from several top law firms about legal problems that could arise from a disclosure, including the bank's potential liability if private information was disclosed about clients."

More.

Sevion said:

I've seen/downloaded 50+GB torrents

In fact, I have one right now that's 54.5GB.

4.71GB torrent files are actually really common. Many movies are about that size. Games as well.

Click to expand...

I think he's talking about the actual torrent files, which are only a coulpe of kb's of size.

I think he's talking about the actual torrent files, which are only a coulpe of kb's of size.

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Indeed

Ah, I see, I see

Ninja_sheep said:

oO Paying for cyber attacks on a website sounds pretty illegal to me Oo

He should sue the shit out of that bank.

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I guess you have a point, but what court would side with them? certainly no court in the U.S. would side with wikileaks, and can you really imagine anon in court?

and like I said earlier, I don't think their cyber attacks will really be able to do anything, can you sue someone for throwing air at you or something similarly ineffective?

Slapshot136 said:

can you sue someone for throwing air at you or something similarly ineffective?

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Nothing is impossible these days. Really!
Well, don't you think so?

FireCat said:

Nothing is impossible these days. Really!
Well, don't you think so?

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Yeah, one second people love you throwing Oxygen at them, and they hate you for doing it the next.