gAtO wAnTeD – to see a timeline of these events - gAtO oUt 

2006-07

Habbo raids

A frequent target for organized raids by Anonymous is Habbo, a social networking site designed as a virtual hotel.The raid pre-dates, and was not inspired by, the news of an Alabama amusement park banning a two-year-old toddler affected by AIDS from entering the park’s swimming pool. Users signed up to the Habbo site dressed in avatars of a black man wearing a grey suit and an Afro hairstyle and blocked entry to the pool, declaring that it was “closed due to AIDS,” flooding the site with internet sayings, and forming swastika-like formations. When the raiders were banned, they complained of racism.

Hal Turner raid

Main article: Hal Turner

According to white supremacist radio host Hal Turner, in December 2006 and January 2007 individuals who identified themselves as Anonymous took Turner’s website offline, costing him thousands of dollars in bandwidth bills. As a result, Turner sued 4chan, eBaum’s World, 7chan, and other websites for copyright infringement. He lost his plea for an injunction, however, and failed to receive letters from the court, which caused the lawsuit to lapse.

Chris Forcand arrest

On December 7, 2007, the Canada-based Toronto Sun newspaper published a report on the arrest of the alleged Internet predator Chris Forcand. Forcand, 53, was charged with two counts of luring a child under the age of 14, attempt to invite sexual touching, attempted exposure, possessing a dangerous weapon, and carrying a concealed weapon. The report stated that Forcand was already being tracked by “cyber-vigilantes who seek to out anyone who presents with a sexual interest in children” before police investigations commenced.

A Global Television Network report identified the group responsible for Forcand’s arrest as a “self-described Internet vigilante group called Anonymous” who contacted the police after some members were “propositioned” by Forcand with “disgusting photos of himself.” The report also stated that this is the first time a suspected Internet predator was arrested by the police as a result of Internet vigilantism.

2008

Project Chanology

The group gained worldwide press for Project Chanology, the protest against the Church of Scientology.

On January 14, 2008, a video produced by the Church featuring an interview with Tom Cruise was leaked to the Internet and uploaded to YouTube. The Church of Scientology issued a copyright violation claim against YouTube requesting the removal of the video.[ In response to this, Anonymous formulated Project Chanology. Calling the action by the Church of Scientology a form of Internet censorship, members of Project Chanology organized a series of denial-of-service attacks against Scientology websites, prank calls, and black faxes to Scientology centers.

Epilepsy Foundation forum invasion

On March 28, 2008, Wired News reported that "Internet griefers"—a slang term for people whose only interests are in harassing others—assaulted an epilepsy support forum run by the Epilepsy Foundation of America. JavaScript code and flashing computer animations were posted with the intention of triggering migraine headaches and seizures in photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics.[39] According to Wired News, circumstantial evidence suggested that the attack was perpetrated by Anonymous users, with the initial attack posts on the epilepsy forum blaming eBaum’s World. Members of the epilepsy forum claimed they had found a thread in which the attack was being planned at 7chan.org, an imageboard that has been described as a stronghold for Anonymous. The thread, like all old threads eventually do on these types of imageboards, has since cycled to deletion.

Defacement of SOHH and AllHipHop websites

In late June 2008, users who identified themselves as Anonymous claimed responsibility for a series of attacks against the SOHH (Support Online Hip Hop) website. The attack was reported to have begun in retaliation for insults made by members of SOHH’s “Just Bugging Out” forum against members of Anonymous.

2009

No Cussing Club

In January 2009 members of Anonymous targeted California teen McKay Hatch who runs the No Cussing Club, a website against profanity. As Hatch’s home address, phone number, and other personal information were leaked on the internet, his family has received hate mail, obscene phone calls, and bogus pizza and pornography deliveries.

Iranian election protests

Front page of The Pirate Bay, June 20, 2009. Anonymous, together with The Pirate Bay, launched an Iranian Green Movement Support site.

Main article: 2009 Iranian election protests

Following allegations of vote rigging after the results of the June 2009 Iranian presidential election were announced, declaring Iran‘s incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner, thousands of Iranians participated in demonstrations. Anonymous, together with The Pirate Bay and various Iranian hackers, launched an Iranian Green Movement Support site called Anonymous Iran.[45] The site has drawn over 22,000 supporters world wide and allows for information exchange between the world and Iran, despite attempts by the Iranian government to censor news about the riots on the internet. The site provides resources and support to Iranians who are protesting.

Operation Didgeridie

In September 2009 the group reawakened “in order to protect civil rights” after several governments began to block access to its imageboards. The blacklisting of Krautchan.net in Germany infuriated many, but the tipping point was the Australian government’s plans for ISP-level censorship of the internet. The policy was spearheaded by Stephen Conroy and had been driven aggressively by the Rudd Government since its election in 2007.

2010

Operation Titstorm

Occurred from 8 am, February 10, 2010 as a protest against the Australian Government over the forthcoming internet filtering legislation and the perceived censorship in pornography of small-breasted women (who are perceived to be under age) and female ejaculation. Hours earlier, Anonymous uploaded a video message to YouTube, addressed to Kevin Rudd, and Seven News, presenting a list of demands and threats of further action if they were not met.[

Oregon Tea Party raid

In July 2010, this was a reaction to the use of one of Anonymous' slogans by the Oregon Tea Party. The Party's Facebook page was flooded with image macro and flames. Within a few hours, the Tea Party posted a message saying "Anonymous: We appreciate your resources and admire your tactics. You have taught us more than you know.

Operations Payback, Avenge Assange, and Bradical

In 2010, several Bollywood companies hired Aiplex Software to launch DDoS attacks on websites that did not respond to software takedown notices.Piracy activists then created Operation Payback in September 2010 in retaliation. The original plan was to attack Aiplex Software directly, but upon finding some hours before the planned DDoS that another individual had taken down the firm's website on their own, Operation Payback moved to launching attacks against the websites of copyright stringent organizations, law firms and other websites. This grew into multiple DDoS attacks against anti-piracy groups and law firms.

Operations OpSony

On April 2, 2011 Anonymous launched an attack on the media giant Sony, named #opsony, as a part of Operation Payback. Anonymous claims the attack a success after they took down the PlayStation Network and other related PlayStation Websites. Anonymous' actions also included personal harassment of employees and their families. The PlayStation Network subsequently has had lengthy outages, although Anonymous claims that this is not due to any officially-sanctioned action on their part, but may be due to sub-groups of Anonymous.

Operation Assange

In December 2010, the document archive website WikiLeaks (used by whistleblowers) came under intense pressure to stop publishing secret United States diplomatic cables. In response, Anonymous announced its support for WikiLeaks, and Operation Payback changed its focus to support WikiLeaks and launched DDoS attacks against Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and the Swiss bank PostFinance, in retaliation for perceived anti-WikiLeaks behavior. This second front in the December offensive was performed under the codename Operation Avenge Assange. Due to the attacks, both MasterCard and Visa's websites were brought down on December 8.

Operation Leakspin

Zimbabwe

The websites of the government of Zimbabwe were targeted by Anonymous due to censorship of the WikiLeaks documents.

2011

A member holding an Anonymous flier at Occupy Wall Street, a protest that the group actively supported, September 17, 2011

Attack on Fine Gael website

The website for the Irish political party Fine Gael, a centre right party and currently in coalition government with the Labour Party, was hacked by Anonymous during the 2011 general election campaign according to TheJournal.ie. The site was replaced with a page showing the Anonymous logo along with the words "Nothing is safe, you put your faith in this political party and they take no measures to protect you. They offer you free speech yet they censor your voice. WAKE UP! <owned by Raepsauce and Palladium>".

Arab Spring Activities

Main articles: Operation Egypt and Operation Tunisia

The websites of the government of Tunisia were targeted by Anonymous due to censorship of the WikiLeaks documents and the Tunisian Revolution. Tunisians were reported to be assisting in these denial-of-service attacks launched by Anonymous. Anonymous's role in the DDoS attacks on the Tunisian government's websites have led to an upsurge of internet activism among Tunisians against the government. A figure associated with Anonymous released an online message denouncing the government clampdown on recent protests and posted it on the Tunisian government website. Anonymous has named their attacks as "Operation Tunisia". Anonymous successfully performed DDoS attacks on eight Tunisian government websites. The Tunisian government responded by making its websites inaccessible from outside Tunisia. Tunisian police also arrested online activists and bloggers within the country and questioned them on the attacks. Anonymous's website suffered a DDoS attack on January 5.

During the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Egyptian government websites, along with the website of the ruling National Democratic Party, were hacked into and taken offline by Anonymous. The sites remained offline until President Hosni Mubarak stepped down.

Anonymous was divided on the 2011 Libyan civil war, while they hacked into Libyan government websites, and persuaded the host of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's personal website to take it down, other members of the group sided with the dictator in what they called "Operation Reasonable Reaction". The pro-Gaddafi attacks were fairly unsuccessful, only managing to take down minor opposition sites for a little while.

Anonymous also released the names and passwords of the email addresses of Middle Eastern governmental officials, in support of the Arab Spring. Countries targeted included officials from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.

Attack on HBGary Federal

Wikileaks, Bank of America, Hunton & Williams, and Anonymous

On the weekend of February 5–6, 2011, Aaron Barr, the chief executive of the security firm HBGary Federal, announced that his firm had successfully infiltrated the Anonymous group, and although he would not hand over details to the police, he would reveal his findings at a later conference in San Francisco. In retaliation for Aaron Barr's claims, members of the group Anonymous hacked the website of HBGary Federal and replaced the welcome page with a message stating that Anonymous should not be messed with, and that the hacking of the website was necessary to defend itself. Using a variety of techniques, including social engineering and SQL injection,[103] Anonymous also went on to take control of the company’s e-mail, dumping 68,000 e-mails from the system, erasing files, and taking down their phone system.[104] The leaked emails revealed the reports and company presentations of other companies in computer security such as Endgame systems who promise high quality offensive software, advertising “subscriptions of $2,500,000 per year for access to 0day exploits“.

Operation Ouraborus

On February 16, 2011, the group supposedly wrote an open letter to the Westboro Baptist Church, stating: “Cease & desist your protest campaign in the year 2011 … close your public Web sites. Should you ignore this warning … the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover.

Wisconsin protests

See also: 2011 Wisconsin budget protests

On February 27, 2011, Anonymous announced a new attack on Koch Industries[130] as a response to the Wisconsin protests. Between 1997 and 2008, David and Charles Koch collectively gave more than $17 million to groups, such as Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth and Citizens United, lobbying against unions. The Kochs are one of (Republican) Governor Walker’s largest corporate supporters.Anonymous accused the brothers of attempting “to usurp American Democracy” and called for a boycott of all Koch Industries products.

2011 Bank of America document release

On March 14, 2011, the group Anonymous began releasing emails it said were obtained from Bank of America. According to the group, the files show evidence of “corruption and fraud”, and relate to the issue of improper foreclosures. They say that a former employee from Balboa Insurance, a firm which used to be owned by BofA.

Operation Sony

See also: Sony Computer Entertainment America v. George Hotz

Anonymous announced their intent to attack Sony websites in response to Sony’s lawsuit against George Hotz and, specifically due to Sony’s gaining access to the IP addresses of all the people who visited George Hotz’s blog as part of the libel action, terming it an ‘offensive against free speech and internet freedom’[141][142] Although Anonymous admitted responsibility to subsequent attacks on the Sony websites, Anonymous branch AnonOps denied that they were the cause behind a major outage of the Playstation Network in April 2011. However, as Anonymous is a leaderless organization, the possibility remains that another branch of the group is responsible for the outage.

Spanish Police

On June 12, 2011, there was a DDoS attack on the website of the Spanish Police, starting at 21:30 GMT. Anonymous claimed responsibility the following day, stating that the attack was a “direct response to the Friday arrests of three individuals alleged to be associated with acts of cyber civil disobedience attributed to Anonymous.” The site was down for approximately an hour as a result of their efforts.

Indian Anti-corruption movement in cyber space

The group has come out in support of a civil movement against corruption in India. This cyber movement has been named as ‘Operation India’.

Operation Malaysia

On June 15, 2011, the group launched attacks on ninety-one websites of the Malaysian government in response to the blocking of websites like Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay within the country, which the group labels censorship of a basic human right to information.

Operation Orlando

On June 20, 2011, 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.

Operation Intifada

On June 28, 2011, 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 the Stuxnet virus, a computer virus which allegedly was created by Israeli and U.S. intelligence and targeted the Iranian nuclear program.

Operation Anti-Security

Main article: Operation AntiSec

The group colaborated 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 21 July, Anonymous released two PDFs allegedly taken from NATO.

Operation Facebook

On August 2011, someone created an account on Twitter with the name OP_Facebook and announced the “Operation Facebook”. According to the links on the post, Anonymous will take down Facebook on the fifth of November 2011. The date “November 5″ is believed to be attributed to the comics V for Vendetta, where the character “V” conducts his major plans every fifth of November in memory of Guy Fawkes.

Operation BART

In August 2011, in response to Bay Area Rapid Transit‘s shutdown of cell phone service in an attempt to disconnect protesters from assembling non-violently in response to a police shooting, Anonymous sent out a mass email/fax bomb to BART personnel and organized multiple mass physical protests at the network’s Civic Center station.

Support of Occupy Wall Street

Several contingents of Anonymous have given support to the Occupy Wall Street movement, with members attending local protests and blogs run by members covering the movement.

Operation Syria

In early August, Anonymous hacked the Syrian Defense Ministry website and replaced it with a vector 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.

In September, a group tied to Anonymous appeared on Twitter, calling themselves RevolluSec, short for Revolution Security. They made their mission statement clear with a press release posted on Pastebin. They defaced many Syrian websites, including the site of every major city in Syria[168] To view the defaces after they were taken down, Telecomix mirrored them. RevoluSec also defaced The Syrian Central Bank As well as a number of pro-regime sites replacing them with a warped imaged of Bashar al-Assad, accompanied by Nyan Cat.

Telecomix worked with Anonymous throughout the ongoing operation, Telecomix showing Syrians how to bypass the censorship, and Anonymous hacking the regime any way they can online. Both groups maintain IRC channels dedicated to this operation.

Operation DarkNet

In October 2011, the collective campaigned against child pornography protected by anonymous hosting techniques. They took down 40 child porn sites, published the names of over 1500 people frequenting those websites, and invited the FBI and Interpol to follow up.

Opposition to Los Zetas

On October 6, 2011, Anonymous released a video stating that Los Zetas had kidnapped one of the group’s members, and threatened that unless the hostage was freed, they would publish personal information about members of the cartel and their collaborators in politics, police, military, and business, which might lead to their prosecution by Mexican authorities, or targeting by rival cartels. The website of Gustavo Rosario Torres, a former Tabasco state prosecutor, was subsequently defaced with a message suggesting his involvement with the organization.

Operation Brotherhood Takedown

On November 7th, Anonymous released a warning threat to the Muslim Brotherhood that they would take down major websites belonging to their organization. The Muslim Brotherhood posted an article on their website explaining the dilemma. The following Friday some websites belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood were down for about 6 hours. Another video was released claiming the attack would continue till November 18th.

Operation Blackout

In response to the increased recognition of the Stop Online Piracy Act bill, Anonymous decided to take drastic action. It called for Emergency Action from the people as well as mass protests and spreading the word, in a video they released on November 18th. This operation is currently still ongoing. The latest activity occurred on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, where Anonymous, having previously called for a blackout from 8a-8p Eastern time, convinced Google Inc. and Wikipedia itself (albeit indirectly) to participate.

Operation Mayhem

On November 18, Anonymous released a video claiming to have released the Guy Fawkes Virus on Facebook and would release it on Twitter. This virus had a number of different reasons for being released; the violence of the police force in Occupy Wall Street, the Stop Online Piracy Act and against anyone who claims to be against Anonymous.

Attack on Lt. John Pike

Anonymous released a video with the entirety of Lt. John Pike’s contact information following the incident at Occupy UC Davis, in which the lieutenant pepper sprayed a group of nonviolent student protesters. YouTube has taken the video down, but not quickly enough before people could flood his phone, Skype, email, and mailbox with messages. An investigation into the event is ongoing.

Attack on Stratfor

On December 24th, claims were made that Anonymous stole thousands of e-mail addresses and credit card information from security firm Stratfor. Reportedly, Anonymous commented that this is because the data was unencrypted, however Anonymous put out a press-release stating “This hack is most definitely not the work of Anonymous”.

2012

Occupy Nigeria

In solidarity with Occupy Nigeria, Anonymous has joined forces with the People’s Liberation Front and the Naija Cyber Hactivists of Nigeria. Anonymous promised “a relentless and devastating assault upon the web assets of the Nigerian government” in support of Occupy Nigeria. This was in protest to the removal of fuel subsidy that the majority of impoverished Nigerians depend upon for their very existence. As a consequence of the action the price of fuel and transportation has skyrocketed, causing extreme hardship upon the majority of Nigerians. On January 13, the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission website was hacked, with a false report of the arrest of people involved in the oil sector replacing the normal page.

Operation Megaupload

In retaliation for the shut down of the file sharing service Megaupload and the arrest of four workers,[191] Anonymous DDoSed the websites of UMG (the company responsible for the lawsuit against Megaupload), the United States Department of Justice, the United States Copyright Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the MPAA, Warner Brothers Music and the RIAA, as well as the HADOPI the afternoon of January 19, 2012. [192] The operations by Anonymous are most likely driven further by anger over the House of Representatives’ Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

The Polish Revolution and other anti-ACTA activism in Europe

On January 21st a series of DDoS attacks on Polish government websites took place, for which the Anonymous took responsibility and referred to as “the Polish Revolution”.[194] The group via their Twitter account stated it was a revenge for upcoming signing of ACTA agreement by the Polish government. Starting with sejm.gov.pl, websites of the Polish Prime Minister, President, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, later on the police, Internal Security Agency (Agencja Bezpiecze?stwa Wewn?trznego) Ministry of Foreign Affairs were also blocked.

TheAnonSi

Anonymous Slovenia announced opposition against the Slovenian signing of the ACTA and have posted video threats on various websites against the goverment officials, aswell as against Nova Ljubljanska Banka (commonly known as NLB), accusing the latter of corruption. On 4 February 2012 The NLB was a victim of a cyber attack and was offline for one hour, while public demonstrations were held in the capital of Ljubljana and in Maribor. Some estimated 3000 people gathered in the capital, while around 300 protested in Maribor.

Operation Russia

Unidentified hackers cracked email boxes of some prominent pro-Kremlin activists and officials, including Vasily Yakemenko, head of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, Kristina Potupchik, press secretary for Nashi youth movement, and Oleg Khorokhordin, deputy head of the Department for Internal Affairs at the Presidential Administration. Since 1 February, links to contents of the mailboxes have been appearing on @OP_Russia Twitter account. The hackers confirmed they consider themselves a part of the Anonymous movement; “We are Anonymous”, they stated in an interview[201][202]. The information discovered enabled many to accuse Yakemenko and his colleagues in paying some influential bloggers, as well as numerous trolls, for publishing stories and commenting in favour of Putin on negative press articles on the Internet[

Greek Ministry of Justice

On February the 3rd Anonymous took down the Greek Department of Justice website for their deplorable support of Internet Autocracy and also protesting for the IMF involvement on Greece’s bailout.Anonymous have given a 2 week deadline for Greece to revoke its support on the A.C.T.A bill or else they would unleash an unprecedented attack on all Greek media and Ministries.

Operation Blitzkrieg

On February 1st, 2012, AnonOps Communications blog announced the findings of ‘Operation Blitzkrieg’, which targeted the websites of several neo-nazi organizations, publishing email exchanges and personal messages.  A message on one the neo-nazi websites that was shut down claimed links between presidential candidate Ron Paul and his campaign staff, including planning a meeting to be set up at CPAC

Bashar al-Assad’s Email Hack

On Feb. 6th, Anonymous broke into the mail server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs, accessing some 78 inboxes of Bashar al-Assad’s staffers. One of the email files was a document preparing Assad for his December 2011 interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters. One of the passwords commonly used by Assad’s office accounts was “12345.”

Operation CIA.gov

Feb 11,2012 still ongoing

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_involving_Anonymous