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HBGary Federal
Aaron Barr is was the CEO and all-around fuckwit in charge of HBGary Federal, a company which bills itself as the National Guard of the Internet. While the HBGary website claims the company provides security against "the attackers [of] intellectual property, infrastructure, identity, and personal safety" what they actually do is shitty malware detection software. However Aaron Barr was planning something big. In his free time he was tip-toeing into the darkest corners of the internet and digging up dirt on Anonymous, the internet love machine. On Feburary 4th, Financial Times ran an article[1] where Mr. Barr claimed he had infiltrated the cyber-terrorist organization known as "Anonymous", identified its leaders, and was going to sell the data to the FBI so said leaders could be arrested. If you just crapped your pants, then you have yet to see the "data" (not found) which Mr. Barr was able to scrounge up.
—Aaron Barr, from the tweet of a lone soldier fighting the "war for the internets" | ||
Misinformation
What makes Mr. Barr the laughingstock of the internet isn’t the fact that he tried to butt heads with Anonymous. What’s funny is that after his thorough investigation into Anonymous he genuinely thought he had the information needed to take Anonymous down, when in fact all his data showed was that he didn’t even know what Anonymous was. Anonymous is an autonomous entity comprised of millions of individuals on the net a bunch of basement trolls. Anyone on the internet can be Anonymous, even your annoying 9-year-old cousin or your mom who still uses AOL. However, Mr. Barr was convinced that Anonymous was comprised of only “a few hundred” members and functioned more like an exclusive secret society with a few Grand Masters pulling the strings. He claimed that “Q,” “Owen,” and “CommanderX,” were the leaders of Anonymous, that he had their dox, and that he was going to bring down their organization. Does Mr. Barr’s genuine belief that Anonymous is a dangerous terrorist group comprised of Bond-villains, which he alone can bring to justice, show a case of unwarranted self-importance or is he just stupid? You decide.
—Aaron Barr, he making this shit up? | ||
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Anonymous Strikes Back
—Official statement, showing how over 50,000 emails uncovered in under 24 hours and instantly released to the public were in fact false and fabricated |
One day after Aaron Barr’s fabricated and erroneous information on Anonymous was published in The Financial Times, HBGary Federal’s website found itself at the ass end of a DDoS attack. The company’s email servers were then breached and over 50,000 emails made by Barr and his employees were extracted and made available for download. Anonymous then deleted HBGary's backup data, hijacked Aaron Barr's twitter, nuked his iPad, and took down HBGary Federal’s website, replacing with an ultimatum stating that Mr. Barr dun goofed. The leaked emails revealed embarrassing information on Mr. Barr, including that his wife threatened that she would file for divorce, and that Mr. Barr has a World of Warcraft account where he plays as a level 80 night elf druid known as Sevrynsten.
After Aaron Barr successfully buttfucked his internet security company, the president of the company 
Penny Leavy went into Anonymous’ IRC and begged that they leave her company alone. Anonymous agreed to leave them alone if Penny fired Mr. Barr and got back in the kitchen. In addition, Penny said that she had yet to see the dox Mr. Barr had on Anonymous and that everyone at his company was “kind of pissed at him right now.”
What Really Happened?
Who the hell are “Q,” “Owen,” and “CommanderX?” What lead Aaron Barr into believing they were the brains behind Anonymous? How did Mr. Barr find them, and what evidence did he have against them? What the fuck kind of research did he do to come up with such false information? Mysteries such as these course through the rivers of the internet and may have gone unsolved, but thanks to the 66,000 emails leaked from HBGary Federal’s computers, they can be answered.
Mr. Barr's spitball attack on Anonymous was part of a larger scheme to bring down Wikileaks by blackmailing journalists. Wikileaks claimed to have incriminating evidence which proved a major US bank was guilty of practicing corporate malfeasance, and on a completely unrelated matter Bank of America then hired Mr. Barr to make these documents go away forever. Thus began Mr. Barr's campaign to bring down Wikileaks through cyber-attacks, falsified reports to damage Wikileaks' credibility, and blackmail against United States citizens. Or at least, that's what Mr. Barr would have done had Anonymous not completely thwarted his jihad on the first amendment.
Mr. Barr believed that through the dangers of social networking, sensitive information could be gathered about people. A person might be smart enough to not list their home address or phone number or real name, but their friends through Facebook or LinkedIn might accidentally leak that information through their profile. Using this theory, Mr. Barr believed that he could identify and dox dangerous hackers, and he would test this concept by exposing Anonymous. Mr. Barr’s scientific process for exposing Anonymous included lurking Anonymous IRC chat rooms, taking note of who was populating those chat rooms, and then use social networking sites to find their true identities. With this technique Mr. Barr tried to get close to the “leaders” of Anonymous. With that said, “Q,” “Owen,” and “CommanderX” are just some trolls who hang out on the AnonOps IRC, and their true identities that Mr. Barr linked them with wasn't even accurate. Mystery solved. In addition, the emails also showed that Mr. Barr was retarded enough to think he could create internet drama between his company and Anonymous. It would lead to more publicity, make himself e-famous, and promote sales of HBGary Federal’s shitty security software.
Aaron Barr isn't the only person to mistake a group of 13-year-old IRC nerds as being the best and brightest of Anonymous. Shortly after the HBGary incident, Adrien Chen and John Cook of Gawker fame published an article 
"Inside Anonymous' Secret War Room", where they more or less did exactly what Aaron Barr did: lurk inside an IRC chat room, listen to a bunch of internet tough guys talk about how leet they are, and then publish that they had infiltrated and identified Anonymous' leaders. This proves two things: 1.) Aaron Barr isn't alone in the quest to bring down Anonymous, and 2.) to avoid accusations of being the head of a terrorist organization one only has to stop using IRC.
Memorable Quotes
—Aaron Barr, excerpt from one of many leaked email documents | ||
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IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA DRAMATICA
Take-home action items
- never sign on a security company that knows nothing about security
- especially if they have powerpoint presentations with corporate bullshit leaked [2]
- and/or get their corporate website defaced with propaganda FOR their declared enemies [3]
- and/or 66,000 of their e-mails published on their own website and a torrent [4]
- and/or draw attention to their completely futile pet projects, like war on benefactors of mankind [5]
- and/or get battleplans leaked by targets that reveal "pushing independent journalists to dropping support" [6]
- all this is of particular importance for taxpayers if the given security company is a government contractor [7]
Anonymous honors the offer, or: from Aaron to AarOn
With trademark promptness and lambent ease, Anonymous followed up on AarOn Barr's invitation the same night. AarOn, his company and other executives thereof got more than his mouthful of worth of sexuality:
- 66,000 corporate e-mails leaked [8]
- website content replaced by brief, but poetically written, Anonymous pamphlet [9]
- professional twitter- and linkedin accounts of several HBGary executives royally augmented with truth and humor [10]
- bland, stilted, powerpoint presentations and memoranda for Wikileaks-disruption and Anonymous-trolling leaked [11]
- backups erased [12]
- documents sent to the FBI for free that AarOn had planned to sell to them for lots of money (despite being worthless)
A major part of this totally lulzworthy series of extraordinary pwnage was played by an allegedly 16 year old girl who social engineered the companies network admin. Because of the cyber terrorists he was up against and the security expert he is, Mr. Barr even had to unplug his router because they tried to "pop his box" and he knew just how to deal with such situations. Maybe this was the best way to avoid all the shame he would face for the rest of his life now.
In other words: this orgy of pwnage would have been enough to please legions of ass-itchy executives for more than one Superbowl weekend. It even sucked Penny, the president of HBGary (HBGary Federal's inverstor), into the powerplay. Penny begged for mercy in an anon-ops chat, imploring Anonymous to not leak tens of thousands of private e-mail messages -- to no avail, of course.
—Sabu reminds Penny that Anonymous can read her mind | ||
—Penny responds | ||
Nevertheless, in a particularly despicable gambit, Penny tried to put all the blame on her minion AarOn. You can read the log (Start at line 522, search for "Penny" for the good stuff; AarOn's handle is "CogAnon". Penny is even liked by some, but be aware that, at the time of the chat, it was not yet known that she, her hubby Greg and her investment AarOn were plotting to smear Wikileaks and to "push" Salon journalist Glenn Greenwald into giving up his support for Wikileaks -- all for profit and on behalf of Bank of America. (NOT NICE!)
Outing of central Anonymous operatives
What about the real names of Anonymous operatives, as researched by Penny's security pOwerhOuse? (Leaked here: [13]) Well... some people are in trouble now, or are they?
- Ms Allis Free (say it!)
- Mr Max Mustamaan -- possibly a misspelled relative of German celebrity Erika Mustermann [14]
- Mr Kerlchen vom Hof -- German for "chappy from the yard"
- Mr Hans Meier -- the man with almost 300,000 google hits [15], because he is almost as legion as Anonymous or John Doe [16]
- Mr Daniel Dusentrieb -- no other than the famous inventor Gyro Gearloose in German [17]
Protip: always fact-check the results of your intelligence contractor with google and wikipedia. If Google or Wikipedia or both show that the intelligence sucks, fire the security contractor and tell all your friends.
The butthurt loudmouth, or: "This is not over!!!1111" (says hubby)
In a somewhat schizophrenic move, HBGary explained that it was butthurt by a cyberwar attack on its website and that it was taking "this crime" seriously. This, too, is a bad omen for smart security consumers: pathetic whinery. Simultanously, Greg Hoglund, founder of HBGary Federal and Penny's husband, was talking tall, showing off the newly goatsed anus of his insecurity company:
—The operative words here are "we" and "try" | ||
After reading some of Gregs emails it was clear, that he was a hell of a security expert and consequences will never be the same for Anonymous (also he bought a copy of "The Multi-Orgasmic Man: Sexual Secrets Every Man Should Know".
—Greg Hoglund, giving some hardcore security advises | ||
—Greg Hoglund, being a serious badass | ||
Update: industrialization of sock-puppeteering imminent
The revelations from the leaked HBGary e-mails include good news for internet addicts, trollfaces, forum pamphleteers, moralfags, batshit crazies and/or all of the above. The magic word of 21st century living on the web is "computer aided persona management", and it is about time that we, the people of the internets, benefit from a good, long subsidy-sip from the military-industrial complex. HBGary Federal and other private-sector companies are developing miracle technology for putting the power of legions at the fingertip of the individual in the government who wants to streamline online campaigns and let loose the wrath of his sock puppets army without duplication, confusion or cross-contamination.
From HBGary's sales brochure:
To this end, smart people have created virtual-machine-assisted astroturfing software for managing up to 10 socks per real person. From the brochure:
—OMFG AWESOME | ||
Very soon this government-approved cyberpunk sockware will trickle down to a torrent near you!
Update: MMOs
—Barr, trying too hard to convince others he's not a complete newfag to the software industry [18] | ||
Hilariously, Battle.net has decided to immediately delete any and all mentions of Barr's astronomic goof up on the internet, or its in-depth coverage by Colbert, such as this one and this one. Google this to see this for yourself.
Update: Resignation
The real reason for the resignation is that AarOn just can't sit down for a while after what became of his rear end, no matter how swanky the CEO chairs may be. (The swelling from the hornet stings doesn't help.)
See Also
External Links
- HBGary's Official Website
- Here is the IRC chat log where President Penny Leavy begged Anonymous to leave her company alone
- Aaron Barr’s twitter
- Anonymous twitter announces new details on the e-mail leaks and how HBGary is trying to save face.
- News story detailing the fiasco
- Anonymous makes a youtube video about the fiasco
- learn all about the shiny new sock management proggies
- Daily Kos trolling against computer-aided socketeering
- Colbert with Anonymous on the fiasco
- Another anti-empowerment troll
- Pamela Geller aka atlasshrugs2000 comments on HBGary.
- HBGary gets pwned on Forbes
Tips for Tards
- Now that all the n00bs are slowing down the hbgary.anonleaks.ch site, use a Google Cache search like [20] to get the goods.
- See the Cliff Notes for the action so far.
- The torrentz are for people with 4.71 GiB free and the bandwidth to download it, not losers like You.
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HBGary Federal is part of a series on Visit the Truth Portal for complete coverage. |
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HBGary Federal is part of a series on Visit the Faggotry Portal for complete coverage. |
| Article of the Nao May 6, 2011 | ||
| Preceded by Pope |
HBGary Federal | Succeeded by 4chon.net |