Anonymous Called 'Hard to Kill Web Hippies' in Leaked Internal Stratfor Emails

In a weekly Intelligence summary, Verizon Business Security blogged, "Wired declared Anonymous to be the net's immune system. But an analyst is compelled to assess if Anonymous is becoming symptomatic of an autoimmune disease." AntiSec hacktivists certainly whacked the "intelligence consultancy" for Strategic Forecasting Inc and endless articles have been published such as this one that points out the failings and "gross example of Statfor." And now Anonymous is starting to publish the internal Stratfor emails in two different "teaser" edition sets.

When Stratfor finally brought its website back online on January 11, Stratfor CEO George Friedman said, "We knew our reputation would be damaged by the revelation, all the more so because we had not encrypted the credit card files. This was a failure on our part. As the founder and CEO of Stratfor, I take responsibility for this failure, which has created hardship for customers and friends, and I deeply regret that it took place." In fact he added that the company is not a "hub of global conspiracy," but does "certainly expect to be attacked again, as we were last week when emails were sent out to members from a fake Stratfor address including absurd messages and videos."

In regard to the email that Anonymous is now leaking, Friedman said, "Obviously, we were not happy to see our emails taken. God knows what a hundred employees writing endless emails might say that is embarrassing, stupid or subject to misinterpretation." Well here comes more pain and embarrassment for Stratfor, as AntiSec published a "sneak peak" of Stratfor's email on Pastebin. The "first real Stratfor mail from AntiSec" on Pastebin is one of those things you read and think what the heck, is this pure fiction or is it real drama, drama, drama? The next Pastebin was called "Teaser 2 Stratfor calls Anon and Wikileaks hippie arseholes."

The first time AnonymousIRC tweeted, "A wild teaser appears! #SOPA is srs business, so we bring you some lulz today in the form of #Stratfor emails: http://bit.ly/z6daTa."

If the first teaser is truly internal emails, then I'm embarrassed for those people. The outrageous correspondence is ugly, full of name calling, deeply personal and supposedly to or from Gray Fuller, David McCullar, Stratfor Senior Editor of Special Projects Mike McCullar, and a woman allegedly named Barb. That is, if those emails are real, then you need to read them yourselves as it goes against my privacy beliefs to even snip from them.

It concluded with the hacktivists writing, "yeah, don't worry, wet pants for us too laughing at that... Stratfor's mails are full of Lulz. Stay tunned [sic] folks, more is coming!!! some sh*ts they wrote will be ugly tho...we'll try to keep the lulz up anyway."

About an hour later, @AnonymousIRC tweeted:

This set of internal emails focuses on WikiLeaks, Anonymous, hacktivists and anarchism. On December 10, as Stratfor analysts discussed "Wiki Hackers Talk to The Economist," Chris Farnham wrote, "Wikileaks is a big deal in the world of the anti-establishment and the network based activists, it has displayed potential to strike at the established powers via information proliferation hand in hand with the conventional media. That's power and Anon has now latched on to the bandwagon. These guys have already crossed from net based activism to physical world activism, it has already happened at a very small level."

In another email, Farnham wrote:

The chaners/anon/b are educated and at the leading edge of network based technology, have a nebulous structure of loyal people spread through the world with no nationalistic foundations bit drawn together under a shared interest in chaos (hentai and cats, for f**k sake). There are numerous examples where they have uncovered identities and all personal details of people based on a single photo (of a woman putting a cat in a garbage bin, for example) and bought some serious vigilanty style justice to those they disagree with. They have also crossed over into the physical/real life world a number of times.
...
It's going to be very interesting to watch what anon does in the 'post-wilileaks' environment. If they move from a bunch of tech geeks in mum's basement into a real movement they could cause serious trouble and be hard to kill. The coresy not be the problem but the few unhinged among them could prove to be quite destructive if so inclined.

This was followed by Fred Burton's email which stated, "These global hippies and arseholes are like CHAOS or THRUSH."

Meanwhile some 'web hippies' may be feeling the heat since the U.S. government has issued a #hashtagsubpoena. Yes, you read that right and you might be included if your tweet was accompanied with an Occupy hastag. "It is time for Twitter to move offshore: US gov demands all Twitter users details who used Occupy hashtag," @wikileaks tweeted. The article on Crikey states, "The subpoena itself is bizarre and quickly became an internet laughing stock" due to misspellings, naming the wrong Twitter accounts, and redundancies. "But in trying to subpoena a hashtag, the Boston DA, one Benjamin A. Goldberger, either through a lack of understanding of social media, or as part of an extraordinary international fishing expedition, has sought information about anyone who used the hashtags in a tweet during the dates identified in the subpoena."