The Anonymous group has a long and complicated history, spanning from 2003 through to the present day. What began as an oddball hacking group consisting mostly of teenagers, has since evolved into an international, decentralized movement that supports freedom of speech.
These Are the Timeline of Events Associated With Anonymous
In 2008, hackers broke into several websites belonging to the Church of Scientology and leaked confidential information about Tom Cruise and John Travolta. The hackers said they were protesting Cruise’s involvement in the film Magnolia.
February 11, 2011: Anonymous starts Operation Anti-Security and defaces the website for the Serious Organised Crime Agency, a government agency that investigates cybercrime.
March 1, 2011: Anonymous launches Operation Anti-Security II to protest against unethical use of social media on behalf of marketers. The group also claims responsibility for two separate mass DDoS attacks against MasterCard and Visa.
April 1, 2011: The group claims responsibility for interrupting the launch of Facebook’s business-oriented site at Harvard University.
April 13, 2011: A video is released showing members of the group hacking into Twitter and posting tweets using accounts belonging to prominent media personalities such as Arianna Huffington and Michael Moore.
May 8, 2011: Members of Anonymous shut down the websites of several companies including credit card processing firm Visa Europe, video game developer Take Two Interactive Software Inc., and security software company McAfee Inc.
June 14, 2011: Members of Anonymous take over the servers belonging to Bank of America Corp., demanding that they release information regarding their customers’ data breaches. They later release banking records containing personal information about thousands of customers
In 2013, Anonymous hacked into 77 Israeli government websites following the Israeli government’s ordering the shutdown of two Israeli ISPs due to alleged ties between them and Hezbollah.
2013: Releases a public statement calling for action against the Church of Scientology. The group claims responsibility for a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against the church’s website.
2013-2014: Launches several distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) against government and corporate websites in response to perceived censorship.
2015: Anonymous start cyber war against ISIS.
2022: Start operation against Russian dictators during Ukraine conflict.
