I feel like episodes like this give Anonymous a bad name...[ sic ;) ]....not that their name/reputation is so stellar in the first place.
But this isn't Hacktivism or whatnot. This is pure outright theft and extortion. It's not "fight the man" or "prevent censorship" or even WikiLeaks-style "information wants to be free".
It's profit-motivated organized crime syndicates trying to extract some $$ from a company. They hacked Symantec because the virus-writers of the world want to be able to write more viruses so they can infect more machines and create more botnets and send more spam and/or do more phishing...and make more money. That's it.
It's frustrating because part of the problem with a group like Anonymous is that you don't get to declare who is and who isn't a part (by definition).
I suppose human nature is human nature - in the real world or online, the same scenarios play out time and time again....
But this isn't Hacktivism or whatnot. This is pure outright theft and extortion. It's not "fight the man" or "prevent censorship" or even WikiLeaks-style "information wants to be free".
It's profit-motivated organized crime syndicates trying to extract some $$ from a company. They hacked Symantec because the virus-writers of the world want to be able to write more viruses so they can infect more machines and create more botnets and send more spam and/or do more phishing...and make more money. That's it.
It's frustrating because part of the problem with a group like Anonymous is that you don't get to declare who is and who isn't a part (by definition).
I suppose human nature is human nature - in the real world or online, the same scenarios play out time and time again....