November 5 Hacking Spree Included Anonymous, HTP

Two hacking groups went wild on November 5 in celebration of Guy Fawkes Day.

November 5th is Guy Fawkes Day, and several hacking groups celebrated the event by going on a hacking spree.

Early Monday morning, ZDNet said that Monday's hacking theme was an anti-surveillance protest, as the Anonymous attacks were focused on surveillance systems like TrapWire and INDECT. The group claims that these systems are direct threats to privacy and certain civil freedoms. Even more, their implementation could "constitute human rights violations."

As always, Anonymous used various social formats to announce its victories including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The collective also linked to document dumps on Pastebin to prove their latest hacking claims. ZDNet added that Anonymous Australia had been the most active of the collective.

So far the hacking spree includes the following:

* Arcelor Mittal, an Australian steel and mining company
* Ascension Australia
* Australian government websites
* Ghana Consulate website
* Giftnow, a homewares website
* Greek City website
* Lady Gaga's fan site
* Leaking the VMware ESX Server Kernel source code
* The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

The following websites were defaced, but Anonymous is currently denying responsibility despite claims from the press:

* NBC.com
* NBC's Jimmy Fallon portal
* NBC's Jay Leno portal
* Saturday Night Live's website

Cyber War News reports that three hacks associated with the Anonymous spree were actually performed by Hack The Planet and include:

* ImageShack
* Symantec
* ZPanel (previously believed to be PayPal)

HTP reportedly released on Monday a Zine containing breached information on ImageShack and Symantec while a zero-day exploit was released for ZPanel (previously thought to be PayPal).

According to the report, the leaked data was uploaded to various places on the internet and included information stored on the ImageShack server (shells, file permission settings, source codes etc), exploits and vulnerabilities that were discovered in the attacks. The Symantec portion of the data consisted of a complete database, and more than 4000 user accounts spanning employees and related companies.

Other information offered in the HTP's Zine included information on Infosec and Anonymous members.

As reported by Mashable, Guy Fawkes Day is a British commemoration of a failed assassination attempt on King James I. Serving as a member of the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes found himself jailed after being caught guarding explosives placed beneath the House of Lords.

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