It"s not the first time we have witnessed in-fighting amongst the "leadership" of Anonymous. Recall the attacks on PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard in retaliation for cancelling a donation source to Wikileaks following the response of governments worldwide to halt the flow of diplomatic cables coming from the whistleblower site. After the attacks on PayPal and the credit card companies, the command structure fell into disarray and anarchy ensued.
Given the nature of Anonymous, one may assume there is no real command, that anyone can speak for Anonymous, that even actions such as credit card theft can be traced to a few Anonymous members even though the leadership of Anonymous condemns credit card theft. Perhaps there is no leadership structure after all, as that is what led one ex-Anonymous helper and IRC operator to turn against his own group in a rather ironic coup d"etat. The same group of members who helped in the overthrow of Middle Eastern governments earlier this year is facing the same problem themselves.
A message posted by AnonOps staff reads:
Dear Users of the AnonOps Network,
We regret to inform you today that our network has been compromised by a former IRC-operator and fellow helper named "Ryan". He decided that he didn"t like the leaderless command structure that AnonOps Network Admins use. So he organised a coup d"etat, with his "friends" at skidsr.us . Using the networks service bot "Zalgo" he scavenged the IP"s and passwords of all the network servers (including the hub) and then systematically aimed denial of service attacks at them (which is why the network has been unstable for the past week). Unfortunately he has control of the domain names AnonOps.ru (and possibly AnonOps.net, we don"t know at this stage) so we are unable to continue using them. We however still have control over AnonOps.in, and will continue to publish news there.
We would STRONGLY ADVISE all users to STAY AWAY from AnonOps.net and AnonOps.ru, and they should be considered COMPROMISED. Using or connecting to any service on those addresses may put your computer, and by extension your person, at risk.
We will continue to update you on this story, as well as on how we proceed with the future of Anonops.
We are profoundly sorry for this drama, and we can"t give you a an estimate on when service will resume normally.
Alas, the IRC-network will probably remain down until we can sort this out.
We will try to keep you up to date you via our official channel (anonops.in).
Signed,
The "Old" AnonOps netstaff.
"****storm", "Nerdo","owen","blergh", and "Power2All"P.S: Further notices on AnonOps.net/ru will probably be posted to dispell this one, and any unavailablity of AnonOps.in will only prove this message is true. THIS IS NOT A JOKE, THIS ISN"T A LIE, THIS IS THE TRUTH AND WE ARE SORRY FOR THAT.
P.P.S: The person behind this attack is also involved in the "new" Encyclopedia Dramatica (encyclopediadramatica.ch) . If you have previously signed up as a user with a legitimate email-address/password, you should take caution and consider that your account and password *might* be compromised.tl;dr:
AnonOps.ru/net got hijacked by a rogue admin, and no longer has anything to do with AnonOps, this domain should NOT be used if you wish to connect to the legitimate AnonOps network. Please use anonops.in instead. Sorry!
The above domains - AnonOps.net and AnonOps.ru, are currently down. AnonOps.in, as pointed out in the postscript, is now also down at the time of writing.
Thanks Audioboxer for the tip in the forums!