Hactivist group Anonymous makes comeback after 3 years of silence

New Delhi: After a three-year hiatus, hacktivist group ‘Anonymous’ made its official comeback during the riots and protests that followed the death of African-American man George Floyd in the US recently.

According to reports, the hactivist group made a comeback to expose many crimes of the Minneapolis Police Department. On May 29, it released a video message on their Facebook page warning the department demanding stringent action against the police officers who were involved in the arrest and the subsequent death of Floyd.

The collective since then has allegedly taken down the Minneapolis Police Department website, and allegedly hijacked the radio systems of the Chicago Police Department.

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They have even released documents as proof among other things which includes the rape allegations on US President Donald Trump of a 13-year-old boy and even the killings of Princess Diana by the English Royal family, Jeffery Epstein and many more. However, many of their tweets have been disappearing off Twitter but its 7.4 million follower base in Twitter took screenshots.

Now the question remains, who is Anonymous?

They are an international group of hackers who are activists. They are decentralised which means that this group does not have any proclaimed leadership. To make things more mysterious, all the members of this group still remains unknown. They come together under a banner to carry out operations which usually sends a political message.

Formed in the year 2003 on 4chan (anonymous English language imageboard website), their motto is, “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive, we do not forget. Expect us.”

They are also known to post a video message as a warning against their next target. In the past, they have launched cyber-attacks against institutions, corporations, and governments which they accuse of wrongdoings and power misuse.

They are known for their operations against the Church of Scientology in 2008 where they targeted them for a period of three months. They even targeted Aiplex, an India software firm that used to host DDoS (Distributor Denial of Service) attacks on Torrent sites to prevent movie piracy as Anonymous believes it to be restricting free speech. They even took on Sony as it denied hackers to find any flaws in its PlayStation 3 console. In its wake, they took down PlayStation Network for over a month and compromised over 100 million Sony accounts.

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Donning the tragi-comic mask which was made popular by graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, the second coming of the hacktivist group does spell doom for the ones they target but their anti-establishment stand and exposing the dark underbelly of various institutions have made them quite popular in the present times.