2020 Anonymous Hacks and Leaks

Overview

2020 Anonymous Hacks and Leaks refers to a series of online actions taken by the decentralized hacker group Anonymous in response to the death of George Floyd and numerous accounts of police brutality against African Americans.

Background

On May 28th, 2020, the Facebook group anonews.co posted a video featuring a person wearing a Guy Fawkes mask threatening retaliation against "officers who kill people and commit other crimes." Anonymous allegedly made the video. The post received more than 3 million views, 76,000 reactions, 73,000 shares and 7,700 comments in less than one week (shown below).

Developments

Attacks

Minneapolis Police Department Hack

On May 30th, 2020, Anonymous allegedly took the Minneapolis Police Department website offline.^[1] That day, journalist William LeGate tweeted, "The Minneapolis PD website has been taken offline by Anonymous & they're threatening to take down any government website for any organization attacking protestors." The tweet received more than 43,000 likes and 17,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below).

Twitter user @abdurahman_saed tweeted a video of attempting to reach the website. They wrote, "The Minneapolis police department website is down!!! It was hacked by anonymous." The post received more than 144,000 views, 2,000 likes and 640 retweets in less than two days (shown below).

The Minneapolis police department website is down!!! It was hacked by anonymous pic.twitter.com/BdwAsspdQs

— Abdurahman (@abdurahman_saed) May 31, 2020

Donald Trump-Jeffrey Epstein Court Documents

On May 31st, Twitter^[2] account @YourAnonCentral responded to a tweet from U.S. President Donald Trump and accused him of organizing the death of Jeffrey Epstein. They wrote, "You had Jeffrey Epstein killed to cover up your history of child trafficking and rape. We've have the recipts here." The tweet recieved more than 342,000 likes and 171,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below, left).

That day, people began posting images of court documents that state that Donald Trump "intiated sexual contact" with a 13-year-old girl and struck her violently. Twitter^[3] user @stellount posted screenshots of the documents and wrote, "DONALD TRUMP, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT IS NOW A CONFIRMED PAEDOPHILE & CHILD RAPIST AND WAS BEHIND THE EPSTEIN KILLING anonymous have been out of hiding for less than 24 hours." The tweet recieved more than 117,000 likes and 70,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below, right).

This lawsuit had previous been reported by The Daily Beast.^[4] They wrote:

The accuser--who used the name Katie Johnson to file a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court--alleges the Republican presidential nominee raped her in the summer of 1994, when she was 13, while attending a sex party at the New York City mansion of notorious pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. The claim was basically a repeat of her earlier lawsuit, filed in California in May without legal representation, which was dismissed on procedural grounds for failing to make a claim under an applicable statute.

Chicago Police Radio Hack

On May 30th, some reported online that Anonymous hacked the Chicago Police Department radio, playing the NWA song "Fuck the Police" on the airwaves. That day, Twitter user @chloehrubin shared video a police scanner playing the song. The post received more than 4.8 million views, 8,900 likes and 2,900 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

Rogue police radio, someone has access. #ChicagoScanner #Chicago #ChicagoProtests pic.twitter.com/d5irE0Q82H

— Chloe (@chloehrubin) May 31, 2020

Online Reaction

On May 30th, Twitter user @HennyOnMyLips shared the video with the caption "YouTube keeps deleting this video. They’re censoring nothing but facts." Within two days, the tweet received more than 36 million views, 252,000 likes and 116,000 retweets (shown below).

YouTube keeps deleting this video. They’re censoring nothing but facts pic.twitter.com/9Q8NwbK8Xb

— MARIO//JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD (@HennyOnMyLips) May 30, 2020

That day, @LAVENDERTHUG shared the video and wrote, "BITCH YALL GOT ANONYMOUS OUT THE SHADOWS." The post received more than 1 million like and 490,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below).

BITCH YALL GOT ANONYMOUS OUT THE SHADOWS pic.twitter.com/bCBPnNJkmr

— Thug (@LAVENDERTHUG) May 31, 2020

On May 31st, Redditor^[5] jigsawmap posted the video on the /r/technology subreddit. Within two days, the post recieved more than 90,000 points (86% upvoted) and 3,000 comments.

That day, Twitter user @ER0TICFANTASIES tweeted,^[7] "In less than 24 hours and #Anonymous has already -Exposed trump for being a pedophile and a child rapist and covered it up but killing Epstein -Shut down the Minneapolis police website – exposed royals for killing Princess Diana -hacked the Chicago pd." The tweet received more than 43,000 likes and 10,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below).

On June 1st, Redditor^[6] FrenchFryeRoom261 asked the /r/NoStupidQuestions subreddit, "Trump and Epstein are trending on Twitter after Anonymous leaked documents detailing several underage rape settlements. Why isn't this appearing on mainstream news, or on Reddit?" The post received more than 62,000 points (84% upvoted) and 1,600 comments in less than 24 hours.

Criticism

On May 31st, 2020, Internet security research Troy Hunt tweeted that the posts were "certainly fake." In a Twitter^[9] thread, he wrote:

I'm seeing a bunch of tweets along the lines of "Anonymous leaked the email addresses and passwords of the Minneapolis police" with links and screen caps of pastes as "evidence". This is almost certainly fake for several reasons:

Firstly, each of the random addresses I picked out appears in @haveibeenpwned, usually against credential stuffing lists which have email address and plain text pairs. In other words, this is data that's already out there in other breaches, at least the email addresses are.

Secondly, the passwords are consistently woeful and are often all lowercase, numeric or other patterns that would almost certainly be rejected by any official @minneapolispd system. They're simple passwords most likely cracked from other breaches.

Thirdly, this is getting traction because emotions are high; public outrage is driving a desire for this to be true, even if it's not. Hash-tagging it "Anonymous" implies social justice, even if the whole thing is a hoax.

Hunt continued his analysis in a blogpost.^[10] He wrote:

I want to be really clear about something at this point: events in the US at present are tragic and people should damn well be angry. But anger shouldn't mean throwing logic and reason out the window and I cannot think of a time where fact-checking has ever been more important than now, not just because of the Minneapolis situation, but because so much of what we see online simply can't be trusted. So by all means, be angry, but don't spread disinformation and right now, all signs point to just that – the alleged Minneapolis Police Department "breach" is fake.

Search Interest

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External References