About

#OpTrump is an ongoing Anonymous-led hacktivist campaign orchestrating various cyber attacks against Donald Trump during his 2016 Republican presidential campaign. Various actions include attempts to distribute Trump's personally identifiable information and planned DDOS attacks against his campaign websites.

Background

After its #OpISIS campaign in late 2015, some members of Anonymous announced that they were going to pursue actions against Donald Trump in retaliation for his comments against Muslims and Mexico. In a now-deleted video, the group said “[Trump's anti-Muslim Policy] is going to have a huge impact. This is what ISIS wants. The more Muslims feel sad, the more ISIS feel that they can recruit them.” and declared that the operation against Trump was a necessary next step (mirror below). It is unclear if any actions were undertaken at that time; if so, none were notable enough to gain publicity.

Also earlier in 2016, Gawker published Trump's personal cell phone number, encouraging people to call him and "ask him about his important ideas.^[2] Trump immediately changed his personal phone number, but he left the previous one active with a campaign message for an outgoing voicemail. On March 4th, 2016, Gawker received an anonymous package of files that hackers claimed were Donald Trump's saved incoming voicemail messages from that number, and a link to a YouTube video where the hackers who claimed responsibility for capturing the recordings attempted to create a new outgoing voicemail message (below).^[3] While these hackers did not directly associate themselves with Anonymous, they did make it clear that many online were attempting to target the candidate electronically.

Notable Developments

#OpTrump 2016

On March 4th, 2016, a YouTube user called Anonymous (but not the main, known Anonymous account) posted a video saying that there would be a new #OpTrump, which would perform a massive DDOS attack on April 1st.

The account linked to a Ghostbin that summarized the group's actions,^[4] including a purported dox of Trump; however, the material included in the dox included the phone number previously disclosed by Gawker, Trump's address (well known to be in the penthouse of Trump Tower in New York City) and Trump's social security number, which has long been publicly available^[4]. Another Ghostbin, linked to from the #optrump IRC on the AnonOps IRC network, illustrated the group's goals.^[5]

It has been quite a while since the last official address of #OpTrump, and things have gotten quite a bit out of hand. It seems that various different individuals and groups have taken action in the name of OpTrump, claiming they are official. Although we do agree with some, there is much conflict over things like what OpTrump does to specifically target Donald Trump.

Recently you have seen that an alleged #OpTrump, now resurrected in 2016, has planned a massive DDoS attack on April 1, 2016. We do not particularly like this idea, but have decided to make an exception and allow this. On April 1st, 2016, Anonymous will conduct a DDoS attack on Donald Trump's main websites.

Let me clarify this once more: The DDoS attacks ONLY serve to gain publicity, we know they are not the best way to directly attack Donald Trump. There has been large amounts of opposition to this operation as many thing that OpTrump aims to censor Donald Trump's free speech. This is not the case. The obscenities that he has said have been far too insulting and vulgar to be left forgotten, and we want him to pay for what he has said. We do NOT stand for a specific political ideology; our most integral members themselves have differing political views. We are NOT against Anonymous beliefs. Anonymous believes in equality. Donald Trump does not.

On March 16th, another video was published, claiming that the #OpTrump operation had been terminated.

However, as of March 17th, the #OpTrump IRC is still active, and one of the most well-known Anonymous Twitter accounts, YourAnonNews, has been actively tweeting messages about #OpTrump.^[6]

#OpTrump Used As A Ruse For #OpWhiteRose

On March 19th, 2016, user Maj Ahoul uploaded to YouTube a video titled Anonymous – #‎OpWhiteRose‬ Round 2. explaining how Donald Trump's personal information was a legally obtained collection of publicly available data (shown below). Trump's information was explained to have never actually been hacked or doxed. The video was posted in support of the White Rose Society and the White Rose Revolt.^[8] The point of this action by Anonymous was that they were trying to prove how fascist Donald Trump and the FBI were -and arguably it worked. The Donald Trump campaign released this quote in response to #OpTrump: “The government and law enforcement authorities are seeking the arrest of the people responsible for attempting to illegally hack Mr. Trump accounts and telephone information."^[7] A Secret Service Spokesman said "The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the Internet postings of Candidate Donald Trump’s personal information, we are working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in this matter."^[7] This would mean Donald Trump was calling for Anonymous members to be arrested for hacks they did not commit.

Search Interest

External References