Fawkes Security

About

Fawkes Security is a group of self-proclaimed ethical hackers established in December 2011 who align themselves with the Anonymous movement. In October 2012, the group took responsibility for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on banking company HSBS before posing a bomb threat set to detonate on November 5th, 2012.

Online History

Fawkes Security launched a Twitter account^[1], YouTube channel^[2] and private Facebook group^[3] in December 2011. According to the group's first video communique, its objective is to target companies and people they view as oppressing average citizens across the globe.^[4]

HSBC Attack

On October 18th, 2012, HSBC Bank revealed that the company came under a large scale DDoS attack,^[5] claiming that it only took their online services offline and did not affect any sensitive customer data. The attack was initially thought to be caused by a group named Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters^[9], who also took credit for DDoSing other American bank websites including Capital One Bank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo; however, a Pastebin document^[6] claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of Fawkes Security was uploaded later that same day, citing several of their real-time tweets as proof. The group also told British newspaper The Register^[7] that they planned on targeting more banks in the future, as the group feels they are at fault for the problems with the world’s economy. The next day, @FawkesSecurity further claimed in a tweet (shown below) that they had collected the details from 20,000 credit card accounts during the DDoS^[8], but have not provided any proof.

When HSBC said ''user data had not been compromised'' This isn't entirely correct. We also managed to log 20,000 debit card details. #OpHSBC

— Anonymous (@FawkesSecurity) October 19, 2012

Bomb Threat

On October 22nd at approximately 9:45pm (ET), during the United States presidential debate, @FawkesSecurity tweeted a link to its latest video message (shown below) claiming that a military grade bomb consisting of 200 kilgrams of composite Nitroglycerin and commercial explosives had been concealed in a government building somewhere in the United States. They also added the information in the form of a Pastebin document^[10], warning readers that the bomb is in a tamper-proof box and cannot be disarmed without exploding if found before the detonation date of November 5th. The message was subsequently picked up by other Anonymous-affiliated channels on Twitter, many of which included the hashtag #OpV^[15] to cross-promote Operation Vendetta^[21], an Anonymous protest set to take place in front of the British House of Parliament on November 5th, 2012, in commemoration of Guy Fawkes Night.^[16]

Soon after the video began to circulate, other Anonymous-aligned Twitter accounts including @YourAnonNews^[11], @TheAnonNation^[12] and @Asher_Wolf^[14], and the Anon Central Tumblr^[20] began claiming the bomb was a hoax^[13] and that @FawkesSecurity was not speaking for the whole community. Despite this, news of the threat was shared on Breitbart^[17], Softpedia^[18] and TechNewsDaily.^[19]

Twitter Feed

Search Interest

External References