Protecting Online Businesses From Fraud Events

Online card fraud has rocketed in recent years as more people head online to shop. Businesses which don't protect themselves from these scam events could result in heavy losses and even put a business under in certain cases.

The good news is that there are ways to protect your online business

Implementing these will have the effect of deterring fraudsters from carrying out a scam event as well as allowing you to identify and prevent some fraud.

New credit card security features

Credit card companies introduced what is known as 3-D Secure to attempt to combat online fraud. In order for a transaction to be completed, the cardholder must enter a password, that they created after entering personal information in order to validate a transaction.

The user must register for this service which is often prompted by attempting to complete a transaction. The customer is taken automatically to the bank issuer website to register.

This system is highly recommended to be adopted by online businesses since it clearly reduces the chance of fraud since it shifts the responsibility back to the cardholder and the credit card company as it acts like an online PIN eliminating the risk of unauthorised cardholder charge back to a business.

The downside is 3-D Secure adds another action for the customer to complete which will affect your businesses conversion rate; hopefully the risk will be offset by the fraud it is preventing. As the systems become more widely known and people get used to them then conversion rates should be impacted as much. The security enhancements should also boost customer confidence as they are dealing with a legitimate website and therefore may lead to increased and repeat business.

I think this is a must for any online retailers however do consider the downsides including the risk of program variations across regions. Customer registrations, card issuer registrations and legislation all differ around the globe.

In conclusion I believe the card password protection technology outweighs the downside however that is up to you to decide. scam event seminars are definitely worth taking the time to attend as the information you will learn is invaluable.

Tom Swayer writes articles covering a broad range of subjects. His main area of expertise is fraud awareness and scam prevention. Tom has written articles on these subjects including a recent article covering the scam event conferences.

How Not to Fall Prey to Cyber Criminals

Imagine checking your e-mail to find out if your friends, colleagues, business associates or any other person or organization that communicates with you, has gotten in touch. Your eyes ritualistically scan the name/subject in each box, and hey! a message in one of the subject lines gets your attention. Curiosity gets the better part of you and naturally you click on the subject matter and the contents are revealed. Well what do you know? someone is presenting a whooping sum of money to you, in exchange for a "seemingly harmless favour". It's an unbelievable offer, probably a once in a life time opportunity and you decide to play ball, and end up parting with some money. Congrats! you've just been duped of your hard earned money by some cyber criminals in sheep clothing.

A person who falls as a victim in the net of these day light robbers is referred to as a "Mugu" or "Maga", which simply means "a dummy, a fool" and in our National colloquial (vernacular) in Nigeria is called "Mumu". The reason why people constantly swallow the bait is ironically based on "Greed ". These lazy bones will always present you with a whooping sum that would make you whistle or cause your eyes to pop out of its sockets. Of course, since you want the money, you agree to play ball. They use the weapon of greed against you, tell you to bring a small amount of money, a little now, and a little again based on a thousand and one excuses. It's like leaving trails of bread crumbs for the bird to eat, which it does eat, hoping excitedly from one to the other, and since its guard has been let down...bam!, it finds itself trapped in a cage.

I have received e-mails telling me of a next of kin issue with millions that I could conveniently inherit, or that I'd won a whooping sum,(in pounds) organized by some Blue chip companies, lottery bodies. I was asked to send my personal details ( name, address, phone number, bank account number,) to claim my prize money. I didn't need any one to tell me that they were scammed mails, I sniffed it out instantly.

Those who perpetuate these crimes are referred to as "Yahoo Yahoo boys" in Nigeria (they illegally used the top notch site for criminal activities when the internet began to blossom in the country), and also "Advanced fee fraudsters".

HOW TO SNIFF THEM OUT
Always bear in mind that the potential scammer might and might not know you. He might know you by reason of being your friend, relative, colleague who knows a lot about you such as your likes and dislikes, where you shop, your habits, what you do, they know a lot. Where they don't know you, they generate e-mails through the e-mail look up process on popular search engines and type in a person's name. Thousands of e- mails with the name pops up, then the search is narrowed down to city, town, address of the people. They then decide on whom to pick, and after carefully writing the letter to avoid suspicion, it's sent to your box, and then the game begins.

Death and Inheritance messages: Next of kin
The scammer introduces himself in the e-mail as "Mr X", (a false name) and probably tells you he'd tried mailing a letter (surface mail) to you, sent it but didn't get any response and so it must have been lost. He correctly states your name, address, and can even tell you some details about yourself (but not in all cases, he can go straight to the point after introducing himself). There are various versions of the next of kin story. One version is to inform you of how a rich man died (with his family) and left an incredible sum with no one to inherit the money. Then he began to conduct an investigation and suddenly finds out that you're his lost long next of kin. Of course he knows you'll doubt it and asks you in the letter to send an e-mail to his Attorney to verify. You're curious (on one hand you feel something's not right and on the other you begin to think of the possibility of being a made for life and even allow yourself to day dream in Fantasy Island). You send the e-mail, after all an Attorney (an officer of the law in the Temple of Justice) can't be engaged in nefarious activities.

The Attorney who unknown to you is still 'Mr X' replies and confirms its true, and with that assurance you eagerly write back to 'Mr X' telling him you've confirmed and your ready to claim the inheritance. He's happy, showers praises on you and tells you he'll get right to working on it. He waits a couple of more days (to heighten the suspense) and sends another e- mail to you stating that he'll need, say $500, to get the legal documents out based on "xyz reasons". What's $500 compared to hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars, so you send it. Then one excuse after the other comes rolling in and you're parting with more and more money, and before you know it "you're the Mugu"

Another version of the Next of Kin evil scheme, would be to receive an e-mail by 'Mr X' who is based in another country. He informs you about how a certain rich man ( a foreign business partner ) deposited a staggering amount in their bank for the expansion of some business deals in Africa, while he was and still is, say, the foreign operations manager. Unfortunately, the man, and his wife, died in an air crash and since they had no children, and no one had come forward to claim same, he was offering you the opportunity of doing that. He tells you to open a new bank account and forward the details to him, and to also include your name, address, phone number, age, occupation and other personal details that would be useful in withdrawing the amount. He tells you not to worry, he's got everything worked out and after the money transfer has been made, he'll resign, meet with you, and split the money 50/50. You decide to play ball, and he begins to bring up one excuse or the other to extort money from you, and hey he's got you "You're the Maga".

THE WIDOWER ANTICS
The trick is always aimed at those who want to 'date/marry' someone 'over the net' (that is not to say that all dating sites are illegal or don't give the desired results some crave for) but it's a strategy they effectively use. I particularly do not encourage people to date over the net or to be swept off their feet by love declarations and marriage proposals (my opinion) for the following reasons:

1) People are not really who they seem to be over the net
2) The net is a facade that hides their true identify/character
3) How do you know the picture of the person is his true self, you'd be surprised at how these idle minds put up fake pictures and impersonate people
4) Anybody can write any thing on the net to impress you, you can't tell if he truly likes/loves you, and you can't attest to his character
5) You could be chatting/dating an ex-con, a criminal, pervert, rapist, wife beater, murderer, psychotic, who just wants to play on your emotions
6) Most dating/love relationships, oftentimes than not, takes place in different geographical axis, the man in one country and the woman in another. It's safer for them that way, after all, you can't hop in to a plane just to go to his country and when you finally do, he's made all the necessary arrangements for you to believe in his tell tales.

Now the widower "Mr X" doesn't reveal his true identity through the picture, so he becomes an impostor, and takes the identity of someone else (having hacked into the person's profile over the net) from another country. He pastes the picture on a dating site he has created, and since he's good looking, "lonely Miss Y" from another country sees the picture and sends him a flattery e-mail, but the letter conveys a tone of disbelief. 'Mr X' quickly responds by sending pictures of himself to her box, his profile, and other vital information he senses would be of paramount interest to her. She's satisfied and begins a relationship with supposedly 'Mr X'. One day he cooks up a story about how he's stranded at the airport in "N country" and needs her to send $500 to help him out. He designs and sends her counterfeit flight tickets, hotel bills etc and instructs her to send it in the name of "Mr Z" (his accomplice). She'll do anything for the love of her life and sends same. It's one excuse or the other after that, and she keeps on sending money and never gets to meet him, until she realises she'd been tricked, but it's too late "She's the Mugu"

Credit/ATM Cards, Bank Accounts
"Mr X" through software generators, gets access to people's IDs and with their credit card information has access to their bank details. He logs on to the bank's website, types in the information, and transfers the money into his account. It was used mainly when internet facilities began to thrive in Nigeria. Currently, e-mails and even text messages via mobile phones, are sent by these lazy drones to people, especially bank and Telecoms customers, requesting them to send their ATM details, bank account details, PIN numbers, to redeem prizes or for some other unrealistic reasons. In a swift reaction, the Banks and Telecoms companies have alerted the public to disregard such e-mails and text messages, and not to divulge such vital information, as they would never tell customers to do that.

Lottery winnings
Imagine being sent an e- mail that you'd won "K million dollars/pounds", because your name popped up as the winner. They tell you to visit the lottery site (bear in mind that some don't ). You do and it looks authentic, and you're thrilled about being a Millionaire, imagine all the stuff you'd buy with the money... but hold on a second "It might not be real". There are authentic lottery sites no doubt, but you've got to be careful that you're not on the wrong track as 'Mr X" also uses lottery sites to perpetuate his illegal activities.

"Mr X" is aware of the ongoing lottery in "P country" he visits the site and designs a similar one, generates e-mail addresses, gets their information and sends it to various people, (not in his country, except to those he knows) and tells them they've won and should visit the site. You do and he has even placed the team's photos (fake) and the country it's being carried out in. You reply the message and you're informed of series of things that would be done in order for you to get the money. Again out of excitement you send "M dollars", and the excuses keep coming in, while you keep paying and then you soon realize "you're the Mugu"

Non-existent Business deals
Most oftentimes than not "Mr X" sends an e-mail to "H company" in another country filled with all sorts of business ideas, information, opportunities, projected financial yields 'H company' would have if they did business together (became partners). Of course, opportunity to expand the business and make tons of profit causes 'H company' to jump at the sweet package. One thing leads to another and 'H company' unaware of the legal processes to take in establishing a business/joint venture in 'X's country or unable to confirm the authenticity of the deal and about his company readily agrees to and gives into the various demands of 'Mr X'. He later finds out its all been a lie and oh! well the "contact man of H company was the Mugu".

Foreigners and indigenes alike should not be in the habit of jumping into partnership/business deals of any kind without verifying the legality of such proposed businesses initiated by an individual/company. One of the steps to take is to engage the services of a lawyer who will help in the verification process amongst other things.

Winning streak

Blue chip companies do not conduct promos without advertising same through the Media (electronic and print). They'll never tell you to send details of your bank account, address, or tell you to call them so that they can inform you of where to pick up your prize. Winners are always contacted or told to go to the Redemption centres to get them.

It's no longer news that some unpatriotic Nigerians are involved in internet scams and have tarnished the country's image abroad. Nigerians generally are viewed with suspicion and are seen as unreliable, untrustworthy, fraudulent people. This notion is however wrong as a few bad apples doesn't necessarily mean the others are rotten, but the country without blemish should first cast a stone!.

Nigeria's Minister of Information Prof. Dora Akunyili spurring on the Re -branding campaign, with the slogan, "Nigeria good people, great Nation" is ready to correct the wrong impression most foreigners have about Nigerians. The Economic and financial crimes commission (EFCC) has been haunting down Cyber criminals with the cyber raid approach and the latest electronic mechanism in partnership with Microsoft to monitor, detect, scam mails over the net which is generating a 100% success result. Illegal sites are being shut down, reducing by the day the number of millions of people who fall as victims. Mails perceived as scams based on reasons expounded herein or otherwise should be reported to the EFCC.

Nigerians are good, warm, hospitable, friendly people and the fertile soil gives investors (foreign and local) the opportunity of ploughing their financial/technical resources into it with mouth watering financial returns. It's a great place to be in and without mincing words "I'm proudly Nigerian".

So long... auggiepo@yahoo.com

Encryption For Internet Security

These days when no information seems safe online, people have been considering file and disk encryption. Sometimes, they don't even understand what it is. They just know it's a security measure they must take to ensure that they need not face the worst from being thieved of their data.

So what is encryption? Encryption is basically the process of presenting a piece on information in coded form. This means that human being will not be able to understand such information unless it is decoded or decrypted. Encryption is an effective way of protecting data traveling over the web and it is, in fact, one of the most used and reliable techniques in cryptography which is a body of scientific principles that promote safe communications.

Cryptogrpahy has a lot of ways but on the Internet, it it makes use of long series of numbers which can be decoded using certain algorithms. Some of these algorithms make use of only one key for encryption and decryption which means a key used for encrypting is the same key that will be used for decoding the data. In other cases, encryption uses one key and decryption will require another. The safer one to use is obviously the latter.

Generally, these keys are responsible for protecting the data that is contained in a piece of encrypted information. Internet browsers are currently using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to ensure that information entered by online customers are adequately protected as this travels from the customer's computer to the businessman's server. SSL encryption also relies on keys and this is the reason why before buying anything online, it is important that the site has an SSL certificate which means data entered into it will be traveling encrypted.

The rule is, the longer the key or the greater number of bits there are, the safer the encryption is. This is because it is generally easier to come up with different bit combinations and try them out. For example, if you have a 2-bit encryption, you can easily come up with four different combinations, try each one and eventually decrypt the information. However, with a 128-bit encryption, there are at least 309,485,009,821,345,068,724,781,056 combinations possible. According to experts, 128-bit encryption can be good enough for a period of ten years which is probably the amount of time it would take for all such combinations to be tried.

Internet security is mostly a matter of having a good understanding of the risks involved as well as knowing what must be done to reduce the risks. In terms of general Internet safety, one can rely on an IP changing software which is a program designed to allow a user to surf the Internet with his IP address hidden.

Remember that an IP address is a computer's unique identifier when it connects with any other computer on the Internet. This means that whatever a hacker can do, he can do it because he knows his victim's IP address. Naturally, when you hide your IP, you're safe from hackers. Thus, with an IP changer alone, you can be assured of significant Internet threat protection.

Why Online Backup is Important - Safeguard Your Data on the Internet

Information is what makes the world go round. In the business world, any organization stores thousands or millions of data everyday for the use in their venture. Sales receipts, pricelist, manifests, and portfolios -- every single data is stored in a database for various uses. What do you think would happen if your precious data is suddenly wiped out from your storage? Let me introduce to you the concept of online backup.

Online Storage

The Internet is not only for the function of disseminating information to every individual in the planet. Today, those who have access to the Internet is capable of utilizing online storage sites to safeguard their files and having access to it wherever they go. The concept of online backup is simple -- store data that can be accessed from any computer console at your disposal.

Safeguard Data

Database backup offsite has its own advantages and disadvantages, but the benefits tend to outweigh the possible drawbacks that come with it. For starters, you can easily upload any form of data to your online servers with ease. You can backup your files through FTP, or Web-based environment for data upload and download.

Benefits

Online backup offers every individual the convenience of having access to important data from any computer console available. Let's take your Webmail for example, you can access your mails from any computer -- all you need to do is to login to your account and your done. Same is with the case of file backup online. You just need to login to your account, utilize built-in applications for uploading files, that's it!

Also, online backup is your last resort in case of emergencies -- like someone accidentally wiped out your entire database on your company's computer. You need not worry sine you have all the information from your latest backup and you can immediately download it to your computer to restore organization functions without having to worry too much about it.

Keep in mind, however, that human initiative is essential for a successful utilization of file backup online. Set a date or time for a routine backup to ensure that restoration of these relevant data is up-to-date. It might also be best to limit people who have access to your backup to avoid tampering.

Online backup is a necessity in today's business. Trusting too much on your private servers might lead to unrecoverable loss later on when you don't have a backup online to restore company operations.

Keep Your PC Safe - Internet Security For the Home User

As the number of cable modems and Wi-Fi networks increases, internet security is becoming more of an issue. You may think that your Internet connection is safe from unwelcome and unwanted intrusion by hackers, but there are some things you can do to improve your security levels to stop hackers gaining access to your personal details, bank account numbers and passwords.

The reason that Internet security is becoming more of an issue now is that people are spending longer connected to the Internet. And unless that pathway is protected by high level security, the hackers will have more opportunities to find a way in. Hijacked machines (often known as zombies and forming part of botnets) are valuable to fraudsters and spammers. The trick is to beat the hackers at their own game.

There are three aspects of home Internet protection, sometimes referred to as the 'holy trinity'.

Personal firewall/intrusion detection

These are the firewalls that often come with your operating system. In older operating systems such as Windows 95 and 98, these systems have virtually no inbuilt security. Because these systems have now been superseded by more up to date software, it is advisable that if you are still operating Win95 or 98 to upgrade to a system that is supported by a Microsoft inbuilt firewall.

All versions of Vista, XP and 2000 are still supported by Microsoft and have inclusive firewall protection. For an additional layer of security, external firewall programs can be incorporated into your operating system as simply as downloading any other piece of software. It is advisable to talk to an expert, however, as some firewalls may not be compatible with your operating system and you may encounter run conflicts that could affect other aspects of your system.

The most popular free downloadable firewall is Zone Alarm, although for comprehensive coverage, Zone Alarm Pro is probably a better option. You can also set your Internet security levels to 'high' on your operating system if you are going to be on the Internet for prolonged periods.

Anti-spyware software

Spyware is software that covertly gathers user information through the user's Internet connection without his or her knowledge. That information is then passed to a third party (the hacker or fraudster) and suddenly your secure system isn't quite as secure as you thought it was. There are countless pieces of embedded software (often also known as 'malware') that piggyback onto downloads and install themselves into your operating system. These include BHOs (Browser Helper Objects) which hijack your browser and take it to their 'chosen' site whether you want to go there or not. Although annoying, these don't do any real damage. However, other spyware can count keystrokes and relay these back to hackers who, from this data, can uncover passwords and other information such as account numbers. Anti-spyware software stops this malware from infiltrating your computer and leaving your important information exposed.

Anti-virus software

A virus can devastate a computer. Designed to cause maximum damage to your data, viruses are created to cause mayhem and have no other purpose other than that. Anti-virus software is essential, particularly if you are using the Internet for long periods of time, and the best option is to include a package such as McAfee VirusScan in your operating system. Ensure that you update this program regularly (you will receive prompts from your computer on start-up).

No piece of anti-virus or spyware software can cover all threats, so it's a good idea to keep an eye out for updates and to combine several systems to cover your bases. There are also some things you can do for yourself when online to keep your PC and your personal details safe:

• Never open email attachments if you do not know who the email has come from, or even from friends. This is the easiest way to allow a virus to access your system.
• Avoid downloading files from sites you are not familiar with.
• Ensure that your security protocol is set to 'high' if you are going to be online for any length of time
• No bank will ever ask for your details via email. Any that do are scams and should be immediately deleted without responding and your bank notified of the scam attempt.
• If something looks suspicious (poor spelling, bad graphics), then trust your instincts - it probably is a bogus email or phishing attempt to get access to your personal details
• If you have a wireless network in your home, ensure that it is password protected.
• Never have the same password for all your sites.

With a little thought and preparation, you can keep your home PC safe from outside attacks and your details out of the hands of fraudsters.

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DDoS Attack Hits Amazon Cloud Customer Hard

UPDATE: updated to clarify that the downtime was isolated to the single customer, and to include comments from Amazon Web Services.

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- As has been reported in several sources this week, including this report from The Register, a customer of Amazon’s cloud computing service - Bitbucket (www.bitbucket.org), a web-based code hosting service that uses both EC2 and the Amazon’s Elastic Block Storage - reported 19 hours of downtime as a result of a DDoS attack.

The disruption, as most of the reports have mentioned, is certain to raise questions about both the resiliance and stability of cloud hosting solutions, as well as invite scrutiny into the quality of Amazon’s response to customer situations like this one.

In an email, Amazon Web Services public relations manager Kay Kinton writes "The customer’s Amazon EC2 instance was receiving a very large amount of network traffic. This large flood of traffic exceeded the networking of the customer’s single Amazon EC2 instance and caused performance to degrade on all network operations for that instance (including access to the EBS volume). Once we properly diagnosed the problem, we worked with the customer to put measures in place to help mitigate the unwanted traffic they were receiving. We have continued to work with the customer to apply network filtering techniques which have kept their site functioning properly."

Bitbucket operator Jesper Nøhr spent a great deal of energy venting his frustrations about the situation via Twitter over the weekend and on Monday. He also published a detailed account of the outage timeline on the company’s blog.

He says in the post that, while he was advised not to reveal the source of the outage (according to The Register, because Amazon felt revealing the attack might give future attackers fuel for designing new means of attacking the service), he believed he owed it to customers to explain what went wrong.

“We were attacked. Bigtime,” he wrote. “We had a massive flood of UDP packets coming in to our IP, basically eating away all bandwidth to the box. This explains why we couldn’t read with any sort of acceptable speed from our EBS, as that is done over the network. So, basically a massive-scale DDOS. That’s nice.”

Nøhr’s blog post, and much of the discussion that has flowed from the incident, is more a look at Amazon’s response, and a debate about the nature of customer service than an investigation into the technical issues at play. His post concludes by saying Bitbucket is taking measures to ensure an outage of this kind won’t happen again, and that those measures might include moving to a new hosting provider.

In the final analysis, he doesn’t come down too hard on Amazon, demonstrating that the company devoted a lot of support attention to his cause after a frustrating (and exceedingly long) preliminary period – about 10 hours.

After the service was originally restored, Bitbucket reportedly suffered two further attacks, Sunday morning and early Monday.

The technical question seems to be how an attack using external traffic was able to disrupt the connection between Bitbucket’s EC2 and EBS resources, which one might reasonably consider an “internal” network connection, and why Amazon didn’t have the means in place to more quickly identify the outage as the result of a DDoS attack.

Kinton points out that AWS may have to do more work to help educate customers on the availability of measures to mitigate the impact of unexpected spikes in traffic.

"We are working to make sure we learn from this and continue to improve the speed with which we and our customers can diagnose issues like this," she says. "We will also provide additional guidance to our customers on how they can better detect this sort of problem and use existing features of EC2 to run a highly scalable and available website. These features include taking advantage of EC2’s scale-out ability to run multiple instances in multiple availability zones and regions, the Elastic Load Balancing feature which helps users filter and balance traffic among their instances and the Auto-Scaling feature which allows users to scale in response to changes in customer traffic."

In the comment section of the Bitbucket blog post, Nøhr wrote that he wouldn’t answer many of the technical questions posted in the comments, but that the company’s system admins “are writing a follow-up post outlining some more meaty details with numbers and graphs.”

Source: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/100609_Outage_Hits_Amazon_Cloud_Customer_Hard

The Assclown Offensive: How to Enrage the Church of Scientology

In the evening of January 15, 2008, a 31-year-old tech consultant named Gregg Housh sat down at the computer and paid a visit to one of his favorite Web sites, the message board known as 4chan. Like most of the 5.9 million people who visit the site every month, Housh was looking for a few cheap laughs. Filled with hundreds of thousands of brief, anonymous messages and crude graphics uploaded by the site's mostly male, mostly twentysomething users, 4chan is a fountainhead of twisted, scatological, absurd, and sometimes brilliant low-brow humor. It was the source of the lolcat craze (affixing captions like "I Can Has Cheezburger?" to photos of felines), the rickrolling phenomenon (tricking people into clicking on links to Rick Astley's ghastly "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video), and other classic time-wasting Internet memes. In short, while there are many online places where you can educate yourself, seek the truth, and contemplate the world's injustices and strive to right them, 4chan is not one of them.

Yet today, Housh found 4chan grappling with an injustice no Internet-humor fan could ignore. Days earlier, a nine-minute video excerpt of an interview with Tom Cruise had appeared unauthorized on YouTube and other Web sites. Produced by the Church of Scientology, the clip showed Cruise declaring himself and his co-religionists to be, among other remarkable things, the "only ones who can help" at an accident site. For the online wiseasses of the world, the clip was a heaven-sent extra helping of the weirdness Tom Cruise famously showed on Oprah. But then, suddenly, it was gone: Scientologists had sent takedown notices to sites hosting the video, effectively wiping it from the Web.

Housh and other channers knew that Scientology had a long history of using copyright law to silence Internet-based critics. But this time, maybe because the church was stifling not just unflattering content but potential comedy gold, the tactic seemed to inflame the chortling masses. That evening, Housh logged in to an IRC channel frequented by like-minded chuckleheads and started talking with five others about the Cruise video. There was a sense that something must be done, but what? One of them logged out and posted a call to action on 4chan and some similar sites. By the middle of the night, 30 people had joined the chat. Within a couple of days, a consensus emerged: They would take down the main Scientology Web site with a massive distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS.

By the time the attacks started on January 18, Housh and many of the now 200 others on the chat channel were devoting every spare moment to the cause: "We were like, OK, we have 24 hours today. None of us need to sleep. Get your caffeine. What's the next step?"

Someone suggested they create a press release. Housh and four others broke off into a side channel to work on it while the DDoS attacks unfolded. They figured they should explain the goals of their spontaneous uprising, but what exactly were those goals? "We had no fricking clue what we were doing," Housh says. "We didn't mean to do it in the first place." They were still more of a riot than a movement—a faceless, leaderless mob growing daily as new adherents flocked in. None of them knew one another, even by pseudonyms, since as a rule there was only one username throughout the community. In fact, it was a standing in-joke on 4chan and related sites that their collective output was the product of a single hive-mind entity, known by that same username: Anonymous.

Instead of a press release, Housh and the others made a video introduction in the name and voice of the hive mind itself. Thrown together in a few days of furious collaboration, it appeared on YouTube on January 21, titled "Message to Scientology."

"Hello, leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous," the clip began in a robotic, software-generated voice-over accompanied by stock footage of clouds rolling over desolate cityscapes. "Your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature: All of these things have caught our eye," the voice explained. "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind—and for our own enjoyment—we shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form." The message ended, as it had begun, on a pitch-perfect note of sci-fi comic book menace: "We are Legion," the robot voice intoned. "We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."

Source: http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-10/mf_chanology