Newswise — The mob mentality behind the current wave of cyber attacks against various banking, credit and other service-industry websites is not one of frenzy or mass hysteria, according to cybercrime experts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“Leaders of Anonymous, the group behind the cyber attacks, have instructed volunteer participants whose machines are being used to overwhelm targeted websites to deny their role by telling authorities that their computer must have fallen victim to a virus,” says Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics at UAB. “This is not a group acting irrationally.”
Warner, who has been tracking the string of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that have disrupted websites operated by Mastercard, Paypal, and others in recent days, breaks down the mentality and motivations of the Anonymous attackers in a new blog post on his site CyberCrime & Doing Time. In the post, Warner includes quotes from UAB criminologist John Sloan, Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Justice Sciences.
“This is a thoughtful group of like-minded members who are brought together by technologies unavailable to previous generations and are united to take out websites run by companies that the group feels support internet censorship,” says Sloan, Ph.D.
Sloan explains the Anonymous group’s behavior is consistent with theories of collective behavior that suggest groups will unite behind passions for a similar interest and act to “make a difference.”
“The DDoS attackers are very aware of what they are doing. This is not mass hysteria with participants in some kind of frenzy to act out,” Sloan says.
In his research, Warner says he has seen similar behavior expressed by groups, typically when nationalists rise up to defend their country’s interests as domestic web users did during the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia and more recently in Iran during political protests there in 2009.
“What makes Anonymous unique is that this group is not tied to a particular country or attacking in defense of a country,” Warner says. “The question remains what the exit strategy will be for this crowd – will they grow bored and quit, will they grow more reckless and dangerous, or will they guide their members to more legal and socially acceptable behavior?”More of Warner and Sloan’s insights are available at http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2010/12/internet-anarchy-anonymous-crowds-flex.html.
About UAB Computer ForensicsThe UAB Computer Forensics Research Laboratory is home to the UAB Spam Data Mine and other projects that track illegal Internet activity and coordinate to law enforcement officials to prosecute offenders. The lab is under the direction of Gary Warner and operates in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences with funds from the departments of Justice Sciences and Computer and Information Sciences.
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