“The oldest stories ever told are written in the stars. Stories of time before man and gods, when Titans ruled the earth. The Titans were powerful, but their reign was ended by their own sons: Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.” (Clash of the Titans, 2010) Now, what the hell does Greek mythology have to do with an article titled “The Anonymous Spider and its Dark Web Chatrooms” that is clearly about hacking, Alek? Nothing, but it sounds cool and fits in with the generally accepted truth that the greatest hacks are seldom told. Buried away and covered in Vantablack and sucked away by a black hole.
Lucky for society, we are only 20 years or so removed from the peak era of random kids exploiting cyber vulnerabilities from their parents’ basement or whatever other room the family computer was located. This means we are living in a time that will go down as the pioneer era of the internet, and we can turn to former cyber enthusiasts for some, as they say, “cool stories, bro”. The similarity between cyber-enthusiasts and the pioneers from early North America is that both manage to “turn assertion into reality. They were a band of rebels who defeated the reigning incumbent of their eras,” as claimed by Vivek Ramaswamy
So, here is a story of how the early pioneers of the internet combined intellectual curiosity and an absolute confidence in their ability to figure things out through self-education and curiosity, figured out how the internet worked. And how network vulnerabilities do not exist to be exploited by kids in their parents’ basement or whatever other room the family computer is in, as you might fall into the crosshairs of the greatest police force the world has ever known, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).
“Anonymous” Cyber Enthusiasts as Kang Variants
That hacking group, commonly referred to as “Anonymous”, owe their name to a high-level discussion among policing stakeholders and elected officials, “We have no idea who the hell they are. They’re anonymous, sir.” And from that high-level discussion emerged the name that would get labelled on a global group of loosely connected cyber enthusiasts.
Looking back to the early days of the dark web and hacker groups, the reason they were so mysterious and hard for police to crack has to do with how people had to “earn” invites into such exclusive chatrooms. Back then, getting an invite into such exclusive chatrooms required going through a process like what Homer Simpson went through to get into the Stone Cutters (Season 6, Episode 12). It required finding network vulnerabilities and sending them over to a select few “admins” who would then go and verify these vulnerabilities, and, once confirmed, a person would get an invite into such exclusive chatrooms. And the anthem that was adopted by these exclusive chatrooms was the 1997 Simpsons song, “We do (The Stonecutters’ Song)”. Seriously.
Perhaps the funniest thing about these “Anonymous” cyber enthusiasts is that despite only knowing each other by code names, nearly all of them were identical in personality—a bunch of Kang variants (Council of Kangs): inhumanely immature, religious about gangster rap, a wannabe p*mp, hall-of-fame level funny, and everything they did they were “doing it for the lulz”. These were individuals who are so eccentric that none of the Hollywood greats could play such characters because of how unbelievable they were. And if you want to try to imagine them, think of the Council of Kangs from the Marvel Cinematic Universe – a stadium full of Kang variants.
Perhaps the main reason as to why police struggled to get into those exclusive chatrooms had to do with police not being allowed to commit crimes, so they would not be able to pass the “network vulnerabilities test”. Instead, they would have to catch individuals with access to such exclusive chatrooms once they got involved in traditional criminal activity, then get them to flip. After police stakeholders backdoored their way into these exclusive chatrooms through cooperation agreements, all the chat logs they gathered probably had policing and public safety stakeholders crapping themselves, first from laughter, and then for the seriousness of the situation.
Personally, I am convinced that the only reason that most network vulnerabilities were identified when they were by network administrators, had to do with how these “Anonymous” cyber enthusiasts lived for “doing it for the lulz”. What that means is that network vulnerabilities would be openly shared in such exclusive chatrooms, with the shared understanding that members would not go and exploit all those vulnerabilities. But “Anonymous” cyber enthusiasts lived for the “lulz”, meaning they laughed at the chaos that these exploits would cause, and they tried their darndest for them to get media coverage—so that they could laugh.
All things being equal, still I stand by my claims that Canadians are the most eccentric, ballsiest, and greatest hackers to ever walk the digital world (it’s not even close), but also that Canadian hackers also mature the slowest (it’s also not even close). But eccentric and ballsy hackers might end up being the peeps who save our world.
Iranian Hackers and the Cool Telephone Number
Back in July of 2020, I decided I wanted to get a new number because my then-number was too epic, “343-777-8-999” for my age. Because I had finally matured and could no longer use jokes that I use to get away with, “hit the jackpot twice”, and a whole bunch of other punchlines that would make all the rapper greats from the 2000s super proud. So, I turned to Freedom Mobile, who had a wickedly good deal, that gave more GBs of data than I could ever use. Because who is not a glutton for excess GBs of data so that they can post the most vain-glorious selfies?
Anyway, Freedom Mobile has personality and that must count for something, because the shit that I got put through was like getting hit by a Mack Truck (which does not turn those hit into “Mack Daddys”.) First, there was an issue with my number change, I was in Ottawa, but I wanted a “new area code” number from Northern Ontario because of the “cool” number sequences they made available. And that desire broke Freedom Mobile’s system.
Initially, I got a “cool” number, changing it out for all my social media accounts, that was before I got a call from Freedom Mobile telling me that I had to get a number specific to the Ottawa due to my address. After wasting close to 30-minutes of Freedom Mobile’s call center representative’s time, going through over hundreds of different phone number sequences, I settled on a “Dragon Ball Z-styled” sequence that ended in “9000” (power level scouter). Less than 48 hours later, I started getting spammed. Then I started getting locked out of some of my social media accounts, and more. Eventually, I started getting messages and calls over WhatsApp wanting to know who I was. So, I sent them a link to my website, then asking them who the hell were they and why the hell were they messaging me.
As a long story short, it turned out that the number that I was issued the number of a Canadian victim of the Airlines Flight 752 (January 8, 2020), Mansour Pourjam. By then, I had already changed my primary number to the “Dragon Ball Z-styled” number, and I was not letting it go. So, hackers, who I can only assume were Iranian, and not “Anonymous”-related (or we might recognize each other), carried out a barrage of attacks. Seeing that Canadian law made it illegal for me to procure the necessary grey market software necessary to engage with the Iranian hackers, I leveraged my public policy background (Harvard Kennedy School ’21) and put out a series on the growing importance of telephone numbers in a digital world.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from that series has to do with how we undervalue the importance of telephone numbers in today’s digital world and how fast telephone numbers are getting recycled—less than 3 months after an account has been closed (whether intentionally or for an unpaid balance). But a lot about how people interact with the digital world remains unaccounted for, and it may catch up to us at some point.
PSA: Hack Around and Find Out Courtesy of the FBI
Back in 2022, I attended a luncheon organized by Canadian Club of Ottawa that focused on the future of cybersecurity in Canada, and the conversations that I had with international cybersecurity practitioners told an entirely different story than what gets reported in the media. So, I have no idea why so many media outlets continue to quote “digital and cybersecurity analysts”, who keep saying that there is nothing that can be done about the illegal activity that occurs over the internet.
In summary, quantum computing and AI-powered technologies are being utilized to account for the rise in cybercrimes and the misuse of digital platforms. Joining that war on crime are internet providers who are actively monitoring IP activity and will flag specific searches for things like downloading pirated software, things related to terrorism and sex crimes, and if someone gets on the “dark web”. However, if there was one takeaway from my conversations with those international cybersecurity practitioners at the luncheon, it was that “As good as Canada’s RCMP may be, and as good as other country’s federal policing services may be, there is only one FBI.”
What the hell does that mean, Alek? Well, one hacker in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, a 30-year-old manchild at the time of his hacking activities, decided he wanted to “hack around” – the FBI decided to help him “find out”. That man-child hacker made the mistake of hacking a US-government computer (you should have targeted Cuba, Iran, North Korea or Russia, brother), and so the FBI got involved.
In short, the FBI tracked him down rather quickly. What took them time was paperwork related to him being located outside of U.S. borders. But when the FBI landed in Ottawa, their agents came out with detection dogs. Canadian policing stakeholders were surprised and wondering, “Why did the FBI come with detection dogs? Did this expand to a drug case?” After the man-child hacker was captured, Canadian policing stakeholders learned that the FBI had dogs that were trained to detect the scents of computer hacking chips. Nobody in Canada knew such dogs even existed or could be trained to do so.
So I repeat, what the colt revolver did to the bow and arrow is what quantum computers and AI-powered solutions have done to hackers—so stop hacking.