Parmy Olson

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Parmy Olson
Occupation Journalist
Known for Forbes bureau chief, reporting on Anonymous

Parmy Olson is a tech journalist for The Wall Street Journal. While at "Forbes" magazine, she was known for her work on the hacktivist movement Anonymous. She describes herself as covering "agitators and innovators in mobile". [1]

Contents

Early in her career with Forbes, she wrote a series of articles about the subprime mortgage crisis. She served as Forbes' London bureau chief from 2008–12 before moving to the magazine's San Francisco office. [2]

We Are Anonymous

In 2012, Little, Brown and Company published her book We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency. Prior to writing it, Olson had spent a year researching Anonymous. [3] The book details the early rise of Anonymous on the 4chan imageboard and chronicles the cyberattacks of Project Chanology (an anti-Church of Scientology protest) and Operation Payback (retaliation for actions against The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks, respectively). In the book's later chapters, Olson follows the exploits and eventual arrests of Anonymous spinoff group LulzSec, formed by hacktivists Sabu, Topiary, and others. [4]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times called We Are Anonymous a "lively, startling book". [4] Rowan Kaiser of The A.V. Club said the book was "an eminently human tale" that moves "from an interesting retelling of recent events into a bigger metaphorical story about order and chaos in activist communities"; Kaiser gave it a grade of "A". [5] Olson appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to discuss the book on June 18, 2012. [6] The Daily called it "a brilliant book": "a masterpiece of shoe-leather journalism, a fast-paced, richly detailed account of the group’s beginnings, various schisms and most spectacular attacks". [7]

Kirkus Reviews praised Olson's depictions of some events, but stated that the descriptions of Anonymous infighting were "lengthy" and "tiresome". The review concluded that We Are Anonymous was "certain to thrill 4chan readers, hackers and others on the Internet’s fringe, but may struggle to hold the interest of casual readers." [8] Quinn Norton of Wired wrote a negative review of the book, criticizing Olson's grasp of technical detail, her focus on criminal elements of Anonymous, and her perceived failure to acknowledge the difficulties of writing about a group known for secrecy, dishonesty, and self-aggrandizement. She concludes her review, "the only voices in Olson's book are those of the small groups of hackers who stole the limelight from a legion, defied their values, and crashed violently into the law. It was a mediagenic story to be sure, but in the end, it turns out to be not the real story of Anonymous, and not a story with any real meaning." [9]

Related Research Articles

Hacktivism Use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends

In Internet activism, hacktivism, or hactivism, is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. With roots in hacker culture and hacker ethics, its ends are often related to free speech, human rights, or freedom of information movements.

SQL injection Computer hacking technique

SQL injection is a code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution. SQL injection must exploit a security vulnerability in an application's software, for example, when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and unexpectedly executed. SQL injection is mostly known as an attack vector for websites but can be used to attack any type of SQL database.

Jeremy Hammond American political activist and hacker

Jeremy Hammond is an American activist and former computer hacker from Chicago. He founded the computer security training website HackThisSite in 2003. He was first imprisoned over the Protest Warrior hack in 2005 and was later convicted of computer fraud in 2013 for hacking the private intelligence firm Stratfor and releasing data to WikiLeaks, and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Anonymous (hacker group) Decentralized hacktivist group

Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.

420chan Anonymous forums where users can discuss drugs and alcohol

420chan is an anonymous imageboard founded on 20 April 2005 by freelance web developer Aubrey Cottle. According to its founder, its name is a portmanteau of 420, a slang word originating in cannabis culture but now applicable to drug culture more generally, and 4chan, another imageboard website. Discussion on the site is primarily focused around recreational drug use and wrestling, with other boards related to topics including humor and academia.

The Jester is an unidentified computer vigilante who describes himself as a grey hat hacktivist. He claims to be responsible for attacks on WikiLeaks, 4chan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Islamist websites. He claims to be acting out of American patriotism. The Jester uses a denial-of-service (DoS) tool known as "XerXeS", that he claims to have developed.

HBGary is a subsidiary company of ManTech International, focused on technology security. In the past, two distinct but affiliated firms had carried the HBGary name: HBGary Federal, which sold its products to the US Government, and HBGary, Inc. Its other clients included information assurance companies, computer emergency response teams, and computer forensic investigators. On 29 February 2012, HBGary, Inc. announced it had been acquired by IT services firm ManTech International. At the same time, HBGary Federal was reported to be closed.

Jake Leslie Davis, best known by his online pseudonym Topiary, is a British hacktivist. He has worked with Anonymous, LulzSec, and other similar groups. He was an associate of the Internet group Anonymous, which has publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and Gawker. They have also claimed responsibility for the defacing of government websites in countries such as Zimbabwe, Syria, Tunisia, Ireland, and Egypt.

LulzSec Hacker group

Lulz Security, commonly abbreviated as LulzSec, was a black hat computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from PlayStation Network in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline. Some security professionals have commented that LulzSec has drawn attention to insecure systems and the dangers of password reuse. It has gained attention due to its high profile targets and the sarcastic messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks. One of the founders of LulzSec was computer security specialist Hector Monsegur, who used the online moniker Sabu. He later helped law enforcement track down other members of the organization as part of a plea deal. At least four associates of LulzSec were arrested in March 2012 as part of this investigation. Prior, British authorities had announced the arrests of two teenagers they alleged were LulzSec members, going by the pseudonyms T-flow and Topiary.

Operation AntiSec Series of cyberattacks conducted by Anonymous and LulzSec

Operation Anti-Security, also referred to as Operation AntiSec or #AntiSec, is a series of hacking attacks performed by members of the hacking group LulzSec and Anonymous, and others inspired by the announcement of the operation. LulzSec performed the earliest attacks of the operation, with the first against the Serious Organised Crime Agency on 20 June 2011. Soon after, the group released information taken from the servers of the Arizona Department of Public Safety; Anonymous would later release information from the same agency two more times. An offshoot of the group calling themselves LulzSecBrazil launched attacks on numerous websites belonging to the Government of Brazil and the energy company Petrobras. LulzSec claimed to retire as a group, but on 18 July they reconvened to hack into the websites of British newspapers The Sun and The Times, posting a fake news story of the death of the publication's owner Rupert Murdoch.

Hector Xavier Monsegur, known also by the online pseudonym Sabu, is an American computer hacker and co-founder of the hacking group LulzSec. Facing a sentence of 124 years in prison, Monsegur became an informant for the FBI, working with the agency for over ten months to aid them in identifying the other hackers from LulzSec and related groups. LulzSec intervened in the affairs of organizations such as News Corporation, Stratfor, UK and American law enforcement bodies and Irish political party Fine Gael.

Anonymous is a decentralized virtual community. They are commonly referred to as an internet-based collective of hacktivists whose goals, like its organization, are decentralized. Anonymous seeks mass awareness and revolution against what the organization perceives as corrupt entities, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Anonymous has had a hacktivist impact. This is a timeline of activities reported to be carried out by the group.

Barrett Brown American journalist, essayist and activist

Barrett Lancaster Brown is an American journalist, essayist, activist and former associate of Anonymous. In 2010, he founded Project PM, a group that used a wiki to analyze leaks concerning the military-industrial complex, which was labeled a "criminal organization" by the Department of Justice. In late 2020, Brown restarted Project PM.

Gabriella Coleman Internet anthropologist

Enid Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist, academic and author whose work focuses on cultures of hacking and online activism, particularly Anonymous. She previously held the Wolfe Chair in Scientific & Technological Literacy at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada and is currently a full professor at Harvard University's Department of Anthropology.

On 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing what it called the Syria Files, a collection of more than two million emails from Syrian political figures and ministries and from companies including Finmeccanica and Brown Lloyd James dating from August 2006 to March 2012.

<i>We Are Legion</i> 2012 American film

We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists is a 2012 documentary film about the workings and beliefs of the self-described "hacktivist" collective, Anonymous.

Mustafa Al-Bassam

Mustafa Al-Bassam is a British computer security researcher and hacker. He co-founded the hacker group LulzSec in 2011, which was responsible for several high profile breaches. He later went on to co-found Chainspace, a company implementing a smart contract platform, which was acquired by Facebook in 2019. He is currently a PhD student in the Information Security Research Group at University College London working on peer-to-peer systems. Forbes listed Al-Bassam as one of the 30 Under 30 entrepreneurs in technology in 2016.

Ryan Ackroyd

Ryan Ackroyd, a.k.a.Kayla and lolspoon, is a former black hat hacker who was one of the six core members of the hacking group "LulzSec" during its 50-day spree of attacks from 6 May 2011 until 26 June 2011. At the time, Ackroyd posed as a female hacker named "Kayla" and was responsible for the penetration of multiple military and government domains and many high profile intrusions into the networks of Gawker in December 2010, HBGaryFederal in 2011, PBS, Sony, Infragard Atlanta, Fox Entertainment and others. He eventually served 30 months in prison for his hacking activities.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is an American composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music.

References

  1. ↑ "Parmy Olson". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 3, 2013. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Parmy Olson profile". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 6, 2013. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  3. ↑ Jesse Hicks (June 7, 2012). "Inside Anonymous: an interview with Parmy Olson". The Verge. Archived from the original on April 12, 2013. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  4. 1 2 Janet Maslin (May 31, 2012). "The Secret Lives of Dangerous Hackers: 'We Are Anonymous' by Parmy Olson". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 5, 2012. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  5. ↑ Rowan Kaiser (July 2, 2012). "We Are Anonymous: Parmy Olson". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on May 30, 2013. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  6. ↑ "Parmy Olson". The Daily Show. June 18, 2012. Archived from the original on May 11, 2013. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  7. ↑ Michael C. Moynihan (June 3, 2012). "For the Hack of It: To LulzSec, the guilty and innocent alike are worthy targets". The Daily. Archived from the original on May 6, 2013. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  8. ↑ "We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency". Kirkus Reviews. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
  9. ↑ Quinn Norton (June 13, 2012). "In Flawed, Epic Anonymous Book, the Abyss Gazes Back". Wired. Archived from the original on September 20, 2012. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
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