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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

How do you know they haven't already? Committed+careful+smart probably wouldn't issue press releases.

Sure they would, they'd just be smarter about it. The point of hacktivism is publicity. If no one knows what you're doing, you're not being particularly effective.

I want to refute your point with the mention of Stuxnet. Please correct me if I'm wrong but up until now there are no groups that have owned up to the virus. There's evidence and much speculation to point it towards Israel gov't but no definitive proof.

A lot of the content that surrounded Stuxnet also hints to further organizations existing behind the veil. There were at a minimum 3 0-day exploits present in the virus that would have to have been operated from behind the scenes. It is extremely unlikely that a single group was able to create such a virus without external resources.

In the end you don't need to issue press releases and the like. You need to get in, do your damage and get out. Let the damage reveal itself in time and its considered massively successful. Those fighting the Iran nuclear program did more while keeping their mouths shut than any loud group ever has.

Stuxnet was cyberwarfare, not hacktivism. The point of Stuxnet was to disable infrastructure, whereas the point of much of what Anon does is to get attention. Now, granted, that doesn't require the ego-driven hacks and braggery that we've seen from them, it simply requires getting in, getting out, and posting the data anonymously then promoting and publicizing the data, not the hackers. I suspect you may start to see more of the hacker cells aligned with anonymous take this approach in the future to minimize the heat that they feel personally.

Great distinction of cyberwarfare and hacktivism ... its unfortunate that both get shown in the same light while they clearly have different motive behind them.

I'd say the point is to inflict financial pain on who they are attacking, the publicity comes second.

For a group, that would take lots of discipline. Not impossible, but not very likely. Even Feds, Chinese and Israeli "teams" suffer unwanted leaks --and these are trained people. People who go thru psychological profiling, shaping, and get reminded by the bureaucracy probably on a frequent basis.

It's hard for me to imagine a loose-knit group being able to pull this disciple off long-term.

Sure, but people are aware of the US, Chinese and Israeli teams, and they actively try to sabotage them, often with some pretty fantastic resources.

Nobody's stolen my social security number (knock on wood), but Todd Davis has had his identity stolen over a dozen times.

Ssshh... they're on to us now!

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