Anonymous NYSE: Wall Street 'Hacktivism' Exposes Downside of Anonymity

"Many of our brothers and sisters," a widely circulated statement read, "have gone down in the fight for using such tactics [as advocated in the video]," it read. Another hinted that the attack might be a plant, or a small faction without the skill set to take NYSE on. "You must take all notices and information claiming to be 'Anonymous' with a grain of salt," wrote detractors. 'Consider EVERYTHING... Anonymous wouldn't tell you to use LOIC. Anonymous wouldn't attack NYSE on a holiday. It is debatable if Anonymous would ever even attack NYSE."

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Following the attack, meanwhile, an Anonymous supporter with access to some of the movement's main Twitter accounts spoke to the IBTimes. "The NYSE attack proved Anonymous is not unanimous," the man said. "[The attack] was probably not generally supported. I didn't notice mass support in IRC [Internet Relay Chat] either."

And therein lies what has been the brilliance and will continue to be one downside of the Anonymous organization: it's not really an organization at all.

The Great Non-Movement

In an earlier interview with IBTimes, supporter Michela Marsh addressed many people's misconceptions. "[Anonymous] isn't a group or community or movement like everyone thinks," she said. "It's just a name under which all these people are operating... a pseudonym, a pen name, something to stop government and the public from knowing these people's identity."

"People think they can 'join' and start saying, 'Oh, Anonymous doesn't support that hack, Anonymous supports Lulzsec [a splinter group],'" she continued. "But they can't, because it doesn't mean anything."

Such a position is what has made Anonymous such a giant, successful, and often unstoppable non-movement.

When it began in 2003, just a name popping up on the imageboard 4chan, Anonymous was almost exclusively hackers, a sort of anarchic, chaotic, but nonetheless sprawling global brainpower. By 2008, when Scientology protests began to grow, supporters helped shape the phenomenon known as "hacktivism," and put it to devastating use in a series of well-publicized DDoS (Distributeed Denial of Service) attacks which crashed and overwhelmed servers, while more began to join on-the-ground protests as well.

As more and more people took to the streets under Anonymous' name, however, a new symbol began to emerge. Guy Fawkes masks, referencing Alan Moore's graphic novel and the 2006 film "V for Vendetta," overtook the original calling card of a man with a question mark for a face.

A message also began to appear, even as Anonymous supporters continued to diffuse that message's meaning. "We Are Anonymous," many statements released by supporters now read. "We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."