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This article is part of the Biggest Piece of Shit of the Year (BPOSOTY) Award nominations. Click here to view the list of nominees or vote at the bottom of this article.
Risking a hacking retaliation from script kiddies and other socially inept computer enthusiasts, hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec (who are said to have a number of members who have been in both groups) make a joint nomination as one of the biggest pieces of shit of the year.
Why? There’s no long and convoluted reasoning to this nomination but rather a simple one: the things that they have done and the services they have taken down have been disruptive and irritating.
Sure, Sony are idiots who underestimated their online security but the takedown of the PSN this year for over a month was heartbraking for many PS3 owners who love nothing more than to relax with their favourite game and play online with their friends. There were the hacking of US state of Arizona’s police department, attacks against the US FBI and PayPal which made websites inaccessible and the millions of dollars wasted by many other companies who had to pay for repairing the damage left behind to their services. That cost was then either passed on to the customer or taken away from employees in the form of pay cuts or job losses.
Best of all, there were all the threats that were all smoke and no fire. The takedown of Facebook on Nov 5? Didn’t happen. The World War 3 ‘open war’ declaration against all governments, banks and big corporations? Meh. The effing up of the Mexican drug cartel? They backed dowm on that one when the cartel murdered a blogger to show that they are people who should not be messed with.
I read a few of the entries on PasteBin by these people and the tone of the written pieces just reeled of immaturity. At some point, you stopped disliking this people and just felt really sorry for them.
The golden rule is that the best and most elite hackers in the world are the ones that you’ve never heard of before or even know exist. True hackers are ‘actually’ anonymous. These guys? It all seems to be one big desperate attempt for attention to me.
Of course, a few of these guys have been busted already and their bragging on IRC, amoungst other things, were the reason why the authorities found them. As a result, these indisputably brilliant minds will be spending their days being someone’s bitch in prison where pawning is dished out by the men, not the boys. It’s a totally different kind of Lulz fest.
Good riddance guys. Don’t forget to drop the soap.
January 24th, 2012 
Aaron Holesgrove 
