Unmasked - Ars Technica [16]
But both of the Team Themis leads at these companies knew exactly what was being proposed (such knowledge may not have run to the top). They saw Barr’s e-mails, and they used his work. His ideas on attacking WikiLeaks made it almost verbatim into a Palantir slide about “proactive tactics.”
And Palantir had no problem scraping tweets from union supporters and creating linkages from them.
As for targeting American organizations, it was a Berico analyst who sent out the Team Themis “sample reports,” the documents suggesting that the US Chamber of Commerce create false documents and false personae in its effort to “discredit the organization” US Chamber Watch.
The US Chamber of Commerce expressed shock when the Team Themis work came to light. “We’re incredulous that anyone would attempt to associate such activities with the Chamber as we’ve seen today from the Center for American Progress,” said Tom Collamore on February 10. “The security firm referenced by ThinkProgress was not hired by the Chamber or by anyone else on the Chamber’s behalf. We have never seen the document in question nor has it ever been discussed with us.”
Indeed, the meeting between H&W and the Chamber on this issue was set to take place today, February 14. On February 11, the Chamber went further, issuing a new statement saying that “it never hired or solicited proposals from HBGary, Palantir or Berico, the security firms being talked about on the Web... The leaked e-mails appear to show that HBGary was willing to propose questionable actions in an attempt to drum up business, but the Chamber was not aware of these proposals until HBGary’s e-mails leaked.”
“No money, for any purpose, was paid to any of those three private security firms by the Chamber, or by anyone on behalf of the Chamber, including Hunton & Williams.”
As for Hunton & Williams, they have yet to comment publicly. On February 7, however, the firm celebrated its top ranking in Computerworld’s report on “Best Privacy Advisers.”
It has been an embarrassing week for security firm HBGary and its HBGary Federal offshoot. HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr thought he had unmasked the hacker hordes of Anonymous and was preparing to name and shame those responsible for co-ordinating the group’s actions, including the denial-of-service attacks that hit MasterCard, Visa, and other perceived enemies of WikiLeaks late last year.
When Barr told one of those he believed to be an Anonymous ringleader about his forthcoming exposé, the Anonymous response was swift and humiliating. HBGary’s servers were broken into, its e-mails pillaged and published to the world, its data destroyed, and its website defaced. As an added bonus, a second site owned and operated by Greg Hoglund, owner of HBGary, was taken offline and the user registration database published.
Over the last week, I’ve talked to some of those who participated in the HBGary hack to learn in detail how they penetrated HBGary’s defenses and gave the company such a stunning black eye—and what the HBGary example means for the rest of us mere mortals who use the Internet.
Anonymous: more than kids
HBGary and HBGary Federal position themselves as experts in computer security. The companies offer both software and services to both the public and private sectors. On the software side, HBGary has a range of computer forensics and malware analysis tools to enable the detection, isolation, and analysis of worms, viruses, and trojans. On the services side, it offers expertise in implementing intrusion detection systems and secure networking, and performs vulnerability assessment and penetration testing of systems and software. A variety of three letter agencies, including the NSA, appeared to be in regular contact with the HBGary companies, as did Interpol, and HBGary