The HBGary Federal Hack

In February 2011, the loosely knit collective of hacktivists known as Anonymous successfully compromised the corporate network of HBGary Federal (HBG Fed), a company that provided information security services to the federal government of the United States. This attack brought down the HBG Fed website, compromised the Twitter and LinkedIn accounts of HBG Fed CEO Aaron Barr, and resulted in the public release of thousands of internal documents and emails.

Before proceeding you may want to familiarize yourself with the history of the Anonymous hacker group.

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Storm brewing – the prelude to the attack

The internal documents disseminated to the public by Anonymous reveal much about the nature of HBG Fed’s business operations before “the incident”. HBG Fed was engaged in several anti-hacker projects that were aimed at disrupting and discouraging Anonymous-style hacktivism. Based on their own internal files, here is a breakdown of HBG Fed’s efforts at fighting Anonymous, similarly motivated Internet activists, and individuals deemed to be antagonistic to their clients.