Operation Desolation: The Case of the Anonymous Bank Defacement

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At the desk in his San Diego hotel room, Jeff Aiken stared at his computer screen. He had fifty-five minutes. CyberCon was being held just around the corner, not five minutes away. He’d started this current project from his home office in Georgetown, D.C., and brought it to an initial point of conclusion. On the cross-country flight, he’d expanded his work and now was busy completing another fix. For some weeks his client, RegSec, had been threatened by the hacktivist group Anonymous. “Justice will be swift!” had read one posting. “Prepare to be extinguished!!!” read another. Anonymous had even named their attack “Operation Desolation”. Given their track, RegSec’s management had every reason to be concerned.

RegSec, a major investment group and bank, was in the news, having just been cleared by a federal court for its part in the financial meltdown. Through their vast offshore holdings RegSec had been short-selling derivatives under suspect circumstances in the months leading up to the financial collapse. The Court of Appeals had reversed the earlier adverse verdict, ruling that the offshore entities were sufficiently independent of corporate control as to not violate United States law. There was no doubt that RegSec had engaged in unethical and contemptible conduct, amassing billions at the expense of hapless homeowners lured into overpriced houses, but legally — technically — the company had broken no law.

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