Well, this is new.  Yesterday, Lulz Security and Anonymous, two of the premiere hacking groups, have announced that they are teaming up in an effort they are calling “Operation:  Anti-Security” or “AntiSec” for short.  (For all of you that follow news on twitter the hashtag #AntiSec will be the one of note).

To quote yesterday’s release by LulzSec (http://pastebin.com/9KyA0E5v):

Welcome to Operation Anti-Security (#AntiSec) – we encourage any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path. We fully endorse the flaunting of the word “AntiSec” on any government website defacement or physical graffiti art. We encourage you to spread the word of AntiSec far and wide, for it will be remembered. To increase efforts, we are now teaming up with the Anonymous collective and all affiliated battleships.

To the best of my knowledge this is one of the most, if not the most, high profile alliances that I have seen in the hacking community.  Moreover, if estimates are correct, the two allies in AntiSec represent the largest global hacking consortium ever assembled.  Beyond the sheer size of their organization, this new alliance, if successful will test all anti-hacking and cyber security legislation and practices.  In many instances, the law is unclear or simply fails to track down international attacks due to legislation or priority.  It will be fascinating to see if their attacks will be successfully repelled, or if we find out the hacking alliances will feed on machines worldwide with relative ease and free from repercussions.

So who should be worried at this point about their security?  Well, LulzSec went on in their release to define their targets as:

Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments.

To the governments around the world, and those high-target establishments that are like financial institutions or multinational organizations with strong brands that can be greatly defaced by failing to repel such attacks, keep your guard up… you are in the cross-hairs of a very well organized army.

For all of you out there reading this, I sincerely wish that there was a switch on the wall that I could flip to turn off the darkness on the Internet. — If there was, I’d flip it.  Unfortunately, there is only one way to get rid of the darkness and that’s to immunize the Internet from attacks.  That reality though, costs money and time.  Hopefully in the years to come we’ll learn our lesson and re-focus the required resources to make that happen.  Hopefully organizations that create software will bring their security to the forefront and we’ll find ways to prevent such high-profile exposures.  In the interim, I unfortunately have to stop at warning everyone that more attacks are on the way, and I hope that we don’t learn our lesson about the importance of security the hard way.

Update:  Interestingly enough, since this blog entry was written, London police have announced an arrest of a 19-year old in connection with the high-profile Sony Playstation network and are now investigating ties to LulzSec.  — It’s good to see that international authorities did cooperate and treat that attack as seriously as they did.  It’s a great sign that maybe we can have international cooperation to track down and prevent future attacks.