A man who first got into computer hacking when he was still in school has explained what it was like to work with infamous hacktivist group Anonymous.
Mustafa Al-Bassam, who was once a member of Anonymous and is one of the founders of LulzSec, got his first taste for computer programming when he was just nine years old, and completed his first hack while using an online calculator to do his maths homework.
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It escalated from there, when Mustafa hacked into his school’s website and uncovered all of his teachers’ salaries and his classmates’ grades.
Eventually, through online activist forums, he found himself becoming a member of the infamous international movement Anonymous, known for their cyber attacks against governments, agencies, and corporations.
One of Mustafa’s first attacks alongside Anonymous was to hack the Prime Minister of Tunisia, when both Tunisia and Egypt were in the midst of a revolution.
Mustafa explained that the aim of Anonymous ‘wasn’t to show that we were master hackers, but that the companies we were hacking had very poor security.’
In one instance, he recalled hacking a tech security company called HBGary Federal, who had claimed to know the identity of Anonymous’s leaders.
“When we hacked HBGary Federal’s emails, it was exposed that they were up to a lot of no good.
The CEO at the time, Aaron Barr, resigned three weeks after the hacking scandal.
While still aged 16, Mustafa was arrested by London’s Met Police for 80 different cyber attacks.
“I wasn’t really scared, I was more p***ed off,” he remembered.
Because he was under 18, Mustafa was given a non-custodial sentence.
