Q+A: Anonymous' Sabu Is Not Pleased

Sabu is a hacker affiliated with the hacktivist group Anonymous who has been alternately called a freedom fighter and an egomaniacal asshole. While Anonymous professes to have no hierarchy, a claim that’s probably somewhat true, Sabu’s notoriety – indicated by the sheer volume of interaction on his Twitter feed – point to the fact that he’s a pretty big player in the Anon/LulzSec world.

Wednesday, a pair of separate hackers, who both claimed to be white hats, announced – loudly – that they’d ‘doxed’ Sabu. Doxing someone essentially means to leak documents about them that reveal their secrets, including their real-life identity. It’s extremely dangerous to any hacker, especially to someone aligned with such a high profile group as Anonymous, because connecting a high-profile hacker’s online identity with their real life person can be a recipe for immediate arrest.

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With Twitter arguments raging between Sabu, his supporters and the white-hat groups, and now with the tech editor of The Guardian, Charles Arthur, Sabu’s come under a lot more scrutiny in the last couple of days. To get the word from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, I signed on to Anonymous’ operations chat room and asked Sabu what was going on.

Tuesday morning, AnonTangoDown, a Twitter account associated with a supposed white-hat that’s bent on fighting Anonymous and LulzSec activity, started ranting on Sabu:

After inciting a back-and-forth between himself and Anon supporters over the next few hours which mostly consisted of crude shit talking and weak, childish prison rape jokes, AnonTangoDown dropped a bomb:

The link leads to a transcript from the AnonOps chat room featuring AnonTangoDown posing as “Sabu.” AnonTangoDown, using the “Sabu” handle, went on one hell of a rant, calling everyone in the room worthless shits who needed to bow down to him. General rage ensued, until an unknown party appeared with the handle “TheRealSabu” and started his own rant against AnonTangoDown (as Sabu), telling him he couldn’t keep treating everyone like his minions and being a jerk. “TheRealSabu” then listed off a bunch of names, places and events purportedly attached to the real life Sabu. In short, AnonTangoDown seemed to have subverted Sabu by pissing everyone off so much that someone came out of the woodwork to drop knowledge.

AnonTangoDown was convinced he’d doxed Sabu, posting the transcript and a summation of the relevant keywords to Twitter. Those keywords give an idea of how much information it apparently takes in the hacking community to reveal someone’s identity.

Later, AnonTangoDown returned to the AnonOps chat to try to pry a response out of Sabu, who responded by posting the conversation to his own Twitter feed:

Then, last night, a newcomer appeared in the fray. Twitter handle, TeaMp0isoN announced Sabu was toast.

Using AnonTangoDown’s info, he said he’d found the real life Sabu, who appeared to be some guy in his mid-20s from New York.

Sabu, using AnonymouSabu, responded by saying the names found by AnonTangoDown and the identity proposed by TeaMp0isoN were simply old identities he himself had stolen to use as covers over the years.

What came after was a flood of hundreds of Anon supporters, each saying that he or she was actually the real Sabu.

Almost immediately a ton of attention was sent AnonymouSabu’s way, with sympathizers and detractors arguing left and right over any and all posts regarding him, and a whole mess of reporters looking for Twitter interviews, which eventually devolved into this journalistic mess with Charles Arthur and AnonymouSabu in which no one comes away not sounding like a total asshole.

Sabu, the real, actual one, told me yesterday that he’s railing against hackers, like those that tried to dox him, who are hellbent on taking others down for selfish reasons.

Although white-hats like AnonTangoDown say that they are fighting against Anonymous’ attacks on government, which they consider treason, and supposed support of lesser-skilled (and thus more at-risk of arrest) teenagers in their campaigns, Sabu said he thinks most of them are doing it for their reputation.

“Others like @anontangodown do it [dox] for ego,” he wrote. “I cursed him out the other night and banned him from this network. so he fabricated those chat logs with “therealsabu” and released them. [Y]ou see how I talk here and on twitter, those logs have literally nothing to do with me except for the use of my nickname in it. [Y]ou have people like @nonynews who is blogger trying to play the role of a journalist who in one sentence denounce[s] doxing but in the next tweet congratulate[s] someone on a dox. These are all people who are fucking lost or bored with their lives.”

Furthermore, he was less concerned about the possibility of himself getting busted than the threat of innocent people being harassed over information released in any doxing attempt, referencing the names dropped in the latest release of files and the curious case of Hugo Carvalho, a Portguese man accused all over the Internet of being Sabu a week ago.

“[N]ow, it doesn’t essentially affect me per se, but it does affect those names and people who got dropped and it’s sad they post addresses, pics of kids and shit. I can guarantee you the feds already raided all of these people’s houses, even that guy in Portugal will probably get hit with a visit from some intelligence agency in his country. So, it’s just sickening.”

With Anonymous, LulzSec and both organization’s throngs of splinter groups all gaining notoriety every day, he said the rush to dox members has increased, especially considering the perceived fame potential of beating the cops to discovering big names. With so many people watching anyone affiliated with Anonymous, the release of individuals can have real, immediate legal ramifications.

“It is [increasing], and I’m going to work on getting my people at Anonymous not to do that shit. I mean, it’s fucking repulsive and dangerous. When will people stop doxing? Until some crazy fuck goes and kills one of the people on the dox? Then what? I mean, what is the end result from doxing someone? Making them fear reprisal?”

Asked if he thought Anonymous itself would have a real increase in targeted doxing attempts, he wrote “I can’t really say, but the only way to scare people is to show them they can be caught. So this is the only method of fear tactics these people can use against anyone, as well as Anonymous. At the end of the day we’re all anonymous. It’s just a movement based around activism, human rights and all that.”

Rather than blowing things up all over Twitter, if someone really thought they had him, he told me, they should just tell the authorities to deal with it. “My point: if you feel you know who I am, email the FBI or email Interpol. Otherwise shut the fuck up. I’m doing what I’m doing regardless.”