Famous with the general populace for their vendetta (pun intended) against ISIS while donning the Guy Fawkes masks,
Anonymous is an open online creation group spread in many
parts of the world.
They stand against the injustice of all kinds, keeping with their personality of vigilantes that becomes apparent with their Guy Fawkes masks.
They acted against the Church of Scientology, häçked the Pentagon, attacked Visa, PayPal and MasterCard for refusing payments to WikiLeaks, and took down some websites belonging to ISIS.
Many individuals from countries like Netherlands, USA, UK, Australia, Spain, and Turkey have been arrested for being allegedly belonging to Anonymous.
Lizard Squad's list of victims includes high profile websites like the Malaysian Airlines website,
where users were redirected to a page with the message "404- plane not found", and Facebook.
Although Facebook denied being häçked, their network was
down for some time due to a DDoS attack by Lizard Squad. The group has also attacked Sony and Microsoft, with their members posting ISIS flags on Sony's servers.
Some members were arrested in USA and England following their Xbox and PlayStation häçks.
One of the most notorious groups of previous years,n
The Level Seven Crew was involved in some big häçks in 1999 but their functioning stopped in 2000. They were allegedly inspired by the seventh level of hell
according to Dante's Inferno, which is the violent level.
Their list of victims includes The First American National Bank, NASA, the US Embassy in China's Website, and Sheraton Hotel
Chaos Computer Club or CCC was formed in 1981 in Germany and now operates across national borders in many countries around the world.
This group works to make information free and accessible
to everyone.
They became news when they häçked the German Bildschirmtext computer network and debited 134,000 Deutsch Marks from a Hamburg bank and returning the money the next day,having shown the flaws in the security system.
They also häçked the US government's computers and sold the source code of its operating system to the KGB in 1989.
This group, short for Lulz Security, was founded as a spinoff of Anonymous after the 2011 HBGarry häçk.
Their slogan said "laughing at your security since 2011".
Their existence was announced to the world when they first
häçked Fox.com, followed by Sony Pictures, in 2011.
After that, LulzSec took down CIA's website as well.
However, in 2012, the group members were arrested by the FBI because their leader, named Sabu, gave them away.
Syrian Electronic Army aka SEA, is one of the groups that has a strict purpose of their functioning, which is stamp out opposition groups in Syria.
They are widely accredited to be active supporters of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and identify themselves as active Syrian youths who will not stand by idly to watch massive distortion of facts about recent uprisings in Syria.
Their activity is routinely marked by posting of the Syrian flag on a victim's website,
with the group using techniques like phishing, DDoS attacks, spamming, and malware.
They have targeted Twitter accounts as well as Facebook pages of influential people like Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
This was a häçking group that was started by a street-gang member named Patrick Gregory. The group's activity includes häçking some 115 websites
and destroying their data leading to millions of dollars' worth
damage.
Although Gregory took to computers, his group behaved in a similar way a street gang does, with the group regularly writing "global hell will not die" on US Army's website.
The NHCP Group is believed to have been found in China in 1994, the group is supposedly the one who funded the People's Liberation Army.
Their leader, Tan Dailin, was also widely believed to be
working for the Chinese army.
This group was started by a 16-year in old in 2010 who used the pseudonym Trick.
The activity of this group included häçking into NATO, Facebook, Daily Mail UK site, the English Defence League, which included Tony Blair's account.
Although they supposedly broke up in 2012, they resurfaced in 2015 as a white-hat security research group.
Tarh Andishan is an Iranian häçking group that is comprised of a group of 20 highly skilled and talented häçkers.
It is believed that the group, based in Tehran, formed due to the Stuxnet worm virus which, according to Iran, was a joint effort by US and Israeli forces against them.
Their activity ranges far and wide, with the group being
believed by many to wanting to control all the web-based
systems of the world.
Their victims consist of many security systems as well as airline gates.
Their most notorious activity, though, is believed to be Operation Cleaver, which is an operation targeting military, energy and utilities, oil and gas, airlines, airports, transportation, and hospitals.
More than 50 entities in over 16 countries including China,
USA, Saudi Arabia, India, Israel, France, Germany, and
England have been hit by this campaign.
Tarh Andishan uses techniques like SQL injection attacks, self-propagating software, backdoors, etc.
The häçking groups discussed in this article are just some of the many häçking groups that are functioning or are known to have functioned at some point of time in the world.
Their activity shows that häçking is a serious issue, with
some reports claiming that more than $575 trillion has
been lost as damage due to cyber crime or activities of
häçktivists.
While some of these häçking groups have a social or political agenda behind their formation and activities, others are just groups of people who are out there to instil fear in people.
While some, like Anonymous, have gained popularity with people for targeting terrorist outfits like ISIS, others have received widespread hate and criticism for rendering public services helpless only for their personal gain.
Their stamping out is like cutting a tree with seeds in its flowers; the cutting of one tree sprouts many others due to the spilling of the seeds.
