Anonymous
termhackingops culture
The leaderless online collective that emerged from imageboard culture around 2003 and became, from 2008, the public face of hacktivism - identified by the Guy Fawkes mask and the line 'We are Legion.' Anyone can act as Anonymous, which is the point and the problem.
Project Chanology against Scientology in 2008 moved it from pranks to protest; Operation Payback defended WikiLeaks by knocking payment processors offline; later operations touched Tunisia, Egypt, police departments and ISIS accounts. Having no membership makes it impossible to disband and impossible to hold accountable - actions range from genuine whistleblowing to mistaken doxxing of innocent people. Its subgroups and splinters, LulzSec above all, ended in arrests built on informants.
Also known as: anon, guy fawkes mask, we are legion, project chanology