Fake Facebook Identity Used By Military Contractors Plotting To Hack Progressive Organizations

[Ian David]

Earlier this year, ThinkProgress obtained 75,000 private emails from the defense contractor HBGary Federal via the hacktivist group called Anonymous. The emails led to two shocking revelations. First, that an assortment of private military firms collectively called “Team Themis” had been tapped by Bank of America to conduct a cyber war against reporters sympathetically covering the Wikileaks revelations. And second, that late in 2010, the same set of firms began work separately for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a Republican-aligned corporate lobbying group, to develop a similar campaign of sabotage against progressive organizations, including the SEIU and ThinkProgress.

In presentations obtained by ThinkProgress from the e-mail dump detailing the tactics potentially used against progressives, HBGary Federal floated the idea of using “fake insider personas” to infiltrate left-leaning groups critical of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s policies. As HBGary Federal executive Aaron Barr described in several emails, his firm could work with partner companies Palantir and Berico Technologies to manipulate fake online identities, using networks like Facebook, to gain access to private information from his targets. Other presentations are more specific and describe efforts to use social media to hack computers and find vulnerabilities among even the families of people who work at organizations critical of the Chamber.

In one email from the dump, Barr discusses a fake persona he created called “Holly Weber.” She would be born in Portland in 1984, attend Reynolds High School, and work for Lockheed Martin after a stint in the Air Force. Earlier this week, Twitter users actually identified the phony account. Before it was taken down, ThinkProgress snagged screen shots of the fake persona’s Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. (Barr also described his strategy for pretending to be teenagers online). View a screenshot of the fake account below:



<snip>

Hunton and Williams, the law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, had been immersed in talks with HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico to deliver on a $2 million deal to move forward with the hacking plot against the Chamber’s critics. However, after Anonymous leaked HBGary’s emails and a few reporters picked up on the story, the Chamber distanced itself from the deal. The emails show that HBGary Federal had also worked to sell “persona management” solutions to the U.S. government for cyber intelligence work.

More:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/18/298081/hbgary-federal-us-chamber-persona/

Looks like "Holly Weber's" page is gone: http://www.facebook.com/people/Holly-Weber/100001555180221

[blogslut]

1. Isn't it a crime to impersonate a member of the US armed forces?

?

[SpiralHawk]

2. Game on. Cyber War. For real.

...disgustipating...

[Sherman A1]

3. Poor Holly, we barely knew thee.....

I suspect that there are several violations of the law in this little escaped. I am not sure on specifics, but I would fraud & impersonation come to mind.

[Ian David]

4. Certainly a violation of Facebook Terms of Service. n/t

[Ikonoklast]

5. Anyone think they're not here?

That's why I seldom believe anything anyone says on Teh Intrawebs.

[Enrique]

6. lol, Holly Weber

I wonder what "she" really looks like. And I wonder who posed for that picture.

[Matariki]

7. Why is it when men impersonate woman online

they are always blonde w/ huge breasts? (Aaron Barr proving he's nothing but a petulant 12 year-old man-boy)

:rofl:

[Odin2005]

8. It's actually good marketing, sex sells.

I know it's pathetic, but men are more likely to believe something if the spokesperson is an attractive woman.

[JDPriestly]

9. Why don't they just join using Facebook using their real names?

Nobody would care. The Facebook pages for Progressive organizations aren't all that secretive are they? I'm not on Facebook, so I don't know about it. A lot of my family members are on it, but I just don't want to talk about personal things on Facebook.

It's one thing to talk about public, political things on DU, and quite another to talk about personal things on the internet.

My reticence no doubt harks back to my memories of my great-aunt who was "central" for the phone company in her small town. She knew every bit of gossip and relished in all of it. She had a legitimate reason for listening in on people's phone conversations back in the days of party lines and manual connections of the phone lines.

Facebook reminds me of that.