Opkkk Because Ignorance is Less Than Bliss: 2014

EVENT

Overview

#OpKKK refers to an ongoing online hacktivist campaign and a series of social media protests launched by Anonymous in November 2014 in retaliation to threats of violence made by the Ku Klux Klan against protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

Background

On November 13th, 2014, CBS St. Louis reported that a chapter of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan based in Park Hills, Missouri has been distributing “threatening” fliers across the town of Ferguson, where a series of anti-police protests have been ongoing since the fatal shooting of local black teenager Mike Brown in August, publicly condemning the protesters as “terrorists” and that “lethal force” would be used against “violent protesters”.^[1] The sightings of the KKK fliers were reported as the grand jury is expected to deliver its decision on whether or not to indict Officer Darren Wilson before the end of November.

Notable Developments

In the midst of the ensuing controversy, the KKK and Anonymous reportedly exchanged several rounds of threats.^[4]On November 14th, 2014, the YouTube channel of Anonymous Australia published a video titled “ANONYMOUS#OpKKK”, in which it declared the launch of a cyberattack campaign against the KKK. The video communique was briefly taken down from the site before it was reactivated on November 18th.

We are not attacking you because of what you believe in as we fight for freedom of speech… We are attacking you because of what you did to our brothers and sisters at the Ferguson protest on the 12th of November.

DDoS & Doxxing Campaigns

Soon after the video was released, an international network of Anonymous hackers began targeting several KKK-affiliated websites and social media accounts with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and hacking attempts, as well as doxxing a number of alleged KKK members near St. Louis County with their photographs and personally identifiable information, including their names and home addresses.^[5]

Hacking of @KuKluxKlanUSA

On November 15th, 2014, the KKK-affiliated Twitter account @KuKluxKlanUSA retweeted a direct message from Anonymous Australia, in which Anonymous announced that it would take direct action against the KKK.^[2] Over the course of the next ten hours, the Twitter account taunted Anonymous repeatedly, declaring it “a bunch of wannabees” and claiming that it “won’t take any action”.^[3] At 9:11 p.m. (GMT) on the same day, approximately two hours after it made its final tweet taunting Anonymous, @KuKluxKlanUSA was hacked. The account’s profile avatar was immediately changed to the symbol of Anonymous and a post was made celebrating the success of #OpKKK.

On November 17th, the Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account @YourAnonNews declared that several KKK-affiliated websites had been taken offline, including KKK.com, UWKKK.com, AmericanHeritageCommittee.com and TraditionalistAmericanKnights.com, the last of which has been suspected of distributing the fliers in and around Ferguson, Missouri.

@YourAnonNews also released a “digital attack map” originally put together by @EastCoastAnonymous, which visualizes the geographical origins and destinations of the coordinated DDoS attacks against KKK-affiliated web servers (shown below).