The Man Who Tried to Unmask Anonymous

February 6th, 2011. Super Bowl Sunday. Aaron Bar's iPhone dies. Mid email. He tries his password.

Kibbafo 33. The one he's used everywhere for 7 years but is incorrect. His Facebook

locked. Twitter. Someone else is posting from his account. His home address. His social security

number. His wife's phone buzzing with death threats. But here's what Bar doesn't know yet.

Four teenagers are watching him through his own security cameras. They have 71,000 of his emails.

They found something that will destroy three companies and expose a conspiracy to attack

Wikileaks. The craziest part, one of them is pretending to be a 16-year-old girl. Another is

secretly working for the FBI. In 12 minutes, this former Navy cryptologist will realize he just made

the biggest mistake in cyber security history. How did a military trained security expert get

hacked by teenagers? And what did they find in his emails that was worth $2 million to keep secret?

6 weeks earlier, December 23rd, 2010, Aaron Bar sits in his 3.2 million government contracted

office staring at a spreadsheet that makes his blood run cold. HBJ Jerry Federal, his threeperson

security firm, has burned through $893,000 in 6 months. He got zero new contracts. At this rate,

they'll be dead by March. But Bar has discovered something. Something that could save everything

or destroy it. While other security firms chase million-doll firewalls, Bar's been hunting ghosts.

For 73 straight nights, he's been infiltrating anonymous chat rooms, creating fake identities,

mapping their social networks. He's convinced he's cracked their code. Using nothing but Facebook

likes, Twitter follows, and LinkedIn connections. He claims he's identified their secret leaders.

Q in California, Owen in New York, Commander X in Boston. His real names, real addresses,

and real people who think they're untouchable. January 31st, 2011. Bar makes the call that seals

his fate. He phones the Financial Times. I can prove Anonymous has a hierarchy, he tells them.

I have names. The reporter asks if he's worried about retaliation. Bar actually laughs. They think

they're so elite. He types in an email to his programmer that same day. As 137 as these guys are

supposed to be, they don't get it. I have pounded them. That smiley face. Remember it. It's about to

become evidence in a federal investigation. His own team thinks he's lost his mind. Ted Vera,

HB Gary's lead programmer, sends Bar a meme. The South Park underpants gnomes. The first

step is gathering data. The second, no one knows. And the third is profit. Even Bar's

business partner warns him, "You're poking a sleeping bear with a very short stick."

But bars already scheduled the FBI briefing February 4th, 10:00 a.m. The Financial Times

article goes live. Cyber activists warned of arrest, the headline reads. Within 17 minutes,

it's trending on Reddit. Within an hour, it's on every hacker forum from Moscow to Manila. And in

a basement in England, an 18-year-old girl named Kayla reads Bar's quotes and starts typing nine

words that will change everything. This idiot just declared war, so let's give him one. But there

is something Bar doesn't know. Anonymous isn't what he thinks. It has no leaders, no hierarchy,

no organization. It's not even a group. It's an idea. And you can't arrest an idea. What happens

when you attack something that doesn't exist? And why did four random teenagers decide Aaron Bar

had to pay? Four hackers converge in an encrypted chat room. You need to understand who these people

really are. Sabu, a 28-year-old Puerto Rican from New York's Lower East Side, caring for his nieces

while hacking governments. Topiary, British, 18, writes press releases that newspapers,

quote, verbatim. Kayla, claims to be 16, might be younger, can break military grade encryption in

her head. TFlow. Nobody knows anything about TFlow, not even the other hackers. They've

never met. They'll never meet. But in the next 37 hours, they'll commit one of the most devastating

hacks in history. Kayla types seven characters into HB Garry's website or one one. It's called

SQL injection. A hack so basic it's taught in computer science 101. The site crumbles like wet

paper. She's in. But that's not the shocking part. The shocking part is what she finds. Aaron Bar,

the cyber security expert charging the government $270 per hour, used the same password everywhere.

Not just similar passwords, the exact same password. Kibbafo 33, his email, his Facebook,

his Twitter, his LinkedIn, even his World of Warcraft account. All protected by his dead dog's

name and his high school football number. Here's where it gets interesting. The hackers don't

immediately destroy everything. Instead, they do something terrifying. They watch. For 31 hours,

they read Bar's emails in real time. They see him bragging to the FBI. They watch him mock them to

reporters. They even read his message to his wife. Honey, after Monday, we'll never have to worry

about money again. Sabu screenshots that one. This is going to age poorly, he types. After that time,

the hackers find something that makes them stop laughing. Hidden in bars emails are powerpoints

labeled Wikileaks destruction plan, Wikileaks destruction plan. Ppppt and journalist targeting

protocol, journalist targetingprotocol.doc. The presentations detail operations to plant fake

documents in Wikileaks, expose whistleblowers identities, and destroy the careers of specific

journalists. One slide actually uses the phrase cyber assassination. Another suggests targeting

Glenn Greenwald's family. TFO breaks the silence. This isn't just about him attacking Anonymous

anymore. Topiary agrees. We're not just taking him down. We're exposing all of it. They download

everything. 71,843 emails, 27 powerpoints, and 2,165 confidential documents. A total of 4.7

gigabytes of evidence that HBJ Jerry Federal isn't just incompetent, they're conspiring to destroy

journalism itself. After that, Topiary writes the message that will replace HBerry's homepage.

You've probably heard the famous line, "You've tried to bite at the anonymous hand, and now

the anonymous hand is [ __ ] slapping you in the face." But that's not the line that terrified Bar.

The line that terrified him was this. We're not hackers. We're your IT department. You just didn't

know you hired us. Because it was true. They owned everything. And Bar still had no idea. The hackers

set a timer, the Super Bowl kickoff, for reaching a maximum audience and maximum humiliation.

But two questions remain. How could a military contractor be this careless? And what was Aaron

Bar about to discover that would make him quit his job, flee his home, and disappear completely?

February 6th, 4:58 p.m. Aaron Bar has exactly 2 minutes of normal life left.

He's wearing his lucky Steelers jersey, the one from Super Bowl 40. His wife made a seven

layer dip. His kids are arguing about commercials. His phone sits silent on the coffee table,

which is strange because he usually gets 200 emails on Sundays. He picks it up. No

new messages since noon. That's when the first domino falls. Exactly at 5:00 p.m., his iPhone

screen flashes. Cannot retrieve mail. He enters his password. Wrong. He tries again slowly. K

I B A FO33. Invalid. His wife asks if he's okay. He doesn't answer. He's already running upstairs,

taking them three at a time. He opens his Gmail and account has been suspended for

unusual activity. His Facebook. This account has been temporarily locked. And what about Twitter?

His profile picture has been replaced with the HB Garry logo wearing a Hitler mustache. The bio now

reads, "I'm a security expert who uses his dog's name as a password." 3 minutes later, a Twitter

notification appears from his own account, posting without him. My social security number is 38774.

I live at Woodland Drive. Come say hi. 1,300 retweets in 40 seconds. His phone starts ringing,

getting calls from unknown numbers. He even gets pizza deliveries he didn't order. His 12-year-old

daughter runs upstairs. Dad, why are there police outside? But the police aren't there to help.

They're there because someone called in a hostage situation at his address. It's called swatting.

Seven officers, guns drawn, surround his house during the Super Bowl. His neighbors watch from

their windows. His kids are crying. And somewhere, four hackers are watching it all unfold through

his own security cameras. At 5:17 p.m., Bar opens an anonymous chat room on his son's laptop,

the only device they haven't compromised. A message pops up instantly. From Topiary,

"Enjoying the game, Aaron?" Bar types back, "What do you want?" The response changes everything.

"Nothing. We already have it. All 71,843 emails, including the one where you called your wife fat.

The one where you planned to lie to the FBI. The one where you offered to sell Wikileaks donor's

information to Bank of America for $2 million. Here's what you need to understand. Bar thought he

was in a chess match, but Anonymous wasn't playing chess. They were playing demolition. They weren't

trying to win. They were trying to create chaos. And chaos doesn't follow rules. It continues at

5:41 p.m. HB Gary's website changes. Suddenly, anyone on Earth can download a file called HBGary

Federal Full Exposure. All the 71,000 emails for free, unfiltered and unredacted. Within minutes,

it's on Wikileaks. Within hours, it's on every major news site. The Financial Times,

the same paper that ran bars boasts two days ago, publishes a new headline. Security expert

hacked by subjects he hunted. Greg Hogland, co-owner of HBGary, texts bar in all caps,

"What the f did you do?" Penny Levy, the company president, is even more direct. You've destroyed

us. All of us. She's already on an IRC channel, literally begging Anonymous for mercy. The

transcripts still exist. You can read her saying, "Please, this isn't our fault. It's Aaron's. We

had nothing to do with this." Meanwhile, the Super Bowl is still being played, but Aaron Bar doesn't

see it. He's in his bathroom, doors locked, laptop balanced on the sink, trying to salvage something,

anything. His company email shows 1,847 unread messages. The subject lines tell the story.

You're fired from HB Garry's board. Congressional investigation pending from his lawyer. We're done

from his wife. Well, that last one he made up. But his wife did take the kids to her mother's

house. The TV downstairs is still playing. The announcer says something about the biggest upset

of the year. He's talking about football, but Aaron Bar knows better. The biggest upset already

happened and it's only getting worse because those 71,000 emails, they contain something

nobody expected. Something that would end three companies, trigger a federal investigation,

and expose a conspiracy that goes all the way to the Pentagon. What did Anonymous find that was

so explosive even they were shocked? And why did it involve a plan to destroy American journalism?

February 7th, 6:00 a.m. While Aaron Bar hasn't slept in 36 hours, journalists worldwide are

having the best morning of their careers. The leaked emails read like a conspiracy

theorist's fever dream, except they're real. The first one is a PowerPoint titled the Wikileaks

threat. Slide 9 proposes creating fake documents filled with errors, leaking them to Wikileaks,

then exposing the errors to destroy their credibility. Slide 16 suggests targeting

specific journalists. Glenn Greenwald's name appears 17 times. Slide 23, marked confidential,

destroy after reading, outlines something called persona management software. Fake online

identities designed to manipulate public opinion. Each persona has a Facebook, Twitter, blog,

and email. HBJ Jerry was selling these fake people to the highest bidder for the price of $2 million

per campaign. But that's not the smoking gun. The smoking gun is an email chain from January 24th,

2011. The subject line is Bank of America urgent. The bank thinks Wikileaks has documents that could

destroy them. They've hired the law firm Huntton and Williams, who hired HB Garry, who hired two

other firms. Palunteer, this one is very wellknown lately, and Barerico. Together, they're called

Team Theis. Their mission is clear. destroy Wikileaks before Wikileaks destroys Bank of

America. The fee is $2 million per month and the methods are illegal in 48 states. That morning,

Palunteer's stock drops 8%. Their CEO, Alex Karp, issues an emergency statement. We've severed all

ties with HBGary Federal. He personally calls Glenn Greenwald to apologize. Barerico deletes

all mentions of HB Garry from their website. By noon, it's like team Theis never existed,

except it did. And Anonymous has the receipts. Here's where it gets personal. Remember those

anonymous members Bar claimed to identify? He was wrong about every single one. Commander X wasn't

even in anonymous. He ran a completely different group. Q was a 17-year-old kid from Iowa who'd

never hacked anything bigger than his school's lunch menu. One person Bar identified was actually

an undercover FBI agent. Another was dead, had been for 3 years. Bar's entire investigation

was fantasy. He'd connected random dots and created a conspiracy that didn't exist. But

the universe has a sense of irony because while Bar was inventing fake anonymous leaders, real

anonymous members were watching and laughing. Sabu posts the chat logs from that night. You can see

them mocking each page of Bar's research. Look, he thinks I'm 45 and live in Texas. Topiary writes,

I'm 18 and British, you muppet. Kayla's response, he spent 6 weeks on this. My cat could do better

social engineering. On February 8th, Congress calls for an investigation, not into Anonymous,

into HB Gary. Representative Hank Johnson writes to the CIA, NSA, and FBI. What is the government's

relationship with these firms? What other operations are they running? Who authorized this?

The answers never come. The investigation quietly disappears. But the questions remain until today.

February 14th, Valentine's Day. Penny Levy does something unprecedented. She logs into Anonymous's

public chat and begs. The full transcript is 73 pages. She offers everything. We'll donate to

your causes. We'll fire Aaron. We'll shut down the company. Please just stop. Anonymous's response

is three words. Too late now. But they do make one demand. They want HB Garry to donate Bar's

$1.2 million salary to Bradley Manning's defense fund. The whistleblower who leaked documents to

Wikileaks. The irony is deliberate. February 21st, 2 weeks after the hack, Forbes publishes

an investigation titled The Real Lesson of HB Gary. They found something everyone missed. In

the leaked emails, there's a contract with the FBI dated January 2010, a full year before the

hack. HBJ Jerry wasn't just working for the FBI. They were creating something called Metal Gear,

software designed to control thousands of fake social media accounts. To shape public opinion,

to destroy reputations, to manipulate elections, the FBI paid $250,000 for a prototype.

It was delivered 3 weeks before bar decided to attack Anonymous. The questions multiply. How

many other companies are doing this? How many fake people are on your social media

right now? How many opinions that you think are real are actually manufactured? And the

biggest question of all, why did Aaron Bar really attack Anonymous? Was it ego or was he ordered to?

February 28th, 2011, 22 days after the hack, Aaron Bar sends a two-s sentence resignation email.

Effective immediately, I resign as CEO of HB Gary Federal. I need to focus on protecting my family.

What he doesn't mention, his family has received 3,847 death threats. His daughter's school had

to hire security. His wife filed for separation. His dog, the one whose name became his password,

won't even look at him. On March 15th, HBJ Jerry Federal ceases to exist. Acquired by another firm

for $23,000. That's not a typo. A company once valued at $15 million, sold for less than a Honda

Civic. The buyer immediately destroys all records, deletes all data, and fires everyone. It's like

HB Gary Federal never existed. Except it did, and the internet never forgets. Where's Aaron

Bar now? Nobody knows. He disappeared completely. No LinkedIn, no Facebook, no digital footprint at

all. Some say he works at McDonald's in Delaware. Others claim he teaches cyber security at a

community college under a fake name. The truth, he's probably reading this script. Hi Aaron, your

password still sucks. But here's what matters. The four hackers who destroyed him, three got

arrested within a year. Sabu was already an FBI informant, had been since before the HB Gary hack.

He sold out everyone to avoid prison. Topiary got 2 years. Kayla, whose real name was Ryan and who

was actually a 25-year-old man pretending to be a teenage girl, got 30 months. Only TL escaped.

Nobody knows who TL was. Nobody ever will. Yet, their arrest doesn't undo what they exposed. Those

71,000 emails revealed a shadow industry. Private companies conspiring with banks,

law firms, and government agencies to manipulate reality itself, creating fake people, destroying

real journalists, attacking anyone who threatens corporate power. It's still happening right now.

The only difference, they've learned not to use their dog's name as a password. You want to know

the real lesson? It's not about passwords. It's not about security. It's not even about Anonymous.

It's about power. Aaron Bar thought he had it because he had government contracts and corporate

backing. Anonymous knew they had it because they understood one simple truth. In the digital age,

information isn't just power. It's the only power that matters. And the moment you think you control

it, you've already lost. Here's what should terrify you. Everything in this story happened

in 2011. Facebook had 600 million users then. Now it has 3 billion. Twitter had 200 million.

Now it has 500 million. The tools HBJ Jerry was building. Fake people, opinion manipulation,

reputation destruction. They're not prototypes anymore. They're products. You interact with

them every day. That argument you had online last week, half the people might have been software.

That political opinion that suddenly went viral could be Metal Gear 2.0. By the way, remember when

we talked about Sabu being an informant? His story is crazier than you probably think. It makes this

one look like a training exercise. Click here to watch how Anonymous tried to change the world but

just ruined their lives. Trust me. You think this story was insane? You haven't seen anything yet.