13. Lizard Squad

Lizard Squad

If you're a gamer, you're likely familiar with Lizard Squad.

The Black hat group took down both the PlayStation and Xbox gaming networks on Christmas Day last year.

The crew formed in August 2014, and claimed to be behind outages of gaming networks that support League of Legends and Destiny, by using denial-of-service attacks (if you can't tell, this happens to be most hacker groups' favorite kind of attack.)

In fact, they're currently selling the DDoS attack on their website for use by anyone willing to shell out the money.

Lizard Squad is as well known for making false hacking claims as they are for taking down video game networks.

They've claimed to have taken down Tinder, Facebook, and Instagram, and have said they would release nude pictures of Taylor Swift.

Two people have been arrested as alleged members of the group, Vinnie Omari, a 22-year-old from Britain, and a 17-year-old known as "Ryan."


14. Anonymous

Anonymous

By far the best hacking group to have gotten its style cues from a comic book character, Anonymous is comprised of "hacktivists" who get involved in political and international events.

The group originated on 4chan around 2003, when members posting under the alias "anonymous" started the joke that there was a single person with the name Anonymous who's been talking to himself the whole time.

The collective was associated with pranks and trolling until 2008, when they launched a coordinated attack on the Church of Scientology under the name "Project Chanology."

They've since gotten involved with the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Charlie Hebdo, by leaking documents or taking down the websites.

They launched an attack on the KKK in November, which saw them releasing identities and taking down their social media accounts.

Members of Anonymous have fractured off from the main group, forming other collectives like LulzSec.

In 2008 Anonymous and LulzSec teamed together for AntiSec, after Arizona passed the immigration enforcement bill SB 1070. (LulzSec disbanded after its leader, Hector Mansegur, ratted out on other members when he was arrested by the FBI.)

SOURCE: Complex.com


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