Anonymous Vows Cyber War

Back in this country tonight, NBC News has been given an exclusive look inside the secretive organization known as Anonymous, a loose-knit group of computer hackers who came to the defense of WikiLeaks and got the attention of law enforcement in the process. They are young and stealthy and they are potential giant killers who are promising a new wave of cyber attacks. Our national investigative correspondent Michael Isakov with us from our DC Newsroom tonight with more on this Michael Good evening. Brian the hacker group known as Anonymous has spooked major US corporations and the Pentagon is now singling out Anonymous as an example of the serious new cyber threats facing the country. Barrett Brown is an underground commander in a new kind of warfare. It's a guerrilla cyber war, he might call it. If you want to use the term cyber war. 29 years old a cocky college dropout, Brown calls himself a senior strategist for Anonymous. A loose collection of rogue tech savvy hackers credited with bringing down the websites of MasterCard and Visa last December. Retaliation they say for cutting off service to WikiLeaks. But if we just said a message basically, just saying that look, we don't appreciate she working with the feds. The feds, the FBI is now investigating Anonymous for those attacks, rating homes and issuing dozens of subpoenas. But amusing though. A self-described anarchist, Brown proclaims he is policing wrong doing, at least as an Anonymous defines it and promoting the free flow of information. You may not know that WikiLeaks is protected by a global hacker nerd brigade known as Anonymous. Who's joked about by some, but very serious. They call themselves activists, communicate via secure internet chat rooms and in public protests hide their identities behind masks. When we break laws, we do so in the service of civil disobedience. We do so ethically, we do it against targets who have asked for it. Target's like HP Gary, a major cyber security firm, some US government agencies rely on to keep their computer safe. Last month, HP Gary boasted it would expose Anonymous. The response was swift. Anonymous took down their website, stole thousands of emails and posted them on the internet. The CEO resigned. And how did they do it? It was tech savvy to be sure, but also an old-fashioned con. Brown says a 16-year-old girl posed as HP Gary's founder in emails and tricked the computer security manager to reset his password. Anonymous is credited with bringing down government websites in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. And now it's made new threats against companies and government officials complicit in what it views as the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, the army private accused of leaking to WikiLeaks. Anonymous is powerful enough that it's certainly struck fear into the hearts of some of the biggest technology companies, the biggest companies in the whole world. We got stuck at all for this. Anonymous even claims to have a version of the notorious Stuxnet computer virus that was reportedly used to bring down the Iranian nuclear program for several months. That's a pretty dangerous piece of information. I mean, it's dangerous off of you. It shouldn't have been floating around like that. It shouldn't have been available by this federal contract or to get ripped off by a 16-year-old girl in her friends. And it shouldn't be in the hands of Anonymous. But it is. Say, lovey. Brown told us he's not personally involved in any computer hacking, but he fully expects federal prosecutors will come after him. We also spoke tonight to HP Gary's founder, who called the members of vicious individuals and criminals who are breaking into computer systems and stealing information. Brian Michael, as a call for our exclusive reporting tonight from our DC Bureau, Michael, thank you.