Individuals appearing in public as Anonymous, wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularised by the comic book and film V for Vendetta. Photo from from the Wikimedia Commons
Hacktivist collective Anonymous has made it onto Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list.
“They are the people who inspire us, entertain us, challenge us and change our world,” Time magazine said of the people on its annual list.
Anonymous has changed things, all right, in particular, the functioning of websites with its cyber attacks as a form of protest.
Just earlier this month, for example, hackers associated with Anonymous apparently caused the government websites Number10.gov.uk, Homeoffice.gov.uk and Justice.gov.uk to crash in distributed denial of service attacks to protest the UK’s extradition policies.
Other targets of Anonymous have included Arab dictatorships, the Vatican, banking and entertainment companies, the FBI, the CIA, the security firm Stratfor and even San Francisco’s BART transport system, Time magazine said.
The list has been compiled from votes readers cast on who they believe should be on Time‘s 100 Most Influential People in the World list. Time magazine itself even asked if Anonymous fixed the poll.
Anonymous joins other tech luminaries on the 100 Most Influential People in the World list. Apple CEO Time Cook; Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable; Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer; and Virginia Rometty, president and CEO of IBM, are also recognised on Time magazine’s list.
