Hackers and hucksters reinvigorate ‘Anonymous’ brand amid protests

The amorphous internet activist movement known as Anonymous staged an online resurgence in the past week on the back of real-world protests against police brutality.
Born from internet chat boards more than a dozen years ago, the collective was once known for organizing low-skill but effective denial-of-service attacks that temporarily shut down access to payment processors that had stopped handling donations to the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks.
But accounts using variations of the Anonymous name recently claimed credit for temporarily knocking a Minneapolis police website offline and, inaccurately, for hacking police passwords.
At the same time, millions of Twitter accounts began following longstanding Anonymous posters and retweeting them, helping boost Anonymous into Twitter’s Trending column and greater attention. Many of the boosted tweets opposed police actions, defended Black Lives Matter or faulted President Donald Trump.