title: Commodus

text: Whereas the reign of Marcus Aurelius had been marked by almost continuous warfare, Commodus's rule was comparatively peaceful in the military sense, but was also characterised by political strife and the increasingly arbitrary and capricious behaviour of the emperor himself. In the view of Dio Cassius, his accession marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust".


title: Commodus

text: Despite his notoriety, and considering the importance of his reign, Commodus's years in power are not well chronicled. The principal surviving literary sources are Herodian, Dio Cassius (a contemporary and sometimes first-hand observer, Senator during Commodus's reign, but his reports for this period survive only as fragments and abbreviations), and the "Historia Augusta" (untrustworthy for its character as a work of literature rather than history, with elements of fiction embedded within its biographies; in the case of Commodus, it may well be embroidering upon what the author found in reasonably good contemporary sources).


title: Commodus

text: Commodus remained with the Danube armies for only a short time before negotiating a peace treaty with the Danubian tribes. He then returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph for the conclusion of the wars on 22 October 180. Unlike the preceding emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, he seems to have had little interest in the business of administration and tended throughout his reign to leave the practical running of the state to a succession of favourites, beginning with Saoterus, a freedman from Nicomedia who had become his chamberlain.


title: Commodus

text: Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs would lead to a series of conspiracies and attempted coups, which in turn eventually provoked Commodus to take charge of affairs, which he did in an increasingly dictatorial manner. Nevertheless, though the senatorial order came to hate and fear him, the evidence suggests that he remained popular with the army and the common people for much of his reign, not least because of his lavish shows of largesse (recorded on his coinage) and because he staged and took part in spectacular gladiatorial combats.


title: Commodus

text: One of the ways he paid for his donatives (imperial handouts) and mass entertainments was to tax the senatorial order, and on many inscriptions, the traditional order of the two nominal powers of the state, the Senate and People ("Senatus Populusque Romanus") is provocatively reversed ("Populus Senatusque...").


title: Commodus

text: At the outset of his reign, Commodus, aged 18, inherited many of his father's senior advisers, notably Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus (the second husband of Commodus's eldest sister Lucilla), his father-in-law Gaius Bruttius Praesens, Titus Fundanius Vitrasius Pollio, and Aufidius Victorinus, who was Prefect of the City of Rome. He also had four surviving sisters, all of them with husbands who were potential rivals. Lucilla was over ten years his senior and held the rank of Augusta as the widow of her first husband, Lucius Verus.


title: Commodus

text: The first crisis of the reign came in 182, when Lucilla engineered a conspiracy against her brother. Her motive is alleged to have been the envy of the Empress Crispina. Her husband, Pompeianus, was not involved, but two men alleged to have been her lovers, Marcus Ummidius Quadratus Annianus (the consul of 167, who was also her first cousin) and Appius Claudius Quintianus, attempted to murder Commodus as he entered a theater. They bungled the job and were seized by the emperor's bodyguard.


title: Commodus

text: Quadratus and Quintianus were executed. Lucilla was exiled to Capri and later killed. Pompeianus retired from public life. One of the two praetorian prefects, Publius Tarrutenius Paternus, had actually been involved in the conspiracy but his involvement was not discovered until later on, and in the aftermath, he and his colleague, Sextus Tigidius Perennis, were able to arrange for the murder of Saoterus, the hated chamberlain.


title: Commodus

text: Commodus took the loss of Saoterus badly, and Perennis now seized the chance to advance himself by implicating Paternus in a second conspiracy, one apparently led by Publius Salvius Julianus, who was the son of the jurist Salvius Julianus and was betrothed to Paternus's daughter. Salvius and Paternus were executed along with a number of other prominent consulars and senators. Didius Julianus, the future emperor and a relative of Salvius Julianus, was dismissed from the governorship of Germania Inferior.


title: Commodus

text: After the murder of the powerful Saoterus, Perennis easily took over the reins of government and Commodus found a new chamberlain and favourite in Cleander, a Phrygian freedman who had married one of the emperor's mistresses, Demostratia. Cleander was in fact the person who had murdered Saoterus. After those attempts on his life, Commodus spent much of his time outside Rome, mostly on the family estates at Lanuvium. As he was physically strong, his chief interest was in sport: he took part in horse racing, chariot racing, and combats with beasts and men, mostly in private but also on occasion in public.


title: Commodus

text: Commodus was inaugurated in 183 as consul with Aufidius Victorinus for a colleague and assumed the title "Pius". War broke out in Dacia: few details are available, but it appears two future contenders for the throne, Clodius Albinus and Pescennius Niger, both distinguished themselves in the campaign. Also, in Britain in 184, the governor Ulpius Marcellus re-advanced the Roman frontier northward to the Antonine Wall, but the legionaries revolted against his harsh discipline and acclaimed another legate, Priscus, as emperor.


title: Commodus

text: Priscus refused to accept their acclamations, and Perennis had all the legionary legates in Britain cashiered. On 15 October 184 at the Capitoline Games, a Cynic philosopher publicly denounced Perennis before Commodus. His tale was not believed and he was immediately put to death. According to Dio Cassius, Perennis, though ruthless and ambitious, was not personally corrupt and generally administered the state well.


title: Commodus

text: However, the following year, a detachment of soldiers from Britain (they had been drafted to Italy to suppress brigands) also denounced Perennis to the emperor as plotting to make his own son emperor (they had been enabled to do so by Cleander, who was seeking to dispose of his rival), and Commodus gave them permission to execute him as well as his wife and sons. The fall of Perennis brought a new spate of executions: Aufidius Victorinus committed suicide. Ulpius Marcellus was replaced as governor of Britain by Pertinax; brought to Rome and tried for treason, Marcellus narrowly escaped death.


title: Commodus

text: Cleander proceeded to concentrate power in his own hands and to enrich himself by becoming responsible for all public offices: he sold and bestowed entry to the Senate, army commands, governorships and, increasingly, even the suffect consulships to the highest bidder. Unrest around the empire increased, with large numbers of army deserters causing trouble in Gaul and Germany. Pescennius Niger mopped up the deserters in Gaul in a military campaign, and a revolt in Brittany was put down by two legions brought over from Britain.


title: Commodus

text: In 187, one of the leaders of the deserters, Maternus, came from Gaul intending to assassinate Commodus at the Festival of the Great Goddess in March, but he was betrayed and executed. In the same year, Pertinax unmasked a conspiracy by two enemies of Cleander – Antistius Burrus (one of Commodus's brothers-in-law) and Arrius Antoninus. As a result, Commodus appeared even more rarely in public, preferring to live on his estates.


title: Commodus

text: Early in 188, Cleander disposed of the current praetorian prefect, Atilius Aebutianus, and took over supreme command of the Praetorian Guard at the new rank of "a pugione" ("dagger-bearer"), with two praetorian prefects subordinate to him. Now at the zenith of his power, Cleander continued to sell public offices as his private business. The climax came in the year 190, which had 25 suffect consuls – a record in the 1,000-year history of the Roman consulship—all appointed by Cleander (they included the future Emperor Septimius Severus).


title: Commodus

text: In the spring of 190, Rome was afflicted by a food shortage, for which the "praefectus annonae" Papirius Dionysius, the official actually in charge of the grain supply, contrived to lay the blame on Cleander. At the end of June, a mob demonstrated against Cleander during a horse race in the Circus Maximus: he sent the Praetorian Guard to put down the disturbances, but Pertinax, who was now City Prefect of Rome, dispatched the "Vigiles Urbani" to oppose them. Cleander fled to Commodus, who was at Laurentum in the house of the Quinctilii, for protection, but the mob followed him calling for his head.


title: Commodus

text: At the urging of his mistress Marcia, Commodus had Cleander beheaded and his son killed. Other victims at this time were the praetorian prefect Julius Julianus, Commodus's cousin Annia Fundania Faustina, and his brother-in-law Mamertinus. Papirius Dionysius was executed, too. In AD 29, he took over more of the reins of power, though he continued to rule through a cabal consisting of Marcia, his new chamberlain Eclectus, and the new praetorian prefect Quintus Aemilius Laetus.


title: Commodus

text: In opposition to the Senate, in his pronouncements and iconography, Commodus had always stressed his unique status as a source of god-like power, liberality, and physical prowess. Innumerable statues around the empire were set up portraying him in the guise of Hercules, reinforcing the image of him as a demigod, a physical giant, a protector, and a warrior who fought against men and beasts (see "Commodus and Hercules" and "Commodus the Gladiator" below). Moreover, as Hercules, he could claim to be the son of Jupiter, the supreme god of the Roman pantheon. These tendencies now increased to megalomaniacal proportions. Far from celebrating his descent from Marcus Aurelius, the actual source of his power, he stressed his own personal uniqueness as the bringer of a new order, seeking to re-cast the empire in his own image.


title: Commodus

text: During 191, the city of Rome was extensively damaged by a fire that raged for several days, during which many public buildings including the Temple of Pax, the Temple of Vesta, and parts of the imperial palace were destroyed.


title: Commodus

text: Perhaps seeing this as an opportunity, early in 192 Commodus, declaring himself the new Romulus, ritually re-founded Rome, renaming the city "Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana". All the months of the year were renamed to correspond exactly with his (now twelve) names: "Lucius", "Aelius", "Aurelius", "Commodus", "Augustus", "Herculeus", "Romanus", "Exsuperatorius", "Amazonius", "Invictus", "Felix", and "Pius". The legions were renamed "Commodianae", the fleet which imported grain from Africa was termed "Alexandria Commodiana Togata", the Senate was entitled the Commodian Fortunate Senate, his palace and the Roman people themselves were all given the name "Commodianus", and the day on which these reforms were decreed was to be called "Dies Commodianus".


title: Commodus

text: Thus, he presented himself as the fountainhead of the Empire, Roman life, and religion. He also had the head of the Colossus of Nero adjacent to the Colosseum replaced with his own portrait, gave it a club, placed a bronze lion at its feet to make it look like "Hercules Romanus", and added an inscription boasting of being "the only left-handed fighter to conquer twelve times one thousand men".


title: Commodus

text: In November 192, Commodus held Plebeian Games, in which he shot hundreds of animals with arrows and javelins every morning, and fought as a gladiator every afternoon, winning all the fights. In December, he announced his intention to inaugurate the year 193 as both consul and gladiator on 1 January.


title: Commodus

text: When Marcia found a list of people Commodus intended to have executed, she discovered that she, the prefect Laetus and Eclectus were on it. The three of them plotted to assassinate the emperor. On 31 December, Marcia poisoned Commodus's food, but he vomited up the poison, so the conspirators sent his wrestling partner Narcissus to strangle him in his bath.


title: Commodus

text: Upon his death, the Senate declared him a public enemy (a "de facto" "damnatio memoriae") and restored the original name of the city of Rome and its institutions. Statues of Commodus were demolished. His body was buried in the Mausoleum of Hadrian.


title: Commodus

text: Commodus's death marked the end of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. Commodus was succeeded by Pertinax, whose reign was short-lived; he would become the first claimant to be usurped during the Year of the Five Emperors.


title: Commodus

text: In 195, the emperor Septimius Severus, trying to gain favour with the family of Marcus Aurelius, rehabilitated Commodus's memory and had the Senate deify him.


title: Commodus

text: Cassius Dio, a first-hand witness, describes him as "not naturally wicked but, on the contrary, as guileless as any man that ever lived. His great simplicity, however, together with his cowardice, made him the slave of his companions, and it was through them that he at first, out of ignorance, missed the better life and then was led on into lustful and cruel habits, which soon became second nature."


title: Commodus

text: His recorded actions do tend to show a rejection of his father's policies, his father's advisers, and especially his father's austere lifestyle, and an alienation from the surviving members of his family. It seems likely that he was raised in an atmosphere of Stoic asceticism, which he rejected entirely upon his accession to sole rule.


title: Commodus

text: After repeated attempts on Commodus's life, Roman citizens were often killed for making him angry. One such notable event was the attempted extermination of the house of the Quinctilii. Condianus and Maximus were executed on the pretext that while they were not implicated in any plots, their wealth and talent would make them unhappy with the current state of affairs. Another event, as recorded by the historian Aelius Lampridius, took place at the Roman baths at Terme Taurine, where the emperor had an attendant thrown into an oven after he had found his bathwater to be lukewarm.


title: Commodus

text: His original name was Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus. On his father's death in 180, Commodus changed this to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Commodus, before changing back to his birth name in 191.


title: Commodus

text: Later that year he adopted as his full style Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus Augustus Herculeus Romanus Exsuperatorius Amazonius Invictus Felix Pius (the order of some of these titles varies in the sources). "Exsuperatorius" (the supreme) was a title given to Jupiter, and "Amazonius" identified him again with Hercules.


title: Commodus

text: An inscribed altar from Dura-Europos on the Euphrates shows that Commodus's titles and the renaming of the months were disseminated to the furthest reaches of the Empire; moreover, that even auxiliary military units received the title Commodiana, and that he claimed two additional titles: "Pacator Orbis" (pacifier of the world) and "Dominus Noster" (Our Lord). The latter eventually would be used as a conventional title by Roman emperors, starting about a century later, but Commodus seems to have been the first to assume it.


title: Commodus

text: Disdaining the more philosophic inclinations of his father, Commodus was extremely proud of his physical prowess. The historian Herodian, a contemporary, described Commodus as an extremely handsome man. As mentioned above, he ordered many statues to be made showing him dressed as Hercules with a lion's hide and a club. He thought of himself as the reincarnation of Hercules, frequently emulating the legendary hero's feats by appearing in the arena to fight a variety of wild animals. He was left-handed and very proud of the fact. Cassius Dio and the writers of the "Augustan History" say that Commodus was a skilled archer, who could shoot the heads off ostriches in full gallop, and kill a panther as it attacked a victim in the arena.


title: Commodus

text: Commodus also had a passion for gladiatorial combat, which he took so far as to take to the arena himself, dressed as a secutor. The Romans found Commodus's gladiatorial combats to be scandalous and disgraceful. According to Herodian, spectators of Commodus thought it unbecoming of an emperor to take up arms in the amphitheater for sport when he could be campaigning against barbarians among other opponents of Rome. The consensus was that it was below his office to participate as a gladiator. Popular rumors spread alleging he was not actually the son of Marcus Aurelius, but of a gladiator his mother Faustina had taken as a lover at the coastal resort of Caieta.


title: Commodus

text: In the arena, Commodus's opponents always submitted to the emperor; as a result he never lost. Commodus never killed his gladiatorial adversaries, instead accepting their surrenders. His victories were often welcomed by his bested opponents, as bearing scars dealt by the hand of an emperor was considered a mark of fortitude. Cassius Dio claimed that citizens of Rome who were missing their feet through accident or illness were taken to the arena, where they were tethered together for Commodus to club to death while pretending they were giants. Dio also wrote that it was Commodus's custom to privately use deadly weapons to fight, murdering and maiming his opponents. For each appearance in the arena, he charged the city of Rome a million sesterces, straining the Roman economy.


title: Commodus

text: Commodus was also known for fighting exotic animals in the arena, often to the horror and disgust of the Roman populace. According to Cassius Dio, Commodus once killed 100 lions in a single day. Later, he decapitated a running ostrich with a specially designed dart and afterwards carried his sword and the bleeding head of the dead bird over to the Senators' seating area and motioned as though they were next. Dio notes that the targeted senators actually found this more ridiculous than frightening, and chewed on laurel leaves to conceal their laughter. On other occasions, Commodus killed three elephants on the floor of the arena by himself, and a giraffe.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Anonymous originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an "anarchic", digitized "global brain" or "hivemind". Anonymous members (known as "anons") can sometimes be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the graphic novel and film "V for Vendetta". Some anons also opt to mask their voices through voice changers or text-to-speech programs.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks in countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, India, and Turkey. Evaluations of the group's actions and effectiveness vary widely. Supporters have called the group "freedom fighters" and digital Robin Hoods, while critics have described them as "a cyber lynch-mob" or "cyber terrorists". In 2012, "Time" called Anonymous one of the "100 most influential people" in the world. Anonymous' media profile diminished by 2018, but the group re-emerged in 2020 to support the George Floyd protests and other causes.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Internal dissent is also a regular feature of the group. A website associated with the group describes it as "an Internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives". Gabriella Coleman writes of the group: "In some ways, it may be impossible to gauge the intent and motive of thousands of participants, many of who don't even bother to leave a trace of their thoughts, motivations, and reactions. Among those that do, opinions vary considerably."


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Broadly speaking, Anons oppose Internet censorship and control and the majority of their actions target governments, organizations, and corporations that they accuse of censorship. Anons were early supporters of the global Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. Since 2008, a frequent subject of disagreement within Anonymous is whether members should focus on pranking and entertainment or more serious (and, in some cases, political) activism.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Because Anonymous has no leadership, no action can be attributed to the membership as a whole. Parmy Olson and others have criticized media coverage that presents the group as well-organized or homogeneous; Olson writes, "There was no single leader pulling the levers, but a few organizational minds that sometimes pooled together to start planning a stunt." Some members protest using legal means, while others employ illegal measures such as DDoS attacks and hacking. Membership is open to anyone who wishes to state they are a member of the collective; British journalist


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Carole Cadwalladr of "The Observer" compared the group's decentralized structure to that of al-Qaeda: "If you believe in Anonymous, and call yourself Anonymous, you are Anonymous." Olson, who formerly described Anonymous as a "brand", stated in 2012 that she now characterized it as a "movement" rather than a group: "anyone can be part of it. It is a crowd of people, a nebulous crowd of people, working together and doing things together for various purposes."


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: The group's few rules include not disclosing one's identity, not talking about the group, and not attacking media. Members commonly use the tagline "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." Brian Kelly writes that three of the group's key characteristics are "(1) an unrelenting moral stance on issues and rights, regardless of direct provocation; (2) a physical presence that accompanies


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Journalists have commented that Anonymous' secrecy, fabrications, and media awareness pose an unusual challenge for reporting on the group's actions and motivations. Quinn Norton of "Wired" writes that: "Anons lie when they have no reason to lie. They weave vast fabrications as a form of performance. Then they tell the truth at unexpected and unfortunate times, sometimes destroying themselves in the process. They are unpredictable." Norton states that the difficulties in reporting on the group cause most writers, including herself, to focus on the "small groups of hackers who stole the limelight from a legion, defied their values, and crashed violently into the law" rather than "Anonymous’s sea of voices, all experimenting with new ways of being in the world".


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: The name Anonymous itself is inspired by the perceived anonymity under which users post images and comments on the Internet. Usage of the term Anonymous in the sense of a shared identity began on imageboards, particularly the /b/ board of 4chan, dedicated to random content and to raiding other websites. A tag of Anonymous is assigned to visitors who leave comments without identifying the originator of the posted content. Users of imageboards sometimes jokingly acted as if Anonymous was a single individual. The concept of the Anonymous entity advanced in 2004 when an administrator on the 4chan image board activated a "Forced_Anon" protocol that signed all posts as Anonymous. As the popularity of imageboards increased, the idea of Anonymous as a collective of unnamed individuals became an Internet meme.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Users of 4chan's /b/ board would occasionally join into mass pranks or raids. In a raid on July 12, 2006, for example, large numbers of 4chan readers invaded the Finnish social networking site Habbo Hotel with identical avatars; the avatars blocked regular Habbo members from accessing the digital hotel's pool, stating it was "closed due to fail and AIDS". Future LulzSec member Topiary became involved with the site at this time, inviting large audiences to listen to his prank phone calls via Skype. Due to the growing traffic on 4chan's board, users soon began to plot pranks off-site using Internet Relay Chat (IRC). These raids resulted in the first mainstream press story on Anonymous, a report by Fox station KTTV in Los Angeles, California in the U.S. The report called the group "hackers on steroids", "domestic terrorists", and an "Internet hate machine".


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Encyclopedia Dramatica was founded in 2004 by Sherrod DeGrippo, initially as a means of documenting gossip related to LiveJournal, but it quickly was adopted as a major platform by Anonymous for parody and other purposes. The not safe for work site celebrates a subversive "trolling culture", and documents Internet memes, culture, and events, such as mass pranks, trolling events, "raids", large-scale failures of Internet security, and criticism of Internet communities that are accused of self-censorship to gain prestige or positive coverage from traditional and established media outlets. Journalist Julian Dibbell described Encyclopedia Dramatica as the site "where the vast parallel universe of Anonymous in-jokes, catchphrases, and obsessions is lovingly annotated, and you will discover an elaborate trolling culture: Flamingly racist and misogynist content lurks throughout, all of it calculated to offend." The site also played a role in the anti-Scientology campaign of Project Chanology.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 14, 2011, the original URL of the site was redirected to a new website named "Oh Internet" that bore little resemblance to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Parts of the ED community harshly criticized the changes. In response, Anonymous launched "Operation Save ED" to rescue and restore the site's content. The Web Ecology Project made a downloadable archive of former Encyclopedia Dramatica content. The site's reincarnation was initially hosted at encyclopediadramatica.ch on servers owned by Ryan Cleary, who later was arrested in relation to attacks by LulzSec against Sony.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Anonymous first became associated with hacktivism in 2008 following a series of actions against the Church of Scientology known as Project Chanology. On January 15, 2008, the gossip blog Gawker posted a video in which celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise praised the religion; and the Church responded with a cease-and-desist letter for violation of copyright. 4chan users organized a raid against the Church in retaliation, prank-calling its hotline, sending black faxes designed to waste ink cartridges, and launching DDoS attacks against its websites.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: The DDoS attacks were at first carried out with the Gigaloader and JMeter applications. Within a few days, these were supplanted by the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), a network stress-testing application allowing users to flood a server with TCP or UDP packets. The LOIC soon became a signature weapon in the Anonymous arsenal; however, it would also lead to a number of arrests of less experienced Anons who failed to conceal their IP addresses. Some operators in Anonymous IRC channels incorrectly told or lied to new volunteers that using the LOIC carried no legal risk.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: During the DDoS attacks, a group of Anons uploaded a YouTube video in which a robotic voice speaks on behalf of Anonymous, telling the "leaders of Scientology" that "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind—for the laughs—we shall expel you from the Internet." Within ten days, the video had attracted hundreds of thousands of views.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On February 10, thousands of Anonymous joined simultaneous protests at Church of Scientology facilities around the world. Many protesters wore the stylized Guy Fawkes masks popularized by the graphic novel and film "V for Vendetta", in which an anarchist revolutionary battles a totalitarian government; the masks soon became a popular symbol for Anonymous. In-person protests against the Church continued throughout the year, including "Operation Party Hard" on March 15 and "Operation Reconnect" on April 12. However, by mid-year, they were drawing far fewer protesters, and many of the organizers in IRC channels had begun to drift away from the project.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: By the start of 2009, Scientologists had stopped engaging with protesters and had improved online security, and actions against the group had largely ceased. A period of infighting followed between the politically engaged members (called "moralfags" in the parlance of 4chan) and those seeking to provoke for entertainment (trolls). By September 2010, the group had received little publicity for a year and faced a corresponding drop in member interest; its raids diminished greatly in size and moved largely off of IRC channels, organizing again from the chan boards, particularly /b/.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In September 2010, however, Anons became aware of Aiplex Software, an Indian software company that contracted with film studios to launch DDoS attacks on websites used by copyright infringers, such as The Pirate Bay. Coordinating through IRC, Anons launched a DDoS attack on September 17 that shut down Aiplex's website for a day. Primarily using LOIC, the group then targeted the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), successfully bringing down both sites. On September 19, future LulzSec member Mustafa Al-Bassam (known as "Tflow") and other Anons hacked the website of Copyright Alliance, an anti-infringement group, and posted the name of the operation: "Payback Is A Bitch", or "Operation Payback" for short. Anons also issued a press release, stating:


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: As IRC network operators were beginning to shut down networks involved in DDoS attacks, Anons organized a group of servers to host an independent IRC network, titled AnonOps. Operation Payback's targets rapidly expanded to include the British law firm , the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, the British nightclub Ministry of Sound, the Spanish copyright society Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, the U.S. Copyright Office, and the website of Gene Simmons of Kiss. By October 7, 2010, total downtime for all websites attacked during Operation Payback was 537.55 hours.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In November 2010, the organization WikiLeaks began releasing hundreds of thousands of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables. In the face of legal threats against the organization by the U.S. government, Amazon.com booted WikiLeaks from its servers, and PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa cut off service to the organization. Operation Payback then expanded to include "Operation Avenge Assange", and Anons issued a press release declaring PayPal a target. Launching DDoS attacks with the LOIC, Anons quickly brought down the websites of the PayPal blog; PostFinance, a Swiss financial company denying service to WikiLeaks; EveryDNS, a web-hosting company that had also denied service; and the website of U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who had supported the push to cut off services.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On December 8, Anons launched an attack against PayPal's main site. According to Topiary, who was in the command channel during the attack, the LOIC proved ineffective, and Anons were forced to rely on the botnets of two hackers for the attack, marshaling hijacked computers for a concentrated assault. Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll also reported that the "zombie computers" of involuntary botnets had provided 90% of the attack. Topiary states that he and other Anons then "lied a bit to the press to give it that sense of abundance", exaggerating the role of the grassroots membership. However, this account was disputed.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: The attacks brought down PayPal.com for an hour on December 8 and another brief period on December 9. Anonymous also disrupted the sites for Visa and MasterCard on December 8. Anons had announced an intention to bring down Amazon.com as well, but failed to do so, allegedly because of infighting with the hackers who controlled the botnets. PayPal estimated the damage to have cost the company US$5.5 million. It later provided the IP addresses of 1,000 of its attackers to the FBI, leading to at least 14 arrests. On Thursday, December 5, 2013, 13 of the PayPal 14 pleaded guilty to taking part in the attacks.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In the years following Operation Payback, targets of Anonymous protests, hacks, and DDoS attacks continued to diversify. Beginning in January 2011, Anons took a number of actions known initially as Operation Tunisia in support of Arab Spring movements. Tflow created a script that Tunisians could use to protect their web browsers from government surveillance, while fellow future LulzSec member Hector Xavier Monsegur (alias "Sabu") and others allegedly hijacked servers from a London web-hosting company to launch a DDoS attack on Tunisian government websites, taking them offline. Sabu also used a Tunisian volunteer's computer to hack the website of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, replacing it with a message from Anonymous. Anons also helped Tunisian dissidents share videos online about the uprising. In Operation Egypt, Anons collaborated with the activist group Telecomix to help dissidents access government-censored websites. Sabu and Topiary went on to participate in attacks on government websites in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Zimbabwe.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Tflow, Sabu, Topiary, and Ryan Ackroyd (known as "Kayla") collaborated in February 2011 on a cyber-attack against Aaron Barr, CEO of the computer security firm HBGary Federal, in retaliation for his research on Anonymous and his threat to expose members of the group. Using a SQL injection weakness, the four hacked the HBGary site, used Barr's captured password to vandalize his Twitter feed with racist messages, and released an enormous cache of HBGary's e-mails in a torrent file on Pirate Bay. The e-mails stated that Barr and HBGary had proposed to Bank of America a plan to discredit WikiLeaks in retaliation for a planned leak of Bank of America documents, and the leak caused substantial public relations harm to the firm as well as leading one U.S. congressman to call for a congressional investigation. Barr resigned as CEO before the end of the month.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Several attacks by Anons have targeted organizations accused of homophobia. In February 2011, an open letter was published on AnonNews.org threatening the Westboro Baptist Church, an organization based in Kansas in the U.S. known for picketing funerals with signs reading "God Hates Fags". During a live radio current affairs program in which Topiary debated church member Shirley Phelps-Roper, Anons hacked one of the organization's websites. After the church announced its intentions in December 2012 to picket the funerals of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, Anons published the names, phone numbers, and e-mail and home addresses of church members and brought down GodHatesFags.com with a DDoS attack. In August 2012, Anons hacked the site of Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi in retaliation for the Parliament of Uganda's consideration of an anti-homosexuality law permitting capital punishment.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In April 2011, Anons launched a series of attacks against Sony in retaliation for trying to stop hacks of the PlayStation 3 game console. More than 100 million Sony accounts were compromised, and the Sony services Qriocity and PlayStation Network were taken down for a month apiece by cyberattacks.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In August 2011, Anons launched an attack against BART in San Francisco, which they dubbed #OpBart. The attack, made in response to the killing of Charles Hill a month prior, resulted in customers' personal information leaked onto the group's website.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: When the Occupy Wall Street protests began in New York City in September 2011, Anons were early participants and helped spread the movement to other cities such as Boston. In October, some Anons attacked the website of the New York Stock Exchange while other Anons publicly opposed the action via Twitter. Some Anons also helped organize an Occupy protest outside the London Stock Exchange on May 1, 2012.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Anons launched Operation Darknet in October 2011, targeting websites hosting child pornography. In particular, the group hacked a child pornography site called "Lolita City" hosted by Freedom Hosting, releasing 1,589 usernames from the site. Anons also said that they had disabled forty image-swapping pedophile websites that employed the anonymity network Tor. In 2012, Anons leaked the names of users of a suspected child porn site in OpDarknetV2. Anonymous launched the #OpPedoChat campaign on Twitter in 2012 as a continuation of Operation Darknet. In attempt to eliminate child pornography from the internet, the group posted the emails and IP addresses of suspected pedophiles on the online forum PasteBin.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In 2011, the Koch Industries website was attacked following their attack upon union members, resulting in their website being made inaccessible for 15 minutes. In 2013, one member, a 38-year-old truck driver, pleaded guilty when accused of participating in the attack for a period of one minute, and received a sentence of two years federal probation, and ordered to pay $183,000 restitution, the amount Koch stated they paid a consultancy organization, despite this being only a denial of service attack.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On January 19, 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice shut down the file-sharing site Megaupload on allegations of copyright infringement. Anons responded with a wave of DDoS attacks on U.S. government and copyright organizations, shutting down the sites for the RIAA, MPAA, Broadcast Music, Inc., and the FBI.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In April 2012, Anonymous hacked 485 Chinese government websites, some more than once, to protest the treatment of their citizens. They urged people to "fight for justice, fight for freedom, [and] fight for democracy".


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In 2012, Anonymous launched Operation Anti-Bully: Operation Hunt Hunter in retaliation to Hunter Moore's revenge porn site, "Is Anyone Up?" Anonymous crashed Moore's servers and publicized much of his personal information online, including his social security number. The organization also published the personal information of Andrew Myers, the proprietor of "Is Anyone Back", a copycat site of Moore's "Is Anyone Up?"


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In response to Operation Pillar of Defense, a November 2012 Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, Anons took down hundreds of Israeli websites with DDoS attacks. Anons pledged another "massive cyberassault" against Israel in April 2013 in retaliation for its actions in Gaza, promising to "wipe Israel off the map of the Internet". However, its DDoS attacks caused only temporary disruptions, leading cyberwarfare experts to suggest that the group had been unable to recruit or hire botnet operators for the attack.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On November 5, 2013, Anonymous protesters gathered around the world for the Million Mask March. Demonstrations were held in 400 cities around the world to coincide with Guy Fawkes Night.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Operation Safe Winter was an effort to raise awareness about homelessness through the collection, collation, and redistribution of resources. This program began on November 7, 2013 after an online call to action from Anonymous UK. Three missions using a charity framework were suggested in the original global spawning a variety of direct actions from used clothing drives to pitch in community potlucks feeding events in the UK, US and Turkey. The #OpSafeWinter call to action quickly spread through the mutual aid communities like Occupy Wall Street and its offshoot groups like the open-source-based OccuWeather. With the addition of the long-term mutual aid communities of New York City and online hacktivists in the US, it took on an additional three suggested missions. Encouraging participation from the general public, this operation has raised questions of privacy and the changing nature of the Anonymous community's use of monikers. The project to support those living on the streets while causing division in its own online network has been able to partner with many efforts and organizations not traditionally associated with Anonymous or online activists.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In the wake of the fatal police shooting of unarmed African-American Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, "Operation Ferguson"—a hacktivist organization that claimed to be associated with Anonymous—organized cyberprotests against police, setting up a website and a Twitter account to do so. The group promised that if any protesters were harassed or harmed, they would attack the city's servers and computers, taking them offline. City officials said that e-mail systems were targeted and phones died, while the Internet crashed at the City Hall. Prior to August 15, members of Anonymous corresponding with "Mother Jones" said that they were working on confirming the identity of the undisclosed police officer who shot Brown and would release his name as soon as they did. On August 14, Anonymous posted on its Twitter feed what it claimed was the name of the officer involved in the shooting. However, police said the identity released by Anonymous was incorrect. Twitter subsequently suspended the Anonymous account from its service.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: It was reported on November 19, 2014, that Anonymous had declared cyber war on the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) the previous week, after the KKK had made death threats following the Ferguson riots. They hacked the KKK's Twitter account, attacked servers hosting KKK sites, and started to release the personal details of members.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On November 24, 2014, Anonymous shut down the Cleveland city website and posted a video after Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy armed only with a BB gun, was shot to death by a police officer in a Cleveland park. Anonymous also used BeenVerified to uncover the phone number and address of a police officer involved in the shooting.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In January 2015, Anonymous released a video and a statement via Twitter condemning the attack on "Charlie Hebdo", in which 12 people, including eight journalists, were fatally shot. The video, claiming that it is "a message for al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists", was uploaded to the group's Belgian account. The announcement stated that "We, Anonymous around the world, have decided to declare war on you, the terrorists" and promises to avenge the killings by "shut[ting] down your accounts on all social networks." On January 12, they brought down a website that was suspected to belong to one of these groups. Critics of the action warned that taking down extremists' websites would make them harder to monitor.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On June 17, 2015, Anonymous claimed responsibility for a Denial of Service attack against Canadian government websites in protest of the passage of bill C-51—an anti-terror legislation that grants additional powers to Canadian intelligence agencies. The attack temporarily affected the websites of several federal agencies.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On October 28, 2015, Anonymous announced that it would reveal the names of up to 1,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan and other affiliated groups, stating in a press release, "You are terrorists that hide your identities beneath sheets and infiltrate society on every level. The privacy of the Ku Klux Klan no longer exists in cyberspace." On November 2, a list of 57 phone numbers and 23 email addresses (that allegedly belong to KKK members) was reportedly published and received media attention. However, a tweet from the "@Operation_KKK" Twitter account the same day denied it had released that information The group stated it planned to, and later did, reveal the names on November 5.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Since 2013, Saudi Arabian hacktivists have been targeting government websites protesting the actions of the regime. These actions have seen attacks supported by the possibly Iranian backed Yemen Cyber Army. An offshoot of Anonymous self-described as Ghost Security or GhostSec started targeting Islamic State-affiliated websites and social media handles.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In November 2015, Anonymous announced a major, sustained operation against ISIS following the November 2015 Paris attacks, declaring: "Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go." ISIS responded on Telegram by calling them "idiots", and asking "What they hack?" By the next day, however, Anonymous claimed to have taken down 3,824 pro-ISIS Twitter accounts, and by the third day more than 5,000, and to have doxxed ISIS recruiters. A week later, Anonymous increased their claim to 20,000 pro-ISIS accounts and released a list of the accounts. The list included the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, "The New York Times", and BBC News. The BBC reported that most of the accounts on the list appeared to be still active. A spokesman for Twitter told "The Daily Dot" that the company is not using the lists of accounts being reported by Anonymous, as they have been found to be "wildly inaccurate" and include accounts used by academics and journalists.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In 2015, a group that claimed to be affiliated with Anonymous, calling themselves as AnonSec, claimed to have hacked and gathered almost 276 GB of data from NASA servers including NASA flight and radar logs and videos, and also multiple documents related to ongoing research. AnonSec group also claimed gaining access of a Global Hawk Drone of NASA, and released some video footage purportedly from the drone's cameras. A part of the data was released by AnonSec on Pastebin service, as an Anon Zine. NASA has denied the hack, asserting that the control of the drones were never compromised, but has acknowledged that the photos released along with the content are real photographs of its employees, but that most of these data are already available in the public domain.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: The Blink Hacker Group, associating themselves with the Anonymous group, claimed to have hacked the Thailand prison websites and servers. The compromised data has been shared online, with the group claiming that they give the data back to Thailand Justice and the citizens of Thailand as well. The hack was done in response to news from Thailand about the mistreatment of prisoners in Thailand.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In late 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory first emerged on 4chan, and adherents used similar terminology and branding as Anonymous. In response, anti-Trump members of Anonymous warned that QAnon was stealing the collective's branding and vowed to oppose the theory.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: A group calling themselves Anonymous Africa launched a number of DDoS attacks on websites associated with the controversial South African Gupta family in mid-June 2016. Gupta-owned companies targeted included the websites of Oakbay Investments, The New Age, and ANN7. The websites of the South African Broadcasting Corporation and a political parties Economic Freedom Fighters and Zimbabwe's Zanu-PF were also attacked for "nationalist socialist rhetoric and politicising racism."


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In February 2020, Anonymous hacked the United Nations' website and created a page for Taiwan, a country which has not had a seat at the UN since 1971. The hacked page featured the Flag of Taiwan, the KMT emblem, a Taiwan Independence flag, and the Anonymous logo along with a caption. The hacked server belonged to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In the wake of protests across the U.S. following the murder of George Floyd, Anonymous released a video on Facebook as well as sending it out to the Minneapolis Police Department on May 28, 2020, titled "Anonymous Message To The Minneapolis Police Department", in which they state that they are going to seek revenge on the Minneapolis Police Department, and "expose their crimes to the world". According to Bloomberg, the video was initially posted on an unconfirmed Anonymous Facebook page on May 28. According to BBC News, that same Facebook page had no notoriety and published videos of dubious content linked to UFOs and "China's plan to take over the world". It gained repercussions after the video about George Floyd was published and the Minneapolis police website, which is responsible for the police officer, was down. Later, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that every computer in the region suffered a sophisticated attack. According to BBC News, the attack on the police website using DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) was unsophisticated. According to researcher Troy Hunt, these breaches of the site may have happened from old credentials. Regarding unverified Twitter posts that also went viral, where radio stations of police officers playing music and preventing communication are shown, experts point out that this is unlikely to be due to a hack attackif they are real. Later, it was confirmed by CNET that the leaks made from the police website are false and that someone is taking advantage of the repercussions of George Floyd's murder to spread misinformation.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On June 19, 2020, Anonymous published BlueLeaks, sometimes referred to by the Twitter hashtag #BlueLeaks, 269.21 gibibytes of internal U.S. law enforcement data through the activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets, which called it the "largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies". The data — internal intelligence, bulletins, emails, and reports — was produced between August 1996 and June 2020 by more than 200 law enforcement agencies, which provided it to fusion centers. It was obtained through a security breach of Netsential, a web developer that works with fusion centers and law enforcement.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: During the George Floyd protests, law enforcement agencies monitored protesters' communications over social media and messaging apps. Reports leaked found that the police were aware of the potential for their surveillance to violate the Constitution. They distributed documents to police filled with rumors and warnings that the protests would become violent, sparking fear among police officers.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: The documents also show a much broader trend of surveillance. They show details about the data that police can obtain from social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit and Tumblr, among others. Fusion centers also collect and distribute detailed data from automatic license plate readers. Surveys from law enforcement training programs reveal that some instructors were prejudiced and unprofessional. Classes taught biased, outdated, and incorrect content. Some contain sexual content unrelated to the class, and there was one report of an instructor admitting to lying in court frequently.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In Maine, legislators took interest in BlueLeaks thanks to details about the Maine Information and Analysis Center, which is under investigation. The leaks showed the fusion center was spying on and keeping records on people who had been legally protesting or had been "suspicious" but committed no crime. Documents also contain reports about other countries from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of State and other agencies. Officials discussed cyber attacks from Iran and concerns about further attacks in early 2020. Another report discusses possible Chinese espionage at natural gas facilities. Homeland Security also discussed Russian interference with American elections, attempts to hack the 2020 census, and manipulation of social media discussion.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In 2020, Anonymous started cyber-attacks against the Nigerian government. They started the operation to support the #EndSARS movement in Nigeria. The group's attacks were tweeted by a member of Anonymous called LiteMods. The websites of EFCC, INEC and various other Nigerian government websites were taken-down with DDoS attacks. The websites of some banks were compromised.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: The Texas Heartbeat Act, a law which bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, came into effect in Texas on September 1, 2021. The law relies on private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone who performs or induces an abortion, or aids and abets one, once "cardiac activity" in an embryo can be detected via transvaginal ultrasound, which is usually possible beginning at around six weeks of pregnancy. Shortly after the law came into effect, anti-abortion organizations set up websites to collect "whistleblower" reports of suspected violators of the bill.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On September 3, Anonymous announced "Operation Jane", a campaign focused on stymying those who attempted to enforce the law by "exhaust[ing] the investigational resources of bounty hunters, their snitch sites, and online gathering spaces until no one is able to maintain data integrity". On September 11, the group hacked the website of the Republican Party of Texas, replacing it with text about Anonymous, an invitation to join Operation Jane, and a Planned Parenthood donation link.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On September 13, Anonymous released a large quantity of private data belonging to Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company known for providing services to websites that host far-right, neo-Nazi, and other extremist content. Epik had briefly provided services to an abortion "whistleblower" website run by the anti-abortion Texas Right to Life organization, but the reporting form went offline on September 4 after Epik told the group they had violated their terms of service by collecting private information about third parties. The data included domain purchase and transfer details, account credentials and logins, payment history, employee emails, and unidentified private keys. The hackers claimed they had obtained "a decade's worth of data" which included all customers and all domains ever hosted or registered through the company, and which included poorly encrypted passwords and other sensitive data stored in plaintext. Later on September 13, the Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) organization said they were working to curate the allegedly leaked data for more accessible download, and said that it consisted of "180gigabytes of user, registration, forwarding and other information". Publications including "The Daily Dot" and "The Record by Recorded Future" subsequently confirmed the veracity of the hack and the types of data that had been exposed. Anonymous released another leak on September 29, this time publishing bootable disk images of Epik's servers; more disk images as well as some leaked documents from the Republican Party of Texas appeared on October 4.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On February 25, 2022, Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous declared that they had launched a 'cyber operations' against the Russian Federation, in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The group later temporarily disabled websites such as RT.com and the website of the Defence Ministry along with other state owned websites. Anonymous also leaked 200 GB worth of emails from the Belarusian weapons manufacturer Tetraedr, which provided logistical support for Russia in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Anonymous also hacked into Russian TV channels and played Ukrainian music through them and showed uncensored news of events in Ukraine.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: This section has been expanded to the page Anonymous and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Read more about this Operation there.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On March 7, 2022, Anonymous actors DepaixPorteur and TheWarriorPoetz declared on Twitter that they hacked 400 Russian surveillance cameras and broadcast them on a website. They call this operation "Russian Camera Dump".


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On March 25, 2022, DDoSecrets published approximately 22.5 gigabytes of emails allegedly from the Central Bank of Russia, which was allegedly hacked by Anonymous actor Thblckrbbtworld. Included in the package are registrations, invoices, internal communications, documents, notes, bank statements, names of shareholders of various banks, bank licenses, names, addresses of clients, apparently high-profile clients, etc.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On March 29, 2022, DDoSecrets published 2.4 gigabytes of emails from RostProekt, which was hacked by Anonymous actor DepaixPorteur. RostProekt is a Russian construction company. The RostProekt hack was dubbed as a "celebration" for the grand opening of the now-defunct AnonymousLeaks, a leak site solely for leaks from the Anonymous Collective.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 2, 2022, DDoSecrets published approximately 200,000 emails from Capital Legal Services, which was hacked by Anonymous actor Wh1t3Sh4d0w. Approximately 200,000 emails hacked from the Russian law firm Capital Legal Services, which practices law in a variety of areas. An additional 89,000 emails are located in a "Purges" mailbox, consisting largely of bounced email notifications, cron jobs and other server notifications.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 4, 2022, DDoSecrets published more than 900,000 emails from the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), which were hacked by the Anonymous aligned NB65. VGTRK is a Russian state-owned broadcaster which operates five national TV stations, two international networks, five radio stations, and over 80 regional TV and radio networks. The Russian government has declared VGTRK essential for the "security of the state." VGTRK also runs the information agency Rossiya Segodnya / Росси́я сего́дня, which operates Sputnik, RIA Novosti and other entities.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 7, 2022, DDoSecrets published approximately 100,000 emails from Aerogas, which was hacked by Anonymous. Approximately 100,000 emails from Aerogas, an engineering company which specializes in the oil and gas industry. Aerogas' clients include Rosneft, NOVATEK, Volgagaz, Purneft and others.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 11, 2022, DDoSecrets published approximately 230,000 emails from Blagoveshchensk City Administration, which was hacked by Anonymous. 230,000 emails from the Blagoveshchensk City Administration / Благове́щенск from 2019 through 2022.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 15, 2022, DDoSecrets published roughly 400 gigabytes of emails from the Continent Express, a Russian travel agency, which was hacked by the Anonymous aligned NB65.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 18, 2022, DDoSecrets published 222 gigabytes of emails, files and decryption keys from Gazregion, which was hacked by three different sources around the same time, including the Anonymous actor DepaixPorteur, the Anonymous affiliated NB65, and an unnamed actor. A construction company specializing in gas pipelines and facilities. Gazregion's clients include Gazprom, and has thousands of kilometers of pipelines as part of the Russian Federation's program to transport gas throughout the different regions.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 19, 2022, DDoSecrets published 15,600 emails from GUOV i GS - General Dept. of Troops and Civil Construction, which was hacked by the Anonymous actor DepaixPorteur. A construction company that works on projects in the interests of the Russian Ministry of Defense. GUOV i GS is wholly owned by the Russian Ministry of Defense through JSC Garnizon (formerly Oboronservis) and JSC GUOV / ГУОВ, the Main Directorate for the Arrangement of Troops / Главное управление обустройства войск.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 22, 2022, DDoSecrets published 365,000 emails from Accent Capital, which was hacked by Anonymous. 365,000 emails from Accent Capital, a commercial real-estate investment firm. In contrast with many other real-estate investment firms, Accent Capital owns or is directly involved with the management of many of the properties its clients invest in.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On April 25, 2022, DDoSecrets published nearly 1,100,000 emails from ALET/АЛЕТ, which was hacked by Anonymous. Nearly 1.1 million emails from ALET / АЛЕТ, a customs broker for companies in the fuel and energy industries, handling exports and customs declarations for coal, crude oil, liquefied gases and petroleum products. ALET has worked with over 400 companies since 2011 to file over 119,000 customs declarations and has recommendations from Gazprom, Gazprom Neft and Bashneft. Approximately 75% of ALET's business comes from oil products, 10% from oil, and 9% from hydrocarbon products.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On May 5, 2022, DDoSecrets published roughly 480 gigabytes of files, emails and disk images from CorpMSP, which was hacked by the Anonymous aligned NB65. CorpMSP is a federal institution providing support to small and medium-sized businesses. The controlling shareholder of CorpMSP is the Russian Federation.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On May 11, 2022, DDoSecrets published over 466 gigabytes of emails from the Nikolai M. Knipovich Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO), which was hacked by Anonymous actors DepaixPorteur and B00daMooda. 466 GB of emails from the Polar Branch of the Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, whose studies determine the total allowable catch of different forms of commercial sea life.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On May 12, 2022, DDoSecrets published over 7,000 emails from the Achinsk City Government, which was hacked by Anonymous. Over 7,000 emails from the Achinsk city government.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On May 13, 2022, DDoSecrets published 116,500 emails from SOCAR Energoresource, which was hacked by Anonymous. 116,500 emails SOCAR Energoresource / ООО Сокар энергоресурс, which operates the Antipinsky Refinery and several oilfields. SOCAR Energoresource works directly with Gazprom, Rosneft and Lukoil and is partially owned by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR).


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On May 30, 2022, DDoSecrets published more than 184 gigabytes of emails from Metprom Group LLC, which was hacked by the Anonymous actors DepaixPorteur, B00daMooda, and Wh1t3Sh4d0w. Emails from a metallurgic engineering and investment group involved in dozens of projects with ArcelorMittal, PAO NLMK, EVRAZ group enterprises, PAO Mechel plants, PAO Severstal, Isfahan metallurgical plant, Helwan metallurgical plant and others.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On June 1, 2022, DDoSecrets published more than 1,000,000 emails from Vyberi Radio, which was hacked by Anonymous. 1.5 million emails from the Vyberi Radio / Выбери Радио group, which operates around 100 radio stations in 18 cities throughout Russia, with over 8 million listeners.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Over the death of Mahsa Amini, Anonymous took out Iranian websites on their word to "help the Iranian people".


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In response to the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China, Anonymous launched the "Operation White Paper", attacked and took down Chinese government controlled websites, and leaked some Chinese government officials' personal information.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In May 2011, the small group of Anons behind the HBGary Federal hack—including Tflow, Topiary, Sabu, and Kayla—formed the hacker group "Lulz Security", commonly abbreviated "LulzSec". The group's first attack was against Fox.com, leaking several passwords, LinkedIn profiles, and the names of 73,000 "X Factor" contestants. In May 2011, members of Lulz Security gained international attention for hacking into the American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) website. They stole user data and posted a fake story on the site that claimed that rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were still alive and living in New Zealand. LulzSec stated that some of its hacks, including its attack on PBS, were motivated by a desire to defend WikiLeaks and its informant Chelsea Manning.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In June 2011, members of the group claimed responsibility for an attack against Sony Pictures that took data that included "names, passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses and dates of birth for thousands of people." In early June, LulzSec hacked into and stole user information from the pornography website www.pron.com. They obtained and published around 26,000 e-mail addresses and passwords.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On June 14, 2011, LulzSec took down four websites by request of fans as part of their "Titanic Take-down Tuesday". These websites were "Minecraft", "League of Legends", "The Escapist", and IT security company "FinFisher". They also attacked the login servers of the multiplayer online game "EVE Online", which also disabled the game's front-facing website, and the "League of Legends" login servers. Most of the takedowns were performed with DDoS attacks.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: LulzSec also hacked a variety of government-affiliated sites, such as chapter sites of "InfraGard", a non-profit organization affiliated with the FBI. The group leaked some of InfraGard member e-mails and a database of local users. On June 13, LulzSec released the e-mails and passwords of a number of users of senate.gov, the website of the U.S. Senate.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On June 15, LulzSec launched an attack on cia.gov, the public website of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, taking the website offline for several hours with a distributed denial-of-service attack. On December 2, an offshoot of LulzSec calling itself LulzSec Portugal attacked several sites related to the government of Portugal. The websites for the Bank of Portugal, the Assembly of the Republic, and the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Development all became unavailable for a few hours.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On June 26, 2011, the core LulzSec group announced it had reached the end of its "50 days of lulz" and was ceasing operations. Sabu, however, had already been secretly arrested on June 7 and then released to work as an FBI informant. His cooperation led to the arrests of Ryan Cleary, James Jeffery, and others. Tflow was arrested on July 19, 2011, Topiary was arrested on July 27, and Kayla was arrested on March 6, 2012. Topiary, Kayla, Tflow, and Cleary pleaded guilty in April 2013 and were scheduled to be sentenced in May 2013. In April 2013, Australian police arrested the alleged LulzSec leader Aush0k, but subsequent prosecutions failed to establish police claims.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Beginning in June 2011, hackers from Anonymous and LulzSec collaborated on a series of cyber attacks known as "Operation AntiSec". On June 23, in retaliation for the passage of the immigration enforcement bill Arizona SB 1070, LulzSec released a cache of documents from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, including the personal information and home addresses of many law enforcement officers. On June 22, LulzSec Brazil took down the websites of the Government of Brazil and the President of Brazil. Later data dumps included the names, addresses, phone numbers, Internet passwords, and Social Security numbers of police officers in Arizona, Missouri, and Alabama. AntiSec members also stole police officer credit card information to make donations to various causes.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On July 18, LulzSec hacked into and vandalized the website of British newspaper "The Sun" in response to a phone-hacking scandal. Other targets of AntiSec actions have included FBI contractor ManTech International, computer security firm Vanguard Defense Industries, and defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, releasing 90,000 military e-mail accounts and their passwords from the latter.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In December 2011, AntiSec member "sup_g" (alleged by the U.S. government to be Jeremy Hammond) and others hacked Stratfor, a U.S.-based intelligence company, vandalizing its web page and publishing 30,000 credit card numbers from its databases. AntiSec later released millions of the company's e-mails to Wikileaks.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Since 2009, dozens of people have been arrested for involvement in Anonymous cyberattacks, in countries including the U.S., UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Turkey. Anons generally protest these prosecutions and describe these individuals as martyrs to the movement. The July 2011 arrest of LulzSec member Topiary became a particular rallying point, leading to a widespread "Free Topiary" movement.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: The first person to be sent to jail for participation in an Anonymous DDoS attack was Dmitriy Guzner, an American 19-year-old. He pleaded guilty to "unauthorized impairment of a protected computer" in November 2009 and was sentenced to 366 days in U.S. federal prison.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: On June 13, 2011, officials in Turkey arrested 32 individuals that were allegedly involved in DDoS attacks on Turkish government websites. These members of Anonymous were captured in different cities of Turkey including Istanbul and Ankara. According to "PC Magazine", these individuals were arrested after they attacked websites as a response to the Turkish government demand to ISPs to implement a system of filters that many have perceived as censorship.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Chris Doyon (alias "Commander X"), a self-described leader of Anonymous, was arrested in September 2011 for a cyberattack on the website of Santa Cruz County, California. He jumped bail in February 2012 and fled across the border into Canada.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In September 2012, journalist and Anonymous associate Barrett Brown, known for speaking to media on behalf of the group, was arrested hours after posting a video that appeared to threaten FBI agents with physical violence. Brown was subsequently charged with 17 offenses, including publishing personal credit card information from the Stratfor hack.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Several law enforcement agencies took action after Anonymous' Operation Avenge Assange. In January 2011, the British police arrested five male suspects between the ages of 15 and 26 with suspicion of participating in Anonymous DDoS attacks. During July 19–20, 2011, as many as 20 or more arrests were made of suspected Anonymous hackers in the US, UK, and Netherlands. According to the statements of U.S. officials, suspects' homes were raided and suspects were arrested in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington DC, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio. Additionally, a 16-year-old boy was held by the police in south London on suspicion of breaching the Computer Misuse Act 1990, and four were held in the Netherlands.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: AnonOps admin Christopher Weatherhead (alias "Nerdo"), a 22-year-old who had reportedly been intimately involved in organizing DDoS attacks during "Operation Payback", was convicted by a UK court on one count of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers in December 2012. He was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment. Ashley Rhodes, Peter Gibson, and another male had already pleaded guilty to the same charge for actions between August 2010 and January 2011.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Evaluations of Anonymous' actions and effectiveness vary widely. In a widely shared post, blogger Patrick Gray wrote that private security firms "secretly love" the group for the way in which it publicizes cyber security threats. Anonymous is sometimes stated to have changed the nature of protesting, and in 2012, "Time" called it one of the "100 most influential people" in the world.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: In 2012, Public Radio International reported that the U.S. National Security Agency considered Anonymous a potential national security threat and had warned the president that it could develop the capability to disable parts of the U.S. power grid. In contrast, CNN reported in the same year that "security industry experts generally don't consider Anonymous a major player in the world of cybercrime" due to the group's reliance on DDoS attacks that briefly disabled websites rather than the more serious damage possible through hacking. One security consultant compared the group to "a jewelry thief that drives through a window, steal jewels, and rather than keep them, waves them around and tosses them out to a crowd ... They're very noisy, low-grade crimes." In its "2013 Threats Predictions" report, McAfee wrote that the technical sophistication of Anonymous was in decline and that it was losing supporters due to "too many uncoordinated and unclear operations".


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Graham Cluley, a security expert for Sophos, argued that Anonymous' actions against child porn websites hosted on a darknet could be counterproductive, commenting that while their intentions may be good, the removal of illegal websites and sharing networks should be performed by the authorities, rather than Internet vigilantes.


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Some commentators also argued that the DDoS attacks by Anonymous following the January 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act protests had proved counterproductive. Molly Wood of CNET wrote that "[i]f the SOPA/PIPA protests were the Web's moment of inspiring, non-violent, hand-holding civil disobedience, #OpMegaUpload feels like the unsettling wave of car-burning hooligans that sweep in and incite the riot portion of the play." Dwight Silverman of the "Houston Chronicle" concurred, stating that "Anonymous' actions hurt the movement to kill SOPA/PIPA by highlighting online lawlessness." The Oxford Internet Institute's Joss Wright wrote that "In one sense the actions of Anonymous are themselves, anonymously and unaccountably, censoring websites in response to positions with which they disagree."


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Gabriella Coleman has compared the group to the trickster archetype and said that "they dramatize the importance of anonymity and privacy in an era when both are rapidly eroding. Given that vast databases track us, given the vast explosion of surveillance, there's something enchanting, mesmerizing and at a minimum thought-provoking about Anonymous' interventions". When asked what good Anonymous had done for the world, Parmy Olson replied:


title: Anonymous (hacker group)

text: Sam Esmail shared in an interview with "Motherboard" that he was inspired by Anonymous when creating the USA Network hacktivist drama, "Mr. Robot". Furthermore, "Wired" calls the "Omegas", a fictitious hacker group in the show, "a clear reference to the Anonymous offshoot known as LulzSec". A member of Anonymous called "Mr. Robot" "the most accurate portrayal of security and hacking culture ever to grace the screen". In the TV series "Elementary" a hacktivist collective called "Everyone" plays a recurring role; there are several hints and similarities to Anonymous.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Ingrid Bergman (29 August 191529 August 1982) was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films, television movies, and plays. With a career spanning five decades, she is often regarded as one of the most influential screen figures in cinematic history.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: According to the "St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture", upon her arrival in the U.S. Bergman quickly became "the ideal of American womanhood" and a contender for Hollywood's greatest leading actress. David O. Selznick once called her "the most completely conscientious actress" he had ever worked with. In 1999, the American Film Institute recognised Bergman as the fourth greatest female screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: She won numerous accolades, including three Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, four Golden Globe Awards, BAFTA Award and a Volpi Cup. She is one of only four actresses to have received at least three acting Academy Awards (only Katharine Hepburn has four).


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Born in Stockholm to a Swedish father and a German mother, Bergman began her acting career in Swedish and German films. Her introduction to the U.S. audience came in the English-language remake of "Intermezzo" (1939). Known for her naturally luminous beauty, she starred in "Casablanca" (1942) as Ilsa Lund, her most famous role, opposite Humphrey Bogart. Bergman's notable performances in the 1940s include the dramas "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1943), "Gaslight" (1944), "The Bells of St. Mary's" (1945), and "Joan of Arc" (1948), all of which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress; she won for "Gaslight". She made three films with Alfred Hitchcock: "Spellbound" (1945), with Gregory Peck, "Notorious" (1946), opposite Cary Grant and "Under Capricorn" (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: In 1950, she starred in Roberto Rossellini's "Stromboli", released after the revelation she was having an affair with Rossellini; that and her pregnancy prior to their marriage created a scandal in the U.S. that prompted her to remain in Europe for several years. During this time she starred in Rossellini's "Europa '51" and "Journey to Italy" (1954), now critically acclaimed, the former of which won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. She had a successful return to working for a Hollywood studio in "Anastasia" (1956), winning her second Academy Award for Best Actress. Soon after, she co-starred with Grant in the romance "Indiscreet" (1958). In 1969, she starred in the acclaimed and highly successful film "Cactus Flower". In later years, Bergman won her third Academy Award, this one for Best Supporting Actress, for her role in "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974). In 1978, she starred in Ingmar Bergman's (no relation) Swedish "Autumn Sonata" receiving her sixth Best Actress nomination. Bergman spoke five languages – Swedish, English, German, Italian and French – and acted in each.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: In her final role, she portrayed the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the television miniseries "A Woman Called Golda" (1982) for which she posthumously won her second Emmy Award for Best Actress. In 1974, Bergman discovered she was suffering from breast cancer but continued to work until shortly before her death on her sixty-seventh birthday.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Ingrid Bergman was born on 29 August 1915 in Stockholm, to a Swedish father, Justus Samuel Bergman (2 May 1871 – 29 July 1929), and his German wife, Frieda "Friedel" Henriette Auguste Louise (née Adler) Bergman (12 September 1884 – 19 January 1918), who was born in Kiel. Her parents married in Hamburg on 13 June 1907. She was named after Princess Ingrid of Sweden. Although she was raised in Sweden, she spent her summers in Germany and spoke fluent German.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman was raised an only child, as two older siblings had died in infancy before she was born. When she was


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: two and a half years old, her mother died. Justus Bergman had wanted his daughter to become an opera star and had her take voice lessons for three years. He sent her to the Palmgrenska Samskolan, a prestigious girls' school in Stockholm where Bergman was reportedly neither a good student nor popular.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Since Justus was a photographer, he loved to document his daughter's birthdays with his camera. He made his daughter one of his favorite photographic subjects. She enjoyed dancing, dressing up and acting in front of her father's lenses. "I was perhaps the most photographed child in Scandinavia", quipped Bergman in her later years. In 1929, when Bergman was around 14, her father died of stomach cancer. Losing her parents at such a young age was a trauma that Bergman later described as "living with an ache", an experience she was not even aware of.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: After her father's death, Bergman was sent to live with her paternal aunt, Ellen, who died of heart disease six months later. Bergman then lived with her maternal aunt Hulda and her husband Otto, who had five children of their own. She also visited her other maternal aunt, Elsa Adler, whom the young girl called "Mutti" (Mom) according to family lore. She later said she "knew from the beginning that [she] wanted to be an actress," sometimes wearing her deceased mother's clothing, and staging plays in her father's empty studio.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman spoke Swedish and German as first languages, English and Italian (acquired later, while living in the US and Italy), and French (learned in school). She acted in each of these languages at various times.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman received a scholarship to the state-sponsored Royal Dramatic Theatre School, where Greta Garbo had some years earlier earned a similar scholarship. After several months, she was given a part in a new play, "Ett Brott" ("A Crime"), written by Sigfrid Siwertz. This was "totally against procedure" at the school, where girls were expected to complete three years of study before getting such acting roles. During her first summer break, Bergman was hired by a Swedish film studio, which led her to leave the Royal Dramatic Theatre after just one year to work in films full-time.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman's first film experience was as an extra in the 1932 film "Landskamp", an experience she described as "walking on holy ground". Her first speaking role was a small part in "Munkbrogreven" (1934). Bergman played Elsa, a maid in a seedy hotel, being pursued by the leading man, Edvin Adolphson. Critics called her "hefty and sure of herself", and "somewhat overweight ... with an unusual way of speaking her lines". The unflatteringly striped costume that she wore may have contributed to the unfavorable comments regarding her appearance. Soon after, "Munkbrogreven", Bergman was offered a studio contract and placed under director Gustaf Molander.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman starred in "Ocean Breakers", in which she played a fisherman's daughter, and then in "Swedenhielms", where she had the opportunity to work alongside her idol Gösta Ekman. Next, she starred in "Walpurgis Night" (1935). She played Lena, a secretary in love with her boss, Johan, who is unhappily married. Throughout, Lena and the wife vie for Johan's affection, with the wife losing her husband to Lena at the end.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: In 1936, in "On the Sunny Side", Bergman was cast as an orphan from a good family who marries a rich older gentleman.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Also in 1936, she appeared in "Intermezzo", her first lead performance, where she was reunited with Gösta Ekman. This was a pivotal film for the young actress and allowed her to demonstrate her talent. Director Molander later said: "I created "Intermezzo" for her, but I was not responsible for its success. Ingrid herself made it successful." In 1938, she starred in "Only One Night", playing an upper-class woman living on a country estate. She didn't like the part, calling it "a piece of rubbish". She only agreed to appear if only she could star in the studio's next film project, "En kvinnas ansikte." She later acted in "Dollar" (1938), a Scandinivian screwball comedy. Bergman had just been voted Sweden's most admired movie star in the previous year and received top billing. "Svenska Dagbladet" wrote in its review: "Ingrid Bergman's feline appearance as an industrial tycoon's wife overshadows them all."


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: In her next film, a role created especially for her, "En kvinnas ansikte" ("A Woman's Face"), she played against her usual casting, as a bitter, unsympathetic character, whose face had been hideously burned. Anna Holm is the leader of a blackmail gang that targets the wealthy folk of Stockholm for their money and jewellery. The film required Bergman to wear heavy make-up, as well as glue, to simulate a burned face. A brace was put in place to distort the shape of one cheek. In her diary, she called the film "my own picture, my very own. I have fought for it.". The critics loved her performance, citing her as an actor of great talent and confidence. The film was awarded a Special Recommendation at the 1938 Venice Film Festival, for its "overall artistic contribution". It was remade in 1941 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with the same title, starring Joan Crawford.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman signed a three-picture contract with UFA, the German major film company, although she only made one picture. At the time, she was pregnant, but, nonetheless, she arrived in Berlin to begin filming "The Four Companions" (Die vier Gesellen) (1938), directed by Carl Froelich. The film was intended as a star vehicle to launch Bergman's career in Germany. In the film, she played one of four ambitious young women, attempting to set up a graphic design agency. The film was a light-hearted combination of comedy and romance. At first, she did not comprehend the political and social situation in Germany. Later, she said: "I saw very quickly that if you were anybody at all in films, you had to be a member of the Nazi party." By September, she was back in Sweden, and gave birth to her daughter, Pia. She was never to work in Germany again.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman appeared in eleven films in her native Sweden before the age of twenty-five. Her characters were always plagued with uncertainty, fear, and anxiety. The early Swedish films were not masterpieces, but she worked with some of the biggest talents in the Swedish film industry, such as Gösta Ekman, Karin Swanström, Victor Sjöström, and Lars Hanson. It showcased her immense acting talent, as a young woman with a bright future ahead of her.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman's first acting role in the United States was in "Intermezzo: A Love Story" by Gregory Ratoff which premiered on 22 September 1939. She accepted the invitation of Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, who wished her to star in the English-language remake of her earlier Swedish film "Intermezzo" (1936). Unable to speak English, and uncertain about her acceptance by the American audience, she expected to complete this one film and return home to Sweden. Her husband, Dr Petter Aron Lindström, remained in Sweden with their daughter Pia (born 1938). In "Intermezzo", she played the role of a young piano accompanist, opposite Leslie Howard, who played a famous violin virtuoso. Bergman arrived in Los Angeles on 6 May 1939 and stayed at the Selznick home until she could find another residence.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: According to Selznick's son Danny, who was a child at the time, his father had concerns about Bergman: "She didn't speak English, she was too tall, her name sounded too German, and her eyebrows were too thick". Bergman was soon accepted without having to modify her looks or name, despite some early suggestions by Selznick. "He let her have her way", notes a story in "Life" magazine. Selznick understood her fear of Hollywood make-up artists, who might turn her into someone she wouldn't recognize, and "instructed them to lay off". He was also aware that her natural good looks would compete successfully with Hollywood's "synthetic razzle-dazzle".


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: During the following weeks, while "Intermezzo" was being filmed, Selznick was also filming "Gone with the Wind". In a letter to William Hebert, his publicity director, Selznick described a few of his early impressions of Bergman:


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: "Intermezzo" became an enormous success and as a result, Bergman became a star. Ratoff, said, "She is sensational." This was the "sentiment of the entire set", wrote a retrospective, adding that workmen went out of their way to do things for her and that the cast and crew "admired the quick, alert concentration she gave to direction and to her lines". Film historian David Thomson notes that this became "the start of an astonishing impact on Hollywood and America", where her lack of make-up contributed to an "air of nobility". According to "Life", the impression that she left on Hollywood, after she returned to Sweden, was of a tall girl "with light brown hair and blue eyes who was painfully shy, but friendly, with a warm, straight, quick smile".


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Selznick appreciated her uniqueness. Bergman was hailed as a fine new talent, and received many positive reviews. "The New York Times" noted her "freshness and simplicity and natural dignity" and the maturity of her acting which was nonetheless, free of "stylistic traits - the mannerisms, postures, precise inflections - that become the stock in trade of the matured actress". Variety noted that she was warm and convincing, and provided an "arresting performance" and that her "charm, sincerity" ...and "infectious vivaciousness" would "serve her well in both comedy and drama". There was also recognition of her natural appearance, in contrast to other film actresses. "The New York Tribune" critic wrote: "Using scarcely any make-up, but playing with mobile intensity, she creates the character so vividly and credibility that it becomes the core of [the] narrative." Bergman made her stage debut in 1940 with "Liliom" opposite Burgess Meredith, at a time when she was still learning English. Selznick was worried that his new starlet's value would diminish if she received bad reviews. Brooks Atkinson of "The New York Times" reviewed that Bergman seemed at ease, and commanded the stage that evening. That same year she starred in "June Night" ("Juninatten"), a Swedish language drama film directed by Per Lindberg. She plays Kerstin, a woman who has been shot by her lover. The news reaches the national papers. Kerstin moves to Stockholm under the new name of Sara, but lives under the scrutiny and watchful eye of her new community. "Öresunds-Posten" wrote, "Bergman establishes herself as an actress belonging to the world elite."


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Bergman was loaned out of David O. Selznick's company, to appear in three films which were released in 1941. On 18 February, Robert Sherwood Productions' released her second collaboration with Gregory Ratoff, "Adam Had Four Sons." On 7 March, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released W. S. Van Dyke's "Rage in Heaven". On 12 August, Victor Fleming's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", another Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, had its New York opening. Bergman was supposed to play the "good girl" role of Dr Jekyll's fiancée but pleaded with the studio that she should play the "bad girl" Ivy, the saucy barmaid. Reviews noted that "she gave a finely-shaded performance". A New York Times review stated that "...the young Swedish actress proves again, that a shining talent can sometimes lift itself above an impossibly written role...". Another review said: "...she displays a canny combination of charm, understanding, restraint and sheer acting ability."


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: On 30 July 1941 at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, Bergman made her second stage appearance in "Anna Christie." She was praised for her performance as a whore in the play based on Eugene O'Neill's work. A San Francisco paper said she was as unspoiled as a fresh Swedish snowball. Selznick called her "The Palmolive Garbo", a reference to a popular soap, and a well-known Swedish actress of the time. Thornton Delaharty said, "Lunching with Ingrid is like sitting down to an hour or so of conversation with an intelligent orchid."


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: "Casablanca", by Michael Curtiz, opened on 26 November 1942. Bergman co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in the film; this remains her best-known role. She played the role of Ilsa, the former love of Rick Blaine and wife of Victor Laszlo, fleeing with Laszlo to the United States. The film premiered on 26 November 1942 at New York's Hollywood Theater. "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote, "The events are shot with sharp humor and delightful touches of political satire." It went into more general release, in January 1943."Casablanca" was not one of Bergman's favorite performances. "I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart." In later years, she stated, "I feel about "Casablanca" that it has a life of its own. There is something mystical about it. It seems to have filled a need, a need that was there before the film, a need that the film filled". Despite her personal views regarding her performance, Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" wrote that "... Bergman was surprisingly lovely, crisp and natural...and lights the romantic passages with a warm and genuine glow". Other reviewers said that she "[plays] the heroine with...appealing authority and beauty" and "illuminates every scene in which she appears" and compared her to "a youthful Garbo."


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: "For Whom the Bell Tolls" had its New York premiere on 14 July 1943. With "Selznick's steady boosting", she played the part of Maria, it was also her first color film. For the role, she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. The film was adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel of the same title and co-starred Gary Cooper. When the book was sold to Paramount Pictures, Hemingway stated that "Miss Bergman, and no one else, should play the part". His opinion came from seeing her in her first American role, "Intermezzo". They met a few weeks later, and after studying her, he declared, "You "are" Maria!". James Agee, writing in "The Nation", said Bergman..."bears a startling resemblance to an imaginable human being; she really knows how to act, in a blend of poetic grace with quiet realism, which almost never appears in American pictures." He speaks movingly of her character's confession of her rape, and her scene of farewell, "which is shattering to watch". Agee believed that Bergman has truly studied what Maria might feel and look like in real life, and not in a Hollywood film. Her performance is both "devastating and wonderful to see..."


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: "Gaslight" opened on 4 May 1944. Bergman won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. Under the direction of George Cukor, she portrayed a "wife driven close to madness" by her husband, played by Charles Boyer. The film, according to Thomson, "was the peak of her Hollywood glory." Reviewers noted her sympathetic and emotional performance, and that she exercised restraint, by not allowing emotion to "slip off into hysteria". "The New York Journal-American" called her "one of the finest actresses in filmdom" and said that "she flames in passion and flickers in depression until the audience - becomes rigid in its seats".


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: "The Bells of St. Mary's" premiered on 6 December 1945. Bergman played a nun opposite Bing Crosby, for which she received her third consecutive nomination for Best Actress. Crosby plays a priest who is assigned to a Roman Catholic school where he conflicts with its headmistress, played by Bergman. Reviewer Nathan Robin said: 'Crosby's laconic ease brings out the impishness behind Bergman's fine-china delicacy, and Bergman proves a surprisingly spunky and spirited comic foil for Crosby'. The film was the biggest box office hit of 1945.


title: Ingrid Bergman

text: Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" premiered on 28 December 1945. In "Spellbound", Bergman played Dr. Constance Petersen, a psychiatrist whose analysis could determine whether or not Dr. Anthony Edwardes, played by Gregory Peck, is guilty of murder. Artist Salvador Dalí was hired to create a dream sequences but much of what had been shot was cut by Selznick. During the film, she had the opportunity to appear with Michael Chekhov, who was her acting coach during the 1940s. This would be the first of three collaborations she had with Hitchcock.