Three weeks after the hacker group Anonymous brought down HBGary’s website and published thousands of company emails, the internet security firm CEO has now resigned.
Aaron Barr has had a bad month. On February 6th, Anonymous breached the website and internal servers of HBGary, posted an image with a press release, and then published tens of thousands of the company’s emails on WikiLeaks. Not only that, but the hacker group singled out CEO Aaron Barr by hacking his Twitter account to broadcast his home address, cell phone number and social security number. After the content of the exposed emails were examined, HBGary was implicated in a proposal to discredit WikiLeaks and independent journalist Glenn Greenwald from Salon on behalf of a major American bank (read: Bank of America). The whole ordeal has proven too much for Aaron Barr, who tendered his resignation as CEO of HBGary today in direct response to the attacks.
“I need to focus on taking care of my family and rebuilding my reputation,” Barr said today. “It’s been a challenge to do that and run a company. And, given that I’ve been the focus of much of bad press, I hope that, by leaving, HBGary and HBGary Federal can get away from some of that. I’m confident they’ll be able to weather this storm.”
Given that it was Barr’s comments appearing in an article in the Financial Times that spurred Anonymous’ attack, it seems apropos that he is the one to take the fall. Barr said that he had collected the real names and locations of the upper echelon of Anonymous’ management. The problem, as Barr soon found out, is Anonymous calls themselves that for a reason: they will protect their identities viciously. You mess with the bull, you get the horns.
Or as Stephen Colbert put it, Aaron Barr put his penis into a hornet’s nest. Of course, Colbert’s researchers also dug up the fact that Barr plays WoW and has a level 80 Night Elf Druid named Sevyrnsten on the Velen server. Knowing that Barr is a fellow gamer does make me a little sad that his life was ruined by Anonymous.
But only a little bit.
Source: Threat Post
