As discussed in my previous post that Anonymous hactivist group keeps on looking for ways to grab attention, here we have one more instance of the same instinct.

Anonymous is quite interested in the cables released by WikiLeaks and their work, but not so happy with their pace, and this is the reason some members of the Anonymous collective has launched a WikiLeaks-like site called Par:AnoIA. The Potentially Alarming Research: Anonymous Intelligence Agency (Par:AnoIA) was launched back in March this year, where an Anonymous group hosts data leaks, with an aim to curate and present content to an interested public. Unlike WikiLeaks, Paranoia does not gather the data itself and relies on the submissions of the Anonymous community.

“The reason no one cares about these leaks, as a general rule of thumb, is that they can’t do anything with [them],” said a Paranoia anon volunteering on document processing for the project in an online chat with Wired. “Basically, [we’re] making it accessible to anyone that wants to do something with it, in a proper usable format.”

So far, Paranoia website is hosting the Austrian Scientology emails, an anonymous arrest tracker, a browsable archive of the HBGary mails, a proxy for the Pirate Bay (to bypass filters) and a pirated copy of Parmy Olson’s book, We Are Anonymous.

This is not the first time that Anonymous is trying to overtake something (like WikiLeaks) in the virtual world. Another recent attempt was to replace the use of Pastebin for releasing sensitive information like manifestos, articles of leaked data, and evidence of past exploits, in which it ultimately failed! The group launched a project called “AnonPaste” in a joint agreement between Anonymous and the People’s Liberation Front. Together, they also issued a joint statement, called Pastebin as ‘infamous’ and accusing it of censorship. Here is a glimpse of that statement:

“As many might be aware, PasteBin has been in the news lately for making some rather shady claims as to what they are willing to censor, and when they are willing to give up IP addresses to the authorities. And as a recent leak of private E-Mails show clearly, PasteBin is not only willing to give up IP addresses to governments – but apparently has already given many IPs to at least one private security firm. And these leaked E-Mail’s also revealed a distinct animosity towards Anonymous. And so the PLF and Anonymous have teamed up to offer a paste service truly free of all such nonsense.”

“Although these are largely attention-grabbing acts, and serve to faction Anonymous, they might be seen as a cultural initiative within the hacktivist collective towards creative and public organization work,” says Kyt Dotson, Editor of HackANGLE. “However, noting the lack of success of few things built by the collective to retain any permanence, this may yet be a sand castle against a rising tide of future disinterest.”