In 2010, Aaron Barr, CEO of HBGary Federal, alleged that he could exploit
social media to gather information about
hackers. partly by using
IRC,
Facebook,
Twitter, and by
social engineering. In the e-mails, Barr explained that he identified his list of suspected Anonymous "members" by tracing connections through social media, while his main programmer criticized this methodology. On 5–6 February 2011, Anonymous compromised the HBGary website, copied tens of thousands of documents from both HBGary Federal and HBGary, Inc., posted tens of thousands of both companies' emails online, and usurped Barr's Twitter account in apparent revenge. Anonymous also claimed to have wiped Barr's
iPad remotely.
Content of the emails Some of the documents taken by Anonymous show HBGary Federal was working on behalf of
Bank of America to respond to
WikiLeaks' planned release of the bank's internal documents. As a means of undermining Wikileaks, Aaron Barr suggested faking documents to damage Wikileaks' reputation and conducting "cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters. This would kill the project". He also suggested pressuring journalist
Glenn Greenwald and other supporters of
Wikileaks, who, Barr suggested, would choose to abandon support for Wikileaks in order to preserve their careers. In the emails, two employees of HBGary referenced a blog post that endorsed manipulating translation software in order to 'mitigate' damaging content within information leaks. Emails indicate
Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and the law firm Hunton & Williams, which was acting for
Bank of America at the recommendation of the
US Justice Department, • 28 February 2011: Aaron Barr announced his resignation from HBGary Federal to "focus on taking care of my family and rebuilding my reputation." • 1 March 2011: 17 members of the
United States Congress called for a congressional investigation for possible violation of federal law by Hunton & Williams and "Team Themis" (the partnership between Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal). • 16 March 2011: The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities asked the Defense Department and the National Security Agency to provide any contracts with HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies for investigation.
Astroturfing It has been reported that HBGary Federal was contracted by the US government to develop
astroturfing software which could create an "army" of multiple fake social media profiles.
Malware development HBGary had made numerous threats of cyber-attacks against WikiLeaks. The hacked emails revealed HBGary Inc. was working on the development of a new type of
Windows rootkit, code-named
Magenta, that would be "undetectable" and "almost impossible to remove." In October 2010, Greg Hoglund proposed to Barr creating "a large set of unlicensed
Windows 7 themes for video games and movies appropriate for the Middle East & Asia" which "would contain back doors" as part of an ongoing campaign to attack support for WikiLeaks. == Acquisition by ManTech International ==