Is Anonymous on the verge of civil war?

A group claiming to speak for Anonymous has released a video declaring it plans to ‘kill’ Facebook on November 5th – but the actions seem to have revealed a division in the hacking group’s policy makers.

Scheduling the Facebook attack on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot is presumably no coincidence. Anonymous often uses the face masks made famous in the comic and film V for Vendetta, which heavily references the folklore.

A video declaring the group’s intent to take down the social networking site appeared on YouTube – you can see it here.

It claims Facebook immorally passes on confidential information to governments, including autocratic regimes, and that we will be thankful in the future that it was ‘killed’.

The video was initially called out as a fake by security big shots such as Eugene Kaspersky, founder of Kaspersky Labs.

However a statement from Anonymous’ Twitter account seemed to verify the attack was real, but that it was being perpetrated by a rogue element within the group.

It read:

#OpFacebook is being organised by some Anons. This does not necessarily mean that all of #Anonymous agrees with it.

The organisation, while by its nature is fairly loosely knit, has at least appeared to have a fairly common anti-establishment agenda.

However this one seems to have split Anonymous – and remember this is the group that seemed pretty unanimous even when going after the FBI and other hugely powerful government bodies.

‘Killing’ Facebook might be a tall order, since the social networking site has something like 30,000 servers propping up its network.

But any attack will first have to get past George Hotz, who now works for Facebook’s security division. You might remember he was the fulcrum of the entire Anonymous versus Sony affair earlier this year. Anonymous launched attacks on Sony in retaliation for the firm taking Hotz to court over file sharing.

It’s a small world.