Anonymous release special ‘fully loaded’ linux operating system

Anonymous have released a new operating system based around Linux which offers a lot of security and sniffing tools. According to reports, more than 30,000 people have downloaded it already. Interestingly however, this appears to have been created by a few members, and the official Anonymous group are distancing themselves from the release.

AnonOps have posted on their twitter page which says that the release is infected.

The operating system isn't hard to find, anyone can snag it from the Source Forge channel, which hosts a variety of open projects. We would like to add however that we haven't tried this ourselves, so there is a chance it could be risky.

The 1.5GB download is formed around Ubuntu code, a great Linux operating system. In a rather clever move, the coders of the Anonymous version have said ‘not to use it to destroy webpages'. They say it can be used for educational purposes and to check the security of web pages.

AnonOps claim the operating system is infected, but the creators of the OS say that is not true and it contains ‘no viruses'.

The BBC report that Rik Ferguson, director of Trend Micro's European security research said it was a “a functional OS with a bunch of pre-installed tools that can be used for things like looking for [database] vulnerabilities or password cracking.”

Sophos senior researcher Graham Cluley said “Who would want to put their trust in a piece of unknown software written by unknown people on a webpage that they don't know is safe or not?”.

We would argue that many people will take the risk on a secondary box of no importance.

Kitguru says: Is this something you would use?

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