The Anonymous "hacktivist" collective, known as much for its self-branding as its anything-goes, anti-authoritarian sense of online comeuppance, first came to public attention in January 2008. The occasion was an internal Scientology video starrin

The Anonymous "hacktivist" collective, known as much for its self-
branding as its anything-goes, anti-authoritarian sense of online
comeuppance, first came to public attention in January 2008. The
occasion was an internal Scientology video starring Tom Cruise, which
had been leaked to YouTube. The church, saying that the video was
copyrighted, requested that YouTube remove it. Members of Anonymous,
however, took issue with that request, and as part of what it dubbed
"Project Chanology," reportedly began launching distributed denial-of-
service (DDoS) attacks against Scientology websites, blanketing church
centers with prank phone calls and faxes, and "doxing" the church by
releasing its sensitive documents into the public domain, for example
via peer-to-peer networks.
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