Phineas Fisher

Phineas Fisher (also known as Phineas Phisher, Subcowmandante Marcos) is an unidentified hacktivist and anarchist. Notable hacks include the surveillance company Gamma International, Hacking Team, the Sindicat De Mossos d'Esquadra (SME, union of the Catalonian police force) and the ruling Turkish Justice and Development Party, three of which were later made searchable by WikiLeaks.

Typically, each public attack is followed by a communique containing information about the breach, technical information in a how-to format, ASCII art, poetry and leftist and anarchist propaganda. In 2019, Fisher offered hackers a bounty of up to US$100,000 for successful hacktivism and the following year claimed to have paid out US$10,000.

In 2014, Gamma International, most known for the FinFisher malware was hacked and a 40 gigabyte dump of information was released detailing Gamma's client lists, price lists, source code, details about the effectiveness of the FinFisher malware, user and support documentation and a list of classes/tutorials. Months later Fisher released the first document of the HackBack! series named HackBack!: DIY Guide for those without the patience to wait for whistleblowers which claimed responsibility for the Gamma International hack as well as giving detailed instructions aimed at beginners on how to repeat similar attacks, intending to "Inform and inspire you to go out and hack shit".

After the release, WikiLeaks rereleased it as part of SpyFiles 4.

Fisher in 2015 claimed to have successfully breached Hacking Team. In the communique, which was this time released in Spanish, Fisher claimed to have breached the network through a 0-day exploit from a bug found in a SonicWall SSL-VPN embedded network device. The exploit was subsequently patched by SonicWall before it was made public by security researcher and ex LulzSec member Darren 'Pwnsauce' Martyn who stated "The only recommendation I have if you use these products is to unplug them, douse them in kerosene, and set them on fire. It is the only way to be safe from something seemingly developed with this level of negligence."

After the release of the files, WikiLeaks rereleased the Hacking Team emails.

On May 15, 2016, Phineas Fisher breached and leaked data from Sindicat De Mossos d'Esquadra (SME), the police union of the Catalonian police force. Fisher uploaded a video to YouTube of the attack and a link to a cache of personal data of officers such as full names, addresses, bank accounts and telephone numbers for more than five thousand officers, a quarter of the total force. The Minister of the Interior, Jordi Jané i Guasch stated that the leak "does not compromise the work or investigations of the agents, but does compromise their privacy". Fisher claimed that Ciutat Morta, a Catalan documentary investigating the 4F case, inspired her to commit the attack.

Fisher uploaded a thirty-nine minute video after the attack to YouTube. The video consists of the attacker probing an SME website with publicly available open-source tools before using an SQL injection to dump the data. Whilst the attacker waits they show the viewer images of people who have allegedly been victim to police brutality at the hands of Mossos, a woman blinded at the 2012 Barcelona General Strike. The video is set to a soundtrack themed around anti-police and overtly 'revolutionary' English and Spanish language hip-hop.