DepartmentofDD

Overview

Department of Defense, abbreviated to DD, was an internet hacking group founded in 2005 by OpVac, vasiyet, and Tunnel:48. Origins of this group date back to Habbo Hotel military styled agencies. DD was created in effect to provide warfare for the military USM, also known as United States Military, which would find itself engaged in many conflicts through other agencies on the website. DD would later usurp USM and USM would further be referred to as a part of DD, rather than vice versa. OpVac was also the founder of USM, which would later be expanded upon and create its own forum.

Throughout the short months of its existence, the DD forum would gain some traffic and approximately see an average of 10 new unique users signing up a day. This became a turning point for DD, and major re-construction of the hierarchy was to take place in order for the hierarchy to remain competent during the influx of such a high number of new members. With the three administrators also being the founding figures of DD, OpVac, Vasiyet and Tunnel:48 would oversee the organisations entire operations, with some further unspecified members being a part of the staff, being responsible for moderation. Staff would be referred to as Senior DD members, rather than "staff" themselves. It remains unknown how to obtain the status of Senior DD, but was rumoured to consist of a trial in which a member must prove their worth by attacking rivals from other forums or groups.

Through the use of DD's new forum, the group gained further attention from overseas. Russian nationalists became a part of DD's organisation, and DD is rumoured to have recruited Russian nationalists into a sub-group, referred to in passing as "intel", short for "intelligence". The existence of this group has never been confirmed, and every mention of the sub-group is followed by very little credible evidence to the group existing. It is thought that Intel was led by Russian nationalists, and consisted of Russian nationals only.

Intelligence

Though the existence of the group itself was never proven, Intelligence was credited for a number of catastrophic attacks against rivalling groups. It is alleged that Intelligence members would join a rival group months before DD even engages in conflict, in order to gather information - or as DD would refer to it, as intel - and gather personal information on their targets. This would, ultimately result in DD more often than not starting conflict with the upper hand.

As DD consisted of members all across the globe, it was alleged that Intelligence recruited either only Russian speaking, or Russian nationalists. This became a rumour created by former DD members who joined Red Shadow, a rival group. A DD member by the alias of Daz was accused on multiple occasions of being the sole leader of Intelligence, but others believed a user by the name of Verol was responsible. It remains unclear how many, if any leaders Intelligence ever had, let alone how many members it may have accumulated over the years.

420chan

The first large scale movement of DD was the beef with 420chan. With Kirtaner claiming he ran and founded Anonymous, DD found it a pivoting point in which they could debunk the whole definition of anonymity for Kirtaner, alongside his members. DD was credited for doxxing Kirtaner, as well as some other key members of 420chan at that time, such as Spardot. Trolling would ensue, and some members went to such extremes as to impersonate the FBI, and email Kirtaners hosting for 420chan requesting the site be shut down. This became a famous event in DD, because the hosting service Kirtaner used forwarded the request to Kirtaner, which he then believed was legitimate.

Kirtaner would go on for years, and even to this day, continues to believe the FBI and government are watching him closely. In 2011, Tunnel:48 sat on Kirtaner's lawn in an FBI jacket and hat, and Kirtaner has since believed he was a legitimate FBI agent. Copy-cat crimes have been committed since then, with many other DD members in the local area attending "stake outs" outside of Kirtaner's house. Something he Tweeted about profusely, on his Twitter.

420chan remains a community today, with their Discord server now being notorious for encouraging underage children to use drugs, and discouraging already addicted members from seeking help.

The First Great Conflict

After DD had gained some traction, and even some ground for the relentless and continued harassment of 420chan, and other similar forums such as 4chan, DD would eventually become split in two. Many of the senior DD members no longer wished to participate alongside DD, and split off into their own group. This left DD unstable for some time, due to those Senior DD members having had used their influence months prior to splitting off into their own group to take as many people from DD with them as possible. This great conflict is considered by former DD members as the only conflict DD ever had, and is referred to commonly amongst DD members, former and current as the DD vs. RS war.

It would be in this conflict that many of DD's more influential members would make their reputations in attempt to disassemble Red Shadow, and bring about their destruction. At its peak, DD would maintain around 2,500 members in total, with roughly 600 senior DD members, and 3 administrators.

Red Shadow

After the split between DD and those senior members who left, the group which spawned as a result of this split would become referring themselves as "Red Shadow". This was apparently decided upon as to bring back what DD was once created for - electronic warfare. The same has symbolic meaning. The word red, symbolising blood, violence, and chaos, and the word shadow, a subtle nod to what DD once was.

Red Shadow proved difficult to combat for DD, and DD proved difficult to combat for Red Shadow. This would result in years of static conflict. Both groups would end up in a stalemate, with one not being able to outdo the other, no matter what. With Red Shadow being a group with decentralized leadership, it was never clear to DD who their leaders, figureheads or prominent members were for long enough to make a damaging attack.

The fall of Red Shadow

After years of no progress between the two rivalling groups, on May 17th, 2017, DD managed to make a breakthrough. This took Red Shadow by surprise, and remains as the only evidence that the group Intelligence may exist.

On May 17th, 2017, The Red Shadow Discord Bot was compromised and every channel in the Discord server had been deleted. The name of the bot, and every role in the server had been changed to "Long Live Intel". It remains unclear how the bot was compromised, if at all. With rumours in circulation that many members of Intelligence were actually in Red Shadow on behalf of DD for years prior to this event in order to bring Red Shadow down in a swift blow, it would be an uncertain statement to confirm if Intel or DD even had anything to do with this event.

GitHub accounts of the Red Shadow members were compromised, which would result in leaks of malware samples, as well as doxxes on their senior-most and most prominent, and active members were released by routine. This routine would consist of 5 a day, for a week - this event would be referred to as "The Mass Grave". It was believed that Nocturnal, a sub-group of DD was responsible for these high-effort and consistent doxxes. This has not since been confirmed.

The Red Shadow forum was also defaced, with the web page being changed to racial slurs directed at some of the Red Shadow members, and also stated on the web page: "Hey, Red Shadow. We took your database, too. Love, Vasiyet" - This would be commonly referred to a turning point in which both Red Shadow, and even some DD members were to realise that DD had this attack planned weeks, potentially months prior to executing it. This would mark the end of Red Shadow, as the website was never fully restored, and instead the home page was replaced with a letter of retirement from their senior most members.

At its peak, Red Shadow maintained an estimated 800 - 2,000 members.

Post-Conflict DD

After the conflict between DD and Red Shadow had come to an end over the years, DD would find itself unable to continue running without someone to fight. This would later result in in-fighting between different factions of DD, which soon became uncontrollable for the administrators to maintain. Eventually, DD became nothing more than a server, which is now jokingly referred to as "no mans land" by former DD members.

Change of Leadership

With many members now growing old and no longer wishing to continue DD as an organisation, the group began to slow down drastically, as its Discord server would slowly become more and more social, and less exclusive. Former members of RS joined, and would engage in conversation without drama. This marked the end of DD and its campaign of electronic warfare. Soon, the original administration found they no longer wished to take charge of DD, and vasiyet alongside Tunnel:48 quit.

During the absence of Tunnel:48 and vasiyet, OpVac decided he would be leaving as well. He would leave another member, Ryanf, in charge of DD.

The Great Ban, and Ryanf's leadership

After Ryanf received control of DD, the power he held over the server clearly took control of him, through his actions. He began extorting members of DD, namely women, and some being underage, into sending him explicit images of themselves. Once he received these images, he would then use them as further ammunition to extort and blackmail them further into doing his bidding. If they refused, he would have them doxxed and their images would be sent to their school friends, family, and in some instances, even their local communities via Facebook.

These actions would unfortunately gain Discord's attention after the server was reported by members within. The server, alongside many of its members, was banned. It's unknown how many unique users were banned in the event, though it is known some participants of the server refused to re-join the platform for their own reasons.

Ryanf remains in control of DD, though there is only an estimated 100 active unique users, as of May 2021.

Notable Members

Throughout the years, DD had many members whom were recognisable through their talents and capability at combating their rivals through electronic warfare. Those whom are most notable are:

OpVac, Tunnel:48, vasiyet, Ganaram, Cupcakes..., Daz, Aestrol, Lucifist, WahankeTheGreat, Koosh, K3nji, Witchman05, Funshine, Motolee28, Shanf, Dethrone, Unorth0doxy, Padrino, Verol

Many of these members still persist and remain active on platforms such as Discord, and some image boards such as 4chan. None remain a part of DD.