Community:VGRC/Anonymous vs Shaun Barratt

Close to the end of July 2007 (a week or so after the glorious launch of ZeldaInformer) a mysterious person had broken into a moderator's account on VGRC and deleted a good deal of the posts from the forums. The events that ensued eventually entangled multiple parties and had an impact on a handful of websites.

The Cause
Mere days after an unrelated attack by 'Anonymous' on Zelda Universe, as well as other attacks on The Hylia and Zelda Dungeon days prior, posts started vanishing en masse from the VGRC Forums mere minutes after VGRC owner Captain Cornflake announced he was heading out to get some work done. While then inexperienced site staff raced to figure out what exactly was going on, roughly half the boards posts (including everything from the hosted ZeldaInformer forums) were wiped out before the attack could be stopped. Nobody had taken credit for the attack, and people began to assume that 420chan and Anonymous had targeted VGRC in its campaign against Zelda fansites, despite the fact VGRC had been serving as a shelter for many a /b/tard.

When the Captain returned, he knew for a fact that it couldn't have been Anon, as Anon never attacks their own. Especially not the site of a loyal /b/tard and /i/nsurgent. Running through the admin logs on the forums, he found out somebody had broken into Yami's mod account to do the damage, and pulled the IP address from the logs for examination. Leminnes (who at that time was still a mod on ZU) ran some searches in ZU's logs and found ISP and hostmask matches with "Windeh," a ZU member and regular in the VGRC and ZU chat rooms. The hostmask of the IP also directly matched Wind's hostmask off of Gnug-IRC.

Of course, Wind wasn't to know that just yet, and in the meantime, Capn and the rest of the VGRC crew privy to this information pretended to act like they didn't know Wind was responsible. In the meantime, Wind was happy to think he had gone scot-free, going as far as to post on his blog how 420chan had attacked ZU and VGRC.

The Plan
Immediately, VGRC called up its allies from the /i/nsurgency: An Anon-run stronghold had not only been attacked, but the attacker tried to spark a civil war by turning Anons against each other. For that, he must pay.

In the following days, a VGRC and Anon run chat room had opened up in an Anon-run IRC network to focus on the Wind issue. Starting by talking to his friends and running record searches on domains he owned, they were able to dig up not only his name (Shaun Barratt) but his cell phone number, home address, school name and address and more. Great Justice was to take place.

The Judgement
While judgement was delayed, the following conversation opened up about the taunting that was going on:

''[04:47]  hey ''[04:48] seriously, any reason for that? ''[04:49] im not retarded. we've all known it was you from like, right after it happened ''[04:49] to be expected when you're too much of a dumbass to use a proxy ''[04:49] *to not use [04:50]  i didn't use a proxy because i didn't want to [04:50]  i know what cgi proxies are, too. [04:50] especially when we have people in zu who are more than happy cross-check ips and hostmasks with us [04:51]  the reason i did it is because of the repeated way people try me. ''[04:51]  my motto is 'treat me like shit, i treat you like shit.' ''[04:51]  capn, don't try me. ''[04:51] when have i tried you before this? ''[04:51]  it's not you. you're a fine person. ''[04:52] yet you do it to my fucking site ''[04:52]  someone on VGRC has given, probably an anon, my phone number. ''[04:52]  and they repeatedly harass me. ''[04:52]  i got called at 4 and 9 this morning. ''[04:52]  i get the same things, too. ''[04:52] yeah. you're up on 420 over this. ''[04:52]  and because all of the members on your site decide to repeatedly insult me. ''[04:53] and it certainly hasnt been on the site ''[04:53] the site had nothing to do with whatever this drama was ''[04:54]  but you still have members who, in the chat, decide to fuck around. ''[04:54]  listen, if there's a solution you want, then give it to me. ''[04:54] http://www.not420chan.com/i/res/25714.html [04:54] enjoy it.

The 420chan link mentioned in the conversation (now dead) was the first of many Shaun-centered threads in /i/, and in it discussion was already well underway.

Immediately, the Barratt household was flooded with pizza and chinese deliveries, taxicabs and limos showing up to pick up the Barratts and every other business in the Maltby/Rotherham area that would send people to his house. Of course, this was only the beginning.

Within days, the now massive IRC channel managed to break into his Gmail account, giving Anon free access to nearly all of Wind's accounts on the internet. The troops immediately spread out, spamming under his accounts on various forums, harassing people on his contact lists, and breaking into sites he had staff powers on. A Pokemon fan forum was soon wiped out, and eventually Zelda Oracles was hit, having its entire forums and news system wiped. (Though it should be noted that VGRC had nothing to do with that particular hit)

Eventually, after masquerading as Wind through enough of his screenames, Anon was able to get the names of his mother and aunt, eventually finding the holy grail of the raid: His home phone number. Needless to say, many prank phone calls from Anon ensued.

The Aftermath
Having exploited every possible resource, a round of drinks was shared and victory declared. Anon moved onto their next target, and VGRC went back to business as usual. Shaun vanished from the internet for a few months, before resurfacing on ZU where he now keeps a relatively low profile.

Zelda Oracles, showcasing how reckless the operation had gotten, spiraled downwards until it went offline in September. However, it has since relaunched and is now back online.