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Bank of America's ill considered cyber war against the hacking non-group Anonymous (who have sided with wikileaks in their desire to keep the internet free of corporate intervention) has to be this years best private sector blowbacks.

The data intelligence firms Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal and Berico Technologies, have all begged Anonymous for forgiveness after they helped to concoct a plan for a coordinated cyber assault against Wikileaks to plant false information about Bank of America so Bank of America could attack it's own disinformation campaign and smokescreen any real criticism of their leaked secrets.

The plan was revealed after members of "Anonymous" hacked the email account of HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr and published its contents of their plans to lie and manipulate disinformation for Bank of America onto the web.

The presentation recommends a multi-pronged assault on WikiLeaks including deliberately submitting false documents to the website to undermine its credibility, pioneering cyber attacks to expose who the leakers to WikiLeaks are and going after sympathetic journalists.

One of those mentioned is Glenn Greenwald, a pro-WikiLeaks reporter in the US. Writing on Salon.com, Greenwald said his initial reaction to was "to scoff at its absurdity".

"But after learning a lot more over the last couple of days," he added, "I now take this more seriously - not in terms of my involvement but the broader implications this story highlights. For one thing, it turns out that the firms involved are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the US Government and the nation's largest private corporations."

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