All of this is known only because various members of Anonymous took exception to earlier this month in which HBGF spook-in-chief Aaron Barr bragged about and other publicly available information. He even claimed to know the real identities of the group's "leaders."

Except he was dead wrong.

ITworld's spoke with one of those accused of being not only part of Anonymous, but its alleged kingpin, Commander X. It turns out that Ben de Vries is just an organic gardener in San Francisco who happened to run a Facebook group where alleged Anons liked to gather. Yet that was enough for HBGF's Barr to conclude that de Vries was the mysterious X and to discuss with his boss submitting that info to the FBI.

A handful of commenters weighed in saying that they too had been named by Barr, incorrectly, as members of Anonymous -- so much for Barr's theory that he could penetrate the innards of a supersecret org through the magic of social media and his own innate brilliance.

Ars Technica, which has been all over this story in a way nobody else can touch, has . It used a standard weapon from the hacker arsenal, an SQL Injection, to penetrate HBGF's custom content management system. That in turn allowed access to HBGF's database of user names and passwords, which the Anons quickly cracked. It turns out that the principals at HBGF used simple passwords -- and recycled them for Twitter, Facebook, email, and so on.