Bastet (hacktivist)

”Bastet” is the screen name of a pseudonymous hacktivist. They started hacking spam and scam sites in 2013, and formed Team Bastet with several other pseudonymous hackers in 2015. “Bastet” is actually the third person to use this screen name. Their real name and identity remains unknown, but they have admitted to being female and living in the Federated States of Micronesia. They may actually be multiple people sharing an identity.

Prior Bastets
Bastet is the name of an Egyptian cat goddess. The original “Bastet” was active from 1996-2002, and mainly targeted spammers on newsgroups, as well as phishing and “joe-job” email scammers. This person retired in 2002 in a newsgroup post, due to the changing climate of the Internet.

The second “Bastet” was active from 2005-2009. This person mainly exposed pedophiles, also defacing websites of groups like NAMBLA, and assisting Chris Hansen in sting operations. However, they also continued the legacy of “counterattacks” against spammers. On a LiveJournal post from 2006, this person cited the original Bastet as their inspiration. This person retired in 2009 in a LiveJournal post, saying that “it started as a hobby, but became more of a chore”.

“Some Guys from Micronesia”
In 2008, a group called “Some Guys from Micronesia” was formed. The group acted as a white-hat hacker group, and mainly committed attacks against spammers, scammers, and malware writers. The identities of the members were unknown, except that they were “two guys and one girl”. The following is a sample of their defacement, from a phishing site hijacked circa 2011: hacked by some guys from micronesia. if you are seeing this, then we just stopped you from being “phished”. that email wasn’t really from paypal. it was a scam. The group disbanded in late 2012 due to “personal issues” between the members. Their website someguys.fm later redirected to bastet.fm (Bastet’s personal homepage), and now redirects to the Team Bastet webpage.

Bastet
After Some Guys from Micronesia disbanded, one of their members continued the operation on their own, initially under the name “some girl from micronesia”. In May 2013, the first defacement credited to “Bastet” occurred, and the dormant @someguysfm Twitter account (formed in March 2009) was renamed to @bastethax. In a 2016 interview, “Bastet” claims that: “I read about the original Bastet hacker, who also mainly targeted scammers. I decided to adopt the identity, because it sounded cooler than ‘some girl from Micronesia’.”

This iteration of “Bastet” inspired several copycats, such as “Sekhmet” and “Nefertem”, also mainly targeting spammers and scammers. In 2015, “Bastet” themselves and several of these copycats, along with “two guys from Micronesia” (believed to be the other former Some Guys members), formed a hacktivist group known as Team Bastet.

“Bastet” is also a cryptocurrency skeptic, and has a page on their personal website debunking several claims made by crypto promoters.