Operation Save the Arctic — Parody Shell ad showing an oil rig with the caption 'Because fuck you, Earth. Let's go.'

Operation Save the Arctic

2012eventdead

Published September 19, 2026

Operation Save the Arctic was a 2012 hacktivist campaign run by Anonymous in support of Greenpeace's anti-drilling push, dumping thousands of oil company emails on Pastebin under the #OpSaveTheArctic banner. The two-phase leak targeting Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Gazprom and Rosneft turned a corporate advocacy fight into one of the most visible eco-hacktivist ops of the year.

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Overview

Operation Save the Arctic, tagged online as #OpSaveTheArctic and #SaveTheArctic, was a hacktivist operation Anonymous ran in mid-2012 to piggyback on Greenpeace's Save The Arctic campaign against oil drilling near the North Pole3. The op paired old-school Anonymous tactics, pastebin dumps of hacked corporate emails, with an advocacy twist: leaked addresses were used to sign the Greenpeace anti-drilling petition on behalf of oil company staff3.

The format was simple and repeatable. A spokesperson going by CyberZeist would publish a Pastebin communique framing each dump as a new 'Phase' of the operation, followed by hashes and email lists. Supporters on Twitter then amplified the leak with the #OpSaveTheArctic tag, treating the hack itself as the meme3. A companion YouTube explainer titled 'Official Anonymous #SaveTheArtic – Phase 1 and 2' packaged both dumps for a wider audience1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Pastebin / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Anonymous
Date
2012

The wider push began on June 7th, 2012, when Greenpeace launched Save The Arctic at the Rio Earth +20 summit in Brazil, calling for the North Pole to be designated a global sanctuary and drawing pledges from more than 100 celebrities3. Anonymous picked up the cause on June 27th, 2012, when CyberZeist (Twitter handle @le4ky) posted a Pastebin release billed as 'Phase I of Operation Save The Arctic,' claiming to expose roughly 300 email accounts tied to Exxon Mobil employees3. Anons then used those addresses to sign the Greenpeace petition, and the hashtags #OpSaveTheArctic and #SaveTheArctic started climbing on Twitter3.

Greenpeace itself did not organize the hack, but on June 29th, 2012 the group posted a welcoming tweet acknowledging the Anonymous action2. The same day, cybersecurity outlet Cyber War Zone uploaded a YouTube walkthrough of both phases and a companion blog post telling readers how to help1.

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How It Spread

The op moved fastest on Twitter, where CyberZeist and sympathetic accounts pushed the Phase I dump under #OpSaveTheArctic in the last days of June 20121. Coverage from cybersecurity blogs and the informal Anonymous news network fed the hashtag, and Greenpeace's own June 29th acknowledgment gave the campaign a mainstream signal boost from the NGO it was targeting the industry on behalf of3.

On July 16th, 2012, CyberZeist published a second Pastebin note as 'Phase II,' this time claiming more than 1,000 additional email accounts pulled from Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, and Russian majors Gazprom and Rosneft1. The Phase II post also admitted that some Phase I data had been reused by third parties for phishing schemes, which pushed the story from environmental Twitter into infosec press coverage1. Outlets including The Daily Dot, Wired, The Next Web and WebProNews wrote up the second leak, cementing Operation Save the Arctic as one of the more visible eco-hacktivist actions of 2012 before the hashtag activity faded later that year1.

Timeline

2012-06-07

Greenpeace launches the Save The Arctic campaign at the Rio Earth +20 summit in Brazil.

2012-06-27

Anonymous spokesperson CyberZeist (@le4ky) posts 'Phase I of Operation Save The Arctic' on Pastebin, exposing about 300 Exxon Mobil-linked email accounts.

2012-06-29

Greenpeace publicly welcomes the Anonymous action in a tweet; Cyber War Zone uploads the 'Official Anonymous #SaveTheArtic – Phase 1 and 2' explainer on YouTube.

2012-07-16

CyberZeist releases 'Phase II' on Pastebin with 1,000+ additional emails from Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, Gazprom and Rosneft.

How to Use This Meme

Participation was less a meme template and more a call to action: post the #OpSaveTheArctic or #SaveTheArctic hashtag on Twitter, share links to the Pastebin dumps, or reuse leaked oil executive email addresses to sign Greenpeace's anti-drilling petition3. On YouTube the common convention was to repost or remix the Cyber War Zone explainer clip framing the leak as an environmental protest1.

Frequently Asked Questions