The very nature of Anonymous precludes false flag operations, as from its inception, anyone who claims to be Anonymous is, ipso facto, Anonymous. It doesn't mean they're the same group of people everyone else is thinking of, but it's never meant that. It's simply a distinction that's lost on many of the people who comment on Anon's activities.
Russian Gangs are known to fly the flag of Anonymous, but I bet you that the rank-and-file members of Anon would prefer not to be confused with those guys.
Doesn't matter. The very idea of Anonymous is that it's a label, not a group. It's a flag that anyone and everyone can choose to fly, with no one group any more deserving of doing so than any other. That's been the fundamental idea of Anonymous since its inception, and is one of the most misunderstood points about it.
Sure, there are the "core" Anonymous groups that you might associate with LulzSec, but those were very different from the WhyWeProtest Anonymous groups that continue to fight the Church of Schientology, which are in turn different from the Anonymous groups that supported Occupy Wall Street, which are in turn different from those involved in the Arab Spring, which are in turn different from those working with the FBI to take out child porn rings on TOR, etc. They may share some common ideals, and perhaps even membership, but they're all disparate groups and none is more or less Anonymous than any other. The people who did this are just as deserving of the label as those who worked to bypass internet surveillance in Iran, as they both choose to fly the flag.
I fully understand 4chan /b/ culture and so forth. Trust me, I know what you're talking about. Look at how I worded my response, its both "yes" and "no". Russian criminal gangs have the full right to call themselves Anonymous, as does the NSA if they really wanted.
And whether or not it is "right", there are groups of people on the internet who "respond to the call of Anonymous". As long as you invoke the name anonymous, then you recieve them as an ally. This is dangerous behavior, and leads not necessarily to "false flag" attacks (in the strictest sense), but allows the groups that align themselves with Anonymous to be easily manipulated.
Given the history of infiltrating activism groups, and the fact that Anonymous requires effictively zero effort to infiltrate, I'd put the probability at just a shade beneath 100%.
That said, I'd guess that much of the irresponsible vigilantism of Anon probably is still the work of idealistic teenagers and so forth.
