Lone hacker theory in Wikileaks DDoS attack

A denial of service attack against Wikileaks that brought the whistleblower site to its knees on Sunday night, in the run up to its publication of classified State Department documents, may turn out to be the work of a lone hacker. The attack, which rendered the site inaccessible for several hours, might be blamed on an …

[Code Monkey]

th3j35t3r

Seriously? th3j35t3r? Someone needs to get out more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...

Isn't he one of those elite hacksaws that I'm hearing so much about?

[Destroy All Monsters]

"Patriot-hacker"

Also known as Juvenile Nationalistic Jerk, I reckon.

Maybe that guy and Lamo could get together for a twosome.

[Elmer Phud]

As if .

As if just doing a DDoS on Wikileaks will have much effect.

The data has already been copied elsewhere - the Guardian f'rinstance.

Jester? \\' 4 /\/ |< 3 /2 is more like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

th3j35t3r

I believe it is quite straightforward to crack substitution ciphers, so this chap doesn't stand much of a chance...

[Anonymous Coward]

(untitled)

Other information:

http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/6327/jester-exmilitary-hacker-takes-the-distributed-out-of-ddos-attacks/

http://information-security-resources.com/2010/02/04/more-talks-with-anti-jihadi-hacker-the-jester/

http://twitter.com/th3j35t3r

[Anonymous Coward]

"a mass distributed denial of service attic,"

Yes, those cyber-criminals are now co-ordinating their assaults from my loft.

[Anonymous Coward]

By the sounds of it...

...he's utilizing a 30 year old attack that basically involves sending shitloads of parallel requests to the server and leaving it hanging after the initial "can I has page pls". When me and a friend developed it, he called it AnOctopus. Quite capable of keeping an email or web server down with a crappy PC, any old broadband connection and whatever your favourite version of Linux is. When the denizens of 4chan played with the idea, they called it SlowLoris.

And this guy's called it XerXes.

Ho hum. How leet, eh? Word of warning: Asides being about the most traceable form of attack there is, if you're trying it through a domestic NAT router the chances are you'll just fill the state table and DoS yourself. So have fun with that.

[Keith T]

If American "patriots" are attacking UK and Australian Patriots ..

If American "patriots" are attacking UK and Australian Patriots that means they don't want to be allies any more.

Which suits me fine. To me, they stopped being allies when they pushed our government to attack Iraq against the democratic wishes of the overwhelming majority of British people.

A country that is against British democracy is not an ally.

[paisano1]

Videos of XerXeS DoS Attack In Action

Thanks for the mention in the above article. To see all of my interviews with The Jester beginning in February of this year, including two exclusive videos of the XerXeS DoS attack in action, please see the following articles:

https://www.infosecisland.com/blogtag/427/Jester.html

Cheers!

Anthony M. Freed

Managing Editor, Infosec Island

[Anonymous Coward]

Another DDoS attack happening now

...as per Wikileaks's Twitter status: http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/statuses/9578593516523520

You may want to monitor this, John. Thanks!

[Xenobyte]

What's wrong with this guy?!

"Information Wants To Be Free" - It still applies!

Somebody seriously need to take out that moron and his stupid DDoS attack.

We need more leaks like these. All secrets shouldn't be.

[Anonymous Coward]

so

where can i get this XerXes thing?

[mhenriday]

When an attack originates in China,

it is, as a matter of course, the Chinese government that is pulling the strings. When it comes from the US, it is, equally as matter of course, the responsibility of a lone hacker, who is claimed to be something of a nut job - and who has nothing whatever to do with «teh governments». Somehow, I get the impression that the Reg has a certain, shall we say, bias ?...

Henri