Anonymous hackers' Wikileaks 'infowar' LATEST ROUNDUP Online "warfare" between the friends and enemies of Wikileaks continues, with an increasing number of organisations involved. The hacktivist collective Anonymous, operating under the banner Operation:Payback, has continued to mount various types of hacking attacks including DDoS strikes – supplemented by the use of illegal …
ColdBlood was on BBC Radio 4 this morning, announced as a "spokesman" for Anonymous. He certainly claimed to represent the group, unfortunately, I couldn't work out what his underlying message was.
And may I be the first to declare that I, for one, welcome our botnet-wielding, spotty, crusty-tube-socked, 19 geek overlords!
The card companies just have to wait - after all, the same (d)dossers that are working against them will also be the first to realise that they have just cut of their pizza supply as they can no longer take a payment. So, it's a loss but not a tragedy.
What IS a tragedy that this sort of behaviour is becoming the norm. Don't like someone? Hey, let's juts throw an electronic version of a petrol bomb through their window. Cowards.
The biggest irony is that Wikileaks is in principle supporting crime, and is then "supported" by people using criminal methods as well (notice the absence of any comment from Wikileaks asking supporters to stop those DDoS). There are better ways to blow the whistle, means which involve less costs, less ego pumping and are more effective in actually addressing the problem rather than just talking about it and apear on national talk shows. But hey, Ze Ego Must Be Polished..
The fastest solution is to hang Assange by his nuts and then call on Wikileaks to make good on their threats to release everything at once. The best way to lance a festering boil is to cut it and so get the pain over in one go. The information has leaked anyway now, so they might as well get it over with.
I support what Wikileaks is doing, but attacking organisations that are perceived to have wronged wikileaks is the wrong way of doing things -- it reflects badly on wikileaks; yes I know that Anonymous are different group, but they will be lumped together by politicians/CIA/... and this will be believed by Daily Mail type readers (or for readers on the other side of the pond: Sarah Palin supporters).
We claim that we are better than those who are being exposed as wrong doers, so we must live up to that, even if it is harder to do so. To do otherwise will muddy our good intentions.
Mostly because after playing "by the rules" for quite long (and being serially an*l raped as a consequence) I find it quite refreshing that "The People" can use the same tactics as our revered underlords (FUD, Eliminate opposants, if discrediting them is not sufficient, etc....) and get some traction because of it...
I support what Wikileaks was TRYING to do: be a route for whistleblowers to find a publication channel. However, nothing of what they do now achieves that aim, it's all about being as noisy as possible. Wikileaks and Assange have become the story, which is 100% wrong, especially as they are descending more and more into the criminal to keep up that profile. I bet Assange is already working on a book deal.
.....the end result will be an Internet better hardened against DDOS attacks in its entireity. A good thing.
Trouble is, if I can work that out, then presumably the *really* nasty people who make their cash doing DDOS blackmail scams can work that out. I wouldn't want to be part of Anonymous right now, those types have ways of finding out who's really behind something that the world's intelligence agencies aren't allowed to have (e.g. "Now tell us who it is, or we'll saw your *other* bollock off."). I also suspect that they do a nice line in the sort of retribution designed to deter anyone else considering pissing on their picnic.
It is currently not possible to differentiate legitimate requests to a webserver (people wanting to visit a page) and a DDOS attack. Even flagging repeated attempts at access wouldn't do much good, since a lot of internet mouth-breathers sit there and click "reload" over and over when the page they are trying to access doesn't load. I have worked in tech support for a large ISP, so trust me. People actually do that, instead of giving up and doing something else.
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"Register management, having witnessed the disasters befalling other online organisations which have angered Anonymous, would like to point out that Lewis Page is an unimportant, low-paid employee who is in no way representative of the Reg as a whole. Only a certain misguided sympathy for his cripplingly expensive alcoholism and many other personal problems has led to his continued employment, and they would ask that this charitable impulse not be punished too harshly."
You owe me a new keyboard
"Register management ... would like to point out that Lewis Page is an unimportant, low-paid employee who is in no way representative of the Reg as a whole."
Are we then to assume that the Reg management consider themselves important and are highly paid.
If I tell you Paypal is down, you'll go and check. You can see it with your own eyes. If I tell you that the Swedish Prosecutor's website is down (incidentally, it is), you won't care much.
Also, as the Daily Mash has revealed, a man has been prevented from buying a Chris de Burgh album and therefore, karmically, Anonymous has won the Internet.
The title of this message is a quote from Huey P. Newton, Defense Minister and principal founder of the U.S. group, the Black Panther Party. He said this early in the career of his group, at a rally in a San Francisco Bay Area city which the police were trying to disrupt by flying noisy helicopters immediately overhead.
This author hopes that Huey's assessment will prove true in the WikiLeaks affair.
Sorry to hear about Lewis's problems with alcohol. All of us who have appreciated his work over the years owe Lewis our support. I should like to suggest a fund to cover his expenses at the various pubs favored by The Register staff. If you folks would be so kind as to publish an address for Lewis (at work, of course) I will send him a tenner and hope that many others will do the same.
In the US at least, you can get hauled into court by either the government (criminal case) or a person/organization (civil case).
Anybody following the RIIA shenanigans might want to consider what a really pissed off credit card industry might due to IP addresses found to be attacking their business.
Just sayin'.
So far the guys in the pedobear suit have hit soft targets with ease. Makes me wonder how Visa and MasterCard ended up being soft targets but where there is a will, there is a corporate way... that isn't secure. The scary thing is that a sustained attack until after xmas could close one or more of the national institutions if it was pointed at the money network and not at the PR mouthpiece.
All those little machines that phone home to Visa/Mastercard - same system - are a private network and it's proving very hard to find a way in. Anonymous could really use somebody on the inside to help out a little here.
If that's you, you could drop by some of the usual spots and make things go a lot more smoothly.
Just sayin.
I wouldnt want to be in his shoes when Anon finds out who he is.
"These possible contra-hacktivista "patriots""
No "patriots" DDoSing the pro-anon sites. The essense of 4Chan is trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls. They are just other Anons trying to get a reaction out of the pro-Assange DDoSers.
I will not be ordering anything from Amazon this Christmas due to your withdrawal of service from Wikileaks. Honestly, I don't think Wikileaks is that great either but dropping them as a user is, in my opinion, a cowardly act and un-American.
What happened to the principal of "innocent until proven guilty"? Where do you draw the line between standing up for your Principals and Bending Over and sticking your head in the sand?
Frankly, I expected better of you.
It doesn't matter since all your friends and family have already spent more than enough with us buying you presents. As a massive corporation we have no principals beyond "keep making money".
We regret you feel you cannot use us for your online purchases but rest assured we do not take this personally, we have no personality to offend. We would like to assure you that should you change your mind later on we will take your money unless you cause us embarassment or hurt the bottom line in which case we won't.
Assange's stated goal is the overthrow of constitutional government in the U.S. (or at least what's left of it after Bush and Obama are done). I'm not joking here: Assange believes that the U.S. government IS a conspiracy and that distributing this information will kill the "conspiracy." (he likely also believes that JFK was assassinated by the ghost of Elvis right before the moon landings were staged)
Aside from this, Wikileaks is a distinctly for-profit venture. You can see this in their constant begging for money--something that's almost as annoying as Wikipedia's new ads, and Assange's attempts at attention grabbing--things like his constant claim that he has to "hide out" so that he isn't assassinated (apparently Elvis' ghost is still alive and looking for additional victims)
The real interesting thing here, by the way, isn't what was in the cables and other documents that Manning leaked, but what wasn't in them: no evidence of systemic corruption, cover ups, or secret dealings. It's all just high-school gossip... diplomat A said something nasty about leader B. King C wants the US to attack country D. Political big-shot E has bad breath.
In a way it's comforting to be reminded that the conspiracy theorists are all crazy as loons
I only respond to the second part of your crap:
Wikileaks did publish a very interesting report of a Russian-American committee assessing Iranian and North Korean missile capabilities. It becomes clear U.S. Intelligence is again trying to fake evidence of WMD technology (in this case the "BM-25 solid-booster rocket, never tested, surely a threat"). Last time it was "mobile chemical labs".
This is just one cable worth for the world to see. Julian's a hero !
I could go on to refer to other nasty dealings of USG, US Army, General Petraeus, Yemeni Gov, but I'l stop here. Maybe you read some of the cables yourself before you write crap here.
The Wikileaks have been amusing but really they are just fodder for the nosey, how would you like it if your emails were published? In the end they are just the opinions of a bunch of diplomats at a given moment in time or the people they meet. I have no problem with Wikileaks publishing this stuff because it highlights the errors in security. I DO have a problem with the willful download and installation of the DDOS tool. I think that the logs of victims of the DDOS attacks and ISP's should be used to prosecute the offenders.
ISP’s should be able to spot a user spitting out UDP traffic and should simply suspend their service.
The computer misuse act allows for 2 years in prison for downloading and 10 years in prison for using such a tool, we should now be tracking down and prosecuting offenders.
So called freedom campaigners do not realise that such action will actually work against them, it will force the internet to demand a fully traceable connection in due course.
Even if you were totally supportive of Wikileaks, attacking people like Visa and Mastercard does not damage them, it damages their clients, that is you and me or our employers. Trade is the foundation of our society, in this time of austerity the lack of orders may be enough to force some people out of business as users who could not complete their purchase look elsewhere.
I really hope the government does something, in the first place gather the evidence in the form of access logs from all UK ISP’s along with IP lease information. Even if they decide not to send these people to prison, we can ban them from having an internet account for 5 years and from working in the computer industry. Harsh, yes, but you would not allow a person with a criminal record for robbing a bank to be responsible for financial transactions.
Waddaya mean "wouldn't allow someone with a criminal record for bank robbery run the bank"? Don't you read the papers? The biggest financial crooks in the world are those who are now running the bloody banks.
Also the biggest liars in the country are now running the country. Jeez, wake up! - or were you just born self-righteous?
Yes, I expect you do. Kibo forbid that you ever take any action on anything for yourself, beyond spouting your corporate-fed drivel on the Reg's comment boards.
I have posted as "Anonymous Coward" but this is misleading. Only one of us is a coward, and that's you.
Why doesn't el reg allow comments on the CRYPTOME article?
We know who you are john.
your claim to fame is registering the wikileaks domain?
Alex Jones is impressed with anyone that knows how to use a computer so it's not hard to have him support you. Alex thinks that by brute forcing google you can increase your page rankings for god sakes.
Wait, maybe im lieing.
Don't we all lie? :)
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