Article

2010-12-09 Science & Technology

Cyber Attacks by Wikileaks Sympathizers Continue

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Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-12-09 09:03|| || Front Page|| [11124 views ] Top

#1 Transnational criminals.

Posted by Whiskey Mike 2010-12-09 09:28|| 2010-12-09 09:28|| Front Page Top

#2 Its telling that people who 'support transparency and freedom of speech' do so by attacking others and denying them their freedom of speech.

Typical leftist.... Freedom of speech for me... but not for thee...

Posted by CrazyFool 2010-12-09 10:09|| 2010-12-09 10:09|| Front Page Top

#3 I have mixed feelings about the cyberstorm going on right now; I used to like wikileaks until they started posting US classified material, and still disagree with how the government is handling the problem, but don't feel that tangentially related companies should get DDoS'd over them.

The attacks branched from threads on 4chan's Anonymous, which is anything but monolithic. I suspect most of the attackers are easily-led teenagers; the rest of 4chan's denizens are mostly college students who would get in trouble with their school's IT department for DDoSing anything.

The program they're using, LOIC, is ridiculously easy to set up and use, and there are guides all over. It's basically like deliberately installing a virus, except they know what it does and who's controlling the botnet. Literally anyone who can read can join in the attacks, which is why they've been so successful so far.

I dont think there's much of an ideology behind most of the attackers beyond "lol we took down MasterCard, lets see if we can take down Visa and PayPal" and "Sarah Palin's mad lets get her too XD", though the actual directors of the attacks seem to be more libertarian than anything else from what I've read of their manifestos.

Posted by HEU 2010-12-09 12:37|| 2010-12-09 12:37|| Front Page Top

#4 Whoops, meant to say attacks branched from threads on 4chan's /b/ board. Anonymous is the loose coalition of script kiddies that reside there among other imageboards.

Posted by HEU 2010-12-09 12:41|| 2010-12-09 12:41|| Front Page Top

#5 this is just more proof that people are easily manipulated by high sounding words, when in reality all they are doing is feeding ammunition to the enemy who will use it indiscriminately to fire up thier mindless minions who will in turn kill, maim and destroy. Thanks wikileaks.

Posted by killjoy 2010-12-09 13:18|| 2010-12-09 13:18|| Front Page Top

#6 Libertarian? Hardly. These are a bunch of little fascists that want to silence anyone that angers them. A gigantic tantrum. This isn't about liberty at all, its about emotionalism, rage, and leftists shutting up those who would disagree with them.

They should track the IP addresses and prosecute every single one of these they can get their hands on.

Posted by OldSpook 2010-12-09 13:40|| 2010-12-09 13:40|| Front Page Top

#7 "These are a bunch of little fascists"

Umm... no. Have you ever been to the ocean of chaos of 4chan? Have you read any of their statements? They're about as radically anti-authority as it gets. Anonymous's major uniting factor (aside from the Internet Boss thing) is freedom of speech.

A lot of the Wikileaks outrage is over government interference on the internet; they're just as pissed over ACTA and the MPAA/RIAA's attempts to lock down computing as they are over this, it's just that the credit card companies provided a convenient target, and when they actually went down the entire thing snowballed.

They know that they dont have the ability to shut down any major websites for a prolonged period of time - this is just to make a political point that there are angry supporters of Assange out there.

Anonymous, by its very nature, prevents any kind of coherent organization. Go onto their IRC channel and you will see. The only reason they've done anything is because LOIC is so easy to use.

About prosecuting them; I estimate there are about 70,000 attackers, most of whom will claim they had a computer virus that did it. If there was a way to prosecute Anonymous over DDoS attacks, the RIAA and MPAA would be doing it now. They might get one or two of the exceptionally dumb ones, but that's about it. LOIC is in essence a voluntary botnet, so the 'I had a virus I didn't know' excuse should work. Also, I'm almost positive a large percentage are minors.

This group of people have been evading consequences for internet vandalism/vigilantiism for years.

Posted by HEU 2010-12-09 14:47|| 2010-12-09 14:47|| Front Page Top

#8 This site needs an edit button...

The directors of the attacks have lofty ideals of an internet free of government oversight - but I think most of the actual grunts are just in it for the thrill of vandalism.

Ten years ago it took some kind of knowledge to pull off a DDoS so something like this couldn't have happened, but today any 15-year-old can download pre-configured software and DDoS through an open WiFi point to their heart's content.

Posted by HEU 2010-12-09 15:00|| 2010-12-09 15:00|| Front Page Top

#9 "This site needs an edit button..."

It has one, HUE.

It's at the right-hand side of the Comment box, just to the right of "Pic-a-Nic"; it's labeled "Preview."

Posted by Barbara Skolaut 2010-12-09 15:28|| 2010-12-09 15:28|| Front Page Top

#10 They should label the button My Friend.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-12-09 15:46|| 2010-12-09 15:46|| Front Page Top

#11 estimate there are about 70,000 attackers

We've never ended murder, rape, or robbery. However, we know we can abate the level of it by in fact making examples of others. How hard and how heavy really depends upon will and response.

If they realize they can't remain anonymous and can eventually be tracked down and hammered for their act, a good number will tread a little more lightly instead of acting like spoil bratty children.

Posted by Procopius2k 2010-12-09 17:02|| 2010-12-09 17:02|| Front Page Top

#12 Panda Labs, a security company is tracking the attacks, if anyone is geeky enough to want to know.

Posted by tipper 2010-12-09 18:55|| 2010-12-09 18:55|| Front Page Top

#13 DDoS'ing isnt murder, rape or robbery; at best it's a minor crime akin to vandalism.

In the anonops IRC channel, attackers are being instructed to use someone else's wifi when conducting these attacks, and to delete LOIC and claim they had a virus if arrests start happening.

It's very hard to establish guilt over DDoS attacks in court if the attacker has even half a brain, and prosecuting a significant number of these people would end up dragging a large number of innocents into the equation (thus making the government look like authoritarian pricks in the media).

Even if you could prosecute very many of them, you'd be ending up following the MPAA and RIAA's strategy against torrenters, which has been wildly ineffective at curbing activity from the same type of community.

A few will get arrested and dragged through the coals, but the vast majority will not care, or worse, view them as martyrs.

My real question is this: how the heck did Wikileaks get such a trove of classified materials without anyone knowing, and why isnt there a witch hunt over the people actually leaking the intel TO WikiLeaks? It cant have all been Manning... Closing the flaws in our security systems will be easier than trying to take down a website (even if WikiLeaks does go down, there are enough likeminded people out there that the hydra will just grow another head)

Posted by HEU 2010-12-09 19:14|| 2010-12-09 19:14|| Front Page Top

#14 First arrest made in WikiLeaks revenge attacks

Posted by tipper 2010-12-09 19:31|| 2010-12-09 19:31|| Front Page Top

#15 DDoS'ing isnt murder, rape or robbery; at best it's a minor crime akin to vandalism.

In your mind it is. However, when you shut down businesses' websites that do hundreds of thousands of dollars of transactions daily, it worse than simple robbery of a store, a home, or a citizen.

Posted by Procopius2k 2010-12-09 20:06|| 2010-12-09 20:06|| Front Page Top

#16 I agree that the DDoS war is wrong, but at the same time, no single individual (outside of the directors) is contributing that much to the attacks - it's because there are so many attackers that the DDoS is doing anything. Just running LOIC because everyone else on a given imageboard was doing it isn't equivalent to a violent crime.

In an ideal world, I there would be some way to catch the people directing the attacks against specific targets. But if they aren't stupid, nobody will ever find out who they are.

This isnt related to the DDoS=riot topic, but I just read that EasyDNS has decided to host WikiLeaks after coming under attack from everyone who mistook them for EveryDNS

(by the way, thanks for the links, tipper - the PandaLabs one is a good timeline)

Also I have one of my own - it's a pretty good breakdown of where some of the more ideological attackers stand. (As one would expect, the viewpoint is kind of strange and the comments are full of idiocy)

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/the-nobel-peace-prize-for-2011.html

Posted by HEU 2010-12-09 20:48|| 2010-12-09 20:48|| Front Page Top

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