Slashdot Mirror
Cyberwar on NASA Websites
Vexorian writes "Two NASA websites were hacked today by a group of Chilean activist hackers. The reason was to protest against the war on Lebanon. The mirror of the defaced site contains an image of an injured child and claims that the sites were running MacOSX."
On the one hand, this is news; NASA is a big target. On the other hand, why are we posting a link to the defacement? We don't need to see it -- just report the story.
Look, I seriously doubt you're going to find that many people who think the war in Lebanon is a good thing, besides anyone with a vendetta against the Lebanese or the people selling bombs and rockets. You want to protest the war, fine -- but don't exepct me to care what you have to say when you can't make your voice heard in a public and legal forum. Defacing a website, any web site, is not the way to make me feel sympathy for your point of view.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Hacktivist hacks happen all the time. Is someone trolling for an Israeli-Lebanon Conflict discussion?
What is not clear is... did they hack OS X or simply hack a web application running on OS X. I wouldn't say "Linux was hacked" if I was running an insecure forum or blog. The information is VERY thin, but I'm interested to see if OS really was hacked.
Yeah! That'll show those NASA warlords.
"Oh boy"
Right... and defacing a NASA website for sure is a good way to "do some good".
Although some say that only active protesting works, I'm sure they didn't mean to sit on your chair and "h4x0r" some sites. Actually it's pretty sad to see one defacing websites in name of "peace and justice". It also concerns when someone say thats hacktivism, as it can create a bad impression about legit hacktivism activities (such as providing privacy for people in China, etc.).
"Go forth, and be excellent to each other" --Bill & Ted
It is so easy to protest something that is right in your face on TV, isn't it? How about years and years of killing that have been going on in Israel by Hizballah and Hamas terrorist organizations? How about all those rockets that were launched at Israel from Lebanon within the past two decades? Maybe a UN server should be hacked, after all after 2000 UN and Lebanon was responsible for keeping Hizballah from amassing rockets and other weapons. Do these activists care when during the 'peace times' Israeli kids and adults get blown up?
If anything, these protestors should thank Israel for taking action now and preventing more carnage later. One cannot constantly procrastinate in this kind of a situation, because it is only getting worse.
Oh yes, and how about protesting where it actually makes sense: at Hizballah, at Lebanese, Iranian and Syrian governments. Protesting against regimes that allow terrorists to do what they do: use civilians AND UN folks as living shields on the battlefield. Not only are civilians used as shields, they are a great propaganda tool. When a terrorist launches a rocket at civilian targets in Israel from a busy market place in Lebanon, and Israeli army answers with fire at that place, is it the responsibility of Israel to make sure that Lebanese civilians do not suffer or is it responsibility of those, who used the civilians for their political gain around the world?
Here are a couple of caricatures that do tell something about the reality of this war.
You can't handle the truth.
They did NOT hack OS X. They simply hacked the application database running on those platforms. Why would the author indicate OS X was hacked when really, it looks like a large number of the servers hacked were in fact running Linux.
I'm not saying OS X is unhackable, but leaving ANY insecure server software running is asking to be hacked.
When Martin Luther King led the nonviolent marches that pulled off a second American Revolution without a second Civil War, the marchers didn't trespass or tear down signs. That's why they changed the attitude and culture of America, which is the victory everyone needs in these conflicts. The victory that others who accepted or embraced violence lost, like Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and all the hundreds of forgotten "freedom fighters". Even when their agenda and goals included important results that would be good for practically everyone, they polarized, alienated and pushed people into defensive positions on even indefensible parts of the status quo.
Chileans vandalizing America when Israel attacks Lebanon doesn't change anyone's minds for the better. It just escalates by a little bit the spiral of violence:
Ignorance -> Fear -> Anger -> Violence -> Alienation -> Ignorance
The central front in the Terror War is in our own minds, where that well-worn cycle can send us all to our doom.
--
make install -not war
The Hezbollah army builds their bases on the ground floor of civilian apartments. They are literally hiding behind women and children. Both sides (Hezbolah and Israel) are equally to blame for the civilian deaths. And since the Syrian and Iranian government are funding the rocket attacks, shouldn't these hackers be hacking Syrian and Iranian sites as well? Could it be that hacking US sites just provides bigger bragging rights?
what with the shooting of Jews in chicago yesterday
Do you actually read the news, or just go with what you're told? The shooting was in Seattle - a very different place from Chicago. And Jews have been at the bottom of some people's "favorite peoples" list for centuries - I doubt our foreign policy could really ever change that in just a few years.
The world is not nearly as petty a place as some would like to think it is. Bush hasn't helped, sure, but anti-US sentiment has been building for years. We rule the world, but spend outlandish amounts on shopping trips and vacations to countries whose people can barely afford basic food and shelter. Then, when something happens to our own, we can't take care of them either.
We'd be a whole lot better off is more Americans would stop using Bush as a scapegoat (again, he might be a good one, but that's not the point) and started changing the way they actually lived - cut back on energy consumption, buy a hybrid or use public transit, demand true equality in civil services and protection in poor neighborhoods/regions, and quit mouthing off on the Internet complaining about your government when the House has something ridiculous like a 98% re-election rate.
We don't take responsibility for our own actions - and when something goes right, take responsibility whether it was our doing or not. That's why people hate us.
Keep in mind not a single civillian would have had to die if their heroic freedom fighters in Hezbolla didn't insist on setting up operations in the center of residential neighborhoods, launching rockets from their cities, and overall using the civillians as human shields.
You're an idiot who has been thoroughly taken by the terrorist propaganda. As someone previously mentioned, an IDF general put it best: "Israelis are sleeping in bomb shelters. Lebanese are sleeping with bombs."
You make a strong point. Except Israel just released video of that strike that they did on that building that killed the 50+ people and sure enough it looks like from the video that the missles are being fired right from behind the main large 4 story building on top of the hill. Yes that is truly sad so many woman and children were killed/crushed to death and I have compassion; but as some news agency have been reporting is 'where are all the young and older men casualties at in the building?'. Could they have been firing from the building from behind or somewhere else at dead night? Argument that they could not get out because of roads/bridges blown were false because the news crews have been reporting they got there with their big news vans easily.
Then maybe we should have done the same to the chicago mafia in the 30's...
just shelled their places of business and damn the consequences...
Again, a non-workable analogy. The people smuggling whiskey and evading taxes in the 30's weren't launching missles from Chicago into Toledo, or proclaiming that only the destruction of Illinois is acceptable to them. They didn't randomly kill women and children, year after year, just to stoke things up (they just killed each other in a turf war over the smuggling market and related "industries").
The mafia wasn't a militant front for an oil-rich retrograde fascist theocracy that was shipping them millions of bucks and thousands of missiles.
It doesnt make sense to use millitary weaponry when surgical strikes on the ground would get things done.
If the Israelis stopped using precision weapons, you'd see the civilian deaths in the areas where Hezbollah keeps parking their weapons and launchers go from a few hundred to thousands and thousands over night. You do understand that you can't just march Israeli troops back into all of Lebanon and surgically remove Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure from the middle of the civilian presence in which they hide without an enormous invasion, right? It takes a gigantic supply chain, tons of armour, and thousands of soldiers - and it would take months and months, and many more Israeli deaths, which is exactly what Hezbollah would like to force them to have to do.
Hezbollah has had an uninterrupted six years to build bunkers, to booby-trap and mine their weapons storage sites, and to make sure that their personnel are woven completely into the fabric of the civilian population of Lebanon. Israel is being smart, and taking out the tools Hezbollah will need to re-supply themselves with weapons. Eventually they will run out, or Iran will have to more clearly show their hand by visibly pushing new weapons into the area by air - and they don't want to have that light shown on them just now. In the meantime, when Hezbollah pops out of a basement with a missle launcher, Israel hits that spot immediately, to destroy the cache that's there. They have no choice, other than to just tolerate more missles raining down on Haifa and beyond.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Of course in your reasonable-sounding comment, you leave out the fact that Hezbollah has never ceased hostilities towards a nation whose existence it denies. They have continually engaged in terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and have refused to disband according to the Taif agreement. They are also not a native Lebanese force. They are originally based in Iran, comprised of Iranian military forces. It's nice to see your balanced view completely ignore this, and jump on Israel as if they have been anything but attacked and harassed over the past 50 years by their neighbors.
I feel sorry for the Lebanese, as they are not really responsible for Hezbollah attacks (besides not taking action against them, anyway). However, the Israelis have leafletted the areas in question, and any civilians who remain in the area after that are either supporting the terrorists themselves, or willing to risk the lives of their own families to stay. In fact, the children who have been injured or killed are victims of their parents and Hezbollah, not Israel.
A nation should not have to endure endless kidnappings of their soldiers/citizens without taking action. Your attempt to compare Israel to the U.S. above shows your ignorance of the situation. A true comparison would be if Ontario was hosting a terrorist group which *regularly* fired rockets, employed suicide bombers, and kidnapped people from the border area and demanded the release of known murderers in exchange for the lives of the kidnapped people. Then, after the exchange (Israel at one point did exchange prisoners, for as little as the remains of the dead) continued to fire rockets, bomb, and kidnap more U.S. citizens. Meanwhile, Canada showed no interest in taking care of the problem themselves, and in fact were terrorized by the same group, but unable to oust them.
That would be apples to apples, except that there would be no Jews to blame. Don't worry though, I'm sure you could come up with some way to justify the terrorist actions, and oh the poor children, what are we doing to the children!
Vidar
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
I find the term 'cyberterrorism' offensive. Get some fucking perspective.
Someone sets off nail bombs in pubs just because the occupants happen to be gay, thats terrorism.
A guy gets on a bus with a dynamite waistcoat and wipes out a load of commuters, thats terrorism.
Some prick hijacks a jet and flies in into a skyscraper full of people, thats terrorism.
Fucking up somebodies webserver? Not even close.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I'm sorry but when you try to justify the killing of innocent civilians you have already lost the argument. Surely war is war and civilians becoming victims of "collateral damage" can be explained. But it can never be justified. Once you claim that killing innocent lives is morally right you have lost all moral authority.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
They gave back all of the Gaza and the West Bank, and withdrew all their settlements.
What are you talking about? They withdrew from Gaza, yes, but since then have blocked anything and anyone from entering or leaving. There is no economy, no money flow, no medicine flow, nothing going into Gaza. Yes, Israelis left, but they completely choked it up.
As for the West Bank, when did Israel withdraw from there? Most of the West Bank is currently occupied by huge Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land (as per the Oslo accords). There are also the ultra-orthdox Jewish settlers who create new "settlements" on Palestinian farmland by terrorizing its owners then erecting makeshift homes and shoot anybody who comes close. The Israeli government is trying to dismantle those, but at the same time expanding their other "legal" settlements by annexing more Palestinian land. Not to mention the completely illegal wall that is eating up even more Palestinian farm land.
They gave the terrorists everything they asked for and complied with every request the UN made.
Really? They definitely did not give back Jerusalem. They definitely did not allow UN peace inspectors into Gaza and the West Bank, and thanks to the US, they do not have any binding UN sanctions against them because of the American veto.
Stop pretending that Israel is the perfect peace loving nation. Israel does not want peace, because peace is not in its favour.
I know how things are in Japan, and let me assure you that while there were people there who hate the U.S., and many who regard it with suspicion, the reputation of the U.S. has taken a steep decline since the Bush administration came to power, and especially since the war on Iraq. There was a brief surge of sympathy and compassion following 9/11, but the president is just too loathsome to ignore. I think it's safe to say that he is the second most disliked foreign politician, after Kim Il Jong.
Look, the fact that a bunch of people in the middle east go around burning American flags should not suprise you. What should be worrying is the fact that one of your closest allies now thinks you guys are power-mad and dangerous. I don't think either Japan or the UK will help you in your next war.
You seem to think that one either loves the U.S. unconditionally, or you hate it absolutely like those guys celebrating 9/11, and that there is no changing of opinions. The fact is, most of the world is not extreme and set in their ways like that, and your actions do have an effect on how they percieve you. Your administration has been pushing people away from liking you, so you might want to reconsider your actions.