Slashdot Mirror
Griefers Assault Epileptics Via Message Board
An anonymous reader tips us to a story up at Wired reporting on what may be the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on victims. Last Saturday, griefers posted hundreds of bogus messages on the support forums of the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation that used JavaScript and strobing GIFs to trigger migraines and seizures in users. For about 3% of the 50 million epileptics worldwide, flashing lights and colors can trigger seizures. "'I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts,' says [an IT worker in Ohio]. 'I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak.' ... Circumstantial evidence suggests the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective of griefers best known for their recent war on the Church of Scientology. The first flurry of posts on the epilepsy forum referenced the site EBaumsWorld, which is much hated by Anonymous. And forum members claim they found a message board thread — since deleted — planning the attack at 7chan.org, a group stronghold."
What the hell is a "Griefer?"
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Reminds me of the terrorist attack by the Panther Moderns on Sense/Net in Neuromancer
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
"Anonymous" has always preyed on the weak. They are not activists, at least, not originally. The activism associated with "Anonymous" recently via the Scientology raids is very new, and was not appreciated by many who had been channers for some time. This is just the same group of people getting back to their roots, griefing the weak. I doubt Scientology had anything to do with this.
I've already seen this sort of thing before. About six years ago Reuters had a series of flash based adverts for BMW that produced a swirling pattern on the screen. This advert produced an epileptic fit in one of our users and when I sent an emergency email to Reuters the adverts were pulled.
For someone to do this on purpose is kinda sick.
Ganty
More like Snow Crash, or even better: the short story BLIT by David Langford. This story immediately brought BLIT back to mind.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
In other words, I do believe they would do something like you are suggesting.
I also would expect another phone call from them tomorrow for this post :~(
Careful What You Wish For....
It's not even new. I remember a virus in about the mid 90s that would attempt to cause the victim to have a seizure in the same manner. Also there was some Japanese cartoon that accidentally caused seizures in som watchers and it was popular for a while for people to post clips of the offending scenes on their websites. Not much a hack.
I am surprised that sufferers of this condition can't get filtering software for their computer though that analyzes what is happening on the screen and blacks out, or otherwise makes safe, dangerous content. Looking for strobes should be a fairly easy thing. Hell, I'd be surprised if a lot of ad banners don't cause seizures.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Epilepsy is traditionally analysed with an EEG. That makes it a neurological condition.
And yes, I do have epilepsy, but not the photosensitive kind. Back in the days when the only way to make a rapid strobe light was with xenon or neon there was a lot of attention paid to pulse rates, intensity and containment. You were not supposed to just set it up anywhere. You had to warn people.
Now that anybody can make a strobe with an array of cheap LED's the photosensitivity issue is being ignored. This is a problem because it goes beyond people with recognised seizure problems. We should not be feeding pulse trains into our eyes which mimic signals which always run inside our brains.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
And they are completely in the clear by their own code, sense according to scientology there are no psychological problems and epilepsy is a psychological disorder.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
this is not true. There is not One or Two anonymous, there is NO anonymous.
It's not useful to associate "anonymous" as a group or entity. "Anonymous" is a completely chaotic, anarchistic, loose association. It is akin to race. There are (excuse this analogy) white people, and there are other white people who do bad things, and there are yet more white people who do good things. It is not useful to say "white people" are anything, except that "white people" came from europe and have a history of colonialism.
It is exactly the same with "anonymous". Anonymous is simply a subset of most people in the world who use the internet, and there is a subse tof them who do other things, and a subset of THEM who attack things, and a subset of this which may have assaulted an epilepsy board. But none of them are really related beyond circumstance.
The point is "anonymous" does not have any goals or means or anything. They don't even share interests, the only real connection is a mode of communication (and often web sites). Some anonymous coalesce to do things, like protest scientology or mess around on the internet, but they are not related except by modes of action. Attributing causal notions to this Anonymous is fallacy.
Or maybe it was "Anonymous" after all, knowing that people would come to the same conclusion as you have, and blame Scientology.
Man, that's trippy. Assholy, but trippy. Never thought Snowcrash would come true! /me sharpens katana and looks for YT.
-- My Sig is a P228.
The fact that the group "Anonymous" actually has no goal or objective that they strive for means that anyone can claim to do anything under the groups name, and hence be a "member" of the group. Now from this, any Scientologist could have caused these attacks, and then claim to be doing it for the "Anonymous" group, with no one ever going to dispute that claim. Anonymous is not really a group; it's more of an identity to hide behind all things internet-like.
01110000 01010111 01101110 00110011 01100100
Quite possibly this, all they'd really have to do it post on /i/ saying "LOL lets raid these forums" along with a link and a lot of people would do it without any serious work from CoS
Anon and CoS activity really isn't fundamentally what Anon was founded for, it was founded for griefers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer the thing is Anon took griefing from video games into real life. before we called people who did that pranksters but the term griefing is much better since some people are so malignant towards their fellow human being that every way of causing others pain and suffering is 'cool' and 'hip' to them.
so you can take your tinfoil hat off about CoS making Anon look bad, the people trying to show the evil of the CoS have mistakenly taken the name 'Anon' without understanding that these are the kind of people who never grew out of giving nerd wedgies, they're the kind of people who thought 'fight club' was a wussy movie... they're the kind of people who get a kick dying their dead grandmothers hair blue for the open casket...
they feed off of doing wrong for the sake of doing wrong, that's the mark of a true anon...
however the CoS may well be behind Anon's darker side getting press online... I had never heard of them until today...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Yup, and in fact the stupid London 2012 olympics logo trailer could trigger epilepsy and had to be removed from the web site. The fact that it is uniquely offensive in its own right without being combined into a mind-wrenching flashing animation makes the whole thing even worse.
Hence my "two Anonymous" comment. From my perspective, and I'm not a channer, most of the Chanology Anonymous reject the rest of Anonymous. The rest of Anonymous mostly rejects Chanology.
And I know that Chanology started from the *chans, hence the name, but the *chans have rejected it since it took the high ground.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
The cult is doing this to make Anonymous look bad.
I used to be a Scientologist, and I can tell you based on first hand experience that this is EXACTLY what the cult would do.
This is not the work of those who fight and oppose the cult of Scientology.
The cult has already taken to creating fake videos and messages that appear to be from Anonymous and that contain threats of violence against the cult itself. This latest stunt is simply the next step in their campaign of demonizing Anonymous.
The problem with Anonymous is that anyone can pretend to be part of the group. While they are highly resistant to efforts by the cult to target them as individuals, they are vulnerable to false-flag tactics such as this one.
This is not the first time the cult has done this. Back in the 70's they targeted a woman for writing a book that revealed the evil nature of the cult. The cult responded by forging evidence linking her to a fake bomb threat, among other things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout
She was facing a long prison sentence until the FBI accidentally discovered that the cult had set her up while conducting another investigation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
Scientology is evil. It is something that most people who have never dealt with the cult have a hard time understanding or believing. To describe the nature of this cult to someone who is unfamiliar with it is very difficult because polite society lacks the terms needed to accurately convey the depth of evil found within this organization. It is also difficult because an accurate description defies belief. Most people are unable to contemplate something so evil actually existing in the real world.
But scientology is that bad, and it is real. Its victims are a multitude and its crimes are horrific.
But don't take my word for it, read up on it yourself:
http://www.xenu.net/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
And I care why? I'm not anonymous. I'm just anti-CoS.
I'm no more required to hide my identity than I am required to participate in harassing epileptics.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
No, they are evil and also stupid, but they have a lot of time on their hands, and not much to do.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Now that anybody can make a strobe with an array of cheap LED's the photosensitivity issue is being ignored. This is a problem because it goes beyond people with recognised seizure problems. We should not be feeding pulse trains into our eyes which mimic signals which always run inside our brains.
Any idea if they test police lights for this on the new cars where they just flash LEDs instead of spinning a light around? I always worry they're going to give someone a seizure when I see some of the more extreme versions.
This is more common than you might think; it has, in fact, been demonstrated that Scientology faked a bomb threat against themselves by Anonymous on YouTube earlier.
An extension of their most certainly not dead Fair Game policy, which states that Scientology critics, or "Suppressive Persons (SPs)", "may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."
Scary stuff, especially for a group claiming to be a religion.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
"One of the things about Anonymous that makes it different than most groups is that there are no real leaders and that, due to its very nature, nobody really knows anyone else in the group short of a few people that they might know outside the anonymous forums"
HAHAHA so anonymous has basically the same structure as Al Qaeda.
Yeah, screw the 240 million websites that use Javascript every day without causing seizures! We should throw them all out the window immediately because of this one offense! Also, I think C++ was used to write a virus once, so let's destroy all C++ compilers and programs! Help us make the world safe again, Dogun!
Comment of the year
So, there should be no internet anonymity, right?
also, this is modded 5 informative? WTF?
Right here on slashdot, the defenders of privacy and anonymity rights? Unbelievable.
File: 120624198932.jpg-(7.37KB, 196x200, 3doitfaggot1frtbwrsgbds.jpg)
//-->
/r/ sticky ;_;
//-->
MIEN EYES Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:13 No. 2501134
Epeleptic forum raid..
1) Make account. 2) Spam flashing gifs, party hard etc. 3) Troll the userbase. 4) ??? 5)PROFIT!! CURRENT TARGET:http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/efforums/forum/
Precious Javascript Weapon:
window.location = "http://gilf.co.nr/myeyes"
ALWAYS WEAR A CONDOM!
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:14 No. 2501142 | this has potential for lulz and win.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:16 No. 2501165 | anon armed and ready.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:22 No. 2501208 | First good fucking idea I've seen in days. I'll be right over there once I'm done fapping on my bosses desk.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:23 No. 2501214 | Good principal, probably won't work in practice.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:23 No. 2501217 | this is relevant to my interests
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:25 No. 2501231 | Wait, their forums support Javascript? That means...they support HTML? FUCK this will be too easy
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:30 No. 2501289 | Haha. Holy fucking shit. I wrote that code...fuck that, Anonymous wrote that code. For Anon By Anon. The Javascript is a nice touch...I'ma go flood that shit now.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:32 No. 2501296 | >>2501134 }} oh wow, thats gotta be the best idea ive ever heard, well done.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:36 No. 2501322 | File: 120624335935.jpg-(67.39KB, 850x719, FreeInternet.jpg) By the time I got there, you have all already filled it with seizurebait. GOOD FUCKING JOB, ANONS, WELL PLAYED.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:37 No. 2501337 | I laughed really hard.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:38 No. 2501346 } someone get a cookie stealing script and post it on a legit thread, then hack the whole thing, give it epic flashing index.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:38 No. 2501352 | File: 120624350150.jpg-(32.28KB, 1138x48, 1206240592977.jpg) >> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:39 No. 2501360 | >>2501352 }} lol'd
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:39 No. 2501366 |
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:42 No. 2501388 | File: 120624374380.jpg-(5.90KB, 1030x41, epilepsy.jpg) also, requesting sticky
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:42 No. 2501395 | >>2501352 }} I fuckin lol'd hard
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:43 No. 2501400 | This is evil
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:43 No. 2501403 | OH GOD HOW DID I GET HERE IM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:44 No. 2501409 | >>2501134 }} Hi I'm going to hijack your thread nao. Where did the Do It spider expert originally come from? Sadly despite months of lurking moar I have yet to figure out where I've seen this bitch before.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:44 No. 2501412 | The name pedrobear made me lol. +1 internet to whoever that is
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:44 No. 2501413 | this isn't funny my brother did that way. Also, sticky this, plox.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:44 No. 2501418 | >>2501413 }} died* I fail.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:47 No. 2501435 | I haert u so hard anon lol.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:47 No. 2501436 |
window.location = "http://www.hey.doyouhaveepilepsy.com/"
Even better script
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:47 No. 2501438 | Ah god, I love you evil bastards.
>> Anonymous 08/03/22(Sat)20:48 No. 2501450 | Is somebody DDoSing it too, cause it's getting slow as fuck
For some, seizures do have a small risk of sudden death.
Actually I seem to remember there were two women posting on that message board who got killed by status seizures within weeks of each other, just a few months ago.
I know. It wouldn't make any sense to do something awful and attribute it to an enemy if the action is not plausible. But from what I understand, Anonymous' targets have been people who "offended" them in some way, or people so loathed by the general public that the majority will not object.
Anonymous attacking the "Church" of Scientology makes sense. Anonymous attacking random epileptics does not. Also, it's worth remembering that most epileptics are dependent on pharmacological treatment, and the "Church" claims that they can treat epilepsy without drugs. They are wrong, of course and have a body count to prove it.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
So based upon past patterns of behaviour, the anti-Co$ anonymous would be very unlikely (discounting no fixed members or control over members) to have attacked a third party, where as Co$ based upon it's history would basically be very likely to do it.
Now of course the nature of the attack itself, a physiological and psychological attack, hmm, does that not sound like a group well versed in psychology and with a pathological hatred for the psychiatric profession and it's patients, and in fact this group claims to be the worlds only true experts in the human mind. Seriously could any one consider this to be the work of a bunch of ill informed, mal adjusted script kiddies, oddly enough, complete with carefully planted evidence in public forums prior to the event.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It's not like the fact that they always blame ebaumsworld is obscure or hard to find out. Also, there are almost certainly Scientologist members of Anonymous, have been since before the CoS raids. Even if it wasn't for this, I'd be very suprised if they hadn't put effort and time into investigating and monitoring the *chans.
I hope that this despicable assault can be, and shall be, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the applicable laws. An interesting case... It's a sort of neurological trespass and vandalism, or a DOS on one's own CNS.
Incidentally, Coeur d'Alene is in Idaho, not Ohio.