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."

Comments

Seen This Before

[Ganty]

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

I have a true Scientology story....

[Izabael_DaJinn]

A few months ago when that crazy Tom Cruise video first appeared I wrote a comment about it on DailyMotion making a joke about Scientology. The next day our office phone number (listed at our registrar) had a call (on the caller ID) from the Church of Scientology the very next day. No one was around to answer and no one called back, but it can hardly be a coincidence since it was the first time before and after we ever had a call from them!!

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 :~(

Re:Cruel and unusual

[MikeFM]

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.

Re:Anonymous, or the Hubbardistas?

[MichaelSmith]

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.

Re:Smear campaign by Scientology

[WhodoVoodoo]

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.

Re:Cruel and unusual

[uglyduckling]

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.

This is a "false flag" tactic by Scientology

[leereyno]

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/

Re:May or may not be the same Anons

[seebs]

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.

Re:Smear campaign by Scientology

[TheSpoom]

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.

Re:Smear campaign by Scientology

[K8Fan]

This is the sort of thing that Anonymous does normally, though. Anonymous was not created for this anti-scientology crusade.

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.