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ImageShack Hacked, Security Groups Threatened
revjtanton writes "Last night a group calling themselves 'Anti-Sec' hacked ImageShack, one of the largest image hosting sites on the web, and replaced many of the site's hosted pictures with one of their own, which detailed their manifesto. The group's grievance is against full-disclosure of exploits, an issue that was debated recently after a presentation on an ATM exploit was canceled. Anti-Sec simply wants the practice within security circles to end, and they've promised to cause 'mayhem and destruction' if it doesn't. These people are taking direct aim against a sector of the IT industry that is already armed to fight the ... but they also already know that. It should be interesting to see how this plays out."
in a "shoot the innocent bystander while sounding all righteous about risk" sort of way.
... of their movement?
-- NeilO
For interested readers; these were the same people who killed astalavista. (Logs of that attack can be found all over the internet if you google).
From what I can understand from their manifest, they don't want full disclosure of exploits so
1) Other script kiddies cannot use them too easily
2) General public is not aware of the risks
3) Security companies cannot prepare protection against them
This is like... let's thing about proper, slashdot analogy... bunch of car thieves telling that they are against installing immobilizers in cars and warning they will steal cars of immobilizer producers and supporters till they stop distributing immobilizers. When they stop, thieves will come back to stealing random cars, with less effort.
Wait, wait. How is messing with other people's stuff on the net from safely behind a computer 'gutsy'? Sounds like cowardice to me. I don't care what their message - if they're fucking with my, or other people's, stuff then whatever their argument is will go unheard. If their message is clear, concise and not disagreeable, why can't they convince us with a logical argument?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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These punks dont know who theyre messin with!! Me and my posse are put on our roller blades, spike our hair and take them out with our camouflage thirty three point six bee pee ess moh demz.
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
What an effective way to distribute a message, hack one of the worlds most popular image hosting sites and replace all the images with your manifesto! Every site with an image linked back to imageshack would be displaying your message. Instant.global.audience. I'm not justifying what they did and I'm all for the feds handing out a beat down, afterall, the law is the law but man, what a good idea.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
...If their message is clear, concise and not disagreeable, why can't they convince us with a logical argument?
Because logic doesn't always work. Logic in the hands of those who count the beans is usually twisted into some diseased, desecrated version of it's former elf.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
...If their message is clear, concise and not disagreeable, why can't they convince us with a logical argument?
Because logic doesn't always work. Logic in the hands of those who count the beans is usually twisted into some diseased, desecrated version of it's former elf.
And trust me, the dwarves are not happy about that.
This hack demonstrates exactly why we need full disclosure. If I used ImageShack to host important images for (e.g. a lot of people use it for blog images or forums) and someone figured out a way to hack in, I'd want to know about it so I can take steps to protect myself. What if someone uploaded child porn and it appeared on my forum?
It's always better to know than to stay ignorant. It might harm the companies behind affected products, but if it was a safety issue (e.g. your car can occasionally explode while filling it with petrol, which actually happened) there would be no question that full disclosure would be a good thing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It doesn't show the details but their website gives a summary. http://romeo.copyandpaste.info/txt/imageshack-pwned.txt How accurate, who knows.
If it's free speech, mind if I come and write graffiti on the side of your house? If you stop me, you're censoring my speech.
Thankfully you're a /. user, so the goatse.cx picture was probably better.
In order to put an end to security consultants and companies spreading fear of being hacked in order to sell security oriented products and services, they will go on a reign of terror hacking everything that isn't secured to the nines? Uhmmmmmm. I'm not sure how that works.
Why stop at the outside? Break into the place and scrawl all over his wallpaper. That's effectively what anti-sec did here.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
They want to discourage full disclosure, because it means they won't get to abuse undisclosed vulnerabilities as freely as they currently do.
Let me put it to you in more immediate terms: If the BH presentation on ATM exploits goes through, it will trigger a much more rapid response to patch the problem, which means the true exploiters have less time to plunder. Now this is just one example... There are hundreds of high-risk exploits discovered every day, some of which were obviously used to hack into ImageShack. These kiddies are scared that full disclosure will take away their "toys".
-Billco, Fnarg.com
They did a LOT more than that!
They came inside the house. Sat down at the TV and ordered PPV and drank all the beer!
Bastards!
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy."
I think full disclosure is a good motivation for companies to fix their stuff. Notify them you found a problem, what the problem is, and that you will make the exploit public after a certain (reasonable) period of time, whether they fix it or not.
It's a very dark ride.
I think l0pht's home page back in the day had it right when they quoted Microsoft as saying:
"That vulnerability is theoretical." -Microsoft
...which is one of my arguments for releasing POC code. Some folks need to be hit with a bigger clue-stick than others.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Wow. I don't think you understand what full disclosure is and what they are allegedly advocating.
Nope. He has it right, you have it 100% wrong. The ATM issue is a perfect example. That vulnerability was disclosed to the vendor eight months ago and they haven't done jack shit. Now the threat of full disclosure - to the entire world - has caused the vendor to get an injunction to prevent disclosure. Where is the fix? I still don't see a fix. Under your theory of "full disclosure is just another word for limited disclosure" the vendor would have fixed the problem long ago.
It rarely ever works like that and we have 30+ years of history to prove it - the security industry used to work the way you wish and the results were the same, vendors didn't do shit. The only time a fix comes is when the vendor knows that the only way to stop the script kiddies and all the serious blackhats is to actually fix the problem instead of sitting on it. Without at least the threat of true full disclosure vendors won't fix their problems, they don't have enough of an economic incentive to do so.
Providing the public with a warning that a vulnerability exists is not unethical and neither is providing information to the vendor but providing full exploit information is not only unethical but completely useless to the end user and places them at additional risk.
Without the threat of true full disclosure, nothing ever comes of limited disclosure.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.