Anti-US Hacker Takes Credit For Worm

angry tapir writes "Credit for the "Here You Have" worm (recently discussed on Slashdot), has been taken by a hacker known as 'Iraq Resistance' who says the worm was designed, in part, as a propaganda tool. He said he had not expected the worm to spread as broadly as it had, and noted that he could have done much more damage to victims. 'I could smash all those infected but I wouldn't,' said the hacker. 'I hope all people understand that I am not negative person!' In other parts of the message, he was critical of the US war in Iraq. For a brief period early the worm accounted for about 10 percent of the spam on the Internet."

Comments

Luddite victims.

[jonescb]

I can understand his message, but unfortunately this sort of things always backfires. I'm not sure how he thinks a virus is going to convince the super patriotic Luddites who support the war that their beliefs are totally wrong.

Re:Luddite victims.

[FriendlyLurker]

Backfire, true: It will just be held up as an excuse to Kill Switch the internet, remove anonymous access - China's state media is already calling for teaming up with the US to remove anonymous internet access. Sure any registration system will be far from a perfect net - full of holes and work around's for the technically adept - but they only have to get the majority to use it and it will be enough to destroy the Internets potential to bring true accountability and openness to our respective governments. Something that our traditional media channels have utterly failed to do.

Re:Luddite victims.

[Anonymous Coward]

Backfire suggests unintended consequences.

On the contrary, it's been proven that a tiny poke in the Achilles world trade centre, causes the land of the free to implode in a counterproductive, authoritarian cluster fuck.

It has a certain beauty to it. Much like a slow motion train crash.

Re:Luddite victims.

[Shompol]

You are wrong. Obviously they just wanted to clear some downtown space for a mosque. "Remove your armies and bring world peace" act it was not.

Re:Luddite victims.

[lwsimon]

I'm an American, and I agree with GP.

On a human scale, 9/11 was a tragedy of epic proportions. It is a day and an act that I will never forget or forgive, period. From the standpoint of a nation of 300 million people, it was a pinprick. The impact of the domestic policy enacted in the wake of 9/11 an order of magnitude larger than that of the work of 12 nutjobs.

Re:Luddite victims.

[ScrewMaster]

On a human scale, 9/11 was a tragedy of epic proportions. It is a day and an act that I will never forget or forgive, period.

I agree.

From the standpoint of a nation of 300 million people, it was a pinprick.

I agree.

The impact of the domestic policy enacted in the wake of 9/11 an order of magnitude larger than that of the work of 12 nutjobs.

I agree, which is why I said, Whether you agree with the direction our government and law enforcement have taken in the years since 9/11 (and I, personally, do not) .

However, I dislike it when anyone says that twenty-thousand-odd deaths are of little consequence, and the GP's tone was indicative that he felt so because they were Americans.

More to the point, however, is that you (and many other people, I might add) have this idea that everything bad that's happened since 9/11, regarding overreaching government behavior, is a direct result of 9/11. It was not: 9/11 was an excuse, a rationale, that permitted the Federal Government (certain parts of it, anyway) to re-assume powers it had had taken away from it some time ago.

Start with the Patriot Act: everything thinks that it just magically appeared in front of Congress right after 9/11. That's a huge document, however, and a lot of thought went into it. Those who put it in front of Congress had it ready, just waiting for the right situation to occur so they could ram it through. And they did. I'll leave it up to you conspiracy types to decide if 9/11 was allowed to happen for just that reason.

Keep in mind that law enforcement, specifically the FBI, was just as abusive during the early stages of the Cold War as they are now. It got so bad that Congress had to step in and limit their power. And those limits were in place for decades for good reason until the Patriot Act stripped them away. Now we're right back where we were, only worse because they have a hell of a lot more technology at their beck-and-call than they did then.

Terrorism actually offers much better justification than the Red Scare ever did. There's no overt enemy to point at and say, "there's the bad guy ... get him!" It's just this miasma of fear that can be used to get anything through Congress.

Not negative?

[Alwin Henseler]

Two points:

1. Writing malware has 0 effect at large, until it's put out into the wild. Once out, damage is done & cannot ever be undone. Yes it might help to increase OS security over time, yes it'll keep anti-virus companies in business, but it's always a net negative for society. Prevention & cleanup takes time. Time that will not be spent on more useful things.
2. What that malware will do over time & for what other purposes it might be used, will have little (if anything) to do with your original intentions. It's a vehicle, and if it works, others (with a different agenda) will ride that vehicle too.

Re:Not negative?

[nedlohs]

The broken window fallacy is that a broken window causes the owner to buy a new window which employs the window maker, who then buys something else, and so and so on. Resulting in a boost to the economy. It's an obvious fallacy.

My claim was nothing to do with that at all, here's the example for the morons:

1. Dr Evil has found a bug in Windows and has his team of hackers writing an exploit which he will use to blow up the power grid in North America.
2. Joe the Crappy Hacker also finds said bug and tells Microsoft
3. Microsoft does nothing.
4. Dr Evil pulls the switch and Americans can't watch TV for an evening.

Compared with:
1. Dr Evil has found ;a bug in Windows and has his team of hackers writing an exploit which he will use to blow up the power grid in North America.
2. Joe the Crappy Hacker also find said bug and writes some malware that displays a political message and distributes itself via email.
3. Microsoft rushes to fix the problem and releases an emergency patch.
4. Dr Evil pulls the switch and nothing happens because the exploit was fixed.

The second situation has less negative consequences for society, and hence the malware was positive for society.

Yes I don't think it's a particularly likely, in fact I don't think it will ever occur. It is however, a possible situation (well the bug getting fixed before a more damaging exploit part, not the Dr Evil part).

But even if you disagree with that it still isn't a broken window fallacy, because it isn't making claims about economic benefit of any activity at all.

If you majored in economics then I suggest asking for refund. Then again I guess if you only have a hammer then the whole world looks like a nail.

After the fact rationalization

[antifoidulus]

If his payload was something *OTHER* than spam I might be more inclined to believe him, but delivering spam to people usually also involves delivering money to his bank account. He is just looking for a nobler purpose to game some "cred" I guess, and opposing the Iraq war in the cracker community is 99% of the time a pretty safe bet.

Re:bad title tag

[Akoman]

It's just a rip from the article, which is terribly written and fails to provide a lot of context. My initial opinion was this was a stitch up and the hacker was just against the war and people were stretching connections and definitions to make them sound like a security threat. This ComputerWorld article is way better at providing the details that link this worm to previous efforts by a Libyan hacker to create a politically motivated hacker group. To describe these guys as anti-US would be, I think, a simplification of the motivation of these groups. Jihadists (and here I also probably simplify) may be prepared to attack the States, but the motivation is not simply anti-US. I found this article on Eurozine to be really interesting on breaking down their attitudes.

Re:Just another victim

[KiltedKnight]

I'm always amazed at how so many people can so easily fall for something that was at best a third grade attempt. Several of my coworkers and I were unhappy, to say the least, because we all took one look at the email and said that a blind man should've been able to pick up on this. And then someone chimed in with probably what was the best comment about why this happened. He suggested that it's been many years since we've seen this kind of attack go this rampant so everyone's guard was let down such that they didn't believe these attacks happened any more.

Why is the title not worded "Windows worm"?

[couchslug]

Certainly any such story on /. should point out the affected operating systems...

Re:"Anti-US" Hacker?

[Lunix Nutcase]

And that the site was damaged in the attacks, making it part of ground zero

Only by redefining the term "ground zero". Ground zero does not include any and all areas that has been damaged it only refers to the "point directly below an explosion". So no, it is not at "ground zero" at all.

Re:"Anti-US" Hacker?

[Abcd1234]

And when pretty much 99.9999% of the people who oppose the Iraq war criticize it because "those durn Amerikkkan Neokkkon Fascist hicks are at it again"

They do? Weird. Because I'm pretty sure most people opposed the Iraq war because, you know, it was justified with lies.

But hey, what do I know, I'm not a total fucking idiot...

Re:"Anti-US" Hacker?

[daem0n1x]

Your post couldn't make it more clear that you're a bigot fed on Fox News propaganda.

The catholic church the evil infidels "destroyed" is still there. I visited it a few years ago. It's the main landmark in the beautiful city of Cordoba. Oh, by the way, they take great pride in their Arab heritage.

Anti-war is not "Anti-US"

[wealthychef]

Just because the worm author makes statements agains the US war in Iraq and calls himself "Iraqi resistance" does not mean he is anti-US. I too am agains the war in Iraq. Is it possible to disagree with US foreign policy and not be accused of being a traitor? Yes, I know he crossed a line making a (fairly harmless) worm, but this guy sounds as much aligned with US interests as most beer-swilling, harley-riding, pit bull owning flag wavers.

Re:"Anti-US" Hacker?

[mr100percent]

No, they named it "Cordoba House" because for centuries Cordoba was a place where Christians, Muslims, and Jews freely lived and worked together. Historians all agree that Moorish rule was a period of tolerance in European history, so much so that those centuries were called the "Golden Age of Judaism" since Jews could work and study freely when they were banned elsewhere in Europe. The great Jewish scholar Maimonides came out of that environment, at a time when the Muslims gave free university tuition to all citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

It's a terrible slander to start accusing the Muslims and Jews and Christians on board with this project as having some sort of malevolence. This Republican talking point shocks me because it's completely false and anyone who even glances at Wikipedia would find it so, yet still gets spread. Rather than argue the point, they renamed the place to Park51 to avoid false controversy