WikiLeaks Defenders Threaten Amazon

healeyb writes "CNN is announcing that, starting at 11 AM EST, the hackers (coined Operation Payback) responsible for the DDoS attacks on MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, and PostFinance have promised to commence an attack against Amazon for their revocation of the WikiLeaks EC2 account. They released a do-it-yourself hacking tool online Thursday so other people can help with the attacks they say took down the websites of MasterCard and Visa..."

Comments

M.A.D.

[tverbeek]

Somehow I don't see escalation of online actions being to anyone's benefit in the long run.

Re:M.A.D.

[SuperRenaissanceMan]

No. A site slowdown could hurt Amazon's holiday sales, but not nearly as much as the government could for aiding a "terrorist."

Re:M.A.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's the terrorist? The one who did the *acts* reported in the documentation? Or the one who's letting others know they did it?

I know which it is, and it's not the one's letting the cat out of the bag.

That's right, the good ole US Gubernment is the terrorist now.

Re:M.A.D.

[dougmc]

We'll just call anybody a terrorist nowadays, won't we?

Re:M.A.D.

[Marc Desrochers]

Pretty much. There always an "ist" of some sort to battle against. There were fascists, that went away. Then came communists, that got old. Now it's terrorist. You have to tell people who the bad guys are or else they start looking at what you've been up to.

Re:M.A.D.

[SuperRenaissanceMan]

Clearly we will, whether or not it is justified. Hence the quotes suggesting that the label might be improperly applied.

Re:M.A.D.

[Stregano]

Nope, just another mother who forgot to put the final D in MADD

Re:M.A.D.

[Motard]

Yes, this will likely have the effect of governments exerting greater control over the internet - exactly what the script kiddies would be most outraged by.

Re:M.A.D.

[Weezul]

Yes, voluntary DDoS attacks are a legitimate form of non-violent resistance, assuming people use their own computers, probably not corporations. And these are these first opt-in DDoS attacks being seen sympathetically by the main stream press (outside the U.S.). So big win!

Btw, Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) is NOT a hacking tool. It's just a opt-in DDoS tool.

Re:M.A.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who wants to flay is a terrorist. The only way to stop terrorism is molesting people. They haven't found any bombs yet, but that's proves that it's working.

Re:M.A.D.

[Gohtar]

I am not sure why we are calling these script kiddies hackers. There is no hacking going on at all.

Re:M.A.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't, not shopping at Amazon would be non violent.

Attacking the site is a form of violent protest.

Re:M.A.D.

[spun]

Anyone who wants to flay is a terrorist. The only way to stop terrorism is molesting people. They haven't found any bombs yet, but that's proves that it's working.

Doesn't that depend on what you want to flay? I mean, flaying a deer is okay. Flaying a TSA agent, not so much.

Re:M.A.D.

[Duradin]

Voluntary DDoS attacks are non-physical-violence at best.

Being a DDoS *ATTACK* should be a clue that it is violence.

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

Essentially they are saying that if you don't agree with them and/or support their cause, they are going to blockade your business.

It's not a boycott and it's not a protest. It is actively interfering with business. No different than parking a cement truck in front of the doors.

If this becomes acceptable, then no one with a web presence is immune to wackos with a grudge or those with legitimate beefs.

Re:M.A.D.

[spidercoz]

To quote the Prophet Bueller, "Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself."

Re:M.A.D.

[X0563511]

A verbal attack isn't violence. That part of your point is invalid. The other, I'm not saying either way. I just wanted to comment on that second bit.

Re:M.A.D.

[eldavojohn]

Pretty much. There always an "ist" of some sort to battle against. There were fascists, that went away. Then came communists, that got old. Now it's terrorist.

How do I move it along to lobbyist?

You have to tell people who the bad guys are or else they start looking at what you've been up to.

From Bob Dylan's "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" at the end once the narrator has picked over his friends and family and everyone else with a fine tooth comb:

Well, I fin'ly started thinkin' straight
When I run outa things to investigate.
Couldn't imagine doin' anything else,
So now I'm sittin' home investigatin' myself!
Hope I don't find out anything . . . hmm, great God!

Someone needs to update that song for DHS and TSA.

Re:M.A.D.

[da5idnetlimit.com]

There has been a few days (and a few harrassing plane tranfers) where the flaying of a TSA agent would have been welcome...

Re:M.A.D.

[spidercoz]

because nobody remembers the term "phreaking"

Re:M.A.D.

[rzei]

How do you confuse DDOS with violence? Attack is just a word I think you can attack in a debate as well.

I'd say that voluntary DDOS is more like a rally in front of a shop, for example animal right activists protesting in front of a fur-clothing store. It will turn down some customers but not in the way a DDOS does that. End result is mostly similar.

However I believe that Amazon might be the first one that might actually get some financial backslash over this compared to Mastercard and Visa which probably are not in the most visited websites, whereas S3 powers many and Amazon seems to have a lot of (American) customers.

Re:M.A.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a DDoS *ATTACK* should be a clue that it is violence.

Don't be absurd.

Re:M.A.D.

[commodore64_love]

Pretty much.

I've been reading the US FCC's idea for "net neutrality". It involves creating a blacklist of sites you can't visit, having ISPs monitor the addresses customers visit to pass-along to the USG, and requiring a license to create a website/blog. And so on.

WE want freedom.
They want control.

Re:M.A.D.

[Duradin]

A rally in front of a shop is not in the shop.

A DDoS works by using up the target's resources, ie, they are protesting *IN* the shop, not in front of the shop.

Re:M.A.D.

[Nadaka]

A DDoS attack is the equivalent of a sit in, instead of physically obstructing access, you electronically obstruct access.

Re:M.A.D.

[mweather]

I think you underestimate Amazon's holiday sales, or overestimate the penalties they could face for hosting wikileaks.

Re:M.A.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you haven't seen the latest security analysis on the attacks. The "opt-in" folks are outnumbered by
compromised notes in the botnets that are also being used.

Re:M.A.D.

[mweather]

I mean, flaying a deer is okay. Flaying a TSA agent, not so much.

I think either one is perfectly fine.

Re:M.A.D.

[DMiax]

There was no business reason for Amazon to quit working with Wikileaks, they did nothing illegal. Amazon interfered in the freedom of Wikileaks to appease US and other governments. This is the thing that justifies a truck on the front door, IMO. If we accept their behaviour USG can effectively destroy freedom of speech by proxy. Do you think this is much different than having US arrest Assange and seizing his properties?

Re:M.A.D.

[twidarkling]

A verbal attack isn't violence.

Yes it is. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/violence

Only one of the six definitions lists physicality as a requirement, the others can be satisfied by a verbal attack as well as a physical one. Doing mental harm to an individual can and is just as much violence as physical harm.

Re:M.A.D.

[cgenman]

Not the same, but related.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZM4Bpt3xZU

Re:M.A.D.

[sjames]

Then governments will get DDOSed.

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

So if I don't like the comments on Slashdot, it's perfectly acceptable for me to rent a botnet and DDOS shut Slashdot down?

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

A few thousand Wikileak supporters are not going to shut down Amazon.

A few thousand Wikileak supporters using DDOS tools can.

One wacko with a grudge can use a botnet to shut down a site.

Re:M.A.D.

[sjames]

If that's the case, then chess if one of the more violent games.

Re:M.A.D.

[dougmc]

because nobody remembers the term "phreaking"

Of course we do (and if we don't, we can look it up), but "phreaking" was always about mucking with phone systems and the like. The term is too specific.

"Crackers" is a better term, but really, "script kiddies" works just fine too.

And lots of the "phreakers" were just "script kiddies" and lots of them were true "hackers".

Re:M.A.D.

[Malc]

It is acceptable isn't it? This is the online version of thousands of protesters turning up and blockading bricks and mortar businesses. So far they haven't been banned.

Welcome to the digital age.

Re:M.A.D.

[sjames]

Essentially they are saying that if the companies don't at least ape ethics in-line with the surrounding society they will be punished. As is generally true, when government fails to uphold basic community standards, vigilantes fill in the vacuum.

Re:M.A.D.

[Desler]

There was no business reason for Amazon to quit working with Wikileaks, they did nothing illegal. Amazon interfered in the freedom of Wikileaks to appease US and other governments.

So basically every company is somehow now obligated to do business with Wikileaks or else they have to face their business being interrupted by a bunch of script kiddies?

If we accept their behaviour USG can effectively destroy freedom of speech by proxy.

Because DDoSing these businesses is going to do anything but turn more people against Wikileaks? And why should Amazon suffer just because they choose not to do business with someone? Do they not also have the right to choose who they want to associate with?

Re:M.A.D.

[dave562]

What does phone fraud have to do with DDoS scripts?

Re:M.A.D.

[Mongoose Disciple]

There was no business reason for Amazon to quit working with Wikileaks, they did nothing illegal.

Wrong!

Amazon has a business reason to do anything that makes them money, or avoids costing them money.

A shitload of people in America (which does not include me, but you've got your head in the sand if you don't notice the sentiment over this) are seriously pissed at Assange and WikiLeaks and want them prosecuted in all kinds of ways that, frankly, are not legally possible.

Do you think Amazon would make more money by dumping WikiLeaks, or by letting the frothing mob above boycott them?

There are more people in America who want to burn Assange at the stake than want to defend him. Washing your hands of the whole thing as best you can is the smart business decision.

Re:M.A.D.

[dvoecks]

If you tick off enough people to where their retaliation is able to significantly impede your business, it seems to me that the grudge they're holding against you must have some merit. Unless it's one guy with a large botnet, can there really be that many "wackos"? It's kind of like the difference between a "cult" and a "religion". That said, DDoS attacks, are not the right way of going about this.

Re:M.A.D.

[miro2]

Yes, these protesters are actively interfering with businesses. This is one of the lowest imaginable crimes. They must be jailed and punished just like the lunch-counter sit-in protesters who actively interfered with businesses in the sixties. So selfish!

Re:M.A.D.

[HungryHobo]

a DDoS is like getting a big crowd of people to stand in front of the doors of a store to make it really hard for anyone else to get in.

It's utterly non-violent in the sense that it's does no physical harm to any human and it damages no property.

it is however illegal and given how much bandwidth amazon has, it's akin to spitting at a thunder storm.

Re:M.A.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. A site slowdown could hurt Amazon's holiday sales, but not nearly as much as the government could for aiding a "terrorist."

Brilliant! If random Amazon shoppers don't share our opinions and concerns, we'll FORCE them to agree with us by making their holiday shopping harder until they do! That'll endear them to our cause! And since we're obviously objectively in the moral right, we're perfectly justified in it!

Re:M.A.D.

[Compholio]

Essentially they are saying that if you don't agree with them and/or support their cause, they are going to blockade your business.

You mean like how private businesses can use trucks to blockade places they don't like? A friend told me about this story, and apparently the local paper has a paywall so this is the best I can do: Spradlin Rock Case

Re:M.A.D.

[Nadaka]

I am not sure how these tools respond to 403 errors, but that would be the correct way to ask the person to "leave and don't come back".

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

It's more like an online version of a few hundred turning up with a cans of gasoline.

With DDOS tools, then can burn a business down..at least for a few days.

Re:M.A.D.

[FatSean]

The control is going to come regardless of the actions of these DOSers. I say, let them have their speech.

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

Vigilantes are usually prosecuted.

Re:M.A.D.

[Duradin]

It's one of our oldest wargames. Of course it's violent.

Re:M.A.D.

[commandermonkey]

Essentially they are saying that if you don't agree with them and/or support their cause, they are going to blockade your business.

It's not a boycott and it's not a protest. It is actively interfering with business. No different than parking a cement truck in front of the doors.

If this becomes acceptable, then no one with a web presence is immune to wackos with a grudge or those with legitimate beefs.

How is this any different than the attacks against Wikileaks to begin with? Someone or some government didn't like that Wikileaks(and many well know newspapers) were reporting that a US Ambassador said someone was rude or that US diplomatic people are asked to spy, so they took Wikikleaks down. Are the DDoS just a cruder version of what ICE did last week when they seized domain names, without a conviction, from people who were linking to places to buy fake coach bags?

Really what it comes down to is the question of why is it OK for a Government to shutdown someones access because

don't agree with them and/or support their cause

but not OK for individuals to do the same thing?

Re:M.A.D.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Statistically, there are no terrorists. They already don't exist -- even those which are CIA false flags or FBI entrapment.

Re:M.A.D.

[uglyduckling]

I was thinking about this on my way to work this morning. I wonder whether it might be legitimate protest to stage a DDOS. IRL, the pubic at large can choose to blockage a company headquarters or a branch office, and if enough of the public are interested and concerned by the cause they can create disruption and media interest. DDOS attacks could be regarded as the online equivalent - they create disruption but when the attack ceases everything goes back to normal. The mainstream media tends to report these as 'hacking' attacks, which isn't really true at all, and it's certainly not terrorism.

Re:M.A.D.

[spidercoz]

We need to coin a new term that fits. How about "wreaking," a portmanteau of "web" and "freaking," giving it technological evolutionary significance, and it has the benefit of also being a real word with similar connotations.

Re:M.A.D.

[jokermatt999]

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

"The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another."

Politics and the English Language should be required reading in schools.

(Yes, you may have seen me saying this elsewhere. It's worth repeating.)

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

Private businesses shut down Wikileaks sites because of potential liability and headaches.

Re:M.A.D.

[Chakra5]

Who's the terrorist? The one who did the *acts* reported in the documentation? Or the one who's letting others know they did it?

eerrrr......exactly which "acts" are you referring to that we should accept as terrorism again? Help a guy see your point of view please.

Re:M.A.D.

[MozeeToby]

Yep, it's almost like if a group of people came in and took all the seats in the local diner and refused to leave, just because said diner refused to serve them.

Actively interfering with business can be a legitimate form of protest. In this case, I don't feel that it's right, since Amazon was forced to either capitulate or risk significant reprisals from the US government. It would be like blacks staging a sit-in at a privately owned diner, that was ordered by the feds to segregate, the owners of the diner aren't really the ones you should be pissed at.

Re:M.A.D.

[MillionthMonkey]

Pretty much. There always an "ist" of some sort to battle against.

Christ!

Re:M.A.D.

[Quiet_Desperation]

There always an "ist" of some sort to battle against. There were fascists, that went away. Then came communists, that got old. Now it's terrorist.

And tomorrow, the NUDISTS!

Seriously, you ever been to a nude beach? I have. It's like David Letterman said- there's more ocean going tonnage at a nude beach than at any major seaport.

Re:M.A.D.

[Zorpheus]

DOS attacks often work with random faked sender IP adresses, so the DOSed server can not just filter out the computers doing the attack. Wouldn't a filter at the providers for fake sender IPs make DOS attacks nearly impossible?

Re:M.A.D.

[JWW]

Yep. The FCC could make the Internet common carrier in a heartbeat. THAT IS NOT WHAT THEY WANT.

They want to control the internet. From the FCC's perspective, Net Neutrality doesn't mean that all packets get sent equally, it means all packets get inspected equally.

Re:M.A.D.

[Shivetya]

What I find amusing is that they are going after corporations instead of nailing government sites. I guess its the old method of, go after those who can't put you into jail or bring harm to you and instead focus on those who are worth hits on news sites.

In other words, we can't go after the government because, they would, like uh, come after us and they can do it.

They are taking a good cause and ruining it.

Re:M.A.D.

[boxo1]

Yes, this will likely have the effect of governments exerting greater control over the internet - exactly what the script kiddies would be most outraged by.

Exactly. I read somewhere: "They'll have to shut down the internet to stop us"
Um, yeah. And that would be good how?

I don't see the internet being shut down, but I wouldn't be surprised at declining internet freedom in direct proportion to the success of "operation payback".

Re:M.A.D.

[moeinvt]

"... FCC's idea for "net neutrality". It involves creating a blacklist of sites you can't visit, having ISPs monitor the addresses customers visit to pass-along to the USG, and requiring a license to create a website/blog. And so on."

I saw this coming YEARS ago, and I've been debating the point with the net neutrality apostles ever since. Net neutrality is a good idea "in principle", but you absolutely CANNOT TRUST Washington D.C. with the implementation. Just as I predicted, there will be a nice cover page with the title "Net Neutrality and Internet Freedom Act" which covers up 2000 pages of insidious provisions empowering the government to micro-manage our online experience.

Re:M.A.D.

[Mindcontrolled]

Can as well upgrade half, heck, one quarter of Dylan's work. Come to think of it, no need for upgrades, it is as valid as ever.

Re:M.A.D.

[mcgrew]

Actually, since MADD seems to be completely prohibitionist, rather than simply against drunk driving, they probably should chage the name to MAD -- Mothers Against Drinking.

I prefer DAMM -- Drunks Against Mad Mothers.

Re:M.A.D.

[Mindcontrolled]

Guess you'd have said the same 40 years ago about sit-ins?

Re:M.A.D.

[Haeleth]

Then governments will get DDOSed.

First they came for the leakers, and I did not speak out, because I was not a leaker.

Then they came for the script kiddies, and I did not speak out, because I was not a script kiddie.

Then they stopped, because nobody else was attacking them. And the world was a better place without all those script kiddies clogging up the tubes.

Sounds good to me. Let's do this!

Re:M.A.D.

[Mindcontrolled]

Fortunately for you, idiots aren't. If slashdot would delete your account and IP ban you for being a moronic wingnut, you'd scream bloody murder, censorship, freedom of speech. See the parallels?

Re:M.A.D.

[JockTroll]

Understand this: the governments have been trying to exert ABSOLUTE control over the internet from quite a time, and they won't stop. Nothing we do or do not do will change that. The choice is between taking it up the bunghole like good slaves or fight back even if the odds are far from fair. I say we fight.

Re:M.A.D.

[mcneely.mike]

Wow... not sure where that came from: but if you like brown original leather, do a youtube search on luigifan. This kids sessions on his VHS collection are OUT-STANDING. Now that is Autism for you (luigifan is one of my son's favourites).

Re:M.A.D.

[mcneely.mike]

Jesus.... i'm sorry, but i like bush. Bush is great. Bush is the one thing that keeps me going in life.

Don't say nothing negative about bush, man, or i'll eat it, then f__k it -- again and again.
That'll teach you.

Sorry about getting all heated up here, but i just don't think there's anything wrong with bush.
Sorry. Sorry.

Re:M.A.D.

[alonsoac]

I haven't seen much sympathy for the attacks, what main stream press are you referring to?

Re:M.A.D.

[mcneely.mike]

How about (young)Jolie-ing... or Acid-burning. Or crash&burning.

Or PoolOnTheRoof-ing?

Re:M.A.D.

[Doomdark]

Who's the terrorist? The one who did the *acts* reported in the documentation? Or the one who's letting others know they did it?

How about neither? Or which one is using acts to spread actual terror (fear)? While there is no commonly accepted strict definition, "Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion." seems like a reasonable consensus definition (as per wikipedia).

Word terrorist is as misused as word liberal these days, at least in US (not much of news, but worth reiterating).

Re:M.A.D.

[endymion.nz]

Funny, in the rest of the world we are glad to see what we suspected all along is actually true.

Re:M.A.D.

[cayenne8]

"Jesus.... i'm sorry, but i like bush. Bush is great. Bush is the one thing that keeps me going in life.

Don't say nothing negative about bush, man, or i'll eat it, then f__k it -- again and again. That'll teach you. "M

Speak for yourself, I prefer when they go Full Brazilian!!!

I'm not looking to floss my teeth when I'm down there...

Re:M.A.D.

[endymion.nz]

Private businesses shut down Wikileaks sites because of extra-judicial pressure from governments. Those businesses should now consider themselves political actors and should not be at all surprised when actions are taken against them because of this fact. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Something like that anyway.

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

And then you would fully support my renting a botnet and bring Slashdot to its knees with a DDOS attack?

See the parallels?

Re:M.A.D.

[shmlco]

"Anyone who wants to flay is a terrorist. "

A little light flogging and now I'm suddenly a terrorist? Sheesh.

Re:M.A.D.

[JustSomeProgrammer]

What speech? This is interrupting me from getting my Christmas shopping done. Your right to free speech does not include forcing me to hear you.

Re:M.A.D.

[TheCRAIGGERS]

I was thinking about this on my way to work this morning. I wonder whether it might be legitimate protest to stage a DDOS. IRL, the pubic at large can choose to blockage a company headquarters or a branch office, and if enough of the public are interested and concerned by the cause they can create disruption and media interest. DDOS attacks could be regarded as the online equivalent - they create disruption but when the attack ceases everything goes back to normal. The mainstream media tends to report these as 'hacking' attacks, which isn't really true at all, and it's certainly not terrorism.

Not really. As far as I know (and this may be false, or only pertain to my particular locale, which is the US) a protest can't interfere with other people's usage of that building. In other words, if I protest Walmart, I can't barricade the doors or even attempt to stop people from going inside. So, I believe what you say is incorrect- that a public can legally block a company.

A DDOS attack, however, is exactly that. By protesting in this way, you are preventing somebody from doing their holiday shopping in the way they want, and as far as I know, that is not a legal form of protest. Or legal at all.

Re:M.A.D.

[mcneely.mike]

Geez... my dentist said flossing was good, but i trust /. for my dental care, so i'll try it!

The mouthwash bush gives me is nice, though a little salty.

Re:M.A.D.

[aristotle-dude]

This is not the same thing at all. By blocking Amazon, they are not just interfering with the business of Amazon but third party resellers who sell through amazon.

Amazon is not preventing Wikileaks from using another service.

Re:M.A.D.

[flyingsquid]

Who's the terrorist? The one who did the *acts* reported in the documentation? Or the one who's letting others know they did it? I know which it is, and it's not the one's letting the cat out of the bag. That's right, the good ole US Gubernment is the terrorist now.

If you actually read Assange's writings, what comes across is that he views the world through the lens of conspiracies. In his view, conspiracies are networks of people who communicate privately to achieve some end. His insight is that an authoritarian conspiracy can't function without private communicaton. If conspirators are reluctant to communicate for fear of being exposed, then the network loses effectiveness. For an example of how this would work, consider how it would become harder for organized crime to conduct their operations if they knew that their communications were being intercepted by the police.

As far as I can tell, Assange is out to undermine authoritarian conspiracies and he views the United States as one of those. What follows is that in the release of these documents, Wikileaks isn't functioning as a whistleblower calling attention to individual misdeeds. Wikileaks is trying to undermine the effectiveness of the entire network, the entire conspiracy that is the U.S. government. That's why they plan to release all 250,000 cables, rather than just the cables that show evidence of wrongdoing. If you think Assange is out to point out a few bad apples, you're thinking too small. Assange wants to burn down the whole damn orchard. The damage done to American foreign policy isn't collateral damage, it's the entire point of the leaks.

Re:M.A.D.

[Noughmad]

Don't say this anymore, if the Australian goverment finds out they might ban it.

Re:M.A.D.

[marcosdumay]

The government will use a protest against its control of the internet to get greater control?

Now, I also think that is true, but it is usefull to stablish it as a fact for once. It is harder to get anoyed about something you think somebody will do. It is much easier to get disturbed by something somebody did actualy do.

Re:M.A.D.

[eleuthero]

It sounds reasonable, BUT amazon's lawyers would probably argue that what you were doing was the equivalent of entering a place of business and holding down the cashier so she couldn't take people's money. This would be assault, trespassing, etc.

Re:M.A.D.

[Original Replica]

No benefit?!? It's great! Internet warfare between commercial entities is so cyber-punk that I can practically smell a dystopian future bubbling into existence around me. That's awesome, except for the small problem of cyber-punk dystopian futures being horrible places to live for 99% of the population.

Re:M.A.D.

[marcosdumay]

As long as enough people support their cause, yes, they are saying that if they don't agree with you, they'll disrupt you. But they can't do that alone, they need people supporting them.

How is that any different from other kinds of protest?

Re:M.A.D.

[joost]

I don't agree. AWS specifically stated they were not ordered but acted out of their own free will. Now that might not be true, but that is what they stated.

Re:M.A.D.

[ubermiester]

Since "terrorism" is generally defined as using extreme fear - most often of sudden violence - to achieve political aims, this most definitely does not fit the description.

But if you take out the extreme and violence part, you've pretty close. The more appropriate term here would fear-ism or threat-ism. The "attacks" are non-violent but since DoS is always used with "attack", the intent is clearly to attack infrastructure. And they are also saying that they will continue to attack anyone who they deem as an "enemy" of Wikileaks.

They are effectively forming a de-facto guerrilla force that is sworn to protect the symbol of their movement. We've digitized and virtualized plenty of other "real" things, so why not guerrilla wars?

Re:M.A.D.

[Mindcontrolled]

I would fully support you to spam Slashdot in protest on your own. That is what is happening here - this is not a rented botnet, these are thousands of people setting their boxes up to spam Amazon. You are free to try such a movement going if Slashdot bans you. Good luck. The difference is, that no one will care for your case.

Re:M.A.D.

[marcosdumay]

They probably aren't going against the government because the government has little to lose with a DDoS. Corporations, by the other side can lose a lot. They are going where it hurts, on the pocket.

Re:M.A.D.

[couchslug]

OTOH, there is no hope for peaceful change.

Re:M.A.D.

[cold fjord]

Pretty much. There always an "ist" of some sort to battle against. There were fascists, that went away. Then came communists, that got old.

You seem to be confusing militant, aggressive, ideological nation states like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with women's fashions. They didn't just "go away" or "get old". Nazi Germany was defeated by a hideously expensive war* that ultimately resulted in its invasion, military defeat, and dismemberment into 4 occupied zones and 2 countries (East & West Germany). The West contended with Communism's greatest power block (the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact) in Eastern Europe at great expense through the Cold War. It was by no means clear that the West and the values of democracy and free enterprise would win against them. And the struggle against Communism isn't really over yet, is it? At least the Chinese are reforming themselves a bit. Good thing too, since Communism killed about 100,000,000 people.

Now it's terrorist. You have to tell people who the bad guys are or else they start looking at what you've been up to.

Really? You have to be told? Just a little help? Well, things can get a little confusing for some, I guess.

*That was the 2nd World War - maybe you've heard of it? All the other wars are jealous about its death toll and cost.

Re:M.A.D.

[Graff]

Yep, it's almost like if a group of people came in and took all the seats in the local diner and refused to leave, just because said diner refused to serve them.

You're absolutely right! In both cases the people can and should be arrested, convicted of trespass or similar crimes, be fined or jailed, and probably owe compensation to the owner for lost business. What a great analogy!

Re:M.A.D.

[Entropius]

See New York Times Co. v. United States.

Re:M.A.D.

[hairyfeet]

Yeah I think when it came out one of our "defense contractors" is pimping out 9 year old boys as party favors and the SAME BUNCH did the same thing with 9-12 year old girls in Kosovo? Yeah any pretense of moral superiority went out the window. If they would have pulled that shit once and got a good firing and prosecution that would be one thing but continuing to hire the sick fucks? It reminds me of that English comedy bit where two Nazis are sitting there and one of them goes "Hey, we have fricking skulls on our uniforms! Do you think we're the bad guys?"

As for TFA with those in power kissing the corporate/government booty, which is now pretty much the same booty thanks to the revolving doors, and the leaks proving the government is covering up some of the most evil shit you can think of pretty much mob justice is the only justice we seem to have right now. When you have CNN and every MSM completely ignoring child molestation and other evil shit only to trip over themselves to talk about how wonderful the government is and how evil Wikileaks is for daring to question them? Yeah we might as well stop pretending our media is any better than Soviet Pravda.

Re:M.A.D.

[dougmc]

But both of these men (the terrorist, the freedom fighter) have guns, or bombs, or some way of killing you. And you're likely afraid of them if they're on the other side (this is where the "terror" comes into it.)

Assange has his mighty balls, which are indeed mighty, but I don't think they'll kill you, even if the condom breaks.

He isn't trying to kill you. He's just telling you how things are. Really, if Assange is a terrorist, I guess Jesus was a terrorist too. (Of course, look how he turned out ... maybe he was!)

Galileo also comes to mind.

Re:M.A.D.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Perhaps Anon should just start buying up cloud resources to aid in their attacks...now where can one buy that?

Re:M.A.D.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

So every time a site gets slashdotted the users should be arrested?

Re:M.A.D.

[Taibhsear]

You seem to have made the false assumption that anyone IS immune to wackos with a grudge.

Re:M.A.D.

[iterativeDesign]

I'm pretty sure no one agrees with the government's actions, and anyone with 2 braincells or more a find a reason to dislike them. But to what benefit does it do to release confidential documents without entire proper noun redaction to reduce/eliminate it's impact on national security and day-to-day operations?

IMHO, Assange (sp?) is an internet, information blackmail thug that is using illicitly provided information to threaten the US government (much like terrorism is used to get what they want). And then these little a55holes who think "gov't sucks, f*ck the man, I deserve more attention and money...etc" are jumping on the bandwagon and using his popularity as an excuse to defend him and his "cause" by downloading this program and DDoSing a site. To what benefit does it do anyone other than Anon and Assange to DDoS a site, especially a private company or personal website? They are private individuals and retain the right to refuse business of anyone. If you don't like it, suck it up and do business elsewhere, that's capitalism and individual rights for you. It doesn't give you the right to go on the offensive and degrade the online experience for everyone else by attacking the private individual/business (like Amazon).

Re:M.A.D.

[VortexCortex]

This is not the same thing at all. By blocking Amazon, they are not just interfering with the business of Amazon but third party resellers who sell through amazon.

Amazon is not preventing Wikileaks from using another service.

Now let's consider for a moment what you just wrote... no, actually, let's not, lets just rewrite it and swap the parties involved.

This is not the same thing at all. By blocking Wikileaks, they are not just interfering with the business of Wikileaks but third party leakers who leak through Wikileaks.

Anonymous is not preventing Amazon from using a better service.

So, you see... it is the same thing. Amazon is protesting the actions of Wikileaks on behalf of the US Gov. Anonymous is protesting the actions of Amazon on the behalf of Wikileaks supporters.

Here's a nice thought: Amazon's servers are just waiting to send me data, if I don't want that data I block it via ad-blockers. My client is just waiting to send Amazon data, If Amazon doesn't want my packets, they can block them via filters.

Don't like it? GTFO the web. There's no reason Amazon can't distribute Internet enabled "apps" you must use to access their content, and block all other unapproved data. I risk being DDoSed and having crazy over-the-cap overages by being connected to the Internet, and spreading my IP address all over the web... so does Amazon. They may be at higher risk, but my overages would cost me a higher percent of my time and money.

Re:M.A.D.

[KDR_11k]

It reminds me of that English comedy bit where two Nazis are sitting there and one of them goes "Hey, we have fricking skulls on our uniforms! Do you think we're the bad guys?

Funny thing is that the skull is the legitimate emblem of stormtroopers which have been around since the days of trench warfare on all sides. They're the dudes who have to jump out of their own trench and run over to the other guys' trench.

Re:M.A.D.

[Shemmie]

Oh you have SO just made the no-fly list.

Re:M.A.D.

[jasonmanley]

Yeah but it is obvious to you that Germany were the bad guys right? When I look at WW2 all I see is a Germany trying to do to Europe what Europe did to the rest of the world in the preceding centuries. I mean Britain enslaved people, forced its religion, language and culture on them had concentration campus - Germany tried to do the same and became the bad guys. America tries to control the world and impose its will through financial institutions and political and trade pressures but when someone else does it by whatever means they have necessary then they are terrorists all of a sudden. Don't get me wrong I am not saying that they are not bad - I am saying that we all are! No one can claim purely clean hands in this world. It is just whoever you can convince to buy your story more than others.

Re:M.A.D.

[Anonymous Coward]

voter democracy is a fraud in the pretence of freedom by the control of the selfish desires of psychopaths to keep society as they wish and the voter subdued.

Think of this.
There is a question to vote on with two opposing options, lets say people pay less tax vs people pay more tax.
Person a : votes for the option which is selfish to pay less tax.
person b, thinks altruistic: now they could vote to pay more tax, but if they are poor they may well vote for people to pay less tax, as they don't care about themselves so don't want the benifits of more tax reveniew.

This would then create a bias, however slight, towards a selfish society. Since the selfish vote will always be selfish and the altruistic vote, may go the way for or against the selfish one.

There are people in this world who have selfish personality's, people who would put themselves above and before other people.

The people who would govern and seek to govern, the people who claim democracy.

The system is rigged, rigged for a selfish society, where selfishness is the norm, where the selfish rule.

What do you expect from such a system.

Re:M.A.D.

[exomondo]

Attacking the site is a form of violent protest.

How so?

Re:M.A.D.

[exomondo]

or risk significant reprisals from the US government.

what reprisals?

Re:M.A.D.

[trickyD1ck]

What about hiring someone with good orator skills to persuade thousands to spam Slashdot?

Re:M.A.D.

[taucross]

"But I was just following orders" didn't work the nazis. Godwin'd

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

A few thousand people is a drop in the bucket to Amazon.

Unless of course the set their machines up to use some kind of DDOS software and aim it at Amazon. If they want to sit at the PC all day long clicking Amazon links, then more power to them

So whether it's a rented botnet or a coordinated use of DDOS software, it is still has an nonrepresentational impact on Amazon.

One guy with a can of gas is worth 100 guys with protest signs in this case.

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

You'd be singing a different tune if was your website and source of income.

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

You have to pretty much be a dickhead to equate this to the Civil Rights Movement.

Re:M.A.D.

[sycodon]

There are rules regarding protests. Break them and you get arrested for criminal trespass.

Re:M.A.D.

[Dan541]

These script Kiddies aren't intelligent. If they disrupt Amazon hosting then all they will do is create thousands of enemies and considering that AWS is primarily aimed at developers i.e people who know what they are doing, this really seems like a stupid move on behalf of the kiddies.

Re:M.A.D.

[The Wild Norseman]

a DDoS is like getting a big crowd of people to stand in front of the doors of a store to make it really hard for anyone else to get in.

It's utterly non-violent in the sense that it's does no physical harm to any human and it damages no property.

Even slightly better, it's like getting a big crowd of people to continuously walk in and out of the front doors of the store. Some actual shoppers (i.e., packets) might slip through, but it's not likely.

Re:M.A.D.

[Red Flayer]

I resent this entire line of discussion.

Re:M.A.D.

[BlackSnake112]

A group of people protesting outside a shop peacefully (with permits where required) will most likely not get arrested.

People involved with these DDoS attacks will be arrested.

Besides they are attacking corporations/people for not giving any more money. This is a modern version of the mob getting 'protection' money from stores. The stores stop paying they get attacked. They pay, they are left alone.

Re:M.A.D.

[Requia]

It's not even cracking, the Anon attacks are entirely voluntary. Its the attacks on Anon and Wikileaks that are being done with zombie systems.

Re:M.A.D.

[DMiax]

So if I don't like the comments on Slashdot, it's perfectly acceptable for me to rent a botnet and DDOS shut Slashdot down?

Are you asking me if you can? You can. You are free to do anything not illegal and IMO something as mild as DDOSing slashdot if you want to. They might sue you, but that's their business.

Now if you ask if you would be on the same moral ground, nope. You are just a jackass. Here we deal with censorship. If it happened in Russia we would be all high and moral against corruption and oppression. It happened to the US, and I am going to do the same.

Don't you feel ashamed that *Putin* is lecturing "the west" on democracy and free speech? I do.

Re:M.A.D.

[DMiax]

So basically every company is somehow now obligated to do business with Wikileaks or else they have to face their business being interrupted by a bunch of script kiddies?

Did anyone claim this? Are you really that dishonest when you discuss? It is disgusting.

Re:M.A.D.

[DMiax]

ok, maybe not, if they are really hit by a DDOS...

Just to explain my position, let's say Mastercard said in 2008 "you know, we don't really want people to donate to Obama, from now on you cannot use our cards to give him your money". Let's say Visa did the same, and maybe Paypal too. Is that a business decision or a political one? (hint: Mastercard and Paypal admitted that the US gov pressured them)

Re:M.A.D.

[debrain]

Actively interfering with business can be a legitimate form of protest. In this case, I don't feel that it's right, since Amazon was forced to either capitulate or risk significant reprisals from the US government. It would be like blacks staging a sit-in at a privately owned diner, that was ordered by the feds to segregate, the owners of the diner aren't really the ones you should be pissed at.

Sir —

Except that the feds created and implemented the "no blacks at the diner" law without any act of legislation or even any discussion with the public or elected officials, and employed this law without any judicial – or other – oversight to convict a defendant without any presentation of charges or evidence or even any real process at all and then executed a mandatory order (of the injunction flavour) to prevent a company from doing business with that supposed defendant on the basis of that conviction. No, rather all this occurred with a phone call from a junior senator.

Of such a senator's call, how jealous would the residents of Jessup County have been in 1964! (That's a reference to Mississippi Burning)

Amazon folded. They didn't even know if the feds even had a hand – much less what may have been in said hand.

I suppose, though, it's not Amazon's sworn duty to uphold the constitution ...

Re:M.A.D.

[Kaz Kylheku]

Fighting communists didn't become old. They merely won: their enemies assimilated their core values.

Re:M.A.D.

[commandermonkey]

True, but different for your OP. However, to go with this thread, would you have supported a restaurant that denied service to 'colored' people 50 years ago? The restaurant refused to serve a group of people and they got picketed so that 'decent' folk couldn't use it, or it made it slightly more difficult to get in, would you be against the picketers? The restaurant was perfectly within their legal rights at the time to deny service, and may have been legally obligated to do so. Hell, the owner really, really wanted to serve them but didn't want to put up with it

because of potential liability and headaches.

To be clear I do not support the actions of the DDoSer's(my response was to email and call Amazon and VISA and let them know I would not be using them for my XMas shopping because of their action) but there is a group out there that is angry and frustrated and doesn't know what to do. This is their way of replying back to the attacks against open information with a statement of "Censorship, for what ever reason, will not stand. You were so afraid of real 'merican's not using you that you took the easy way out. This is the penalty for not standing with an open society"

Is it childish, Yes. Is it effective, No, and judging from NPRs lazy, and standard, fact check free, coverage it was counter productive since they associate 'supporters' of wikileaks and, by Ad Hitlerorum reasoning, wikileaks itself with people trying to harm business and there for America. But what other avenue is there?

Why didn't the DOJ/FBI issue the take down notices to the original, attacker/coverage of the attacker, as they supposedly did to those covering the response? If the original attack had never happened then there would have been no need to turn to Amazon in the first place.

I am sure at this point we have all been assaulted with the calls for assassination of Assange, the evil of letting the US 'secrets' out, really, the full on blitz of US media about how evil free information is. The problem and the frustration that many people have with this is the hypocrisy that is carried out in our name. If you substitute N. Korea or China for USA in the documents and related news articles, how many calls do you think there would be from US press that what was being done was wrong? I bet Kristol, Coulter, Liz Cheney and the Washington Post editorial team would be calling for invading what ever country it was because, "Well they said rude things and are trying to stifle a free press."

Instead we get a media, hungry for access and a little PO'd the leakier didn't trust them with information, clamoring for more press censorship.

With the self-proclaimed government watch dog, the fourth estate, doing the dirty work of the government. Is it any wonder a frustrated people are resorting to whatever means they really know in a cyber age to say(in a counter productive and ineffective way) "Not in my name?

Re:M.A.D.

[jav1231]

Agreed. The bigger the voluntary botnet gets, the more casualties. Most of which will be propaganda-drunken script-kiddies looking to earn 'Net cred by walking down Internet Ave. with picket sign. The puppet masters are so far deep they won't be found. But these people will and will suffer for it, likely, through prosecution. Just as drug dealers and gangs use their youth, these experienced hackers are using the ignorant. The bigger the botnet the easier it is to find someone within it, even if but a few. So Timmy may get thrown under the bus "for the cause." But hey, give peas a chance eh?

Re:M.A.D.

[jav1231]

Assange and Wikileaks crossed the line when he released the cables as collateral. They had nothing to do with unlawful acts. It was just insurance, as was said. So yeah, as far as I'm concerned they became an enemy of the state. They did it because they could, they wanted attention, they wanted to stick it to the man. All these calls for altruism are B.S. as far as I'm concerned. I'm all for whistle blowing when you see a crime being committed but dumping the whole stockpile was more than pissy and petty, it's frankly tantamount to an act of war. Why should Assange care? He's getting his attention.

Re:M.A.D.

[Nursie]

Good.

We need to end the entire practice of western governments pulling dodgy, corrupt, anti-democratic, anti-humanitarian antics in the name of security or in any other name. We need to end the practice of classifying that which is embarrassing, scandalous or distasteful. If anything embarrassing, scandalous or distasteful happens it means that something must be done about it, not that it should be brushed under the carpet.

The people need to see what is being done in their name with their mandate and make sure their voices are heard that these things must end.

I may not agree 100% with the depth of the vision of Mr Assange - that all secret communication in government must end - but I sure as hell think that 99% of it should be available. And this would have the effect of the insidious, sinister shit not happening half as much because the assholes would know they are being watched.

It's time the people watched the government again, not the other way around.

Re:M.A.D.

[akayani]

"Who's the terrorist? The one who did the *acts* reported in the documentation? Or the one who's letting others know they did it?"

The one that hasn't prosecuted a single member of the American Armed Forces for brutal acts outside the rules of engagement but will jail and call for the murder of those that expose this critical issue.

I call for a Jihad on Sarah Palin & friends!

Re:M.A.D.

[kevorkian]

in your analogy .. wikileaks would be a bunch of levels above that ..

Wiki leaks leaks the names .. which gets someone caught .. who is then put in front of someone that pulls the trigger ..just by following your own logic .. the fault is of the person who pulled the trigger ... Not the one that published something on a web site.

if you want to blame wiki leaks , then it would be the same as blaming the guy that invented the gun!

Re:M.A.D.

[Pyrion]

The problem with "crackers" is its association with software piracy as well as its use as an ethnic slur.

Re:M.A.D.

[cold fjord]

Dear reader, what troubles your mind so? Come, let us reason together. What shall we discuss? The Fenians, or the Filibusters? The Comintern, or the Kuomintang? Lebensraum, Continuous Revolution, Socialism in One Country, or the Monroe Doctrine? Socialism with a Human Face, perhaps? Red Guards, White Guards, or Black Panthers? Glasnost, or Lenin's New Economic Policy? The Long March, the Loa Dong, or the Great Leap Forward? NATO? SEATO? Various vetoes? Or, perhaps, you are concerned that I am unaware of the Oracle who is the fraud of all wisdom? Do not weep, but share your troubles with me, I implore you. What nugget of ..."truth" do you have?

Re:M.A.D.

[Evtim]

Don't go there! This morning on the BBC they already said that because of the cyber attacks and counterattacks on Wikileaks the governments will impose draconian Internet control and we will all suffer.

Do I need to spell out the fundamental, barefaced, arrogant lie in this statement? Hint: Internet control is a hot topic (as any /.-er knows) for how long already?

Let’s now blame the terrorist Assange for the next Internet patriotic act. Well, done media spin doctors...

Re:M.A.D.

[endymion.nz]

If it was my website I wouldn't have dropped wikileaks.

Re:M.A.D.

[dougmc]

Then they came for the Terrorists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Terrorist.

So the jews are the terrorists in this story?

It's a nice analogy, except that being a fascist is pretty vague (and really isn't illegal, and really, average citizens are typically not called fascists), being Communist isn't illegal, but being a terrorist certainly is illegal (or doing what terrorists do, anyways.)

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things aren't the same ...

The original was about Communists, trade unionists and Jews.

DIY hacking tool?

[Hatta]

Is wget in a while loop insufficient?

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be more interesting if they could run the tool from within EC2.

just sayin'

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[entotre]

The 'hacking tool' for everyone: object on F5-key

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[Domini]

Yes it is, but "wget &" in a loop is more what they're going for... except they modify wget so that it does not also kill your machine...

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[the_one(2)]

Take a look at LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon). The sourcecode is on sourceforge and everything=). An encyclopedia dramatica page on the subject can be found here

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[Hatta]

So all you really need is wget, while, and nice.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[multipartmixed]

And a process list which can be longer than the number of sockets you can open at once...

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[ifrag]

Well, if they are providing a DIY tool it damn well better be as readable, straightforward source code.

If it's a binary tool then the one "opt-in" might turn into a more serious problem.

Haven't found a link anywhere to see what exactly it is.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[melikamp]

Shhhh, you gonna shatter script bunnies' illusions of grandeur.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[MachDelta]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/hivemindloic/files/Source/

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[Idbar]

So, it's not just a loop, it's a "clever" loop.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[iter8]

The pseudocode for LOIC is:
1. Post article on /. about Amazon being shutdown
2. /.'ers rush to amazon.com to see if it's true
3. Success!

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[Deagol]

To hell with while loops. Do it in style and in parallel:

yes "http://www.amazon.com" | xargs -n1 -P32 wget -e robots=off -q --tries=2 --timeout=32 -H -p --output-document=/dev/null

Okay, "-P32" may be a *little* excessive. ;-) I'm sure the "wget" options can be optimized a little. Anyway, it's a good start.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[Hatta]

In any case, some sort of delay should be added to avoid algorithms to come up with the idea that you're NOT an actual customer and so, lock you out.

Wget includes a --random-wait parameter for exactly this reason. You'd also want to set it to recurse, so you're not just grabbing the same page over and over again, which would likely get cached. If you really want to behave badly, you can even ignore robots.txt with -e robots=off. Most of what you'd need to do can be accomplished with a wget commandline.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[melikamp]

Does putting people down arbitrarily necessitate insecurity? Why? Did Parker and Stone betray their poor self-image when they ripped SJP a new one for looking like a horse? It's a joke, dude. Our entire life is a freaking joke.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[PRMan]

With hacked credit card and Paypal accounts...

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[PRMan]

Shouldn't they be filling up the cart and sending it to payment processing with phony (but numerically valid) credit card numbers? It's like a trifecta. Hitting Amazon, Visa and Mastercard all at once...

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[PRMan]

(After reading that, I'm seeing that it's a good thing I'm not affiliated with that group...)

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[snadrus]

multi-thread it for starters

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[marcosdumay]

I had to look at the manual to see what that does... What do you mean by "-P32", that is equivalent to "--directory-prefix=32"? There is probably some bug in there.

Yet, I think the while true; do wget&; done; thing is more efficient.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[carnalforge]

ulimit is your friend

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[Deagol]

The "-P32" (at least in FreeBSD "xargs") means to have 32 instances of the target command (wget, in this case) in parallel.

Re:DIY hacking tool?

[marcosdumay]

Ops. You're of course right, lame mistake by my part.

Hackers?

[Degenerateuk]

Yet another case of script kiddies giving hackers a bad name...

Re:Hackers?

[hedwards]

Indeed, this is at best social engineering, and even that's questionable given that most of the people know perfectly well what's going on and are participating because they believe in it not in spite of their beliefs.

Re:Hackers?

[MachDelta]

It's NOT hacking, but Joe Public doesn't understand the difference between a "hacker" and a DDOS. I had to explain it to my parents last night with the following example: A Hacker is to a DDOS'er as a Burgler is to a guy who repeatedly rings your doorbell and then hides in the bushes.
The other explanation is that "hacker" is a sexy headline, so the major news outlets prefer to use the sensationalized label over the accurate one.

DIY hacking tools

[digitaldc]

really isn't 'hacking' - or is it?

This news did nothing more than re-direct a lot of people to Amazon.com just to see if it was working. Then, they got distracted searching for something cool and subsequently made a few purchases.

Re:DIY hacking tools

[nospam007]

Good tactic.
Get millions of people to buy tons of stuff and return it the next week.

That isn't fixable with a few server upgrades.

 

Re:DIY hacking tools

[miro2]

Yes, its not 'hacking' and these are not 'attacks' and there is no 'war.' Those are loaded terms, and they are being used in order to make it seem like this is not an ethical politically-motivated action. Participants are not stealing or damaging property. They are simply taking up bandwidth. This is firmly in the tradition of passive resistance, in which protesters enter a business or property and simply take up space to prevent business from occurring (i.e., lunch counter sit-ins). The terms we should be using are 'protest' or 'online sit-in' and the hackers should be called 'protesters.'

Slashdot editors: please stop calling these 'attacks.'

Re:DIY hacking tools

[Chakra5]

While I think you have a point, a DDoS 'attack' is not known as a DDoS 'protest' in any context. That groups motivation and the process itself are different beasts and thus it seems entirely appropriate to refer to the action as a DDoS 'attack'. Furthermore, can a protested not attack a policeman or vice-versa during a protest?

This makes it worse

[Antisyzygy]

The US government now has another excuse for an internet-wide crackdown. Thanks assholes.

Re:This makes it worse

[healeyb]

The fear of a government crackdown is probably the best possible excuse to continue what you are doing.

Re:This makes it worse

[Antisyzygy]

I don't know about that. I think certain people in the government are just waiting for something like this to happen to help convince the 80 percent of the US that are morons its time to "stop the cyber-terrorists". Then its unique ID's on the internet, centralized and monitored network hubs, ect. Maybe Im being a tin-foil hat nut but I don't have alot of faith in the US population that allows themselves to be duped into the Patriot act and TSA gropings.

Re:This makes it worse

[bill_mcgonigle]

The US government now has another excuse for an internet-wide crackdown. Thanks assholes.

What makes you think this isn't a false-flag operation? Duck, signed comms coming this way.

Re:This makes it worse

[healeyb]

You may be right. But to resolve to sit quietly and just take it all out of fear isn't the solution.

Re:This makes it worse

[retech]

Precisely. In the end we'll look back and see the mountains of spin the US Gov', CNN and FOX put on this to convince the world that hackers will eventually take over the world. They'll cite stats on how they compromise this or that. They'll interview ppl who had their identity stolen and close the interview with things like: "..it's only a matter of time before we all end up like John here."

While I do think their heart is in the right place, this is a woefully misplaced effort. If they could instead boycott all these places. If they could get say an 80% reduction in customers of PayPal and Amazon for a month, that would seriously damage them. If they could get a global effort of people to not use their Visa or MC for 6 months, that would make everyone take notice. But sadly, like much of the current social spectrum, they'll have a kneejerk reaction, applaud themselves and then forget about it. But the gov't's and corporations will NOT. We will all pay for this type of behaviour.

I'm left to ask: Why Wikileaks? Why not fight for the stack of equally as good social causes and try to stop the mountain of injustice we have? Oh, yeah, cuz this is the hot topic du jour.

Re:This makes it worse

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it we say around here? The more you tighten your grip the more star systems will slip through your fingers? Or something like that.

Bring it. You're a shuddering fucking pansy who fears the government. The government should fear YOU.

Re:This makes it worse

[hedwards]

You know, it would be far quicker to just attach unique ID numbers to tinfoil hats.

Re:This makes it worse

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't think it's right to blame the movement for the backlash. That's like blaming people who practice free speech for the censoring of free speech. The enemy is the government removal of rights, not the ones who provoke them. Honestly, the government needs no provoking, their objectives have always been the same whether we fight them or not. Frankly, we should all be signing up for this movement. Unfortunately humanity is for the most part too chicken to revolt.

Re:This makes it worse

[Antisyzygy]

I'm left to ask: Why Wikileaks? Why not fight for the stack of equally as good social causes and try to stop the mountain of injustice we have? Oh, yeah, cuz this is the hot topic du jour.

The US government is perpetrating quite a lot of the social injustices these days IMHO.

Re:This makes it worse

[Antisyzygy]

Im not suggesting that. It be more effective to get people involved in a boycott of Visa and Mastercard. Some people can survive only on cash in their wallet for a few months (by that I mean they take it out of the bank when they need it rather than use a Visa or Mastercard).

Re:This makes it worse

[JackieBrown]

I'm left to ask: Why Wikileaks? Why not fight for the stack of equally as good social causes and try to stop the mountain of injustice we have?

The US government is perpetrating quite a lot of the social injustices these days IMHO.

I think that was his point. I agree with you, though, that these attacks are not in anybodies best interests. This will more likely make companies more careful about supporting sites like wikileaks to begin. The result will be even less support for wikileaks and more litmus checks for everyone else who wants to start a web site.

Re:This makes it worse

[smooth wombat]

Then its unique ID's on the internet,

No need for unique IDs when a device can be fingerprinted

Re:This makes it worse

[mcvos]

I'm left to ask: Why Wikileaks? Why not fight for the stack of equally as good social causes and try to stop the mountain of injustice we have? Oh, yeah, cuz this is the hot topic du jour.

Anonymous doesn't fight for stuff. They fight against stuff. Usually oppressive stuff, like Scientology, and in this case it's corporations that hurt free press on behalf of the US government.

Re:This makes it worse

[spidercoz]

Not chicken. Complacent. Comfortable. Cut the power or water for a couple weeks and see how chicken they are then. As long as they keep the idiot masses content they can get away with pretty much anything.

Re:This makes it worse

[Anonymous Coward]

You have not been paying attention to anon. They fought scientology, they have turned pedophiles over to the authorities, they have turned animal abusers over to the authorities, and quite a bit more. They fight against a lot of things at random.

Re:This makes it worse

[Narishma]

When has a boycott ever been successful?

Re:This makes it worse

[JackieBrown]

The government should fear YOU.

This is no more true than my employer should fear me. Government and citizenship should be a positive relationship not a conflicting one.

I am aware that it does not usually work out this way, but I am really sick of the Vendetta quotes.

Re:This makes it worse

[sjames]

They'll interview ppl who had their identity stolen and close the interview with things like: "..it's only a matter of time before we all end up like John here."

They will, of course, conveniently leave out that identity theft wouldn't be a problem if Visa and MC and other financial institutions would implement basic security procedures or if the government made them do so.

Re:This makes it worse

[retech]

But this is not fighting anything. It's just giving fuel to the other side. This will only serve the US Gov and large corporations.

So maybe ANON is being guided by a few well placed CIA ops. Since ANON is doing such a bang up job at helping them out. Hmmm... makes me think ANON is just being used as a corp. tool.

Re:This makes it worse

[1u3hr]

When has a boycott ever been successful?

Rhodesia.

Gandhi's boycott of British textiles.

Re:This makes it worse

[tnk1]

The fear of a government crackdown is probably the best possible excuse to continue what you are doing.

No, its not.

Sure, fighting the power, representing, and all of that is nice. And yes, someone will probably always be able to crack into any system of control to get their way, but in the meantime you are giving the government an excuse to remove free access to the Internet from those who are not particularly savvy. And don't think that the government and corporations together cannot effect a regime on the Internet that can eventually succeed in locking things down. In fact, the Internet could run a lot better and be a whole lot more profitable if it was possible to hold people accountable for their actions on the Internet (and charge them accordingly).

The only thing stopping them is that the general population loves free access to the Internet, and they will complain bitterly against changing the status quo. Once you start actually launching reprisals based on politics, like Wikileaks and the US government, that will start fragmenting the general population into those who are a) for Wikileaks b) against Wikileaks and (worse) c) the people who just want to shop for the goddamn holidays and someone should make a law to stop these juvenile hackers from interfering with their right to shop. That's not a division you want, because now you are pissing off the very people you want to be on your side, even if they are doing so passively, and forcing them and the Wikileaks haters onto the same side.

So, is this really worth it? The attackers will probably just Streisand Effect the Amazon site anyway. Amazon has a right to not host Wikileaks, and they have a right to not collect money from Wikileaks for hosting. They are a private entity. This is basically the equivalent of harassing private citizens if they don't want to host your political sign on their lawn any more, even if you are willing to pay to rent out the space.

Re:This makes it worse

[negativehero]

Yeah, but that is what happens when a "revolution" is started by a bunch of ignorant teenagers.

Re:This makes it worse

[wtfamidoinghere]

In Soviet Russia?

Re:This makes it worse

[Anonymous Coward]

The government should fear YOU.

This is no more true than my employer should fear me. Government and citizenship should be a positive relationship not a conflicting one.

I am aware that it does not usually work out this way, but I am really sick of the Vendetta quotes.

The origins of that quote is actually a bit older than that:

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

Thomas Jefferson

Re:This makes it worse

[it0]

the relationship government and citizen is not the same as employer and employee. a company cannot oppress me, i would leave. for most people it's not an option to leave their country.
also i wouldn't want my country run with the moral compass of your avarage company.

Re:This makes it worse

[Mindcontrolled]

That might very well be, but since when is the answer to the government getting more totalitarian to cower in the shadows hoping that their next strike will hopefully pass you by? That's the spirit that enables dictatorships.

Re:This makes it worse

[Haeleth]

But to resolve to sit quietly and just take it all out of fear isn't the solution.

It's better than handing them a reason to do it on a plate.

The solution would be for it to be self-evident to everyone that there was no need to crack doen on anything. Unfortunately that is snever going to be the case while the news is dominated by people whose thought processes can apparently be summed up as "Amazon hurt Hulk's friend. HULK SMASH AMAZON."

Re:This makes it worse

[Haeleth]

The US government is perpetrating quite a lot of the social injustices these days IMHO.

So people keep saying. And everyone was expecting these Wikileaks cables to prove it, after all the hype.

Then they get released, and it turns out the most embarrassing thing all the papers could find to lead with was basically "US Ambassador To Elbonia Says Elbonian President Has Muddy Boots".

The cables even disprove some of the things critics of US foreign policy have been accusing it of for years!

Yeah, Wikileaks is really sticking it to the man. This is some significant shit. This is totally, like, the Pentagon Papers all over again, dude. I can't imagine why Obama hasn't been chased out of the White House by a crowd with pitchforks and flaming torches yet, given all the evidence of US wrongdoing Wikileaks has produced.

Re:This makes it worse

[Chakra5]

good lord....they fight against 'stuff' (corps) that 'hurt' 'free press'. ??? It appears that nuance just _might_ be slipping past you. One could make a voluminous list of perfectly reasonable actions that 'hurt' 'free press' (loose usage of the term)...just as a minor for-instance, when a news paper prints only a selected list of letters to the editor, or a forum comment is moderated, then voices are metered. One really needs to parse if the action is reasonable and fair, not to mention legal. moving beyond the parent, this is why this attack comes across as mindless and childish. There seems to be no capacity to assess the situation in a nuanced and complex way. Recognision that even accepting their point of view, it's the government applying the pressure here...it's more like a 5 year old who only sees "me hurt"=bad...."me mad" --> bad....throw tantrum! --> bad.

Re:This makes it worse

[zmollusc]

When were they 'duped into the patriot act and tsa gropings'? The population don't get a choice. Every few years the population gets to vote for a party which then does what the hell it likes until the next election.

Re:This makes it worse

[oh_my_080980980]

The US government does need an excuse! Where the hell have you been?? The asshole is the person who doesn't stand up for liberty.

Re:This makes it worse

[mcgrew]

Bring it. You're a shuddering fucking pansy who fears the government. The government should fear YOU.

That would be a lot more insightful if you'd not checked the "post anonymously" checkbox. As it is, you look a bit hypocritical saying it.

Re:This makes it worse

[tsm_sf]

Well, there's South Africa for starters.

Re:This makes it worse

[Junior J. Junior III]

The government should fear YOU.

That's the problem. They DO fear us. So this is how they respond. If you fear something, you seek to destroy it. This is natural, human nature.

The government should stop fearing the people, and start obeying them and acting transparently so that we may evaluate how well they are acting in our interest.

Re:This makes it worse

[stubob]

How about John Adams instead?

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

Re:This makes it worse

[Antisyzygy]

1. Elbonia isnt real. 2. There were more damning things than "muddy boots". Its not on the level of the pentagon papers, but its still some stuff that isnt good. The government is supposed to represent the people of the US to other nations, but they don't as proven by many of the leaks. 3. My point is the US government is a bloated corrupt plutocracy. Not that the Wikileaks is doing an awesome job of sticking it to the man.

Re:This makes it worse

[Antisyzygy]

But the population doesn't do anything about it. Boycott air travel and stop voting for congressmen that support things like the Patriot act. I am doing both.

Court order on coverage?

[healeyb]

gawker has said, although unsubstantiated, that websites are being handed federal orders to stop chronicling the attacks. If true (which it very well may not be), I would be very curious to learn on what grounds the coverage is being ordered to stop.

Re:Court order on coverage?

[mibe]

It's probably in the PATRIOT Act somewhere...

Re:Court order on coverage?

[healeyb]

"Thou shalt not cover things which thy government dislikes. Punishment: Guantanamo."

Re:Court order on coverage?

[X0563511]

They can't incarcerate them all!

Re:Court order on coverage?

[spidercoz]

Directly unconstitutional.

Re:Court order on coverage?

[VGPowerlord]

They can't incarcerate them all!

Gotta catch 'em all, Reportermon!

Re:Court order on coverage?

[Temposs]

Since the courts decide what is constitutional, it seems we would have a problem if the federal courts are handing out these orders.

Re:Court order on coverage?

[marcosdumay]

If there are actual court orders, they are making a very good work of keeping them you of the public's eye. Related elsewhere those companies are only talking about US senators (also, I think only one senator) asking them to stop doing business with Wikileaks.

Re:Court order on coverage?

[healeyb]

Yeah, I'm thinking the report is bogus. By now, it would be everywhere if it was genuine.

Is this really hacking?

[Dyinobal]

I honestly don't see how this can be considered 'hacking' to me it sounds like cyber vandalism. A petty crime for petty reasons. Amazon had valid reasons for dropping wikileaks, they aren't crusaders they are a business. This is pretty much tantamount to being the jackass that sits at the red light until it's yellow and then gunning it through the intersection, to make the rest of the people behind you wait for the next light.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[Dyinobal]

Make that Green light until it's yellow.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[zakeria]

Cut of the nose to spite the face!

Re:Is this really hacking?

[ModernGeek]

Maybe he lives in opposite land, you insensitive clod!

Re:Is this really hacking?

[sockonafish]

If dropping Wikileaks ends up disrupting their sales, then maybe they'll think twice before dropping a customer that the State Department dislikes. The DDoS attacks are giving them a business reason NOT to drop Wikileaks.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[Sparkycat]

The fact that Amazon stopped hosting Wikileaks — but is now selling an e-book edition of the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks — could reasonably be considered cause for outrage.

A better analogy for Operation Payback might be a sit-in, where protesters block a public space with the intention of garnering coverage through inconvenience.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[Entrope]

The US government can give Amazon a much more compelling business reason to drop Wikileaks (it is a clear-cut violation of the Espionage Act, and unlike copyright laws, espionage laws do not make exceptions for data service providers). Do either Wikileaks or anon honestly think they can out-gun the government?

Re:Is this really hacking?

[OldeTimeGeek]

No, the tributary effect of these efforts will be to convince hosting companies to that they need to revise their policies to make them more restrictive as to what types of sites they will host.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[Tridus]

If that were true, Amazon would probably want to stop selling the ebook of the cables in question.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[sjames]

It might even be compared to dressing up as Native Americans and throwing stuff into the harbor.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[jgagnon]

Is Amazon selling that book or is someone else selling it through their site? Do you realize how easy it is to publish an ebook on Amazon?

Re:Is this really hacking?

[Entrope]

Yes, they probably would. Have you made them aware of it? Amazon's marketplace services are a lot like their computing services: They tend to assume things are legitimate, and investigate or react when they find a reason to do so.

Would you want Amazon (or any other company) to assume you were up to no good until you convince them they should do business with you? Would you prefer that they gate new business transactions upon a manual (and therefore error-prone and usually subjective) review before a vendor could offer a product for you to buy?

Re:Is this really hacking?

[cjnichol]

If dropping Wikileaks ends up disrupting their sales, then maybe they'll think twice before dropping a customer that the State Department dislikes. The DDoS attacks are giving them a business reason NOT to drop Wikileaks.

Because extortion is an acceptable business practice now, amiright?

Re:Is this really hacking?

[endymion.nz]

There is nothing clear-cut about whether wikileaks is in violation of any laws. Read more before saying stupid things please.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[kellyb9]

Rock and a hard place. Sure there are a lot of people that agree with Wikileaks, but there's just as many who do not agree with what they are doing. And obviously, since those people don't see it as free speech, I could easily see them not using Amazon for online purchases. Removing them was probably the more prudent business choice. Americans are big on buzz words like "terrorist", and once you start hosting a "terrorist" Web site, it typically hurts your bottom line. I don't have hard metrics to back that up, just a lot of assumptions.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[ScentCone]

The DDoS attacks are giving them a business reason NOT to drop Wikileaks

No. The DDoS attacks are giving all sorts of companies strong reasons to never so business with Wikileaks, and to think twice about making their TOS even more oriented around making it easy to give jackass users the bum's rush. Do you really think that being attacked by a bunch of rebel-without-a-clue script kiddies who are doing this strictly because it's passingly fashionable is actually going to make Amazon want to host content for an oily ego-maniac like Assange? This DDoS attack is going to have exactly the opposite of its intended effect. It's making the vandals look like shrill punks, and it's going to attract all sorts of law enforcement (and later, regulatory) heat of exactly the sort that the Anonymous crowd hates. This displays a classically juvenile lack of getting the big picture. It's an adolescent tantrum.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[Entrope]

I didn't say Wikileaks was in violation of laws -- the US branch of Amazon hosting their files would be in violation of laws. Read more closely before saying stupid things please.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[endymion.nz]

If that was the case, they wouldn't be selling ebooks of the leaked cables.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[Entrope]

I've seen this claim made elsewhere (I haven't gone looking for such a book; nor do I intend to, until and unless they are officially declassified), but I do not think it holds water.

First, has Amazon noticed those ebooks yet, or is now like the time period between Wikileaks signing up for an EC2 account and Amazon seeing and axing the account? Second, are they really the leaked cables?

Also, might those sales be a sting operation? Even if I wanted to handle classified information without proper authorization, I would be leery of paying a major electronic merchant for access to such information -- following the payment trail to me would be a too easy for my likes.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[gtall]

Maybe, but the NYT has an update. Apparently, the Amazon system is so good that they never even noticed the DDoS and the wikileaker sympathizers have called it off. Amazon built their system to withstand the XMas rush and built it out so big it could host other organizations like the NYT itself. Also, they are having little impact on PayPal according to the article.

Re:Is this really hacking?

[Cl1mh4224rd]

I support WIkileaks for the most part, but...

The DDoS attacks are giving them a business reason NOT to drop Wikileaks.

Yeah... just like some thugs smashing up your store is a business reason NOT to refuse paying protection money.

This one could actually hurt

[MetalliQaZ]

If they were able to actually knock Amazon offline, which I think is mostly unlikely to happen, it would be the first to make a serious economic impact. Mastercard's website may have been unreachable, but their credit processing facilities were just fine, as I demonstrated with my own card several times over the past few days. Amazon, on the other hand, is in the middle of their holiday rush, which is crucially important to them. IIRC, it is the reason they had the cloud infrastructure in the first place: their immense holiday resources went unused during the rest of the year. The last thing they need is a DDoS attack right now. I wonder if they might try to appease the mob with some kind of nod to anon in the form of a daily book deal or similar...

Re:This one could actually hurt

[u38cg]

I seriously doubt it. Mastercard barely *needs* a front page; their job is shuffling money between bank accounts and as long as they do that they are making money. Their regular traffic is unlikely to be tenth of a percent of Amazon's. It's not like people don't try taking down site like Amazon relatively frequently.

Re:This one could actually hurt

[Desler]

And if it does hurt Amazon and cause an economic impact, all it will do is turn more people against both Wikileaks and Anonymous.

Re:This one could actually hurt

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Mastercard's website may have been unreachable, but their credit processing facilities were just fine, as I demonstrated with my own card several times over the past few days.

Yes, but the web services were needed for the 3D Secure functionality for online shopping. I work for a gift card processing company, and one of our UK clients was complaining about 3D Secure being down yesterday. MasterCard said they were having global outages, so it seems to have affected their 3D Secure processing at least, and that is used by many online merchants.

Not particularly effective

[emgarf]

Digital terrorism doesn't seem like a particularly effective way to sell a point of view.

Re:Not particularly effective

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't particularly convincing, but the knee-jerk reaction to the threat of digital terrorism will require you to have to get felt-up by a federal employee before launching your web browser.

Re:Not particularly effective

[MozeeToby]

Can we please stop using the word terrorism as though it's definition is "Illegal and I don't like it".

Terrorism: The calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear.

Is a DDoS violent or a threat of violence? No.
Does a DDoS instil fear or terror? No.

Stop using the world like it's a catch all for things you don't agree with.

Re:Not particularly effective

[endymion.nz]

Using the label terrorism for anything that doesn't strike terror into the population is not particularly effective either.

DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge

[FlameWise]

Considering Wikileaks rehosted to Amazon to escape their original sites getting DDOSed exactly BECAUSE Amazon is damn hard to DDOS, I wonder whether Payback can actually do that.

Maybe they just consider it a challenge they can't resist.

Re:DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge

[Stregano]

Or they are throwing out a subtle hint that they can't do it, and need a bunch of people to hop in to help

Re:DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge

[bogaboga]

Remember that no resources on planet earth are infinite. Amazon knows this. If 15,000 people initiate these DDoS attacks, Amazon will be in trouble. Bad press also does no good.

Re:DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge

[hedwards]

I don't think at this stage that they're really trying to take down Amazon, just send a message. If they really wanted to screw with Amazon, they'd be targetting the DNS servers and routers which allow traffic to get to Amazon. Or they'd be throwing a hell of a lot more traffic there way. This is just a way of tapping them and suggesting that this sort of flip flop whoring can be costly.

Re:DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge

[voss]

In other words they dont have the resources to do squat to amazon.com. If they had, they would, and they would be bragging about it.

If you want to send a message use the post office. Amazon.com would probably be more sensitive to a boycott than to a DDOS attack. When you are the size of Amazon.com , ddos attacks are just part of the cost of doing business.

Re:DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge

[jgagnon]

It would take a lot more than 15000 people to make an impact. Amazon probably has 100000+ people browsing their site at any given second of the day, especially this time of year.

Re:DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge

[Rich0]

I dunno - is there an AMI for that hacking tool? I can think of a way to obtain enough bandwidth to do the job... :)

Re:DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge

[Lehk228]

if every LOIC user had instead of comitting federal computer crimes had spend $4 on stamps and sent out 10 letters, with different names on them expessing outrage over such censorship they would have had far more success.

So

[Kymation]

My cat is a hacking tool?

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

My cat is a hacking tool?

You've seen the hairballs it's hacked up, right?

Re:So

[mcgrew]

He's fucking up your data, isn't he?

Re:So

[Kymation]

She hasn't managed to get the password right yet. Last attempt: 9hx

Re:So

[ghmh]

Our cats keep pressing the eject key on my wife's keyboard.

DDOSing

[Dan East]

I think that those holding the reigns of the botnets doing the current DDOSing are making massive mistakes employing them at this time. Not only that, the targets they are choosing are not valuable. Take for example visa.com and mastercard.com. Have you ever been to those sites? For all intent and purposes they are superficial, and have nothing to do with the logistics of the financial services they provide. If you go to either site and try to view financial information you will be given a list of banks that issue that type of card, which provides links to the respective banks that actually issue cards.

Furthermore, the various governments of the world are watching this whole affair with intense scrutiny, and the powers that be will be alarmed over the power wielded by these botnets. It will serve as a wake-up call. By utilizing their resources, these people have shown their hand and provided the evidence and forensics needed to aid in the dissemination of those nets.

As far as Amazon goes, they are so distributed and have such massive resources that I doubt a DDOS attack would have much effect. I might be wrong, but there is a world of difference between Amazon and public relations sites like visa.com and mastercard.com.

Re:DDOSing

[tlhIngan]

I think that those holding the reigns of the botnets doing the current DDOSing are making massive mistakes employing them at this time. Not only that, the targets they are choosing are not valuable. Take for example visa.com and mastercard.com. Have you ever been to those sites? For all intent and purposes they are superficial, and have nothing to do with the logistics of the financial services they provide. If you go to either site and try to view financial information you will be given a list of banks that issue that type of card, which provides links to the respective banks that actually issue cards.

Yeah, that's the problem, unless the online merchants have to redirect through those sites in order to get to their payment processor or 3DSecure. In fact, taking out 3DSecure would put a major dent into the Verified by Visa/MasterCard SecureCode stuff - retailers hurting might end up just dropping that since a DoS of that would prevent anyone from checking out on those retailers. Would definitely hurt Visa/Mastercard's attempts at forcing everyone to use 3DSecure if it keeps going down for everyone during a major holiday season.

Hitting Amazon isn't terribly interesting. Hitting Amazon's secure site could be more interesting as it could possibly make checkout slow enough that real customers abandon their purchases.

Re:DDOSing

[stand]

DDoS attacks should be opposed regardless of the target. The Internet (for better or worse) operates on the "Play Nice" principle.

Re:DDOSing

[Malc]

How do you know there aren't governments already involved, and looking for a way to incite people so that they can enact new regulations with the support of the people?

Re:DDOSing

[davidbrit2]

As far as Amazon goes, they are so distributed and have such massive resources that I doubt a DDOS attack would have much effect. I might be wrong, but there is a world of difference between Amazon and public relations sites like visa.com and mastercard.com.

Yeah, if you really want to take down Amazon, you have to offer a $99 XBox 360.

Re:DDOSing

[adolf]

DDoS attacks should be opposed regardless of the target. The Internet (for better or worse) operates on the "Play Nice" principle.

Weird. I always understood that the Internet was designed to keep on going even in the event of a nuclear attack.

Re:DDOSing

[Synonymous Homonym]

Furthermore, the various governments of the world are watching this whole affair with intense scrutiny, and the powers that be will be alarmed over the power wielded by these botnets.

Even more alarmed than over Stuxnet?

No official attack orders yet

[Predius]

11:50EST and the target change off api.paypal.com hasn't taken place. There is serious internal strife as to weather or not to attack Amazon at all given that they so far haven't been able to reliably take out paypal.

Re:No official attack orders yet

[hedwards]

To be fair, I'm guessing that has to do with PayPal being unredeemably evil and Amazon being only very evil.

Re:No official attack orders yet

[robot256]

One has to wonder just how effective they will be in this at all -- taking down sites of random law firms is one thing, but a million/billion-dollar web service is another. They have orders of magnitude more infrastructure and are designed to handle traffic overloads.

Re:No official attack orders yet

[Memroid]

http://api.paypal.com/ looks down from here. http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://api.paypal.com/

Re:No official attack orders yet

[Predius]

It'll always look down to that tool, it doesn't respond on port 80, never has.

Re:No official attack orders yet

[Memroid]

oops.

DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[bradgoodman]

One could argue that people launching DDoS "attacks" are in-fact perusing a rightful protest.

Isn't having a script to continually request a page for one web site the technical equivilant of marching back and forth in front of a building holding a picket sign?

Why should people have the right to do both if they are unhappy with - and wish to protest a government, company or organization?

I am *not* saying it is right or legal for people to write trojan horses to set up botnets to con others' computers to unknowingly (or unwillingly) do ones bidding - but isn't it completely within an individuals right to do this themselves, from their own homes, with their own equipment?

P.S. I don't think the Wikileaks leaks did *any* damage whatsoever. It may have "undignified" a few "dignitaries" - but that's it. Period. In reality, I think it does the world a *lot* of good when everyone suddenly can see everyone elses cards - and know their thoughts and opinions.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[emgarf]

If you are depriving someone else of their right to choose to be a patron of an online -or- brick/mortar store by a DoS, it's not a righteous protest any more.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[tycoex]

Bravo, if I had mod points you would receive one.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[Aqualung812]

One could argue that people launching DDoS "attacks" are in-fact perusing a rightful protest.

Isn't having a script to continually request a page for one web site the technical equivilant of marching back and forth in front of a building holding a picket sign?

No, it is not the same as a sign. To me, a DDoS is the same as anti-abortion people locking themselves to the doors of a clinic, or WTO protesters blocking the streets so the meeting can't happen.

You have the right to protest, but you don't have the right to force people's actions.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[fusiongyro]

I don't disagree with you strongly, but I think there are a few points that make the situation a little murkier.

Protesters outside buildings carry signs that indicate why they're pissed off. When you DDOS a website, all you can do is take it offline. There's no way to see the protestors' messages online, so most of the citizenry who hear about this are going to hear about it from a news source. And as you know, the news sources in our country are much better at being entertainment than being unbiased or informative.

Also, at least in America, your right to protest does not grant you the right to interfere with my right to obtain services. So this protest is rather unlike picketing in at least two ways.

I also tend to agree with you about secrecy, but in this particular case, the vast majority of the content is diplomat A dissing diplomat B or country C. This is just politics. If you have more than a few friends, you probably have some things you tell one and some things you tell another and sometimes you tell one about the follies of another. That's just the way people are. Obviously it would be bad if one of your friends dissed another one and it got back to them, so it makes sense to me for diplomatic cables to be classified.

The other thing to note is that our government has many secrecy levels, and gaining access to the lower levels is not particularly hard. In this case, most of the cables are at low secrecy levels which are appropriate to their content. It's appropriate for our diplomat to Saudi Arabia to kiss the king's ass publicly and shit-talk him privately with superiors at home. That's what diplomacy is. Of course leaking this does damage, but it's far from being a threat to national security.

I argued earlier that WikiLeaks is using the wrong approach, and I think this is another fine example of it. Dropping tons of material on our country's feeble journalists will only make the story about the size of the leak rather than the content of it. They would do better to leak a little high-profile, actually bad stuff and then release the bulk. They're not leaking this with the intention of effecting positive change in our government by exposing unethical behavior. It's easy to see them as just leaking whatever secrets they can get their hands on for their own self-aggrandizement.

I agree with the idea of WikiLeaks, but the execution thus far leaves much to be desired.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[Schadrach]

So, the moment someone sees your picket line and decides to shop elsewhere rather than deal with it you are in the wrong?

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[istartedi]

Putting up a blog devoted to how much you hate Amazon, and finding every story about how they suck, did somebody wrong, etc.

THAT would be an example of rightful protest.

In the real world, it would be like marching with a sign. DDoS is more like smashing windows and blocking the street without a permit.

As for Wikileaks, they seemed good at first. The early cables were questionable, but you could still give them a pass. Then they started releasing sensitive locations that might be terror targets. That's not a leak!!! A leak is "my boss is breaking the law". "My country has weak spots, here they are" is NOT a leak. That's an attack. DDoS is an attack too.

Wikileaks is behaving more like a bunch of self-styled anarchists than an investigative journalism outfit.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[kevinNCSU]

If you purposefully and physically prevent another free citizen to go about their business you are interfering with that persons freedoms and rights. You can protest outside a building, but you can't chain the doors shut or link arms and bar another citizen entry. As the saying goes, your freedoms end where your neighbors freedoms begin.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[mibe]

Depending on the severity of the attacks it might be the technical equivalent of blockading the building's door for an indeterminate amount of time. Also, since you don't have to physically have people there to protest, your "technical" protest can be a lot more effective with a lot less participation. Equivalent, I'd say not.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[gustgr]

The goal of a DDoS attack is to make the site unavailable to those who want to access it.

You can make a picket and you are not in the wrong if people decide to buy somewhere else just to avoid it, there's no problem with that. What you can't do is to chain the doors of the store and make it impossible for people to go in even if they want to.

It should be clear that those are completely different things. The on-line equivalent of a picket is getting ad space on public sites willing to provide it and promoting "XYZ Corp. is evil" campaigns.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[Desler]

Isn't having a script to continually request a page for one web site the technical equivilant of marching back and forth in front of a building holding a picket sign?

No. A DDoS prevents anyone from accessing the store. A protest is only an annoyance but people can still go into the store by going around the protestors.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[m85476585]

This is more like bombing their parking lot, or dumping large amounts of garbage in front of their building (gigabytes of garbage every second). Marching in front of a store is relatively harmless, but a DOS attack, or vandalism I mentioned above, causes real damage and costs the company money (bandwidth costs, downtime, paying more sysadmins to deal with it, etc).

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[VGPowerlord]

I am *not* saying it is right or legal for people to write trojan horses to set up botnets to con others' computers to unknowingly (or unwillingly) do ones bidding - but isn't it completely within an individuals right to do this themselves, from their own homes, with their own equipment?

In addition to what others have already said about impeding access...

If you want your ISP to kick you off their network, sure! ...you were aware that participating in a (D)DoS is against your Internet provider's Acceptable Use Policy, right? Right?

The Internet is not a public place, and you can be forcefully removed from it.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[alobar72]

So, you are a bit angry that you cannot punch THEM on their noses, aren't you ? Oh boy...

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[alobar72]

As a matter of fact, this differentiation will be made by the future. The outcome of each society ist based on breaking the laws of the one before. I don't say wikileaks has broken laws - and infact I am thankful for what I learned through them about my and other nations governments. When in x years net neutrality is gone and censorship has strictly regulated the Internet - they will sure be seen as riots and vandals. On the other hand... If the majority thinks that the same rules that are long accepted for paper mail should apply to modern means of communication, be it blogs, mail whatever, And if this majority thinks that the whole democracy thing was once installed to make governments impossible that do some of the things we saw on wikileaks... Then they will be seen in a positive light... As always. - it's up to our children to decide :)

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[fusiongyro]

Organizations are required to take some responsibility for the actions of their supporters. WikiLeaks should strongly denounce the DDOSers. Whenever there's a major Islamist terror act in America, the neighboring mosques make a point of denouncing it. To do otherwise sends the message, at best, that they don't believe their actions were invalid. Again, it comes down to WikiLeaks behaving as though the rules of PR don't apply to them, which is a mistake.

While I can't speak to the quality of the press in other parts of the world, I find it hard to imagine that any group is well-equipped to drink down 600,000 cables and find the gems in a reasonable amount of time. I still think it speaks to WikiLeaks true motives that they haven't vetted the leak--neither they nor the leak were in this to expose an important wrong or pattern of bad behavior. I'm not referring in this case to the redaction process, which we agree, they tried their best to no avail. I am saying that they are after quantity rather than quality.

America isn't the only country in the world, but it is my home and it is the country I have the most vested interest in.

Otherwise, I think we agree.

Re:DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest?

[Schadrach]

Wait, you only picket at locations that will let you pay them to picket there? *boggle*

The DDoS case is more like a really dense picket line, where the sheer volume of space taken up y people with signs makes it hard to reach the doors. It might take you a while (excessive loading times) or you might have to back up and approach from a different angle (multiple reloads to get a page), but unless it's so bad that the store closes for the day in hopes that the crowd goes away (taking the site offline), it's nothing but a barrier to entry, an additional hassle created against the target.

Inaccuracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOIC is a tool that has been around for a while. Why would they say it was released Thursday?

Shunning

[srussia]

Shunning plus Direct democracy equals this.

Going Off Half-Cocked

[bill_mcgonigle]

What's more likely, that these tech companies received National Security Letters and can't talk about them under threat of theft, caging or worse, or that these tech companies all just fell over and made up legally and technically bogus excuses because they're idiots?

The only positive result that can come out of these attacks is that the next tech companies might push back against the government harder, but if there's a chance you're taking out innocent bystanders you're doing wrong - end of story.

Re:Going Off Half-Cocked

[Desler]

The only positive result that can come out of these attacks is that the next tech companies might push back against the government harder,

No, the only thing to come out of this is to turn more people and companies against Wikileaks.

Re:Going Off Half-Cocked

[leromarinvit]

What's more likely, that these tech companies received National Security Letters and can't talk about them under threat of theft, caging or worse, or that these tech companies all just fell over and made up legally and technically bogus excuses because they're idiots?

If they had any kind of spine, then a National Security Letter telling them to take down Wikileaks would have, you know, leaked. I think there's a website for that...

Re:Going Off Half-Cocked

[bill_mcgonigle]

If they had any kind of spine, then a National Security Letter telling them to take down Wikileaks would have, you know, leaked. I think there's a website for that...

They tried, but the websites were down. ;)

please stop

[Cybertoy]

please stop calling them hackers. Anonymous are NOT hackers.

Re:please stop

[Nanosapien]

You're right... They're not hackers. They're HACKERS ON STEROIDS!

Going from stupid to outright insane...

[mseeger]

When someone who says "X is violating the freedom of speech rights" and tries to shut him/her/it up as punishment, than that person has not yet grasped the principle of "freedom of speech".

On the tactical level: Disrupting Amazon such a short time before christmas? Fox will have a field day.... At best it will convince the average man/woman on the street, that Wikileaks is evil (since they won't distinguish between Wikileaks and their anonymous supporters). It's like saying "We are facing a supperior enemy, let's make more of them". To mee it looks like some kind of Anti-Sun-Tzu or Clausewitz-in-reverse. Is there goal beyond "venting frustration"?

CU, Martin

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[the_one(2)]

It's called "revenge" and isn't necessarily very rational. They probably hope that this will make companies think twice the next time they try to silence free speech.

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[Mike Van Pelt]

When someone who says "X is violating the freedom of speech rights" and tries to shut him/her/it up as punishment, than that person has not yet grasped the principle of "freedom of speech".

Typical, though... "Free speech for everyone who agrees with me. Anyone who doesn't agree with me is [insert bad name here], and must be silenced for The Good of The People."

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[mseeger]

I know the meaning of revenge, but i also know that it is a dish best served cold.

The current action sounds too much like that "crack suicide squad" from Monty Python's Life of Brian. Hurting your own position and then say "Zat showed 'em, huh?". I can only quote Brian at this point, who replied "Silly sods".

The same people who are complaining about the TSA doing exactly what the terrorists want them to do, react exacrtly the same way once they feel attacked. Don't they see they play into hands of those trying to silence Wikileaks?

CU, Martin

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[mseeger]

OK, when someone shuts down the Wikileaks web site, it's an attack on free speech. When someone shuts down Mastercards web site, it's "disrupting corporate operations to highlight the injustice". Thanks for pointing that out. I would have missed the difference.

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[Anon-Admin]

I hear over and over how Corporations are not the government and are not restricted by the constitutional limits on regulation of speech. Well, If they dont have to respect our right to free speech then we dont have to respect there right to be on the web.

We the People have rights
Governments have privileges granted by the consent of the governed.
Corporations have the privileges grant them by government laws.

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[mseeger]

If "Mastercard is an organisation" implies "Mastercard has no freedom of speech right",
then "Wikileaks is an organisation" implies "Wikileaks has no freedom of speech right".

If Mastercard has only privileges and no rights, than Wikileaks has only privileges and no rights.

If you complain about shutting down Wikileaks (because of doing something other people don't like), than you should complain about shutting down Mastercard (because of doing something other people don't like).

"Wikileaks" is not equal "We the people".

I have not said, that Mastercard has any freedom of speech rights. I just ranted about the "I am holier than thou"-attitude: complaining about a thing and then doing exactly the same (and the tactical stupidity going with it).

CU, Martin

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[Mindcontrolled]

One of them is a member of the press distributing information, one of them is a business collaborating with a government in the suppression of freedom of the press. Do you see a difference there?

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[mseeger]

One of them is a member of the press distributing information, one of them is a business collaborating with a government in the suppression of freedom of the press. Do you see a difference there?

1. You were talking about rights. In case of rights there is no crucial difference between Mastercard and Wikileaks. If Wikileaks has certain rights, so does Mastercard. Moral high ground doesn't give a +1 rights modifier. That is the very nature of rights.

2. If you wan't to claim the privileges of free press, you have to follow the obligations that come with it. It would have been much smarter of Wikileaks if they would have done it first. But they preferred not to do so.

3. Mastercard is not "suppressing the freedom of the press". They are a business that compared two risks ("angering the goverment" and "angering the wikileaks crowd") and then made their choice. I would be more angry at the goverment than at Mastercard at this point. You expect Mastercard to put up a fight for Wikileaks. Those expectations were wrong. No surprise here...

CU, Martin

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[Mindcontrolled]

Freedom of press is not a privilege. There are no obligations with it. Apart from that, yes, Mastercard is not suppressing the freedom of the press on its own account, I never said that. They are assisting the government with it. That makes them a bunch of spineless collaborators.

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[mseeger]

That makes them a bunch of spineless collaborators.

1. Maybe they are spineless, but when spine would be rewarded by additional revenue, they would be the first to grow one. As long as the average citizen doesn't reward extra spine in their buying decisions, corporations will consider that feature optional. Corporations are like mirrors. If you don't like the picture, breaking them will not make you or your fellow citizens more beautiful.

2. Even if they were spineless bastards, that gave neither a legal nor a legitimate reason to attack them. Being spineless is not a crime.

3. It is easy to demand spine of someone else. Spine is easier demanded than delivered. If you have a mortage, a wife, two kids and obligations to your fellow worker, a lot of spine suddenly disappears.

CU, Martin

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[Synonymous Homonym]

When someone who says "X is violating the freedom of speech rights" and tries to shut him/her/it up as punishment, than that person has not yet grasped the principle of "freedom of speech".

True in principle, but the DDoS-attacks seem to be not about shutting someone up, but shutting someone down.
The attacked are still free to voice their mind, if they so choose.

It's like saying "We are facing a supperior enemy, let's make more of them".

The average people in the streets are not enemies, they are innocent bystanders.
Fox can only tell them who to cheer and who to jeer.

Those who would oppress the people, however, are making more enemies the more they oppress.
Their playbook is not by Sun Tsu or Clausewitz, it is Macchiavelli.

Is there goal beyond "venting frustration"?

It used to be "for teh lulz", but people are so angry by now it isn't even funny.

Re:Going from stupid to outright insane...

[mseeger]

Their playbook is not by Sun Tsu or Clausewitz, it is Macchiavelli.

Have you read those three books? I strongly recommend to do so. When Machiavelli was confronted with the thesis, that he his book would show tyrans how rise to power, he replied "Yes, but i have also shown you how to get rid of them".

Sun Tzu and Clausewitz are well worth reading beyond any military application.

CU, Martin

Amazon?

[cgenman]

How exactly do you take Amazon's servers offline? Amazon is the people you cloud your servers to when you're out of capacity. Visa / Mastercard / Paypal... Sure. Plausible targets. DDosing Amazon is like trying to DDos Google, and only 1 hop away from ddosing 127.0.0.1.

Now, if they specifically targeted one part of Amazon's infrastructure... say, their payment validation server, they might be somewhere. But all of Amazon?

Re:Amazon?

[Lehk228]

/b/ have always been hackers on steroids, only they don't have the muscles to show for it, just the shrunken testes and rage issues

Re:So now we MUST follow Wikileaks agenda?

[hedwards]

You don't have to. You could fight Wikileaks or you could stay out of it entirely. So, with three basic realms of possibility, I'd say that freedom still exists. Freedom does not ensure that all possibilities are particularly appetizing.

Old new is no news

[kiwix]

LOIC has been around for a long time. According to Wikipedia it was allready used for Operation Chanalogy, almost three years ago.

Digital riot

[demonbug]

A bunch of angry idiots decide to have themselves a little riot, do some burning and head-cracking, and so far hardly a comment questioning whether this is in any way appropriate? I don't like the efforts to destroy/discredit Wikileaks any more than most here, but I hope the perpetrators of these "retaliatory" crimes feel the full weight of the law coming down on them. Absolutely disgusting to be violently attacking a business because that business made a decision that you disagree with. I have no patience or sympathy for these criminals (and I'm about out of patience with the fucktards who call themselves Anonymous).

You want to call a boycott? Fine. I might even join you. But the second you start attacking them and doing damage, you have crossed the line and deserve to be thrown in jail. There is no valid reason for this, just a bunch of thugs looking for some amusement.

Re:Digital riot

[Duradin]

A "you're not helping" from Wikileaks would help to support some small notion that Wikileaks does not condone the attacks. Refusal to condemn is basically passively condoning their actions and what little respect I had left for Wikileaks is rapidly dissolving.

Re:Digital riot

[rsmith-mac]

A bunch of angry idiots decide to have themselves a little riot, do some burning and head-cracking, and so far hardly a comment questioning whether this is in any way appropriate?

It's not appropriate, and I completely agree with you - when you dislike what someone a business you boycott them, you don't attempt to dictate what other people do by denying access to them. However Slashdot is for all practical purposes a stronghold of Wikileaks supporters, so anything that disagrees with the groupthink is quickly getting ignored and/or downmodded, which is why you aren't seeing many posts calling these actions inappropriate.

Re:Digital riot

[gman003]

I would call this sort of thing a "political statement". Since actually communicating with your representatives doesn't work unless you're "donating" a couple grand to their re-election campaign, the only way to get anything said is to get the people with money to say what you want. If 4chan can actually do economic damage to Amazon, that will get a message sent to the man in Washington. Whether that message is "stop attacking Wikileaks, it's hurting 'America'" or "crack down on 'hackers'" is unpredictable.

Coincidentally, they don't even have to shut Amazon down in order to do economic damage. All they need is news coverage. If people hear "Amazon is being attacked", they might decide to shop elsewhere in order to not have to deal with it. If the investors hear "Amazon is being attacked", that could easily drop the stock price. Actually, the stock seems to have fallen about $4 over the past two days - at the number of shares Amazon has, that could (inaccurately) be described as 1.8 billion dollars in damages.

Re:Digital riot

[Andy Smith]

The riot is the rhyme of the unheard?

Re:Digital riot

[rawler]

But the second you start attacking them and doing damage, you have crossed the line and deserve to be thrown in jail.

If there is permanent damage done to the site, yes, it's clearly vandalism in the worst form, and clearly punishable by law in any country.

A DDoS however, is more akin to a blockade, which occasionally happens in real world too. Even here there are variations of course, from the absolutely peaceful standing passively in the way, to the outright aggressive.

If the DDoS is performed by botnet's it's clearly equivalent of bearing arms, which sometimes leads to individual prosecution. The same should go for the botnet-driven DDoS.

If the DDoS is performed by regular users, using nothing but their own connections to "block the entrance", it's clearly equivalent of passively standing in the way, which may be countered by dispersion-tactics, but hardly ever lead to actual prosecution in a democratic regime.

Re:Digital riot

[carvalhao]

I generally agree with everything that you have said. But there is an exceptional circumstance that must be considered, which is when the lawmakers and the law enforcers no longer are acting in the best interest of the people that elected them but in their own best interest. That thing you call democracy was enacted pretty much throughout the world by a bunch of "criminals" and "terrorists" that organized "riots" that eventually toppled the previous form of government.

How different do you find this situation? Has Wikileaks been charged, judged and convicted? No. The people's elected governments are using non-legal tactics to defend itself from the exposure of it's own misdeeds.

Re:Digital riot

[prockcore]

"Anonymous" are like that kid from the twilight zone.. you do anything to upset him and he sends you do the cornfield.

Or at least tries to.. DDOSing Amazon is soo far out of their league it's not even funny.

Re:Digital riot

[Phoenix666]

You have diluted the meaning of the word "violently" to meaninglessness. But the way you use it to describe a virtual action that physically harms no one, and then shrink from even that in order to defend your rights, speaks volumes about the depths of your cowardice.

Re:Digital riot

[Voyager529]

Whether that message is "stop attacking Wikileaks, it's hurting 'America'" or "crack down on 'hackers'" is unpredictable.

This.

IMO, if Amazon sees a dent in their traffic, it's going to make just about anyone weary of being affiliated with them. The cables may not have been a compromise to national security, but it did make enough news to make them controversial, to say the least. At this point, any hosting provider, by the very nature of being asked to host their site, will be forced to make a political statement - either they piss off roughly half the population for hosting them, or the piss off the other half for not doing so. Amazon couldn't win, Quest can't win, and whoever else does hosting on that kind of scale will find themselves in a no-win situation. From there it becomes a business question: is it safer to appease the hackers, or is it safer to appease Uncle Sam? I may lean a bit closer to the support of wikileaks myself, but even if I were a hosting company, It'd be one hell of an undertaking to both host the site and not get caught in the crossfire.

Re:Digital riot

[endymion.nz]

Not sure if you've noticed, but Wikileaks has a lot on its plate at the moment.

Re:Digital riot

[Duradin]

So waterboarding isn't torture because it doesn't physically harm anyone. Gotcha.

Re:Digital riot

[Duradin]

Maybe they should have cleaned their plate before asking for seconds.

Re:Digital riot

[endymion.nz]

They didn't ask for it...

Inviting prosecution

[The Dodger]

The use of this LOIC tool that this group are encouraging people to download onto their PCs and fire up to launch these DDoS attacks will be easily detectable and tracable. I'm sure that the companies that are being attacked will be keeping records of the malicious traffic, to be passed on to the police who will, in turn, be able to tie the IP addresses back to broadband connections.

So, I wouldn't be surprised if we see raids, confiscation of computer equipment and (in the UK, at least) charges brought under the Computer Misuse Act. I wonder what the average decline in income is, due to one's inability to get certain jobs because of a criminal record.

And, by the way, those who think that they can get away with it by claiming that it must be a virus infection are deluded - forensic examination will reveal the deliberate downloading of the LOIC tool.

Re:Inviting prosecution

[LocalH]

What if the user boots a LiveCD, downloads LOIC to a RAM disk, and runs it there? The computer itself will show no record of any of this (unless you catch them doing it or within a few seconds of having done it and powered off the machine), so forensics won't find jack.

Re:Inviting prosecution

[adamchou]

On top of that, who the hell downloads a "tool" from a "hacking" group that has malicious intent and installs it on their system? Next thing I know, my computer is part of a botnet. Awesomeness.

Re:Inviting prosecution

[cmburns69]

In this case you're essentially volunteering to be part of a botnet by downloading the tool so it's not like you're risking much.

Re:Inviting prosecution

[The Dodger]

Who said anything about jailing them? Police have limited resources so it's likely to take a loooooong time to work their way through all those seized computers. :-)

Re:Inviting prosecution

[The Dodger]

And approximately what percentage of people who think it's a good idea to DDoS Mastercard/Visa/PayPal/Amazon will have the smarts to do what you suggest?

Re:Inviting prosecution

[VGPowerlord]

What if the user boots a LiveCD, downloads LOIC to a RAM disk, and runs it there? The computer itself will show no record of any of this (unless you catch them doing it or within a few seconds of having done it and powered off the machine), so forensics won't find jack.

How much evidence do you need in the UK for this sort of thing? Your ISP will certainly be subpoenaed in the matter.

Re:Inviting prosecution

[taucross]

A message from your friendly gubbermint.

Re:Inviting prosecution

[carnalforge]

[...]

So, I wouldn't be surprised if we see raids, confiscation of computer equipment and (in the UK, at least) charges brought under the Computer Misuse Act. I wonder what the average decline in income is, due to one's inability to get certain jobs because of a criminal record.

Same as the income of RIAA suing grandmothers. Probably a good outcome for most after all.

Self-defeating

[hessian]

The powers that be: You need strong government and law enforcement because most people are unruly vandals.

Anonymous: We believe in a more anarchistic world, and so we're going to vandalize things until disorder comes about.

Silent Majority: Guess the powers that be called that one right.

Re:Self-defeating

[gustgr]

Anonymous just wanna see the world burning, that's all there's to it. If there was a website that upon 1 billion accesses it would trigger an atomic bomb to be launched at a random location on Earth, I bet Anonymous would be running scripts to achieve that as quick as possible.

The sad thing is that they got involved in this WikiLeaks business. They serve no other purpose than giving reasons to those opposing it. It illegitimates the whole deal. What's their motto again? "Because one of us are as cruel as all of us" if I am not mistaken. Tells you a lot.

Re:Self-defeating

[gustgr]

Err, "none of us", obviously.

Miserable typo.

Re:Self-defeating

[ThePangolino]

Because none of us is as cruel as all of us

FTFY

Re:Self-defeating

[carvalhao]

True. Any suggestion on what to do in this circumstance?

Re:Self-defeating

[Blakey Rat]

"nothing" is always a valid course of action. In fact, I think it should be the default course of action.

Amazon was well within their right to end their business relationship with WikiLeaks. They didn't do anything illegal, they didn't do anything immoral, and they did it specifically to ensure that their thousands of other customers weren't affected.

I understand that people are angry that WikiLeaks is having trouble finding servers, but that was easily predictable and should have been expected by them.

Re:Self-defeating

[Synonymous Homonym]

The Wandals moved into Carthago to live there.

At times like these, I am reminded of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace,
and Mentor's Last Words.

BAD idea

[Joey Vegetables]

There are morally, ethically and legally sound ways to protest Amazon's actions if you feel as I do that they were unacceptable. Committing crimes against it, and its customers, is not one of those ways. It is not morally acceptable, and it takes away any moral high ground one might otherwise have had. FYI, I believe Amazon was coerced to some unknown but probably large degree by the government. There is no way to be sure, but I believe that it was, and I have tempered my own response accordingly. I have canceled plans to move some hosting to Amazon in 2011, both to protests its actions and also because it has demonstrated an unwillingness to host material of a potentially controversial nature. However I continue to do business with it as a retailer, since as far as I'm aware Amazon's retail business has behaved in a morally, ethically and legally sound fashion.

Re:BAD idea

[russotto]

There are morally, ethically and legally sound ways to protest Amazon's actions if you feel as I do that they were unacceptable.

Morally, ethically, and legally sound, yet completely ineffective.

Re:BAD idea

[Lehk228]

sending one letter every day would be far MORE effective then pissing into a tidal wave, which is what trying to DDOS amazon would be like.

why not DDOS Akami while you are at it

Useful link.

[Kaz Kylheku]

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/civil_disobedience.html :)

Counterproductive

[davev2.0]

If some company does something involving Wikileaks that this group does not like, this group will punish that company with DDoS and other actions, right?

So, if I own a company, why should I provide any kind of service to Wikileaks? If I decided I don't want to provide my services to Wikileaks because someone is attacking them or I don't like what they are doing, which is my right, I am going to be pilloried by an anonymous group who are hell bent on hurting me and my business for doing something they do not like.

These attacks are showing companies that they should not do business with Wikileaks and any site like Wikileaks.

These attacks are hypocritical as well. The attackers are saying to these companies "You must do as we wish. You must associate with Wikileaks even if you don't want to or find their behavior objectionable." They are attempting to impose their will upon others from a position of secrecy.

Re:Counterproductive

[Animats]

Agreed. This is not good for Wikileaks.

Re:Counterproductive

[OrangeMonkey11]

excellent point

these hypocrites Script Kiddies need to go and read Gandhi philosophy on how to be a real activist

Re:Counterproductive

[DMiax]

Mastercard and Paypal admitted that they pulled the plug under pressure from the USG. Why do you think Visa and Amazon did it?

A good 50% of US people here claims that the right to bear arms is to revolt against oppressive government. Let's see where they stay on this one non-violent revolt...

Re:Counterproductive

[MachDelta]

The sites themselves are hypocritical. Mastercard and Visa both stopped accepting payments for Wikileaks for policy breach (or some shit like that) yet you can still make donations to the goddamn KKK through them. Paypal admitted that the US state department forced them to drop their Wikileaks account. Amazon was just peachy fine with hosting Wikileaks and then mysteriously they kicked them out. Same with the swiss bank that was happy to hold an account for them up until recently, and also the random reappearance of "sexual assault" charges which were dismissed earlier.

Essentially this is the US gubberment on one side pressuring businesses to "do what we want, regardless of weather or not our threats are legal" and the public (Anonymous) on the other side saying "don't give in to the gubberment or we'll attack you, regardless of weather or not that's legal"

Who's right? No one.

Re:Counterproductive

[davev2.0]

Why they did it is irrelevant. They made a choice and did what they believed best for them. Now, they are being punished for exercising their free association rights by people who claim to be fighting for the free speech rights.

And, still these actions will only hurt Wikileaks in corporate and business circles. If, by dealing with Wikileaks, a business will find itself between a rock (the Wikileaks supporters doing the DDoSing)and a hard place ( the U.S. government) with no way to protect themselves, the best option is not to get in the middle.

Didn't you see Wargames? If there is no winning move, the only way to win is to not play the game. In this case, it would mean not doing business with Wikileaks to begin with.

Re:Counterproductive

[blueg3]

Mastercard and Visa both stopped accepting payments for Wikileaks for policy breach (or some shit like that) yet you can still make donations to the goddamn KKK through them.

Probably "not being the KKK" isn't part of their policy. It's sort of a rare requirement.

Re:Counterproductive

[matrixskp]

These attacks are hypocritical as well. The attackers are saying to these companies "You must do as we wish. You must associate with Wikileaks even if you don't want to or find their behavior objectionable." They are attempting to impose their will upon others from a position of secrecy.

Actually the only hypocrisy going on here is by the US government which is bound by the US constitution, and is quite obviously ignoring it when ever it suits it. In this particular case they are trying to restrict freedom of speech and suppress information that shows that they have been breaking the law, using the government as a vehicle to further members own financial positions and various other dirty tactics that some of us suspected was going on, but up to this point in time had no proof.

Anonymous has no charter that states they won't harass, DDoS or use whatever means necessary to get their point across. In fact from what I understand that is in fact the whole idea of the movement.

There are plenty of companies that will support Wikileaks (and other whistle blower movements) as there are people that will support anyone who tries to show where the hypocrisy truly lies

Re:Counterproductive

[mcvos]

It's not so much that all companies are required to do business with WikiLeaks, it's that by canceling active services, they're taking a political stand. And a stand against freedom at that. Consider all the organisations they apparently do approve of in order to do business with them (MasterCard and the KKK is the well-publicised example here).

If a company takes a controversial political stand, they should expect repercussions. I agree that DDoS attacks are stupid. Getting it in the news and boycotting them is much better (but the DDoS attack, even if unsuccessful, will help to get the point in the news).

Re:Counterproductive

[davev2.0]

1. No one said all companies are required to do business with Wikileaks.
2. By what you call "canceling active services", the companies are protecting themselves.
3. The companies are exercising their freedom of association. Those that are DDoSing them are attempting to force the companies to do business with Wikileaks against the companies' wills.
4. If Wikileaks takes a controversial political stand or makes a very public controversial move, "they should expect repercussions."

Your entire post is hypocritical.

Re:Counterproductive

[mcvos]

By what you call "canceling active services", the companies are protecting themselves.

Against what? They're only making the,selves more vulnerable.

The companies are exercising their freedom of association.

And that's the point. They prefer association with the KKK. That's a political choice, and that deserves to be publicized.

If Wikileaks takes a controversial political stand or makes a very public controversial move, "they should expect repercussions."

Are you somehow trying to suggest that WikiLeaks is not suffering repercussions?

I understand that free press and transparent government are more controversial than racism in China, but why are they considered more controversial in the US?

Re:Counterproductive

[davev2.0]

The companies are protecting themselves against being associated with a group that many consider to be anti-American. The only thing they are more vulnerable to is attack by groups such as the Wikileaks supporters who are now attacking them.

They can associate with whom they please. DDoSing their websites does not publicize any association with the KKK or any other group besides the group that is attacking them and that association is "This group that hates America is now attacking U.S. companies that have stopped doing business with the group."

No, Wikileaks is suffering repercussions, dumbass, but it seems many of their supporters, including you, are suggesting that there should be no repercussions to Wikileaks actions and are attacking the vehicles of those repercussions, to whit the companies that have stopped doing business with Wikileaks.

Wikileaks is not the press and they are disseminating information the government considers classified. Not to mention that Wikileaks has started leaking information simply to embarrass the U.S. and damage the international relationships of the U.S.

Re:Counterproductive

[mcvos]

The companies are protecting themselves against being associated with a group that many consider to be anti-American. The only thing they are more vulnerable to is attack by groups such as the Wikileaks supporters who are now attacking them.

So instead, they show their association with a racist group to matter, and they show themselves to be anti-freedom. Is that honestly any better?

They would have been much safer if they had taken a neutral stance and only blocked accounts when ordered to do so by a court. By taking a political stance, they're making themselves vulnerable.

They can associate with whom they please.

They can, but they're showing their colors by doing so, and a lot of people don't like what they see. A neutral stance would have been much smarter. Well, unless there's some shady deal with the government behind it, and there probably is.

"This group that hates America is now attacking U.S. companies that have stopped doing business with the group."

It's not about the US, and the companies operate on a global scale. It is about press freedom and a reliable payment infrastructure.

Wikileaks is not the press

Of course they are press. Not conventional established press, but press nonetheless. Their long association with the NY Times and many other newspapers is pretty telling in that regard.

Speaking of which, why are Visa and MasterCard still doing business with those?

Re:Counterproductive

[mcvos]

Both associations mattered, or they would not have existed in the first place. The belief by the credit card companies that Wikileaks was breaking U.S. federal law is why Wikileaks was cut loose.

WikiLeaks is not even in US jurisdiction! And even if they were, it's highly questionable whether what they did would actually be illegal. Whether it really is illegal, is up to the judges, not up to credit card companies. By blocking their account, they're taking the law into their own hands.

It is not illegal to be racist.

Are you honestly saying the KKK never broke the law? Maybe you should google for "Ku Klux Klan crimes".

Because free speech isn't a right that racists have?

Because racism itself is anti-freedom, and the credit card companies choose to associate them with that. That wouldn't have been a problem if they'd simply considered themselves a neutral common carrier, but their actions make it clear they don't. So they explicitly support racism, and object to independent free press.

They can, but they're showing their colors by doing so, and a lot of people don't like what they see.

So, those people, how are a vast minority, are taking the law into their own hands, acting like a lynch mob.

It's the credit card companies who are taking the law into their own hands. Their actions directly hurt the free press. Most people who object to that are not doing anything illegal. It's not just the Anonymous script kiddies who object, you know (in fact, many of them seem to care more about the fight than the goal). Yes, that's a tiny and foolish minority, but the number of people who care about free press and censorship is much bigger than that.

And, isn't it "I am going to attack you because I can and you won't be able to retaliate or defend yourself"? As far as I am concerned, those that are doing the attacks are a bunch of cowards because they would never do this as a stand up fight.

I don't know about that. Several of the Anonymous kids have already been arrested. (They're not that anonymous, apparently.)

Sorry, but that argument went out the window when Wikileaks made it solely about the U.S.

WikiLeaks isn't solely about the US. They've published documents from lots of different countries. It's just that at the moment, the US seems to be leaking a lot of interesting stuff. Maybe you need to wonder why that is. I mean, it's not like the WikiLeaks guys break in and steal stuff. People send it to them.

And, let us not forget that Wikileaks is putting out intellectual property. They don't deserve any more payment than does the RIAA or the MPAA.

What the fuck does that have to do with anything?

I see, so Betty Jo in her mumu who has been interviewed 16 times about the various tornadoes that have leveled her town is the press too, right? They are not the press, any more than Betty Jo is.

Good god, man. Take that head out of your ass and turn on that brain for a change. Your Betty Jo is the subject of the news. WikiLeaks is the messenger of the news. That makes what they do journalism.

Wikileaks is not the media, they are not the press. They have reduced themselves to an anti-American dissemination center for stolen classified information.

You mean just like the New York Times? Just like the people who published the Pentagon Papers? The Watergate scandal? It is the press's job to examine what governments do with a critical eye. It's not their job to only publish what the government approves of, their job is to inform the public about what's really going on. It's true that WikiLeaks is less selective than many others have been and would have been, but the core of what they do is a vital function of the press. WikiLeaks just does it on a larger scale, and with less funds.

Re:I went to Amazon and made a purchase

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

You have no idea what this fight is even about, do you?

Re:I went to Amazon and made a purchase

[spynode]

Hatred of US? You are so full of shit... I don't know, maybe you really think that this is aimed towards American people, but those who fight against bureaucracy and it's tendency to lie are in fact trying to help you and your children. I don't know about this particular group and their true motives but this is in no way a manifestation of hatred towards the US.

Stop using the word 'Attack'

[miro2]

These are not attacks. This is not a war. A politically motivated DDOS is exactly analogous in form and function to a lunch counter sit-in. These should be called 'protests' or 'online sit-ins.' Use of the words like 'war' and 'attack' only fuels a belief that there is no justified ethical motivation for these protests.

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[ElectricTurtle]

Arson is a completely different class of act, it destroys physical property (in a very dangerous way). A DDOS is like a sit-in in that it is a denial of use. Yes, the business loses potential revenues because customers can't access the means to perform a transaction, but it does not destroy physical property. It is no different than if hordes of people who, for the purpose of whatever cause, decide to fill all the standing room in a store but don't buy anything. The store loses money because legitimate customers can't purchase (or must do so with great difficulty), but no physical thing is necessarily damaged nor any "violence" perpetrated. (However this would still be illegal trespass, but it would also be non-violent protest.)

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[miro2]

Your argument is based on an incorrect analogy. No property is being damaged here. Space (bandwidth space) is being taken up by protesters in order to prevent other legitimate activity. This is how protests have functioned for decades. Perhaps you believe that people in the civil-rights movement should have taken less aggressive tactics so that we wouldn't have had to end segregation so quickly, eh?

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[Duradin]

How do you ask a DDoS to leave and when they do not comply have them hauled out by the cops for trespassing?

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[miro2]

Actually, that's the first intelligent response I have seen to the DDOS=sit-in analogy. You have a very good point. In some ways this is much closer to a sit-in in which participants actually handcuff themselves to objects in the business. Its still not an attack.

Analogies between the real and virtual world are bound to be flawed. But calling it a hacker attack is extremely misleading to a public that imagines the attackers are breaking in to computers and damaging them or stealing data. Despite the analogy's flaws "sit-in" is much more accurate than "attack."

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[Kaz Kylheku]

Sit ins on private property are attacks.

Furthermore, using the word "attack" does not fuel a belief that the actions are not justified.

Except maybe in those whose mode of reasoning consists of the rearrangement of word spellings.

Furthermore, the actions are not justified. They are criminal, and these kiddies should go to jail, and also pay restitution.

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[Kaz Kylheku]

Your argument is based on an incorrect analogy. No property is being damaged here. Space (bandwidth space) is being taken up by protesters in order to prevent other legitimate activity. This is how protests have functioned for decades. Perhaps you believe that people in the civil-rights movement should have taken less aggressive tactics so that we wouldn't have had to end segregation so quickly, eh?

Why don't we cut off your Internet for a month?

The ability to do business is damaged by these attacks.

That can be translated to a dollar figure which corresponds to the actual damages caused.

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[Kaz Kylheku]

Preventing earnings is the same thing as destruction of property.

If I lock you in your house so that you can't go out and earn a living, it is the same thing as if I took your stuff and burned it.

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[endymion.nz]

And that is what makes a protest effective...

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[endymion.nz]

They are not actively denying access, they are blocking the doors. Anyone that gets lucky and waits long enough will get the page served up, cos its Amazon.

Re:Stop using the word 'Attack'

[adolf]

How do you hold a protest if the merchant can just ask you to leave and when you don't comply just have you hauled out by the cops for trespassing?

Re:I went to Amazon and made a purchase

[DogDude]

"Hatred of the US"? Sounds like somebody has been spending too much time watching Fox News...

Double standards much?

[SmallFurryCreature]

So Amazon doesn't agree with Wikileaks cause and blocked their business. But that is fair in your eyes, but the same can not be done in reverse?

My my, how you grovel at your masters feed as the perfect sheep unwilling to question anything.

Basically you claim that you are free, just as long as you don't upset anyone in power.

Re:Double standards much?

[sycodon]

No, Amazon choose not to do business with Wikileaks . They did not block Wikileaks actions in any way.

Wikileaks is free to find someone else to perform what Amazon's former function.

Re:Double standards much?

[twidarkling]

While I agree with your sentiment, Amazon's removal of Wikileaks is hardly blocking their business. It is, at best, Amazon refusing to let Wikileaks use Amazon's business. Wikileaks doesn't have any particular right to use Amazon's service. I do feel Amazon should have something resembling a legitimate reason if they wanted to remove Wikileaks from the Amazon servers, and I don't believe one was supplied, but even then, it's still Amazon's right to refuse to do business with anyone they chose.

Re:Double standards much?

[Desler]

So Amazon doesn't agree with Wikileaks cause and blocked their business.

Blocked what? Since when are these companies obligated to provide services to Wikileaks?

Re:Double standards much?

[Duradin]

As I've said before, for people that don't want government controlling anything they sure do like controlling everything themselves.

Company X doesn't have port Y on device Z. Oh noes! They're attacking my freedoms! We must force them to have Y on Z whether they like it or not!

Re:Double standards much?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's even better is the fact that Amazon dumped WikiLeaks but is now selling a Kindle version of the cables.

THAT is the reason they deserve to get the cannons directed at them.

Re:Double standards much?

[Swanktastic]

With all the libertarians on here, I'm suprised how many folks want to be able to tell Amazon how to run their business. Amazon should have the right to refuse to do business with an entity they think may be unprofitable due to legal reasons or technical support reasons (e.g. surviving a DDoS on Wikileaks itself). Heck, even if they're wrong, they have the right to make the wrong business decision.

Nothing gives you the right to interfere between two parties that want to buy/sell in a legal transaction.

Re:Double standards much?

[hsmith]

You aren't comparing like things. Denying Amazon servers the right to serve up their own content is not the same as Amazon not hosting Wikileaks. They aren't even in the same ballpark. The right to refuse to do business with someone, for whatever reason is no where near the same as denying OTHERS the right to do business with someone.

Re:Double standards much?

[MachDelta]

Not authorized to publish? Wikileaks does not need the U.S. government's permission to publish anything. They have no official presence in the US. And even if they were an American company, there is a little thing called freedom of speech and the freedom of the presses which would protect them. Also, they have not yet been designated a terrorist group (or similar), so the only thing here that is illegal (aside from the private who initially leaked the cables - but he's in jail) is the US State Department trying to intimidate American businesses into not interacting with Wikileaks. THAT is illegal. The response from Anonymous is probably also (technically) illegal, but when the government misbehaves, law goes out the window.

Re:Double standards much?

[MachDelta]

No, Amazon was intimidated into not to doing business with Wikileaks by the US State Department. They did not block Wikileaks actions in any way.

Wikileaks is free to find someone else to perform what Amazon's former function, who will then also be intimidated by the US State Department.

FTFY

Re:Double standards much?

[Chakra5]

...), so the only thing here that is illegal (aside from the private who initially leaked the cables - but he's in jail) is the US State Department trying to intimidate American businesses into not interacting with Wikileaks. THAT is illegal. The response from Anonymous is probably also (technically) illegal, but when the government misbehaves, law goes out the window.

And so the response should have nothing to do with Amazon, rather the government. Amazon is the teller told to hand over the cash, and Anonymous is attacking the wrong entity

Re:Double standards much?

[LordNacho]

And why should Amazon be the one to stand up for Wikileaks? Because they got picked first?

Re:Double standards much?

[LordNacho]

With all the libertarians on here...

Did you keep track of who expressed which opinion, or are you thinking that Slashdot is some amorphous mass of shifting humanity, except maybe for you?

Definitely AMOSH. What else do you call a site with this many users/opinions?

Re:Double standards much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess if you value the right to do business more than the right to live in a free society then I guess you have a point. If you can't see how censorship has become privatized, making the corps the de facto government then you probably never will at this point. It is a protest because private business wanted all the powers of government. We institutionalized bribery allowing our corporate overloads to make the rules and be the law. Well now they are getting treated like the government they so wanted to be like. Consequences, not just for the little people.

Re:Double standards much?

[endymion.nz]

Relatedly, nobody has been convicted of any crimes yet. All of this has been done on speculation and allegations.

Re:Double standards much?

[KingFrog]

Yeah, that would be because they're only pseudo-libertarians. They're actually much closer to anarchists in many respects. Amazon and Wikileaks may have had their issues, but these yahoos have made it into MY issue by stopping my holiday shopping at Amazon. Maybe in protect I should shut down their bank's website and ATM network right around your next payday? After all, you can always bank elsewhere.

Re:Double standards much?

[jafiwam]

On the other hand, Amazon.com is now choosing political sides.

Politics is a dirty business.

Amazon.com shouldn't be surprised or whine like a little girl when they get biatch slapped for participating in politics.

Re:Double standards much?

[Grym]

It's not a double standard. Amazon is choosing not to do business with Wikileaks by blocking what they control. It's like a restaurant not choosing to serve someone not wearing pants.

No, Amazon unilaterally ceasing their business with Wikileaks is like a restaurant refusing to serve Martin Luther King Jr. during a tumultuous period in the civil rights movement... Maybe they think he's breaking the law. Maybe the government requested this or intimidated them. Maybe they just don't want the trouble. We'll probably never know. (Unless the information gets leaked. lol) Nevertheless, they're on the wrong side of history.

Amazon can cite all the reasons it wants to defend this decision. Their sycophantic and fascist supporters can laud the decision as a brilliant display of high-minded libertarian autonomy. The truth remains. Wikileaks has not been found guilty of any crime. None of its members have even been charged with any crime relevant to the leaks. Period.

Yet, despite this: Wikileaks accounts are being frozen. Their infrastructure is under attack. Their spokesperson/leader arrested on trumped-up salacious charges, denied bail, and publicly threatened with government-sponsored assassination. All because they are "information terrorists"--whatever that means...

In all likelihood, Amazon and the other U.S. corporations who have simultaneously all made similar decisions are assisting in an organized campaign to destroy and make an examples out of Wikileaks and Assange, in particular. The spectacle of it all, even at this point, is far more damaging to the image of the United States than anything leaked thus far. Rather than a "City upon A Hill," the U.S. is proving itself to be more like a corrupt, Banana Republic.

-Grym

Re:Double standards much?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

As a business owner, would I have the right to refuse service to anybody wearing a turban because I think they might be a terrorist? Do I have the right to not put ramps and handicap accessible parking (in the U.S.) in front of my store? Business does not complete freedom and they need to be held to some accountability.

Re:Double standards much?

[trickyD1ck]

What are you talking about? Censorship is by definition in the realm of government—how can it be "privatized?"

Re:Double standards much?

[Oligonicella]

"Corporate overlords" Jeez, get out of the social studies programs and live some real life.

Re:Double standards much?

[taucross]

How is the modded insightful? It's just playing with semantics. One could simply state that Amazon is denying others the right to do business with WikiLeaks. Of course that is their perogative, and they are within the bounds of the law. LOIC is outside the bounds of the law.

What a startling coincidence! A corporation is within the bounds of the law... and the people are outside of it! Wow. Who would've thought... no wait. Who made that law again? Oh yeah. You wanna talk about double standards...

Re:Double standards much?

[cmorriss]

You're just not getting it. Here's another analogy that will hopefully clarify why they are two completely different things.

Suppose Julian wanted to print out a thousand page book containing the classified material and sell it in Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble doesn't really want to have something like that on their shelves so they decide not to sell it. Then some protesters proceed to block the entrance to the stores, not allowing anyone in or out just because they wouldn't sell Julian's book of CLASSIFIED government documents.

And this sounds right to you? Really? Because at this point you're denying the business the right to choose how they run their business. Julian can sell his book at other places just fine, but just because this one doesn't do it, it's time to raise the pitch forks and light the fires.

Re:So now we MUST follow Wikileaks agenda?

[Entrope]

Did Wikileaks give Amazon that choice? Or did they just sign up for an EC2 account, forcing Amazon to make a decision sooner or later?

Do you mean that every business should scrutinize their customers and refuse, up front, to serve people who might incur legal liability for the business? If that's what you mean, it would be a generally bad thing for freedom.

Amazon's reason not valid

[Geof]

Amazon had valid reasons for dropping wikileaks

What, that WikiLeaks did not "own" the documents? Copyright infringement? Under U.S. law, material produced by the government are public domain - it belongs to the public. How is a bogus claim of copyright infringement "valid"?

Re:Amazon's reason not valid

[kellyb9]

The OP is pointing out that Amazon is a private business. They can essentially do anything they want to. I'm sure there's some blanket term of services that allows them to drop wikileaks. If wikileaks disagrees with this, take them to court (everyone's doing it). Cyber vandalism isn't the answer, its just going to polarize people who don't care into being against the cause you stand for out of spite.

Re:Amazon's reason not valid

[Geof]

You are throwing up a whole lot of red herrings and not addressing my point.

You say "I'm sure there's some blanket term of service that allows them to drop wikileaks." Maybe so. But the reason they actually did give was bogus. It is not less bogus because you have a vague idea that they could find something else, and I find it reprehensible that you would give a bad argument a free pass on such flimsy grounds.

Amazon's excuse was a claim that WikiLeaks infringed copyright. This is not true, and it sets a bad precedent for future abuses of copyright. I did not talk about "cyber vandalism," nor about the ability of private businesses to "do anything they want to." Check out my previous comment it that second point is what you're interested in. You'll have to go to my profile page though - I'm not going to link to it. It's not what I'm talking about here.

Ultimate irony

[fieldstone]

Has anyone tried the link in the article above recently? Cause it's not working. I am so amused... either all of us visiting it has knocked it offline, or someone has successfully attacked the attackers.

Wikileaks cables for sale on Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

Words fail to describe what i feel right now.
Just follow that link.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/WikiLeaks-documents-expose-foreign-conspiracies/dp/B004EEOLIU/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Oh Really?

[Steeltoe]

Amazon? PayPal? The Swiss Bank? EasyDNS? The list goes on and on.

These are not just random companies realizing they suddenly don't want Julian Assange as customer. Obviosuly, there are invisible connections and strings playing behind the scenes here.

They were ordered to terminate his accounts. This abuse of power should be exposed for what it is.

Next time, it might be yourself losing all rights to live and being shut out of business.

Re:Oh Really?

[Tridus]

EveryDNS, not EasyDNS. EasyDNS is providing DNS for Wikileaks.ch.

http://blog.easydns.org/2010/12/09/important-the-wikileaks-situation/

This has been quite the problem for EasyDNS, since the whole thing started with a typo on some blog and then was copied verbatium as truth without anybody bothering to check.

Re:Oh Really?

[kellyb9]

Although I'm not without some skepticism, private companies generally like to avoid scandal. It's not uncommon or unlikely, that they simply didn't want to be associated with a group that some US politicians are labeling terrorists. Its not good for business.

Operation Foot Bullet in full swing!

[Python]

This reminds me of when the church of $cientology tried this same sort of tactic, punish your rivals with a DOS attack to teach them a lesson and hope that they change their ways (or that no one else repeats the same actions). In that case it was a massive multi-year flood of certain usenet groups, and its probably easier to see how the badguy was - but the method was the same and the result I suspect will be the same: It backfired on the co$ and I think the same if going to happen to here too to wikileaks. Wteher they have anything to with it or not (and I suspect they don't directly have anything to do with). Its not going to get wikileaks any sympathy, its not going to change the stance of companies like Amazon and Mastercard (give in to one DOS attack, then you need to give into the next one, etc.) and its going to scare away other businesses from every working with Wikileaks in the future. Why should a business take the chance, if you bring on wikileaks as a client and you can't handle the heat wikileaks fanboys will DOS you. Safe beat, don't do business with wikileaks.

So this is either a misguided attempt to help wikileaks, or a damn clever attack on wikileaks by destroying any chance they have of working with anyone else. Either way it seems to me (and what the hell do I know) that this going to backfire.

Re:SHUT UP, BITCH!

[MachDelta]

I think my favorite was hearing Anonymous called a "darkside hacker group." I'm not quite sure when Anonymous joined the Sith... maybe they should be called Darth Anonymous now?

Any Substance to This?

[Billy the Mountain]

I'll usually believe something if it appears in the media but I'm not sure I believe this one. OTFA, The blogger says the group in question has a DIY hacking tool, yet there's no link.

If this is all made up, OTOH, I could see how governments publicizing supposed attacks by Wikileak sympathizers would sway general opinion against WikiLeaks as being aggressive nuisances.

Re:Any Substance to This?

[healeyb]

I grabbed the content from CNN, so the credibility has to lie with them. There have been other sources confirming this, however, and the group has supposedly opened a new twitter account which has confirmed it.

Re:Any Substance to This?

[Billy the Mountain]

Official word from Wikileaks:

We neither condemn nor applaud DDoS attacks

From this website: wikileaks-we-neither-condemn-nor-applaud-ddos-attacks

So it's sort of like I thought. An apparently unrelated group conducting attacks.

Think of the Children

[OrangeMonkey11]

So these assholes are potentially ruining quite a lot of kids holidays.

Let them try

[Call Me Black Cloud]

When Amazon stays up, Anonymous loses credibility. Not that they have any to start...they make a lot of noise and put on a show which the media loves but that's about the extent of their value.

No one seems to be concerned over Wikileaks' agenda, which is unknown. They selectively release material over time...why not just put it all up as they get it?

Re:Let them try

[Python]

No one seems to be concerned over Wikileaks' agenda, which is unknown. They selectively release material over time...why not just put it all up as they get it?

Good question, I'm guessing that they are checking the cables to make sure its not going to actually hurt someone before they release it?

Have fun kiddies!

[Vinegar Joe]

I hear the weather at Gitmo is lovely this time of year.

Collateral damage...

[mswhippingboy]

I have a lot of online Xmas shopping to do. I would normally use Amazon for a good portion of these purchases, but out of fear of having my IP captured and designated an accomplice of Anonymous, I'll do my shopping elsewhere...

Take your dollars elsewhere

[GodfatherofSoul]

My personal thoughts about Assange aside, I really hate the idea that the government can make a phone call to a business and get someone's accounts deactivated. This especially when I've been considering Amazon Web Services for virtualization. I'm making it a point to *not* do any of my Christmas shopping at Amazon this season or for school texts for next semester. Last year, I dropped about $1300 on them.

Let me throw out a plug for Better World Books with that being said.

Re:So now we MUST follow Wikileaks agenda?

[twidarkling]

Amazon offers a service which Wikileaks felt was useful, and so Wikileaks purchased that service. I don't really see how that's forcing Amazon to make a decision. Amazon chose to make a decision about what content is allowed on their servers, so I'm pretty sure Amazon themselves just fucked up and guaranteed liability for anything in future found on their servers, rather than being able to go "we simply provide the service to anyone with an account in good standing, what's done with it is not our business," which would have been staying out of it. Instead, they chose to actively go against Wikileaks, showing they are willing and able to discriminate based on content, rather than legality. No Safe Haven for them.

In a strange twist of fates

[das3cr]

This has me breaking out my Visa to put money on my paypal account and make a purchase on Amazon I had not planned on. All in all this may be a boon for the companies those criminals are attacking. And it's going to be bad for the criminals at wikileaks also. As it's causing people like me to actually sympathize with the corporations under attack. Something I would normally NEVER do.

Re:In a strange twist of fates

[Mindcontrolled]

Thanks for clarifying that you are a groveling little lickspittle. How's the arse of your corporate overlords tasting today? The sweet smell of submission and obedience as always?

Re:In a strange twist of fates

[jabelli]

Thanks for clarifying that you are a groveling little lickspittle. How's the arse of your Operation payback overlords tasting today? The sweet smell of submission and obedience as always?

Re:I went to Amazon and made a purchase

[Windcatcher]

Huh?? Care to elaborate, or am I supposed to guess?

Mod up - there are better causes than wikileaks

[jaypaulw]

Wikileaks is pretty well enfranchised I would say. There are billions who are not.

Re:So now we MUST follow Wikileaks agenda?

[Desler]

And yet Amazon, Mastercard, etc are being denied their right to freedom of association.

Let me put it simply and bluntly :

[unity100]

If the only option you leave for people is DDOS, they will ddos.

people talk 10+ hours for minimum wage. people tend their kids. people are studying in colleges by paying to them, in order to have a chance at future. those who have established some career, are busy paying bills.

they dont have the time or resources or the means to mount and run nation-spanning political campaigns, engage in social activity for prolonged periods. they have lives that they are forced to attend to.

and, in the end, because of all these necessities our current dog-eat-dog capitalist system enforces upon people (its always good to cut benefits, social security, and wages for profit after all, aint it ..), what's left to people ?

hitting 'like' button on facebook, doing comments under online news stories, discussing in forums, instant messengers, online blabber. maybe donating a few bucks to a ngo. and the most extreme of what they can do online, ends up being DDOS. they cant even do serious hacks, they dont time or the means to learn and further any knowledge in that area.

and they do this. ddos. because, this is the travesty of a situation our current society manufactures, and then pays for. the ironic thing is, the very perpetrators, creators of this situation, the big corporations, end up on the receiving end of this. hunter hunted.

no, ddos may not be ethically so justifiable. but, as said, if you leave the only option for people to DDOS, they will DDOS.

Re:Let me put it simply and bluntly :

[Blakey Rat]

they dont have the time or resources or the means to mount and run nation-spanning political campaigns, engage in social activity for prolonged periods. they have lives that they are forced to attend to.

If they're not willing to suspend their lives in *any* way, then it can't be a very important issue to them, could it?

"I'm against this, but I can't be arsed to protest it in an effective manner".

Re:Let me put it simply and bluntly :

[unity100]

they dont have the time or resources or the means to mount and run nation-spanning political campaigns, engage in social activity for prolonged periods. they have lives that they are forced to attend to.

If they're not willing to suspend their lives in *any* way, then it can't be a very important issue to them, could it?

"I'm against this, but I can't be arsed to protest it in an effective manner".

and how will they suspend their lives, and what exactly will they suspend ? will the kid who is studying at college with hard earned cash of his father, or student loans, suspend his studies for a year to mount a political campaign ? will a mother of two, stop working, to work in a social campaign ? who will provide for kids ? will a youngster who is working at wal mart for 10+ hours to pay bills stop working for participation ? who will pay the bills ?

mortgages ? support ? children ? expenses ?

who will take care of these ?

lets face it - if you dont have the means and the time to do something, freedoms do not matter. no freedom that you cant use, is a real freedom. only a lie.

Re:Let me put it simply and bluntly :

[Blakey Rat]

lets face it - if you dont have the means and the time to do something, freedoms do not matter. no freedom that you cant use, is a real freedom. only a lie.

And protests that don't require any kind of sacrifice at all don't impress me, or anybody else.

Look, if you feel strongly, then take STRONG ACTION. If you're taking wussy "run a script on my computer because I'm sooooo busy" action, then I assume you don't feel strongly about it, and you're certainly not going to sway my opinion on the matter.

If you care, *show* me you care through your actions. And, hey, guess what? Maybe you miss a class. Maybe you miss a mortgage payment. If it's *important* to you, you'll be willing to miss those things.

Re:Let me put it simply and bluntly :

[unity100]

you dont get the main point here. what they are able to do, may not impress you. may not be accomplishing too much in the direction of what they are going for.

but, that is what they can do. doing anything else, is not within their capability.

you seem to be thinking 'lazy people' or something about the people involved. i take it that you havent worked in a demanding job, and then had to look after anyone when you have come back home.

ill tell you - when i was in that situation, all i could do was to sit in front of the tv, mindlessly staring at some shows for a few hours until i go to bed.

i could do nothing else.

yes. those people are 'lazy'. but, they are MADE lazy, by the system that keeps them in that position so that they wont stir trouble. this may be an intended result, a side effect. doesnt matter.

If you care, *show* me you care through your actions. And, hey, guess what? Maybe you miss a class. Maybe you miss a mortgage payment. If it's *important* to you, you'll be willing to miss those things.

yes. miss a mortgage payment, not be able to pay a few bills. of course, that is if you actually are able to take time off your job.

real people are not able to risk missing their mortgage or bills. they cannot forfeit the means to care for their loved ones as easily as you speak.

Re:Let me put it simply and bluntly :

[Blakey Rat]

yes. those people are 'lazy'. but, they are MADE lazy, by the system that keeps them in that position so that they wont stir trouble. this may be an intended result, a side effect. doesnt matter.

Yeah! Personal responsibility doesn't exist! All problems, even fatigue, are caused by THE MAN!!!

Seriously.

Re:Let me put it simply and bluntly :

[unity100]

i really think you have never been in a position that your physical and life force had been drained out consistently.

no. personal responsibility doesnt exist in that situation. you cant even think. life is (unfortunately) not that easy in this system. hopefully you dont get into any situation in your life that you will have to work or live like that.

Re:I went to Amazon and made a purchase

[GodfatherofSoul]

This isn't hatred of the US. Try to think beyond "they hate freedom." I'm an American and I'm pretty pissed that the government doesn't like what a whistle blower is doing, so the go about systematically trying to dismantle their life (including elected officials calling for assassinations and whatnot). Take a look at this article on Assange's "sex crimes". They just need an excuse to get him into custody for future extradition.

correction

[unity100]

talk = work in the above post, 2nd sentence.

False flag once again

[spynode]

I just visited Payback's IRC channel and it's a mess there. Bunch of silly little kids. Call me paranoid or a tinfoil hatter but this could be a US false flag op to eventually limit the freedom of The Internet. Even if it's not, they will certainly use this as a chance to lock down the last source of free information. What a shame and very bleak future lurking. I do hope that I am wrong, but only time will show.

Re:False flag once again

[negativehero]

Forgive them, for they know not what they do. They are but stupid teenagers.

Re:False flag once again

[alobar72]

Interesting thought that "they" will use it as an argument to further restrict the Internet... That is scary indeed. But on the other hand : it would ultimately educate us where "they" are standing...

How many though?

[SuperKendall]

Returns are not free if the reason is "just because", you have to pay for shipping back. How many people are really going to do that? Would it even be a blip on Amazon's screens compared to the millions of people doing that as a normal course of business?

Good thing they announced it

[93 Escort Wagon]

Amazon is chugging along as usual. If these 12-year-olds hadn't made an announcement, no one would know about this crippling attack.

Re:Good thing they announced it

[Python]

Yep, no impact so far to amazon.com. Did they not start DDOSing amazon yet?

Re:Good thing they announced it

[healeyb]

"With the Amazon attack, they are simply toooo big for us right now. Maybe at a later time we can try again with them." - http://on.mash.to/gIy5kV

What bad press?

[voss]

What bad press? In the US?

Amazon has a great reputation in the US as a company that sells cheap books and cheap legal music, their shipping
is very reasonable and they have excellent customer service. Other than a few hackers, most Americans either dont care what amazon
did and are too busy christmas shopping on amazon.com or support the action of amazon.com.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Thus...

[Desler]

No, this proves that being worthless scum whores might have some consequences.

Which are what? A script kiddy mob is going to try to destroy your business in the name of "freedom"? While all that is being accomplished is the stifling of someone else's freedoms?

Mastercard, PayPal, Visa, EveryDNS and Amazon were all perfectly happy taking the money, they knew what they were taking money for and then chose later on to flip flop on the issue.

Bullshit. There is almost zero chance that any actual human was involved in the business transaction between Wikileaks and these companies until they were notified of the situation after the fact. It's all automated.

Let those with no terror, cast the first IED

[TiggertheMad]

We'll just call anybody a terrorist nowadays, won't we?

Quiet you terrorist, or you're next!

and ?

[unity100]

they were not going to do it otherwise ? so, acta, coica, this that, has been cooking since 2004, for nothing ? there werent even the mention of these kind of situations back then, you know. yet they were more than ready to censor it.

so, you will just let them do it, just so that you can have an illusion of freedom a little longer ?

I demand that Amazon bow to my demands or I'll...

[PinchDuck]

OOOOH, 15% off a USB rocket launcher! Thanks, Amazon! You're my favorite!

Re:So now we MUST follow Wikileaks agenda?

[Entrope]

These particular laws would hold Amazon liable for what you call "staying out of it". The safe harbor exclusion you mention is part of the DMCA, and only covers copyright liability -- not espionage.

Wait a second

[Coldegg]

I just went to Amazons site and I think it responded even more quickly than usual.

scriptkiddiesfail amirite?

Live protest at Amazon headquarters!

[daarklord]

Since Amazon is so robust and distributed online, Anonymous should go stand in front of Amazon headquarters and block employees from going in and out. This would be a legal and effective way to protest, and makes great video footage for the news. Where's the leader of Anonymous? I have to pitch this idea!

Anonymous sent a message to the corporates

[newsblaze]

They didn't attack the money-collecting parts of Visa and Mastercard. They attacked the corporate sites. They didn't disrupt commerce. - Seems they were letting them know they didn't appreciate what the financial companies did. Zombie DOS Attacks Support WikiLeaks

Anonymous Video

[healeyb]

It seems anonymous has posted a video explaining themselves on mediaite.com and it is interesting to say the least...

amazon unscathed?

[bl8n8r]

As of 11:00 am amazon seems to load quite quickly, slashdot on the other hand...

But...

[FatSean]

And thats why our freedoms and privacy continue to erode. Government and law enforcement make it so this kind of vandalism is one of the few remaining potent mechanisms to actually affect powerful corporations and government

You've been well played :)

Lots of reasons to hate the USA.

[FatSean]

Ask an Iraqi or an Afghani!

DDoS or protest?

[corbettw]

Consider a real-world example: a small publisher runs a newsletter out of an office in a mall. The newsletter publishes some leaked information from a government source, and later his landlord kicks him out and changes his locks. While the publisher pursues legal avenues to get the doors open again, his subscribers (and some of their friends) mount a protest at the mall, blocking the entrances and picketing for the landlord to reverse his decision.

In the real world, I would have a hard time feeling sympathy for the landlord, since he acted like a jerkass by closing up the newsletter. But blocking all of the entrances so that other stores (like Amazon's ZStores, which are run by mom-and-pop companies) lose business and customers can't get the purchases they want is just going to earn more enemies than friends. Letters to the editor, a peaceful protest (like forming Facebook groups and email chains), and boycotts would be much more effective than chaining yourself to the front doors.

Of course, acting like a civilized adult requires you to first be a civilized adult. Something that Anonymous/4chan just plain aren't.

Natural Path

[Bob9113]

Seems other posts have covered the moralizing bit pretty well. What about the cause/effect?

What is this path that lead to Anonymous DDoSing these sites?

I posit that it is a familiar quad (which I am observing, not advocating): "Soap Box, Ballot Box, Jury Box, Ammo Box."

That phrase is not just a prescription; it is also a prediction. It is the natural path of any society which believes in the first three, finds them stimied, and has access to the fourth. In this case, the "Ammo Box" is cyberwarfare (or perhaps a new step between three and four).

When the secrecy started ratcheting up after 9/11, lots of people got on the soap box. They elected a President who claimed he was going to open government. They filed lawsuits and FOIA requests to get the openness they believed themselves due. Those are the first three steps, all found severely lacking.

Then, some people went back to Soap Box (WikiLeaks), the US Gov't started rattling sabers at WikiLeaks, and some people have gone to the ammo box (cyberwarfare, which may be a distinct step before the traditional ammo box).

Also worth deeper consideration of the Pentagon Papers. From Johnson/Bush secret war, to Nixon/Obama torn between damaging the other party and advancing authoritarianism, to civil unrest; the similarities go far beyond Ellsberg/Manning / NYT/WikiLeaks.

Which all is, as noted, not to take a postion on who is right and who is wrong. But to point out that this is exactly what we should all be expecting, and the path ahead should be quite clear. And scary. Unless we find some way to reach detante.

Re:Natural Path

[melikamp]

True in general, but in this case we don't even have "warfare", IMO. What these self-proclaimed "Wikileaks defenders" are doing amounts to douchebaggery. So they are going to wget the shit out of amazon.com? It amazes me that people have to invoke the image of war to describe an activity with the same outcome as being too popular.

But I agree, it is a good prediction. Piss off the Anonymous, and you are almost guaranteed to get some aggro directed back at your servers. It is their way of saying that fighting Anonymous has its price too: short-term DOS to get everyone's attention and a protracted period of verbal abuse after that.

Botnet for Mirror, not DDOS

[lacoronus]

If Anonymous really wanted to help WikiLeaks, they would've created a botnet to mirror Wikileaks.

What they're doing now is destructive, not constructive.

Botnet Testing

[glittermage]

Maybe the botnet masters are learning to cooperate & use their tools more effectively against larger more distributed targets.

NOT hackers!

[bodhijon]

Can I just say it again? LOIC is an application anyone can download and use to participate in a DDOS attack. It takes no skill whatsoever.

Re:SHUT UP, BITCH!

[negativehero]

I think they were trying to use hacker lingo. Except, of course, they're are ignorant and used "darkside" instead of "black hat". Though, I wouldn't give Anon that kind of cred as they are just a group of ankle biters.

Re:Value of privacy

[moeinvt]

"Wikileaks doesn't own any of the information they leak.."

Who "owns" information? More specifically, who "owns" U.S. government information? I'm providing funding for the activities which generate this information, and I hereby permit Wikileaks to publish any and all information related to Federal Government.

"What wikileaks does is by nature chaotic, and disregards the consequences of their actions."

Totally untrue. Wikileaks worked dilligently with several major newspapers to edit and redact the information regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They made sure to publish material that was at least several months old to avoid release of any information that could be valuable in a tactical sense. Furthermore, they even solicited the help of the U.S. government to help scrub the documents in order to further minimize the risk of danger to specific individuals.

This is hardly "chaotic" and "irresponsible" and your assertion that "there is no wisdom involved" is obviously false.

Contrary to MSM and government propaganda, of the 250,000 diplomatic cables Wikileaks claims to have in their possession, only around 1000 have actually been released. Wikileaks has again collaborated with several major newspapers in multiple countries to edit and redact the documents, and has NOT published anything but the redacted versions which have been concurrently published in major newspapers.

"...the consequence is increased paranoia, while the information released hasn't merited it."

You sound like a U.S. government spokesperson. On one hand, they claim that the documents are meaningless and contain little which is newsworthy, and on the other hand claim that releasing them is a terrorist act that endangers the country. I don't need to be told what response a particular piece of information "merits". How about we let the people reading the information decide what's relevant and how they should personally react?

Glad you enjoy your privacy. The biggest threat to YOUR privacy isn't Wikileaks, it's the government. If you're involved in any sort of peaceful political activity (e.g. antiwar movement) you'd be wise to take a few precautions to safeguard your privacy. Political dissidence is quickly becoming the new "terrorism".

Re:IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER

[bughunter]

For those who haven't seen what the AC parent is talking about, there's a screenshot here, with a reasonably innocuous URL that shouldn't get you in too much trouble with your employer's IT department...

Provided you don't work for the US Government, Amazon, mastercard, Visa, or paypal... or any other place that has a way to decode sourceforge project IDs .AND. a proscription against tools like LOIC.

And, it's about what you'd expect from a bunch of /b/tards.

Re:But they're too powerful!

[Noughmad]

So according to your plan, some random organizations hosted on EC2 would spend more resources, making more profit for Amazon, while Amazon's site itself remains working. Great idea.

Not really... or so I hope

[luis_a_espinal]

If they were able to actually knock Amazon offline, which I think is mostly unlikely to happen, it would be the first to make a serious economic impact. Mastercard's website may have been unreachable, but their credit processing facilities were just fine, as I demonstrated with my own card several times over the past few days. Amazon, on the other hand, is in the middle of their holiday rush, which is crucially important to them. IIRC, it is the reason they had the cloud infrastructure in the first place: their immense holiday resources went unused during the rest of the year. The last thing they need is a DDoS attack right now. I wonder if they might try to appease the mob with some kind of nod to anon in the form of a daily book deal or similar...

That mob is not as big as you think it is, nor Amazon infrastructure is the typical one that can be brought down or even dented significantly that easily by script kiddies.

Furthermore, I think this is an asshole move by these Wikileads fan hackers. It is preposterous to subject private business to their uncompromising ideologico-retarded for not subjecting themselves to the US government's ire. Damned if you, damned if you don't. I mean, c'mon, even a retarded 6-grader should be able to see that.

An action of this type not does not amount to a defense of freedom of speech and transparency at all.

It is instead unabashed, unjustifiable blackmailing, attacking a third party's (Amazon) private property (infrastructure) for not aligning itself to a particular political/ideological position, in a fight that it's not its own, and risk the ire of an entity far more powerful that itself (the US government)...

... specially if the given third party (Amazon) never gave a binding promise to do anything of the sort, something that only an arrogant asshole would expect it to in the name of their interpretation of freedom.

Re:Not really... or so I hope

[serviscope_minor]

An action of this type not does not amount to a defense of freedom of speech and transparency at all.

Actually it does. The government is avoiding the censorship laws by essentially making veiled threats to companies doing the censorship for them. It seems people are responding by making slightly less thinly veiled threats in the opposite direction to prevent the government from using the companies to skirt the law.

But what about the companies caught in the middle? Well, they ammassed so much wealth and power that they put themselves in the middle. Once you get big enough, it is no longer possible to keep the devil may care, only beholden to the shareholders attitide, in the real world.

Re:Not really... or so I hope

[luis_a_espinal]

An action of this type not does not amount to a defense of freedom of speech and transparency at all.

Actually it does. The government is avoiding the censorship laws by essentially making veiled threats to companies doing the censorship for them.

And that's the big gaping hole in you argument. It is impossible and illogical to mount an "offensive" defense of freedom of any type if the target of the offensive is a third party being coerced by the actual party accused of violating the freedom being defended. You attack the offender, not those that are being coerced. Anything less amounts too the sadly all-to-common "ends justify the means" argument which is at the root of every violation of inalienable freedoms.

It seems people are responding by making slightly less thinly veiled threats in the opposite direction to prevent the government from using the companies to skirt the law.

Attacking Amazon does not prevent the US government from castigating companies from violating the law (yes, it is not skirting the law but violating established law... you don't like the law, lobby for its change... and yes, it's possible. If people were able to overturn Jim Crow's laws, these type of laws can be changed as well.)

This action does not prevent the government, or any government from that matter, from doing anything of the sort. It is a flawed logical argument what you have here.

But what about the companies caught in the middle? Well, they ammassed so much wealth and power that they put themselves in the middle.

May I introduce you to the is-ought problem?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

What you just made here is nothing more than an argument of romanticed ideological convenience. There is nothing in logic or ethics that dictate that being successful economically for providing a useful service implies being inherently evil or that one has to surrender the reasonable expectation of not being turned into collateral damage.

If there is a logical consequence from the former to the later, please describe it.

Once you get big enough, it is no longer possible to keep the devil may care, only beholden to the shareholders attitide, in the real world.

But that does not give anyone the right, in the real world to target Amazon. It is not Amazon's obligation to keep the devil away anymore (a subjective statement open to interpretation) than you or I as we carry on with our daily tasks. Being moral does not indicate one is liable for evils one is not in charge of controlling.

Furthermore, being moral does not imply one must forcibly coerce others by threat of force to comply with moral standards that might be impractical to follow in the general case. And that's what these hax0r fanboys are doing, lowering themselves to the same level of the government they are accusing of being immoral and corrupt, to the same level of islamo-fascists and every single type of intolerable bigotry. It is not morality, but pure arbitrary extremism.

More to the point that this attack has nothing to do with Amazon being big or not. It sets a precedent that every company big or small can be a target of these stupid hax0r fanboys. They are pretty much making a Bushist-styled "you are with us or against us" statement with their actions.

Should I had a LLC 1-man company under my name providing, say cloud storage, making just enough money for me to live comfortably, and I deny hosting to Wikileads because, oh shit, Uncle Sam will stick a big one up my ass, risking my ability to put food on the table for me and my family, am I a reasonable target for their hacking? For not siding myself with them against the big-one that can utterly destroy me?

That's pretty much the type of arguments that can logically follow from your position.

It is not a matter of a company being big as this whole debacle is not strictly a function of a company's size. Neither it is a justification.

Say anything you want,

[unity100]

but you cant say that it hasnt worked. see, paypal had spilled the beans, saying that they were pressurized to cut wikileaks donations by politicians in united states. back a few days ago, they were not directly admitting it, saying stuff about tos violations and some other blabber. the least the attack has done, has been make paypal come out spilling the beans. and this is bad for the politician (hello joe liebermann, arent you too old to be alive already, just die out) that pressurized private companies to censor free speech.

Exactly - Looking for someone to say that

[gadlaw]

The more trouble these morons are able to do the worse it will be, there will a greater consensus to clamp down even further on the Internet and the RIAA and the MPAA and all those suckers will attach themselves to the next legislation even tighter and parachute even more control into the Internet. Great move. It's a lose lose situation.

Perfectly good "coins"

[VortexCortex]

We need to coin a new term that fits. How about "wreaking," a portmanteau of "web" and "freaking," giving it technological evolutionary significance, and it has the benefit of also being a real word with similar connotations.

I prefer "Using", considering that they are simply using the intended IP (Internet Protocol) en masse.

Much like those that overload a telecom by organizing a coordinated mass phone call campaign would be called, "callers"; Those that utilize the Internet to perform their goals should be called "users".

Folks that use their own means to protest should be called "protesters". Much like how sit-ins did no physical harm, neither do too many IP packets.

Those that cause trouble by using technology should be called "trouble makers", optionally prefixed with the adjective "pesky".

The group Anonymous, would simply be "pesky, trouble making, Internet using protesters", which is far more descriptive and has the benefit of also explaining exactly what they are.

On another note: "Hacker" is a silly term that I propose be replaced by "exceptionally skilled programmer".

Re:Perfectly good "coins"

[spidercoz]

Descriptive, perhaps, but it's far too cumbersome. Can't even make a good acronym out of it. PTMIUP. Never gonna catch on.

As of yet...

[skrimp]

As of yet, I have not found where Anonymous has posted ALL their private and public communications.

Maybe they've posted it on WikiLeaks and that's the reason they're trying so hard to restore availability.

I mean, if Anonymous is requiring complete transparency of the U.S. government, they've lead by example by becoming completely transparent themselves...right?

Re:As of yet...

[aristotle-dude]

As of yet, I have not found where Anonymous has posted ALL their private and public communications.

Maybe they've posted it on WikiLeaks and that's the reason they're trying so hard to restore availability.

I mean, if Anonymous is requiring complete transparency of the U.S. government, they've lead by example by becoming completely transparent themselves...right?

Anonymous is not interested in being open themselves which is why they call themselves "Anonymous".

Re:So now we MUST follow Wikileaks agenda?

[marcosdumay]

Yes, they are being denied their right to freedom of association. They can't choose not to associate with the US governemnt.

Yet, people are mad at them because they are helping the US government...

Re:So now we MUST follow Wikileaks agenda?

[aristotle-dude]

Yes, they are being denied their right to freedom of association. They can't choose not to associate with the US governemnt.

Yet, people are mad at them because they are helping the US government...

Everyone in a civil society is associated with their government. The people elected them in the first place.

Some people are ready to scream about the constitution, a document created by representatives or the people and yet those same people are not willing to live by the same rules of law which were also created by elected representatives of the people. A civil society needs to have rules that everyone abides by and every power, even our rights have to have limits or you run the risk of tyranny be it the tyranny of the majority, a small group of people or even an individual holding society hostage.

Freedom of speech is neither absolute or a defense to violate the rights of other. You cannot, for example, yell "fire" in a crowed" theater as a "joke" nor can you yell "hi jack" or "bomb" in an airport.

tail

[antdude]

What about its tail? ;)

Just like torture, this is self-defeating...

[aristotle-dude]

Torture is ultimately self-defeating and so are Denial of Service attacks, sit-ins and strikes.

You end up pissing off the general public and other third parties rather than "winning" them over to your cause.

What does work are:

1. Peaceful protests which do not disrupt the lives of innocent bystanders in a significant way.

2. Disseminating your point of view in a coherent and intelligent manner without resorting to personal attacks and profanity.

3. Organizing a boycott. The sugar boycott in England is what eventually brought an end to the slave trade in the British empire.

4. Writing letters to your leaders with your grievances and what you would like to see changed.

I don't support the way Wikileaks has gone about this matter. I would rather have seen them filter out and only publish information that was directly related to "corruption". The purpose of the "fifth estate" is the hold the government accountable and to expose corrupt. That is what the whistle blower laws are there for. They are there to protect people who leak information to uncover corruption, not for the fun of it or for profit.

Leaks cannot be stopped? Think again.

[Max_W]

The 17th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held during 26 January - 10 February 1934. During this congress things were said which were very damaging to Josef Stalin.

More than thousand delegates participated in this Congress. Almost all, all were later tracked, arrested and shot. In addition the smaller local congresses, which selected the delegates to this one, were arrested and shot.

Wikileaks cannot be stopped? Downloading insurance.aes256? Feeling pretty smart? Hmm... Think again. More strange things known to happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17th_Congress_of_the_All-Union_Communist_Party_(b)

What about Amazon's Freedom of Association?

[Blakey Rat]

What about Amazon's Freedom of Association?

That seems to have been lost somewhere along the line here...

Proposal

[formfeed]

I propose to add:

+1 terrorist
and
-1 terrorist

Sure.

[weston]

Packets are speech, after all. Is a DDOS really so different from too many people trying to use a telephone system at the same time?

</diabolicaladvocacy>

Open Source

[CyberDragon777]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/

Compile it yourself.

Attacking the wrong targets

[argontechnologies]

If the attackers really wanted to get someones attention, they would not be going after the websites of these companies, they would go after the processing servers. The pocket book is what gets the attention.

One more thing

[luis_a_espinal]

Once you get big enough, it is no longer possible to keep the devil may care, only beholden to the shareholders attitide, in the real world.

In the real world, companies are not just beholden to the shareholders, but also to their employees and every single person that directly or indirectly work with them and are able to put food in the table. It is stupid, cynical and rather juvenile to forget this fact. It is also irresponsible to expect a company to risk the employment of every person under its payroll to defend an ideological position that was never its own to begin with.

First DDoSer arrested

[The Dodger]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/09/wikileaks_ddos_arrest/

It's a pity it's a 16 year old who, arguably, isn't old enough to know better. I'd be happier if it was some 20-odd year old feckless leftie layabout who we could lock up for five years or so to send a message.

In any case, kudos to the Dutch police! I expect we'll see a signifcant drop-off in the DDoS effectiveness as it begins to dawn on people that is' not, actually, the same a sitting down and refusing to move, and that they could actually end up in court.

Hopefully, they'll have gotten some good leads when they took down anonops.net

Re:I went to Amazon and made a purchase

[mcvos]

It's not about hatred of the US, it's about hatred of censorship. Amazon actively supports censorship of the free press. This upsets people who like a free press.

Although to be honest, Amazon isn't nearly as much of a bad guy here as the payment providers: MasterCard, Visa and PayPal. Money should be neutral infrastructure, and on the Net, money means MasterCard, Visa or PayPal.

Re:So now we MUST follow Wikileaks agenda?

[marcosdumay]

Nice way to spin the point. The problem is, it was the US government that ilegaly approached thoses sites ordering them to stop doing business with Wikileaks. It was the US government that put them betwen a rock and a hard place. Now some people are just making sure the hard place is, well, hard, so that ceding to illegal orders from the government isn't such an obvious thing to do.

No party is completely in the right here, and the victmis were victimized by both parties. But it was the Us governemnt that created the problem, the people are only reacting.