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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..."
Somehow I don't see escalation of online actions being to anyone's benefit in the long run.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Is wget in a while loop insufficient?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yet another case of script kiddies giving hackers a bad name...
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.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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.
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...
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
The fear of a government crackdown is probably the best possible excuse to continue what you are doing.
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.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
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.
My cat is a hacking tool?
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Better known as 318230.
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.
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.
You may be right. But to resolve to sit quietly and just take it all out of fear isn't the solution.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
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.
Futurist Traditionalism
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.
Nonaggression works!
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.
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.
If the only option you leave for people is DDOS, they will ddos.
..), what's left to people ?
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
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.
Read radical news here
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.
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.
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.
10 minutes working on a sig. What a waste.