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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..."
Is wget in a while loop insufficient?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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
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.
We'll just call anybody a terrorist nowadays, won't we?
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.
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".
My cat is a hacking tool?
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
Pretty much. There always an "ist" of some sort to battle against.
Christ!