Operation Payback and Hactivism 101

Orome1 writes "While individual acts of hacktivism are inconvenient, something else happens when hacktivists group together — they commonly perform a DDoS attack. Techniques have advanced to automate the process, making the attacks more powerful and thus more able to bypass security controls — the effect, however, remains the same. Let us take a look at the recent Operation Payback which has gained notoriety in the past few months."

Comments

This isn't activism

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not activism. It's a bunch of spoiled brats acting like thugs.

Re:This isn't activism

[slimjim8094]

Horse shit. I've protested, I've marched, and damn it I knew what I was getting in to. I was ready (but not expecting) to be on the news with my face and name. I was NOT anonymous, delibrately so, and with all those consequences. I was ready for my name to point to a news article about that protest, where I was quoted.

Now, none of this happened, But I was ready and willing for it to happen.

Protest isn't supposed to be easy. In fact, it cheapens it if it is. If I download a program, run it in the background, then go back to watching TV or jacking off - how is that morally equivalent to people spending many hours of their life calling phones? Or more so - getting beat up or hosed down for standing up for yourself and your skin color?

But these "hactivists" don't understand WHAT they're doing, they don't understand WHY, and they think it's a joke and don't expect to get caught. Those disqualify this breed of vandalism three times over. If they understand what they were doing, the instructions would be more than "go to this website, download this, and type in paypal. lulz". If they understood why, they wouldn't be doing it - at least not Amazon. What, so Amazon is supposed to host Wikileaks despite the DDoS it was getting? That's like if I took a shit in your car, and some guy on the street beat you up for kicking me out. And they're fully expecting to never get caught - look at that idiot in Europe who was astonished to find out that his computer was sending PACKETS with his ADDRESS!

I basically support Wikileaks, mostly because it convinces me that things aren't that bad. Our operatives shouldn't be making stupid mistakes, but our government really should be protecting them. Holy shit, there are civilian casualties in a war? Pakistan is two faced? Stop the presses! Wikileaks hasn't leaked anything new to those of us paying attention to the world.

But these "hacktivists" are absolutely not protesting. They're clicking a button, grabbing a Coke, and playing XBox. By calling them protesters, or even activists, you cheapen what real protest is. Staring down a gun barrel for daring to protest Vietnam, and having a bit of lag on your MW2 because you ran some program you don't understand for reasons you don't understand - those are absolutely not the same thing.