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HBGary Federal Hacked By Anonymous
An anonymous reader writes "As the coin was tossed to kick off Superbowl XLV, Anonymous unleashed their anger at a security firm who had been investigating their membership. HBGary Federal had been working on unmasking their identities in cooperation with an FBI investigation into the attacks against companies who were cutting off WikiLeaks access and financing. Unlike the DDoS attacks for which Anonymous has made headlines in recent months, this incident involved true hacking skills."
And by true hacking, we mean true cracking.
Another mature contribution from those grown-ups at Anonymous.
Ought to have been better prepared if you go kicking a nest full of hornets...
From the article,
HBGary was victimized by a combination of social engineering and a shared password between systems
Evidently, being a security firm means not having to following good security practices.
It's hard to know how to feel about someone waging war against your own society.
Anonymous is fighting partially on behalf of Wikileaks. Wikileaks' recent releases put some sunlight on goverment/industry malfeasance, but also pointlessly harmed some diplomatic efforts by publishing unflattering personal opinions about people the US probably needs to get along with.
And the company Anonymous is going after probably helps stop real security threats that most of us would agree merit stopping; not just Cablegate-related stuff.
What a tangled mess of virtue and vice.
So, Americans decide to peacefully toss a few sacks of tea into Boston harbor and get the entire harbor shutdown.. so they counter with even more illegal activity and a revolution that will get them even further into the shit
great plan numbnuts
Point being... if everyone on Earth was afraid to break a few laws, we'd still be under the rule of British monarchs. Thank god some people don't tuck tail and run whenever Big Brother stares in their direction.
...don't jump into the deep end if you don't know how to swim.
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The myth of 'Civil Disobedience is all about getting caught' is spread by those who don't like the goals of today's civil disobedience, only those of yesterday.
Seriously, imprisonment is how you _FIGHT_ civil disobedience, and you're a moron for thinking that's somehow how you go about succeeding in changing anything.
- These characters were randomly selected.
source article
There was no FBI involved in this. It was some random company's attempt at PR (I'm sure they regret it now). The original article even says that the information would not be useful to police and that they planned to give it away at a conference in San Fransisco next week.
Not exactly "cooperation with an FBI investigation"
Seriously Slashdot... when are you going to hire editors who actually verify submissions before letting them onto the front page. No better than the national enquirer...
I suspect that neither Wikileaks nor Anonymous are interested in engaging in "Civil disobedience".
In the case of Wikileaks, they aren't "Civily disobedient"; because they don't actually tend to break laws. They do obviously have some contact with people who do; but their operations(while deeply unpopular) are not illegal.
Anonymous, on the other hand, is perfectly happy to do illegal things; but doesn't seem to see the point in getting punished in an effort to maintain the moral high ground. They are(aside from the ones who are in it purely for amusement), essentially engaging in the logic of retributive or revolutionary violence, albeit in bloodless and electronic forms. Irregular resistance fighters have no interest in being caught to "generate sympathy", they have an interest in inflicting damage on strategic targets, obtaining intelligence, discrediting their enemies, and then getting away(so do criminals, of course. The classification depends on the percieved legitimacy of their actions).
As you say, these guys are definitely not in the same class as the followers of Ghandi or MLK. This appears to be by design. Wikileaks, by all appearances, is interested in maintaining a legal operation to lower the cost of whistle-blowing in situations where that could open one to heavy retribution. Anonymous, while too nebulous to have a single agenda, consists of a sort of core that has embraced the logic of violent(but bloodless) direct action, along with a cloud of recreational me-toos who participate in some of the more trivial ops.
Whether you think that this is good, bad, or just a matter of style is a different question; but it would appear that they are not aiming at "Civil disobedience"(having judged it as either too personally costly, too ineffective, or perhaps both)...
If it's a label, not an entity, then how can it have "members"?
I don't know why people act as if "Anonymous" is a new thing. It's not. It's just a present-day version of something ancient - the lynch mob. The mob doesn't think, the mob doesn't consider, the mob just destroys. The mob is the barbarian horde burning down civilisation.
For a historical example of an earlier "Anonymous", think about the KKK. Just why did they wear those white hoods? The answer is easy. They did it to be "Anonymous", because if you are "Anonymous", you are released from the obligation to be a civilised human. You do what you like without consequence, so why not lynch a few negroes before they get uppity?
As XKCD says, "Anonymity + Audience = Asshole". Now, that's "Anonymous".
If the hackers were UK based then they just have to buy a wireless dongle. You just lie about the information on the registration screen and away you go untraceable. Granted they will be able to triangulate the signal but its easy enough to drive somewhere quiet with a laptop and do it. Failing that they could just hack some poor old ladys wireless and use that. Both of these options are simple to do and less hassle than proxys.
That guy's a really well-known security author/researcher, mostly from his books and from the rootkit devel community rootkit.com, which now seems to be down as well. Take a look at http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/02/hbgary-federal-hacked-by-anonymous/
They managed to social engineer a site network admin into giving them SSH access. Hoglund has apparently given a phone interview of some sort, but I can't find a transcription if one exists.
Emotions! In your brain!
Good security is too inconvenient for the typical business person. Easy security is invariably bad security. "We want to work from home or the coffee shop and not have to remember stupid passwords!" Tough!
This is especially bad when this is supposed to be a cyber-security focused company! If I were in a decision-making position in the FBI, I would simply walk away from this company without another word. This company is clearly not up to the task of defending itself. How can they be trusted to do good research and deliver good information?
Why is it that when the government(s) refuse to listen to their people, the people get angry? Why is it that governments don't understand or appreciate that this is no small matter? And isn't it a terrible sign that when a people begin acting out against the government and parties involved that the government closes up even tighter refusing to hear anything at all? The result of this behavior is ALWAYS the same -- the angry people get even more angry and will push back even harder.
Wouldn't it be more responsible for the government to at least open up some talks before things get like this and worse? No... I know that won't happen. "We don't negotiate with terrorists!" Fine. Who WILL you negotiate? They wouldn't be "terrorists" if you didn't listen and respond!!
It's amazing how many people don't understand this. "Anonymous" is as smart or as dumb as whichever person wants to ascribe their current actions to anonymous. And the more you have a "fight against anonymous", the more you make it real. It's like a self-fulfilling fiction...someone makes it up, people hear about it, decide they want to be a part of it, and make it real, even though it was never real to begin with. Also.
Blacks in America sat in whites-only establishments in direct contravention of an unjust law -- they broke laws of segregation in order to highlight to the public the systemic injustices placed upon black Americans. What law is Anon directly disobeying to highlight its injustice? All they've broken are laws against computer fraud and abuse. What injustices within computer fraud laws does that highlight? I can understand if Wikileaks mirrors were shut down or reading WL material were made forbidden to the public, and individuals come together to help each other set up servers and to access them in defiance of government censorship. You could draw an equivalence if that were to happen, but what Anon is doing right now is NOT the same as civil rights era civil disobedience.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll