Turkish Police Nab 32 Suspects Tied To Anonymous

wiredmikey writes "Following the arrest of three alleged 'Anonymous' members by Spanish authorities on Friday, Turkey's state-run news agency has reported that police have detained 32 individuals allegedly linked to the hacktivist group. The Anatolia news agency said today that the suspects were taken into custody after conducting raids in a dozen cities for suspected ties to Anonymous. The group recently targeted Web sites of the country's telecommunications watchdog, the prime minister's office and parliament as a protest to Turkey's plans to introduce Internet filters."

Comments

or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[jsepeta]

it's also possible that Turkey is cracking down on dissidents, using Anonymous as a cover story.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

We do seem to be the new villains. And easy to villainize, I suppose. We have no one voice to decry actions of others, no standard that can be recognized, no motive that can be twisted for someone's benefit. Although some have tried. Once this kind of crackdown comes to our shores (yes I am wearing a tin-foil hat), it will we more along the lines of "Suspected pedophile and member of Anonymous..." Posted Anonymously.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[mjwx]

it's also possible that Turkey is cracking down on dissidents, using Anonymous as a cover story.

A fine upstanding nation like Turkey,

Surely you jest.

Sent from my ethnic Armenian.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Pinky's Brain]

Thanks to the legend of Ataturk, which is fading. My prediction, Erdogan will remove term limits in 3-4 years ...

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's not like there isn't rhyme or reason to what comes out of a 4chan mob. The members generally lash out at things -- especially things that are arbitrary and belonging to conventional power structures. Also, there's a strong bias towards things that are in that demographic's field of vision. Just like here, a holy shitstorm gets raised about Sony's transgressions because they actually play their games and use their products -- in absolute terms and with more holistic foresight, it would be something like Goldman Sachs instead.

To piss off Anonymous the most, come in with hypocritical, fit-for-a-fifth-grader morality and attempt to define things like social norms. To please Anonymous, be an attractive young woman who periodically takes pictures of herself, has some degree of confidence and rehashes and without overt intention redefines -chan culture.

...Oh, you mean just anonymous like the two of us... not quite as easy to define, but very easy to disingenuously call dangerous and "linked to others."

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[vajorie]

Nah, it's more probable that these were regular papas and mamas with virus-infested / botnetted PCs or open / wep wireless APs. According to BTK's statements, they were gonna go after folk based on their IP addresses.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[ToasterMonkey]

it's also possible that Turkey is cracking down on dissidents, using Anonymous as a cover story.

Uh, you'd need a cover story for that kind of stuff these days? Are we living on the same planet?

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[DrXym]

it's also possible that Turkey is cracking down on dissidents, using Anonymous as a cover story.

Or more likely the dumbasses running LOIC left their IP addresses all over a crime scene making it easy for the cops to id them and haul them off.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[ToasterMonkey]

We do seem to be the new villains. And easy to villainize, I suppose. We have no one voice to decry actions of others, no standard that can be recognized, no motive that can be twisted for someone's benefit. Although some have tried. Once this kind of crackdown comes to our shores (yes I am wearing a tin-foil hat), it will we more along the lines of "Suspected pedophile and member of Anonymous..." Posted Anonymously.

I love how at the _same time_ people think "information should be free", "once something is online it will be there forever", and "the Internet routes around censorship like damage", they believe anonymity exists as if all the above doesn't apply to digital access logs, billing records, CCTV, etc.

Your anonymity is on borrowed time, and I hope you've enjoyed squandering it on stupid shit for laughs.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[mjwx]

Since you are Armenian, you are biased.

Maybe the GGP is not Armenian or even European, but has left an allusion to some bad recent history of Turkey.

Sent from my Kurd.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

being more like greece? I think kurdis might beg to differ. syria just happens to be a fly's shit. of course they're cracking down on dissidents - that's who people labeled now under the anonymous label are. they're dissidents, they just happen to be more like gandhi dissidents instead of hauling ak's and rpg's(and anyhow, only reason greece hasn't had a military coup in a while is that they're part of the EU). the real question is do _you_ know anything about turkey besides the tourist traps on the west coast?

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[AmiMoJo]

Many anons used their own net connection after someone said that the chances of getting caught using LOIC were virtually zero. The majority of anons are clueless script kiddies and LOIC is designed to be a one-click DDOS tool for them.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Well, it's not like there isn't rhyme or reason to what comes out of a 4chan mob. The members generally lash out at things -- especially things that are arbitrary and belonging to conventional power structures. Also, there's a strong bias towards things that are in that demographic's field of vision. Just like here, a holy shitstorm gets raised about Sony's transgressions because they actually play their games and use their products -- in absolute terms and with more holistic foresight, it would be something like Goldman Sachs instead.

To piss off Anonymous the most, come in with hypocritical, fit-for-a-fifth-grader morality and attempt to define things like social norms. To please Anonymous, be an attractive young woman who periodically takes pictures of herself, has some degree of confidence and rehashes and without overt intention redefines -chan culture.

...Oh, you mean just anonymous like the two of us... not quite as easy to define, but very easy to disingenuously call dangerous and "linked to others."

The problem with that logic is that it is based on the assumption that Anonymous == 4-chan and it doesn't allow for the sabotage factor. Bear in mind that even if only one member of 4-chan is involved they'd find it hard not to tell the world about it - and if they're not from 4-chan (cough) they'd deliberately muddy the waters to hide their identity. Anyone wanting to discredit any anonymous action (and the lower-case a is deliberate) only has to add a 4-chan element to it. Feeding stupid people fake proof of their own fears is the easiest way to manipulate them - it's not like they're ever going to check the facts - and even when presented with evidence to negate their beliefs - the massive emotional investment they've made in their (stupid) opinions is one they will never challenge.

Sound a little tin foil hat? Then maybe a little study of history is in order.

The world is a complex place full of people incapable of grasping even limited complexity - with a shortage of facts they jump to conclusions that compliment their own fears and failings. Teenage hackers with paedophile ascendancies and a hatred of the established order - "Yeah I can picture that"

Be careful what you believe. What happens to you could be happening to others. eg. someone accuses you of something you. did. not. do. - then they are saying nothing of you and speaking volumes of themselves.

---

Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on the living in the land of freedom. Here you go America - you are free to do what we'll tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!

~ Bill Hicks

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Opportunist]

I.e. broke with a corrupt regime?

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Dilaudid]

I agree. The party line seems to be "Things like Wikileaks are good, because they deny privacy to other people. Things like car number plate recognition are bad, because they deny privacy to us." I personally hope that personal privacy is eroded at the expense of public information. I'm here to learn, not to cheat, and I'm not afraid of anyone.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[hairyfeet]

Sure you do! You see the cover story fulfills two purposes, one it keeps the government from looking bad on the world stage, as you can't just say "cracking down on dissidents" without everyone thinking Tienanmen Square, and two it makes them easier to prosecute!

You see most folks look at a PC as a magic black box, it lets them chat to their friends, post pictures, but it is a strange thing and a little scary, especially with all that talk of ID theft and cyberterrorists. By sticking everyone with the Anon label, complete with that picture of the empty suit that Anon uses and the Guy Fawkes masks, it makes it even more scary to the average public so nobody will say squat when they drop them down a dark hole and forget where the hole is!

So you see friend Anon will be used the same way "suspected pedo" and "suspected terrorist" is used here in the USA. It is a one stop shop to do whatever you want to an individual as long as you are sure to stick that label on first. Frankly we shouldn't be surprised as governments can always use another bogeyman and Anon walked right into it with all the headlines they've been grabbing lately.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Joe Snipe]

Or as a threat to anonymous; ie: "ok you are random people. We will just start grabbing random people every time you attack us. We get justice you end up responsible for murder. You jelly?"

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

They don't think "information should be free" at all. Do you think they'd apply the same standards to themselves as they do to the enemy du jour ? By far, the most used attack vector is the fact that people don't use unique passwords. Do you think they find people have the right to know their password has been downloaded (generally, no cracking tools are involved. Encryption is not the weak point of site's defenses. Idiocy is) ? Get real.

Once you actually visit a few of these boards you have to admit the big part of their motivation is "wow I can steal without getting caught. Free stuff !" and another big part is self-congratulation (esp. in the defacing).

Their motivations are not the fight for freedom, morality and goodwill for all.

I actually get the impression that they are enemies of freedom. They are certainly enemies of any freedom to fairly produce software, even when we're talking about GPL software. I don't really get why slashdotters would support them.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only been Turkey since a gay ottoman colonel ("imam", which is a military rank) drove islam out of the caliphate. About 80 years now. Ataturk himself was worse than Hitler, and conducted his own holocaust on Armenians.

But, sad as the comparison may be, most Turks will agree : Turkey's Hitler ... was a LOT better than islam, and so he's a hero.

(and he should be a hero, despite the bad, just like slave-owners are the champions of America's morals. In the same vein Ataturk is the champion of Turkey's morals)

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[m50d]

No freedom is real unless you squander it on stupid shit for laughs

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Xacid]

This was my first pondering as well. Did the world just adopt the "enemy combatant" strategy?

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such a hater.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

>"Things like Wikileaks are good, because they deny privacy to other people"

Only if you consider governments to be people. There is a fundamental difference between privacy in official governmental capacity or (to a limited extent) by a public figure and the privacy of an individual person.

I think you'll change your tune about privacy the first time you don't get hired because of something you posted on Slashdot, can't get a loan because you associate with the wrong people on Facebook or can't get health insurance because you visited websites on cancer. It will be too late then, of course.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[ewanm89]

More likely as arresting domestic anon associates is only likely to aggravate foreign anon associates into carrying out even more attacks.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[poetmatt]

While anonymity exists, that's because it is protected by law in a large number of countries, turkey not being one of those. It's not a time issue and it's not squandered, but I hope you realize that a lack of anonymity is a big deal.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Deus.1.01]

The generals at the supreme court would have use Erodgen as a mop before that happened.(yes I know about officers that were recently on trial, my point still stands)

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Luckyo]

It's like Greece then Turkey thanks to Ataturk, and as time passes it moves more and more in direction of Syria. The fact that they have a large majority of conservative islamist peasants backs this up.

Remember - the party that won the current headcount known as election is the formerly forbidden hardliner islamist party. Turkish folks you see dressed in western clothes in Istanbul and tourist cities of the Western Turkey are about as against him as they can be, but there's simply not enough of them and they don't breed enough to compete with strongly conservative peasants.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Alex Belits]

especially things that are arbitrary and belonging to conventional power structures

Like what, Habbo Hotel?

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually a few of us are having a couple lulz at this. It was clearly a set up. LOIC? Are you fucken kidding me? You have to be the biggest id10t on the webz. There is no such thing as "zero" chance of getting caught. There is always a bigger and badder cat out there. Gov't websites are the worst traps on the face of the earth. I don't even go near those and I work in offensive security.

What anon doesn't seem to understand is that their antics won't have any lasting effect. So what, you disrupted service on paypal? What in the hell does that accomplish at the end of the day other than inconveniencing millions of vendors who have nothing to do with anon's idiotic diatribes. The nativity is almost staggering. The Scientology shit is a perfect example of how anon's hypocrisy will eventually destroy them. Anon is fighting Scientology because it doesn't like what they do. Well so what? We have religious freedom in this country - and if you don't want be a scientologist... DON'T. But that "childish dislike" doesn't give anon the right to attack those people's beliefs protected under the Constitution. Ever hear of the 1st amendment anon? lulz.

Perhaps the most hilarious thing of all is they believe people take them seriously. I have no doubt that there are some real elder anons that are not to be triffled with but the vast majority are just foolish children. This incident proves that, without a doubt.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[tnk1]

Mustapha Kemal Ataturk didn't perpetuate the Armenian Genocide, that was Ismail Enver Pasha, War Minister of the Ottoman Empire and his Committee of Union and Progress colleagues. Mustapha Kemal was too busy fighting World War I to exterminate Armenians.

Certainly, Turkey has never taken responsibility for the Genocide, even when Ataturk was in charge, so you could say he had a hand in denying it, but that doesn't make him Hitler. More like those Japanese who after the war, refused to acknowledge the war crimes perpetrated by their army in Asia.

Ataturk's major program was the secularization and Westernization of the Turkish state. He got rid of the Caliphate, made people start dressing like Westerners in Turkey, changed the role of women and enforced a policy of Islam being controlled by the government, rather than Islam controlling the government or being part of it. His methods were forceful and he was pretty much a dictator most of the time, which has certainly colored his reputation a bit. However, he was also responsible for ordering opposition parties to come into being and ultimately his program allowed Turkey to become more or less a democracy and avoid becoming an Islamist shithole like the rest of the Middle East has.

Of course, I have no interest in living in Turkey compared to say, Western Europe or America. It's still got some serious issues that would not make me feel particularly comfortable living there. That said, if I was given a choice of living in Turkey or some other Muslim-majority state, Turkey would win hands-down.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Killjoy_NL]

You say as you hide behind the same anon fence as they do.

Pussy

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Nadaka]

Much of anonymous ARE dissidents of one flavor or another.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Nadaka]

They went after The Church of Scientology, HB Gary and apparently the Turkish government. Those are pretty damn "real" targets considering the first is known the kill people, the second is involved with the CIA and the last is a national Government.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Alex Belits]

Teenage hackers with paedophile ascendancies

And how is THAT supposed to work?!

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Repossessed]

In this case, is there a difference? In fact, I've never heard of an Anon related arrest that *wasn't* targeting dissidents.

Now, their methods aren't exactly legal, but its worth pointing out that governments are doing jack shit to help regular people who are targeted by Anon. It's only the dissidents that they go after.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[xploraiswakco]

>"Only if you consider governments to be people. There is a fundamental difference between privacy in official governmental capacity or (to a limited extent) by a public figure and the privacy of an individual person."

But, a government, any government, is still made up of individual people.

I also have a comment for the group Anonymous, DoS attacks are the opposite of free speech, as it denies free speech from the person/group receiving the attack. So all I am seeing with Anonymous' DoS attacks is support for the very thing they claim to be attacking. Free speech is one thing where being the example to show why something is bad, is actually only working against Anonymous because their DoS attacks are actually showing why censorship is good.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[MachDelta]

Free speech does not guarantee the right to be heard.
If you showed up at a rally and tried to yell out your one little opinion at the top of your lungs, you'd probably be drowned out by the crowd. Is that stifling free speech?
Same thing with a DDOS. Their website is temporarily drowned out by the angry masses. That's not censorship, that's just finding yourself on the side of a minority. And anyways - eventually the crowd will move on and you'll be able to hear yourself think again. Same with anon.
IMO anyways.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[xploraiswakco]

bad example, at a rally, people are there to hear those on stage, same deal with a website, being drowned out, does not stop the visibility, even for those on stage, a DoS attack stops even the visibility. But in the end that still doesn't change the fact that the DoS attack is a form of censorship.

FYI, a DDOS attack is just a type of DoS attack, as they are acronym's, lets break them down... DDOS - Distributed Denial of Service, DoS - Denial of Service, the word distributed is just a reference to how a DoS attack is performed. There is no point in continuing to describing them as DDOS attacks when most DoS attacks are distributed attacks these days anyway.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[xploraiswakco]

I forgot to add, and at a rally like a website, you have the choice to go to it or not, a DoS attack blocks that choice but stopping the ability to go to the website.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Synerg1y]

DDOS / DOS attacks can be a pre-cursor for a far more malicious exploit. Lose the ignorance, think Sony. Going back to the topic though, accusations don't mean convictions and I'm willing to be it's a combination of posts & probably IP logs from the DDOS tool that got these people busted. On an individual level, I'm not sure how illegal it is to stream packets at an IP, but I'm not considering intent / circumstances as it's unavailable here. All in all, the nail that sticks out gets hammered. Somebody with the know how to get through million dollar IDS & IPS systems has demonstrated that they are above the concept. Still, I have a feeling this whole situation is going to make the internet a much less free place, start reading on SSL tunnels & off-shore server hosting?

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[xploraiswakco]

>"DOS attacks can be a pre-cursor for a far more malicious exploit. Lose the ignorance, think Sony"

What ignorance ? I have been the target of a DoS attack in the past, so don't assume any ignorance on my part. As for the subject in hand, I agree with Synerg1y's last comment... "Still, I have a feeling this whole situation is going to make the internet a much less free place, start reading on SSL tunnels & off-shore server hosting?"

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Hognoxious]

You cranberry jelly?

FTFY

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[cheekyjohnson]

Things like Wikileaks are good, because they deny privacy to other people.

I think it's good because my government's decisions can affect me greatly. They're mostly revealing information about the government as a whole, or when its workers are on the job. Any other information is useless.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me for pursuing lulz instead of wanting to revamp the world.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Darinbob]

Anonymous goons twist their own motives! One members claimed that the Spanish DOS attacks were "civil disobedience". Ignorance of this term either this points to new heights of cynicism or new lows in public education.

Not anonymous.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Darinbob]

So you're saying Anonymous has nothing to do with the cyberterrorists, they're merely posting announcements that falsely claim to be behind the cyberterrorism?

It seems simple to me. DDoS attacks, someone takes credit for it under the name Anonymous, police arrest some people who seem to be involved with the DDoS, therefore calling them members of Anonymous seems logical.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[tnk1]

They don't call it Turkey because it's like Greece. They call it Turkey because that is what it is, and always has been, Turkey.

Actually, Turkey was a major center of Greek culture before the Turks completed their conquest of Anatolia from the Byzantines. Many of the people living there were ethnically Greek, especially on the western coast and in Constantinople. That influence continued for centuries, only being lessened when the Greeks began declaring independence in Greece from the Ottoman Empire.

More to the point, Turkey is not a state that has been unduly influenced by either Arab nationalism (they are not Arabs) nor Islamist doctrine (they are secular). This does make them more like Greece than Syria, although the Greeks and Turks hate each others guts.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Killjoy_NL]

hah see the name, see the mail adress, etc
yeah, I'm really anon /sarcasm

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Teenage hackers with paedophile ascendancies

And how is THAT supposed to work?!

Um, they're working their way *up* to paedophilia.... from anime?

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Anonymous Coward]

So your claim is that it was islam itself that started the genocide ? Btw : yes the ottoman government can safely be called islam, as that word refers to a "religion" in a second sense, and to a government first. Additionally it's what they called themselves, and what muslims called them. And while they certainly committed genocides numbering hundreds of millions of victims (there has never been a period of 10 years in muslim history without at least 1 genocide, and usually, more than 1). But the Armenian genocide, it was probably easy in 1921 to chalk it up to islam : nobody would have been surprised, but it was not them that did it.

Certainly, Turkey has never taken responsibility for the Genocide, even when Ataturk was in charge, so you could say he had a hand in denying it, but that doesn't make him Hitler. More like those Japanese who after the war, refused to acknowledge the war crimes perpetrated by their army in Asia.

Just like the Emperor of Japan, Atatuk participated and gave orders to commit genocide. Additionally, he actually executed some of those orders too. In both cases, those orders led to the death of millions, more than died in the holocaust. There can be no doubt, given also his later history, about what kind of man he was : he was a monster, an asshole, and yet still a lot better than the "religion" he replaced.

And frankly I can see their point. The choice between genocidal fascism and 10-times-as-genocidal islam ... you pick the only choice.

As to why that "religion" hasn't been burned off the face of the earth ... now that's a question I really don't understand. We have no problems destroying governments that killed 1 million people, and vilifying any of their adherents decades after the last act that government did (and we are entirely morally in the right for doing so), so why does this government called "islam" is allowed to exist when there is no disagreement : they killed between 600 million and a billion people. Islam comitted over a thousand holocausts, including about 4 in the decades after world-war 2, and they're still at it (south sudan), but still we haven't learned our lesson.

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You DO realize what these muslims did to the armenians, right ? Calling this guy a hater demonstrates a level of imbecility that borders on dangerous insanity.

Never mind what they did to dozens of other ethnic groups.

Moron

Re: or, Turkey cracks down on dissidents

[Luckyo]

What you neglect to mention is that all of the nations in the world are guilty of the crimes you mention.

A suspiciously round number.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thirty-two? That is a suspiciously round number.

Conspiracy theorists will be happy.

Re:A suspiciously round number.

[JumperCable]

Little did they know that Anonymous has already upgraded to a 64-bit hacktivist system. Long gone are the days of the 2-bit hacktivist.

Re:A suspiciously round number.

[Dails]

It's a round number to a computer.

Re:A suspiciously round number.

[betterunixthanunix]

...and to me. I do all of my arithmetic in base 2, to get rid of the guesswork.

Re:A suspiciously round number.

[93 Escort Wagon]

Thirty-two? That is a suspiciously round number.

As opposed to detaining 31.7 individuals?

Re:A suspiciously round number.

[tqk]

I'm not dead yet, two bit hacktivists are going strong.

ftfy. RMS may be a lot of things, but two bit hacktivist ain't one of them. How've you hacked the planet lately, AC? Slandering real hackers on /.? OMG!

Re:A suspiciously round number.

[InsectOverlord]

In fact they already moved to qubits. 32 is not round or anything like that.

Not that you can tell what it looks like - the moment you look at it, it disintegrates.

Re:A suspiciously round number.

[Dails]

Good man.

hmmmm

[monkyyy]

i have a hard time believing that they have enough people part of anon, to get 32 caught at once... cover story?

Re:hmmmm

[Jurily]

i have a hard time believing that they have enough people part of anon, to get 32 caught at once... cover story?

Is it so hard to believe 32 of them were dumb enough?

Re:hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

i have a hard time believing that they have enough people part of anon, to get 32 caught at once... cover story?

I'm pretty sure that a simple scan for LOIC packets by an ISP on the planet would find at least a couple dozen people. They did not say they were core members, or hardcore hackers, or even members. But regardless, they said "With ties to". So... parents, siblings, children, friends, bartender, people who live within a mile, you get the idea.

Re:hmmmm

[Xest]

The Spanish arrests were simply of people who used LOIC, the DDOS tool directly from their home PC making them trivially traceable by their PC.

It's possible these arrests in Turkey are precisely the same type.

The people who have been doing the real hacks for anonymous like the HBGary hack are probably much less likely to be caught.

Re:hmmmm

[wvmarle]

The people who have been doing the real hacks for anonymous like the HBGary hack are probably much less likely to be caught.

Indeed. That are people that actually know what they are doing. And if it's indeed users of some simple DDOS tool, then that also explains the fairly high number of people rounded up.

Re:hmmmm

[Demonoid-Penguin]

The people who have been doing the real hacks for anonymous like the HBGary hack are probably much less likely to be caught.

Indeed. They are people that actually know what they are doing. And if it's indeed users of some simple DDOS tool, then that also explains the fairly high number of people rounded up.

And if I recall my history correctly - all revolutions required sacrifices (red herrings, expendables). That's why rallies are mass exercises - helps the long-term (committed) activists survive - so a certain amount of fools will always be tolerated and encouraged. Take a look around the world at where rebellions are daily affairs - see those kids throwing rocks and being arrested? They're part of a larger movement, they're expendable, and because they are, the authorities are tied up which makes it a lot harder to track down the real activists. Historically rebellions have deliberately sacrificed their own just to force the general population to pick a side - it's hard for Mum and Dad not to think about the issues when number one son is hooked up to the generator. Play the game long enough and sooner or later the operator of the generator will find their own family strapped to the chair.

Re:hmmmm

[smelch]

no ties to anyone who hacks

You mean like most of anonymous?

Re:hmmmm

[Riceballsan]

actually knowing the way anon tends to work, 32 people mindlessly hitting fire lazars button on LOIC, while anyone who planned or knew what they were doing are setting up the next raid.

Re:hmmmm

[Kjella]

It's not as much a requirement as it's a natural distribution, just like in a big war you'd have 1% special forces, 10% regular soldiers and the rest drafted civilians. Would it be great if everyone was seasoned marines? Yes. But you use what you have so some are effectively cannon fodder. You don't encourage them to be fools, they're just not ready to be anything more than what they are.

Take the war on drugs for example, your average pothead isn't hard to catch. There's just so many of them that it'll never end as long as the dealers and distribution continues, it's just a few random example to say "yes, we can take you too so don't feel safe" than even trying for 100%. Is that according to some big plan? Nah. It's just the way it is, it's Sturgeon's Law for people. 90% of everything is crap and 90% of everyone are idiots.

The only places that isn't true are the places where you've went through a lot of trouble to weed out the idiots. But when you're going for a broad public movement, you haven't got an choice. There will be plenty idiots, people you can't trust to do much of anything. Cheer in a rally? Throw some rocks. Yeah, we can have you do that and that's all we'd trust you to do, too.

Re:hmmmm

[tqk]

actually knowing the way anon tends to work, 32 people mindlessly hitting fire lazars button on LOIC, while anyone who planned or knew what they were doing are setting up the next raid.

Meanwhile, everyone's been told ahead of time in a secured (invite only) channel to proxy and Tor their IP to death, or just use an Internet Cafe's wifi or just wardrive for open APs and go from there.

It'll be interesting to watch the authorities try to sort the guilty from the innocent bystanders on this one (generic "Anonymous" actions). IP Address != $perp

Re:hmmmm

[tqk]

... all revolutions required sacrifices (red herrings, expendables).

Yeesh, that's cruel. :-P

On the bright side, all the potentially innocent victims of this incident have to do is show they've at least one virus/malware infection, and the jury can put it down to "pwned by a botnet; not guilty." Aka, the civilian form of "Plausible Deniability."

Re:hmmmm

[Demonoid-Penguin]

... all revolutions required sacrifices (red herrings, expendables).

Yeesh, that's cruel. :-P

On the bright side, all the potentially innocent victims of this incident have to do is show they've at least one virus/malware infection, and the jury can put it down to "pwned by a botnet; not guilty." Aka, the civilian form of "Plausible Deniability."

...and if they're script kiddies, they *will* have malware on their system (though they might think they're "crakz" and keygens). I'm guessing Adobe (Photoshop) has more legitimate complaints about loss of (potential) revenue through file sharing than the Hollywood media distribution Mafia.

Re:hmmmm

[Demonoid-Penguin]

It's not as much a requirement as it's a natural distribution, just like in a big war you'd have 1% special forces, 10% regular soldiers and the rest drafted civilians. Would it be great if everyone was seasoned marines? Yes. But you use what you have so some are effectively cannon fodder. You don't encourage them to be fools, they're just not ready to be anything more than what they are.

Take the war on drugs for example, your average pothead isn't hard to catch. There's just so many of them that it'll never end as long as the dealers and distribution continues, it's just a few random example to say "yes, we can take you too so don't feel safe" than even trying for 100%. Is that according to some big plan? Nah. It's just the way it is, it's Sturgeon's Law for people. 90% of everything is crap and 90% of everyone are idiots.

The only places that isn't true are the places where you've went through a lot of trouble to weed out the idiots. But when you're going for a broad public movement, you haven't got an choice. There will be plenty idiots, people you can't trust to do much of anything. Cheer in a rally? Throw some rocks. Yeah, we can have you do that and that's all we'd trust you to do, too.

Yes - though you'll probably find the amount of people committed to any side is much lower - people tend to be so damned fickle.

Re:hmmmm

[Riceballsan]

true, but you can't TOR a DDOS, Cracked/Open wifi is certainly an option though. Anon's general official stance "3 will rise up for everyone that falls", doesn't tend to care about protecting the 13-16 year olds that don't know how to do much more then push a button, and can't drive to an open hotspot

Now the real "lulz" begin for those hacktivists.

[Vandil X]

As they called it in Office Space: Federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison. No conjugal visits, either. Better beat someone up on their first day.

Is this legitimate?

[Anonymous Coward]

The link in the article
http://www.securityweek.com/turkish-police-detain-32-suspected-hackers-linked-anonymous
has pictures that were obviously photoshopped with masks. WTF? Seems out of place and an odd thing to do?

Equation

[Altanar]

Let x be amount of lulz to be had.
Let y be number of arrests.
Let z be AnonCon

z = x/y

Re:Equation

[Psychotria]

Let BASIC die

Re:Equation

[Dails]

You should use QBASIC. You don't have to LET it do anything :)

Re:Equation

[wvmarle]

In that case they're lucky that at least some people have been caught. Otherwise you'd get a division by zero error.

Re:Equation

[tqk]

You should use QBASIC. You don't have to LET it do anything :)

You should use perl. Then, it could 'die qq($0: usage - \"$0 INFILE_NAME \(_bak\)\");'[*] if it didn't do anything useful in the first place.

[*] I'll bet THAT doesn't post to /. correctly first try. Huh, son of a gun, it did. Slap me silly. :-|

Like the cloud...

[cold fjord]

It seems people like to consider "Anonymous" to be like "the cloud". The cloud is everywhere and nowhere, boxes and fuzzy lines on a chart. It is a mystery what goes there. "Anonymous" is everyone and no one, no leaders, no members. But at the end of the day, "the cloud" ultimately resolves into individual servers with an IP address, and "Anonymous" resolves into individual people with a computer and an IP address who did or didn't do something as part of the group on any given day. DDOS once, and you were in on that attack, forever, even if it is only once. Now that "Anonymous" is attacking government institutions on a regular basis, I think life will be much more exciting for them, especially since they seem to be showing poor taste in targets.

The interesting thing is, due to the nature of their collective, they can really only admit to attacks, but can't effectively deny them. I wonder how many purely criminal organizations or foreign intelligence agencies are having their members participate as cover?

Re:Like the cloud...

[Xest]

There generally seems to be two types of members of anonymous when it comes to this type of thing, there's those who just hope on the DDOS bandwagon from their home computer and hope the sheer number of users involved in the DDOS will protect them in an "I'm spartacus!" kind of way, then there's those who actually know how to hack.

Those getting arrested seem to be the former type, because they're easily traced from a single IP. It's these folk I believe who attacked Visa, Mastercard and so forth.

In contrast, those who actually know how to hack will proxy through a number of machines before ever connecting with their target. If they're routing through a number of systems like this, in a number of jurisdictions, then it's unlikely they'll be caught. Say they hop from their PC in the US, through a system in China, then one in Russia, one in Venezuela, one in Colombia, one in France and then hit their end target then anyone wishing to trace them will only see the French IP. This means they have to either check the logs on the French system and trace back, or hope the hacker has left some kind of clue behind. If the logs do not exist for the system, if the authorities in charge of the country which the system resides in are not interested in helping the investigation, and if the hacker has left no clues, then what exactly can be done to trace them? Even one system for which no logs are stored in a country like Venezuela which may not support say a US investigation might be enough to avoid ever being caught, but each additional hop is going to give you an additional layer of security.

Re:Like the cloud...

[LandDolphin]

http://modernvespa.com/pix/uploads/good_luck_im_behind_7_proxies_118.jpg

Re:Like the cloud...

[uofitorn]

In contrast, those who actually know how to hack will proxy through a number of machines.

That's not hacking, neither in RMS terminology nor modern media terminology. That's simply basic unix admin skills coupled with some awareness of how to setup or use proxies.

Re:Like the cloud...

[Xest]

What are you on about? The hacking bit is what you do once you've proxied through to somewhere, the use of proxies just hides your true IP whilst you actually do some kind of hacking.

Re:Like the cloud...

[KDR_11k]

It is when you're using a system as a proxy that wasn't supposed to be a proxy.

Re:Like the cloud...

[Saxerman]

It's far worse than that. Anyone can apply the "Anonymous" moniker to anything, and there can be no way to prove or disprove such a relationship. Because, at the end of the day, "Anonymous" resolves into exactly what it sounds like... anonymity.

Which is not to say that there aren't individuals acting collectively under the name "Anonymous" that could be identified. Merely that you can't identify someone as solely being a member. You need to tie them back to specific actions to give them a 'real' identify, such as posted on a specific forum with a given user name, or participated in a given DDoS from a given IP address.

Which becomes even more confusing when people want to attribute press releases to "Anonymous" which is analogous to saying "someone, somewhere posted this and we don't know who."

Re:Like the cloud...

[MikeBabcock]

Pfft.

Running a vulnerability scanner and clicking the 'exploit' button isn't hacking.

Discovering those vulnerabilities and writing the tool, now that's got some brains involved.

wat

[Lysander7]

I seriously doubt there are 32 members of Anonymous's inner circle tied to the hacks, much less all in Turkey. Chance are they detained /b/tards that are guilty of nothing more than posting pony threads and trolling, thinking all of Anonymous knows anything about hacking. And judging by the pics on the site, I doubt it's even legit.

Re:wat

[Xybot]

Pony threads must be met with the harshest of possible penalties.

Re:wat

[matthewv789]

Hmm, yes, did anyone else look at the pictures in the article? Did anonymous hack securityweek.com to doctor the pictures?? I wonder if the edited the article a little, too? It seems surprisingly favorable to their POV...

Re:wat

[Anonymous Coward]

Your tears only make the ponies stronger.

Joey...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

Identify someone in Anonymous?

[complete loony]

Once you identify an individual member of anonymous don't they immediately cease being a member?

Re:Identify someone in Anonymous?

[Nursie]

Nah, that's subatomic particles. With anonymous members it's impossible to figure out where they are and how fast they're travelling at the same time.

Or maybe I have that backwards?

Re:Identify someone in Anonymous?

[tnk1]

And now: Slashdot -- Home of the socially-conditioned ignorant (look at the moderation behavior) backwards basement cattle. Also the number of comments are about a tenth of what they used to be. Even with much less stories than even two years ago.

Don't forget the home of the faux old school hackers who complain about the current readership.

Re:Identify someone in Anonymous?

[kawabago]

Members of Alcoholics Anonymous do not lose membership in AA if they are identified as a member. They usually end up slipping back into their old ways but AA will keep taking them back.

Re:Identify someone in Anonymous?

[Thud457]

Alcoholism is forever.


I wonder what % of Anon is alcoholic?

Such things will happen

[HF005]

Beyond all reason....

Re:Now the real "lulz" begin for those hacktivists

[thegarbz]

Do you think a member of Anonymous would be getting a conjugal visit if he wasn't in prison?

At least the author got one thing right.

[chemicaldave]

As opposed [to] cybercriminals profiting from data theft, hacktivism isn’t motivated by money. Hacktivist groups like Anonymous are motivated by revenge, politics, and a desire to humiliate victims, with profit typically not a motive.

Sounds a lot better than "Internet terrorists".

Re:At least the author got one thing right.

[Darinbob]

So with the intent to cause confusion and panic and disrupt service with no profit motive and no real political motivation. How is this different from your average terrorist, other than that the terrorists usually have a naive political agenda?

This isn't hacktivism. There is no higher moral calling here to try and pretend this is some sort of grass roots activism. This is merely the old style of malware mentality updated to include flash-mob DDoS attacks.

Re:Now the real "lulz" begin for those hacktivists

[Nidi62]

No conjugal visits, either.

No, they still get conjugal visits. Just not from the kind of people they would prefer.

Re:MIDNIGHT EXPRESS BROUGHT TO A HALT !!

[Smallpond]

Ha! We've found another one! Here's the evidence:

by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 13, @02:24AM (#36422702)

Re:Now the real "lulz" begin for those hacktivists

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because prison rape is such a lulz topic. jfc.

I guess the foot's on the other hand now

[VSpike]

Joey... have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

32 in Turkey?

[woboyle]

Yeah. Right. And I wear a fez... Actually, I wear a cowboy hat when I play bluegrass.

Re:Now the real "lulz" begin for those hacktivists

[MikeBabcock]

Destroying peoples' lives and work online isn't funny either, but Anonymous and its ilk haven't really thought that through.

Welcome to immature pranks.

Thought puzzle: if you want to create a future with open rational discussion about a variety of issues, is making people afraid of being hacked and 'outed' the way to get there? No, its the way to create silence and fear.

Anonymous is counter-productive.

big corps and pawns

[danbuter]

As soon as Anonymous went after Sony and the banks, the corps got the governments to nail them. Anonymous would have been safe if they kept their activities aimed at less powerful entities. In any case, I bet most of these guys are just low level pawns for the real hackers.

Anonymous in the crowd

[the_raptor]

The anonymity in the idea of "Anonymous" isn't so much in not posting with your name, it is being an individual in a large crowd. Even if they can track down some individuals they still can't track and label everyone in the crowd.