LulzSec Target the Sun After Phone Hacking Scandal

nk497 writes "LulzSec have come out of retirement to target Rupert Murdoch's News International, hacking the website of The Sun, redirecting it first to a spoofed page reporting his death and then to Lulz's Twitter feed. 'The Sun's homepage now redirects to the Murdoch death story on the recently-owned New Times website,' the hackers said via Twitter. 'Can you spell success, gentlemen?' The hackers also started to post email addresses and passwords they claimed were from Sun staff, and said to have accessed a mail server at now-defunct News of the World."

Comments

Ob. Mr. Burns

[PCM2]

"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the Sun."

Is this what it has come down to?

[McFortner]

So, because they did something ethically wrong and against the law it's OK to do the same to them? I thought we had gotten beyond the whole "eye for an eye" thing.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're black hats, it's what they do. When some kid at school is acting like a total dipshit to everyone else and the authorities don't care, the solution is not to ask him politely to stop. The solution is to give him a black eye, then ask, then give him another if he refuses.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[FyRE666]

I fail to see how adding a redirect to their homepage and posting some phone numbers is on par with hacking a dead girl's phone and deleting her voicemail. Plus all the other reprehensible shenanigans the NotW staff were up to (and if they were doing it, there's a fair chance other areas of the empire were doing the same.)

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[Groo Wanderer]

When you have bought your way out of governmental oversight and any possibility of legal repercussions, how else does one get punished for flagrant illegal behaviour. What you are seeing is the people fighting back against a system that has been thoroughly co-opted by those with more resources. It is classic guerrilla warfare, and more power to Lulzsec for doing it.

It also made me smile, so win/win.

            -Charlie

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[causality]

So, because they did something ethically wrong and against the law it's OK to do the same to them? I thought we had gotten beyond the whole "eye for an eye" thing.

Until we decide that corporations should be second- and third-class citizens compared to breathing human beings, you can expect more of the same.

It's a serious mistake to blame vigilantes as though they happen in a vacuum. That kind of thinking has been tried for a very long time now and it has gotten us absolutely nowhere. It doesn't solve anything. Vigilanteism is the least of things it fails to address. It doesn't change anything. It provides more of the same problems we've always had.

Instead you need to look at the conditions of the environment, the steps that were taken to make them that way, and how they bred the desire to do such things. That's if you are actually interested in really working towards a solution for what you perceive as a problem, so interested in fact that you're willing to put aside the gratification of condemnation and try something that might work.

The root of the problem is that a corporation can do things that would cause any individual person to suffer some serious prison time. The equivalent of "prison time" for a corporation would be to freeze their assets and stop them from doing any business whatsoever for a set period of time. You may say "okay Causality but what about the rank-and-file workers who would be financially harmed by this?" To that I say, maybe that would make people more reluctant to work for known assholes like Rupert Murdoch and maybe that would be a good thing for everyone.

Just as a loan officer has to charge higher fees for risky loans, let Murdoch pay his employees above the standard rate to compensate them for the risk that his asshattery might get them shut down. That would be more like making corporations pay some of the social costs their tactics inflict on the world around them.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[causality]

They're black hats, it's what they do. When some kid at school is acting like a total dipshit to everyone else and the authorities don't care, the solution is not to ask him politely to stop. The solution is to give him a black eye, then ask, then give him another if he refuses.

While I would place emphasis on the "authorities don't care" part, you're absolutely right. There are people with whom you cannot reason. In fact, they hate reason because reason would tell them to change their ways and they're addicted to the gratification and feeling of superiority they obtain from being that way. That kind of egomania is the only sort of (pathetic) life they have.

It is not your fault if someone will not cherish reason. That is their decision; let them reap what they sow. It does not make you a bad person to do what is necessary (but no more) to handle someone like that. It is in accordance with how they have chosen to live. In the case of a bully like in your example, it may in fact be a turning point in life that will end up being the best thing that ever happened to them. It would amount to giving him, albeit a harder way, the correction and guidance that his parents (or more likely, parent) so thoroughly failed to deliver.

After doing what needs to be done, then there is opportunity to take the high road and have an attitude of "sorry it came to this, but you had it coming." Gloating and being glad it happened would just make you a bigger bully who will eventually run into one who is bigger still. That path won't reform anyone. So yes, you're absolutely right but it has to come from a certain level of understanding. The real mistake is to coddle a person like that out of some misguided sympathy (what the unwise think is compassion) because they interpret it as weakness, as submission, and they'd be right.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Oh my bad, police say the death of the whistleblower wasnt suspicious, he probably died of natural causes....

Revenge is a natural cause of death, isn't it?

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[causality]

Not in the US where those rednecks still have barbaric punishments like the death penalty for being retarded.

Yeah yeah, I know I'm replying to a troll, but...

He isn't on death row for being retarded. Saying that makes me question your mental abilities. He's on death row for murdering a 17-year-old. The fact that his IQ is 68 doesn't make the victim any less dead or his family any less bereaved at having to bury their child.

There are good arguments against the death penalty. The fact that so many people on death row turned out to be innocent (i.e. because of DNA evidence) is one of the most rational. After all, you can release someone who is in prison but you can't raise the dead. The logic here is quite straightforward. However, your emotional rhetoric and willingness to distort truth as you have done is only going to weaken your position.

There are no shortcuts to actually making a solid case about a worthy subject. No, you haven't discovered the first.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[Xtravar]

He's mistaking "elected" with "electrocuted". Yes, they elect retards in Texas.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[causality]

When the government ceases to mete out justice this is what happens. Get over it. If you don't like it please fix the governments so we don't need to do this ourselves.

Thank you, kind sir or madam, whoever the anonymous figure may be. To me, what you say is the most intuitive thing in the world but for some it is a hard doctrine. They are stuck in a crime-and-punishment model that fails to account for why certain crimes happen in the first place. It's the same reason we have a War on Drugs instead of an expectation of responsible use.

I'm trying to model and expound this kind of understanding. I'm trying to contribute such that the conversation addresses the higher levels of how and why these things manifest, rather than the low level of how undesirable they might be. Therefore, it's nice to hear from someone else who understands this.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[CheShACat]

Well, no, firstly Lulzsec will have done it "for the lulz" not for "an eye for an eye". They also had beef against The Sun after the Ryan Cleary arrest, and The Sun's appaling coverage of it. Any other reason one might throw into the mix is just gravy.

As a viewer, one can find the whole episode deliciously ironic without needing to take either side of the moral argument.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[phantomfive]

. The equivalent of "prison time" for a corporation would be to freeze their assets and stop them from doing any business whatsoever for a set period of time. You may say "okay Causality but what about the rank-and-file workers who would be financially harmed by this?"

No, I would say, the people responsible should suffer, not a company that is a non-sentient being. You seem to have a weird idea of what a corporation is. People have already been arrested for the hacking scandal, which is good. Rupert himself may not be, but sometimes guilty people go free. It happens.

Corporations are not first-class citizens in any legal jurisdiction I know of. 'Corporate personhood' is a legal metaphor that you, and others, have vastly misunderstood.

Imagine if the corporation got punished for all crimes that a person did in the name of the corporation: then I could start a corporation, rob a bank in the name of the corporation, and the corporation would be punished. That would be idiotic. Furthermore, it would be making a corporation more of a person than it is now, which you claim to oppose.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[rsborg]

Corporations are not first-class citizens in any legal jurisdiction I know of. 'Corporate personhood' is a legal metaphor that you, and others, have vastly misunderstood.
 

Really? Have you not read about the Citizens United case, that effectively gives Corporations the freedom of speech (and by neoliberal accounting, freedom of bribery)?

Imagine if the corporation got punished for all crimes that a person did in the name of the corporation: then I could start a corporation, rob a bank in the name of the corporation, and the corporation would be punished. That would be idiotic. Furthermore, it would be making a corporation more of a person than it is now, which you claim to oppose.

Let's extend your metaphor and say that the corporation hired someone to commit some crime. Should the corporation go unpunished? Sure the crimedoer will catch jail time if (s)he is caught, but the one who made the decision to go ahead with the theft should also get punished. Right now, with the corporate veil this hardly ever pursued... plus given Corporations often have lots of money and live forever, they could literally buy their freedom or push the punishment far enough in the future to avoid real consequences.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[delinear]

It's also definitely worth noting that the police had all of the relevant information to uncover this whole scandal at least two years ago (and they knew some of it over five years ago) and yet they did nothing. They even admitted in the official enquiry that their response was severely lacking. If the police aren't doing their job then surely that's precisely the time for vigilantism - they're meant to be protecting us from this kind of crap.

Re:Is this what it has come down to?

[delinear]

Exactly - in the UK we've already seen this goes to the top of both the government (Cameron being close friends with Brooks et al) and the police (who at the very least failed to properly investigate a crime, even if you rule out outright suppression of facts). When the police, the media and the government all appear to be colluding, what expectation of justice can the people realistically have?

All down

[norriefc]

AFAICT every single NI UK based website is currently offline.

Re:All down

[scubamage]

Their DNS server got taken down, and their admins have taken down public facing servers from what I've gathered.

Is It Wrong?

[causality]

Is it wrong that I'm amused to see this?

It's not like government was going to do anything to the corporation other than a slap-on-the-wrist fine that's certain to be less than the profits made by the act. That they may throw low-level employees under the bus doesn't change this. At least someone somewhere is trying to make sure that corporate malfeasance actually does have some kind of consequence.

I have always believed that a properly-functioning government, not owned by monied interests and willing to take effective and severe action against misbehaving corporations and their executives would have prevented both Anonymous and LulzSec from ever getting started. As I see it, they are only stepping in where the government has grotesquely failed. Everything that is bad about vigilanteism is caused by failing governments.

Re:Is It Wrong?

[Stormthirst]

Rebecca Brooks: Arrested - former News International chief executive - hardly a low level employee
Les Hinton: Arrested - chief executive of Dow Jones - again hardly a low level employee

News International's share price has dropped 6%, which whilst isn't a fine, but will certainly hammer the profits of the organisation as a whole.

You have to bear in mind, most of this is going on in England, where there isn't nearly the obvious corruption you get in American politics. There is corruption - it's government and comes with the territory - but its no where near as blatant. Even the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police have resigned, even though they had nothing to do with it, nor any knowledge of it going on.

Re:Is It Wrong?

[causality]

I don't know how things are in the U.K., but here in the U.S., if any politician so much as suggested trying this, there would be such a massive hue and cry from a huge section of the country about "Government overstepping their bounds!" and "Socialism!" that they wouldn't know what hit them.

If enforcing the law when an individual breaks it isn't socialism, then neither is enforcing the law when a corporation breaks it.

In fact you could even say it's less of an "overstep" or "socialist" when the law is enforced against corporations. I mean, supposedly we have government by the consent of the goverened, meaning individual people have a type of sovereignty that they have willingly surrendered as part of a social contract. Corporations, however, are entirely creations of the state. Since the state created them, it makes perfect sense for the state to regulate them with no need for recourse to any "social contract" type of argument.

Not that I disagree with your assessment of what would happen. The average American really has no idea what kind of vast, powerful interests are arrayed against them. Propaganda and demagoguery are their tools of choice because when the manipulations are successful, the victims think they are defending their own ideas.

Re:Is It Wrong?

[digitig]

Even the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police have resigned, even though they had nothing to do with it, nor any knowledge of it going on.

Er -- Rebekah Brooks admitted to paying the police for information -- a criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of £10000 or two years in prison -- in front of a select committee hearing in March 2003. If they had no knowledge of it going on that was either incompetence or a willful turning of a blind eye. Given the perks that the Commissioner got from from NI (which might be considered bribery in themselves) then their position was untenable.

Is there really a problem here?

[zcomuto]

It's not like the Sun ever posts anything remotely approaching actual news or something with a factual grounding, so what difference does it make if the homepage redirects to the actual Sun homepage or a spoof? Neither is actually news.

News Corp is making themselves out as victims

[SpazmodeusG]

Link

News Corp was already pushing this storey as if they are victims, I see no good from actually giving them something to claim victimisation over.

IMPORTANT

[Anonymous Coward]

They got all the news international emails as well, to be posted tomorrow.

That includes wade and co.

People, this could be massive ^^

Re:Way to go

[Dunbal]

Doesn't matter if anyone gets prosecuted. Damages are $8 billion and counting, and News Corp is about to lose its credit rating. No court in the world could dish out this sort of damage.

Re:Hacking? DDoS is more like it...

[norriefc]

I don't see hacking, I only noticed the domain won't resolve. So its back to ddos again, as always. Lame; guess the only "inteligence" here is that they seem to have targeted the DNS server.

Totally not impressed here.

That's only because NI went scorched earth and took down all their NI UK based websites. There are screenshots and videos floating about the net

Re:Why Isn't Anyone Slagging Cell Carrier's Securi

[scubamage]

The hackers of Paris Hilton's phone weren't being employed by a massive multinational corporation to hack the phones. The people who did hack the phones saw jail time - something that will never happen to anyone who actually ordered the crimes to be committed in the case of News Corp. Until we start instituting nuremburg style trials for large corporations where there are serious consequences for malfeasance, this is going to get worse. At least in China the executives get executed when this shit happens.

Re:the ends do not justify the means

[spongman]

i'd agree with that except it's clear that there is NO rule of law here: the police have shown themselves to be incompetent/complicit in this case.

Re:tampering with evidence?

[scubamage]

They can admit it in the US. The exclusionary clause protects you from a government search. It does nothing to protect you from someone breaking in to your PC, stealing your hard drive, and then turning it over to the police when they find kiddie porn.

Very definitely wrong

[DaveAtFraud]

Just a historical reminder. Both the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis (before they came to power) used the same language for taking the law into their own hands. The only thing that keeps similar groups from using the same tactics to terrorize their targets and even, possibly, gain power is the rule of law. Yes, this time, the target of the vigilantes is a reprehensible dirt bag. Just remember that not all vigilantes are the good guys.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Very definitely wrong

[shutdown -p now]

Underground Railroad was made in defiance of rule of law, as well. Law is not always a good thing. Sometimes it punishes innocent and protects crooks on a scale so large that it is not worth defending.

Not saying that this is that case...

Re:Anonymous and LulzSec are really funny

[datsa]

Righteous lawlessness stinks out loud.

I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, Murdoch's righteous lawlessness is far more damaging than LulzSec's, and a lot less amusing.