Anonymous Claims Responsibility For WikiLeaks Attack

mask.of.sanity writes "Anonymous members have taken responsibility for launching a denial of service attack against WikiLeaks this week using a custom-built tool that exploits an SQL server flaw. Field tests of the tool dubbed RefRef were launched against several websites including WikiLeaks, Pastebin and 4Chan. In a Twitter account linked to the Anonymous blog, the users were described as hacktivists with 'a personal vendetta against WikiLeaks,' adding that 'we are sorry we took you down. We are even.'"

Comments

They had it comming

[Mensa Babe]

Considering the news from just the last week:

• Wikileaks Spokesman Destroyed Documents
• There's Been a Leak At WikiLeaks
• WikiLeaks Sues the Guardian Over Leak

I am not surprised at all that someone has finally attacked them. This is not just an ordinary organization destroying documents, leaking their own sources or suing others for doing what they themselves want us to believe is our duty, ie. leaking confidential documents. This is much more. This is ignoring the fact that people are literally risking their lives because they believed WikiLeaks. I am surprised that it was only a DDoS attack and not a more serious form of revenge. This is what you get for totally disrespecting the lives and risks of the people thanks to whom you are now rich and famous. This is just Karma coming back to you. Not surprising at all.

Re:They had it comming

[MrNaz]

False flag operations are pretty easy against anonymous, because, well, anyone can do something and claim to be them. The media can claim they're in bed with Al-Qaeda and nobody would even be able to be interviewed to confirm or deny.

Re:They had it comming

[bentcd]

False flag operations are pretty easy against anonymous, because, well, anyone can do something and claim to be them.

On the other hand false flag ops against Anonymous are impossible because if someone does something and claims to be them, well then they are them.

Sabotage/Discrediting campaign

[elrous0]

Not sure how this plays into the recent bevy of activity in the CIA's shattershot attempt to sabotage and discredit Wikileaks, but I suspect someone is getting played here. First you have Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a guy with a shady and rather thin past, come into Wikileaks and immediately start stealing documents and attempting to sabotage the operation--later participating in the discrediting campaign too by writing a book bad-mouthing Assange (and starting his own competing honeypot site to boot). Then rape allegations (the same kind that Dominique Strauss-Khan suddenly found himself facing just weeks after he began questioning the value of the U.s. dollar). Now all this recent uproar.

The CIA is really throwing everything at the wall here. Looks like some of it is sticking. Well played.

Some will laugh at me for saying all this. But, let's face it, this is hardly the first time they've used similar tactics.

Re:Sabotage/Discrediting campaign

[elrous0]

Believe what you want to. I'm sure it was just a convenient coincidence that a guy who was calling for the establishment of a new international currency that would have devalued the U.S. dollar was arrested on rape charges just weeks later, with a public "perp walk" and a DA who bragged about an ironclad case. And also just a coincidence that just *days* after he lost his IMF position to a pro-American stooge, suddenly the DA admits that he really has no case and that the alleged victim is laughably uncredible. All just happy little coincidences, in a world where the U.S. would NEVER do such a nasty thing just to advance its own economic interests.

Re:Sabotage/Discrediting campaign

[nomadic]

You don't really believe that utterly ridiculous conspiracy theory, do you?

This Doesn't Make Sense

[Caraig]

This doesn't make sense, though. Anon -- or at least part of Anon -- went out and slammed a bunch of credit-card companies for denying donations to WikiLeaks. And now Anon is saying they attacked WikiLeaks? I don't buy it. As recently as last week they were still expressing support for WikiLeaks, and were noting that WikiLeaks and their own servers were under attack. And 4chan? 4chan is their home turf, why would they DDoS that?

I grok that Anon is decentralized to the point of schizophrenia, but to this extent?

Re:Meanwhile, in Democracyville

[BitZtream]

Start with actually having evidence of corruption.

At one point, thats what Wikileaks did. That ended some time ago and hasn't been the case for the last couple of years. NYT will be happy to publish anything that gets them some readers back, but you actually have to have some sort of proof before you send it to them. They don't particularly respond well when you drop a boat load of stolen documents on their door step and say 'theres bad stuff in here, I know it because its from politicians and I don't like politicians'.

Neither does any other rational person for that matter.

Whistle blowers really don't have a hard time getting information out, when its actually something to be concerned with. The Internet makes it absolutely trivial, as proven already. The problem is as I said, learning the difference between real corruption instead of what typically is called 'whistleblowing' which is more along the lines of 'this company/politician doesn't do what I want/insulted me/won't let me have my way/insert any other childish reason you want here as it all returns to the fact that most of these people are angsty babies.

As I said, its not hard to get the word out. The problem is that 99.999999% of the people who like to think of themselves as 'whistleblowers' are just people who steal documents and break the law because they're too stupid to realize their point of view is unique to them and not the rest of the general population.

Thats the thing, one lone nut job with a irrational story about evil company/government gets overlooked and ignored quickly. Sometimes it takes a little more time, as is the case for Wikileaks who managed to build up some credibility before making it clear they never deserved any such thing.