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

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.

War baby war. Yah!

[DigiShaman]

"I cast... magic cyber missile! Fear my incantations for your servers are feeble to stop them."

Anyone else just find this nerd fight entertaining? Pass the popcorn :)

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]

Never said it *proved* anything. Just says that they've done something similar before. And this isn't a court of law.

Jimmy caught stealing pie from Ms. Reynold's window. Jimmy caught stealing pie from Ms. Smith's window. Pie goes missing from Ms. Wilson's window. Police baffled.

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

[Rakshasa-sensei]

I don't really see how the maid being a powerful serial offender would invalidate the OP's point, that she has a history of making up fake (and very convincing) rape stories would seem to make both cases seem even more similar.
The Assange case also involved a woman with a history of supporting the use of false rape charges for personal gain.

Meanwhile, in Democracyville

[betterunixthanunix]

Wikileaks is dead, Openleaks is going nowhere, and traditional media outlets like the New York Times are not willing to publish certain things...so how do people publicize evidence of corruption? What are whistleblowers supposed to do, especially if the people they are blowing the whistle on are well connected and powerful?

Re:Meanwhile, in Democracyville

[Enderandrew]

Amnesty International

Re:Meanwhile, in Democracyville

[ClioCJS]

blogs get shut down instantly by copyright complaints

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.

Re:Meanwhile, in Democracyville

[Enderandrew]

Wikileaks has been more about calling out what they see as government abuse than traditional whistle-blowing as well.

Amnesty International has never released a huge leak with unprotected civilian names, like Wikileaks has. Amnesty International has been calling out government corruption and human rights violations for years. I feel that they're overlooked in this conversation while everyone is donating money to Wikileaks.

Amnesty International has also called out Wikileaks for being irresponsible in leaking civilian names, which led to those civilian volunteers getting death threats. To that, Assange responded that people should give him more money if they want civilian names redacted. In all fairness, they have redacted more names since then, but that is a pretty deplorable response.

I'm all for exposing government corruption and human rights abuses. I just trust Amnesty International more when it comes to that goal.

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.

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:This Doesn't Make Sense

[Baloroth]

Anonymous is a mob. Like all mobs, they lack restraint or control and will eventually turn on, well, anyone they can. Including their home soil or the people they pretend to defend.

Of course they'll also a mob on the Internet, and lack the power to do anything of real consequence, like burning down a house. The result is that the whole thing is really quite funny, instead of tragic and a horrible crime.

No, we did it

[Anonymous Coward]

We, the hacker group known as Anonymous Coward, are responsible for the attack. Anonymous is simply trying to take credit for our actions.

Oh look, Conspiracy Corner open for business again

[Viol8]

"The CIA is really throwing everything at the wall here"

Sure. If anything the slightest bit unfortunate happens to any hacktivist sacred cow then it - duh! - has to be the CIA. Or FBI. Or NSA. Or some government black hat organisation that only the l337 know about.

Get a fucking grip. If the CIA wanted to take down wikileaks they'd go for the people, not the infrastructure. And why do it now? 6 months ago would have been a lot more useful.

But hey , why bother thinking it through when a good ole conspiracy theory will suffice eh?

RefRef

[cultiv8]

RefRef is the new LOIC, interesting write-up here, confirmed accurate by @AnonCMD.

Is this what took down Wikileaks?

They Sure did have it coming

[FriendlyLurker]

Considering the news from just the last week:

• WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says
• Wall Street Journal: Why Does Jeanne Whalen Have a Hardon for Julian Assange?
• The Guardian Leaks unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables
• Former Wikileaks Spokesman Destroyed Documents
• New Your Times: The Nixonian henchmen of today:

I am not surprised at all that powerful organizations continue to attack them, cheered on by the usual propaganda fan club.