Slashdot Mirror


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.'"

9 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They had it comming by MrNaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I hate printers.
  2. War baby war. Yah! by DigiShaman · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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 :)

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  3. Sabotage/Discrediting campaign by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Sabotage/Discrediting campaign by elrous0 · · Score: 3

      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.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  4. Re:They had it comming by bentcd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    sigs are hazardous to your health
  5. This Doesn't Make Sense by Caraig · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

    --
    "I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
    1. Re:This Doesn't Make Sense by Baloroth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
  6. No, we did it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  7. Re:Meanwhile, in Democracyville by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager