Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Hacks Finland
First time accepted submitter spuguli writes with more exploits of Anonymous. "From Helsingin Sanomat: 'A data leak was uncovered in Finland on Saturday, in which personal details ... of around 16,000 people were uploaded onto a file-sharing website.' Anonymous has claimed responsibility for the cracking of several databases."
Fins hack Finland. Nothing to see here, move along.
The National Bureau of Investigation published a slightly obfuscated list of the 16,000 victims, which brought down their website. They had 60,000 simultaneous connection attempts to the site. The question is how would the officials communicate with the public if it were a real national disaster.
Guess Anon just wanted some names. Wonder what use this could've had at all. Can't be much use, if they know who the people are, unless they plan on just selling the information, which won't do much anyway.
Kids these days have far too much power. And shouldn't they be in school instead of ruining the lives of other people?
-- Cheers!
How on Earth could they miss Mexico and end up in Finland instead?
:: There is no light at the end of a tunnel. There is a tunnel after a tunnel : Thom Y.
"Hello,
This is Anonymous Finland messaging you once again (actually not, the earlier messages were not written nor released by us.)
We have no opinions on any politicians all.
We have not hacked any Finnish websites.
We find antisec childish, among with lulzsec that was nothing but a bunch of bought exploits."
http://pastebin.com/X98zQ4Ea
U+F8FF
Finland invented Linux!
Is this even a data leak? "Names and social security numbers" -- I'm sure that information is all publicly available. Couldn't anyone simply run a few thousand social security numbers by some official government lookup web service and get these names? Now, TFA says "personal information, SUCH AS names and social security numbers". When I see a wording like that in a context like this, I'm convinced that "names and social security numbers" is precisely all it is!
The most astonishing thing with this story is the medium. This is the first time in quite a while I've seen an easy to read, easy to navigate web page (from a news organization) where the actual content gets the majority share of my screen real estate.
It also was so quick to load that I couldn't really believe that it was done, and for a long while after it had finished I simply sat staring at the page wondering when the rest (the crap!) would arrive. It never did.
Good job, Helsingin Sanomat.
May we live long and die out
16,000 people, out of a population of about 5.4 million, that's about a 0.3% chances they got him, or perhaps one of his family's personal information.
Finnish newspaper Iltalehti (in Finnish) is now reporting that the attempt by some members of Anonymous to claim the leak is a hoax. Actually, the person or group claiming responsibility did probably do neither of the leaks. The "new" leak was actually published already three weeks ago, and someone just copied that leak and tried to gain news coverage for his political ends.
Can't you feel 'em circlin', honey
Can't you feel 'em schoolin' around
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
And you're the only bait in town
The person who did this uses the alias anomuumi. It is a generic term used when individuals who hang around at the Finnish message board forums discuss their evildoing.
-- Mikko Hyppönen on his deep understanding of Internet culture.
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
Wrong forum to say this, but listen to me, all you call yourselves Anonymous!
Forget about "V for Vendetta". Now, take a history lesson from someone who's not of the first world and grew up in a communist paradise.
Guy Fawkes did British revolutionaries a complete disservice. First up, he was a religious nutjob who wanted to kill a king for religious intolerance. The end result of which was that finally the king had a real good & proper reason to hunt down the catholics. The ordinary catholics ended up in a long drawn struggle and bore most of the collateral damage out of the actions of an anarchistic commune. Those thirteen proved to be as bad for the catholics as the original.
With the new "Guy Fawkes" vigilantes are similarly giving ammunition to the government to grab control of the internet, choke down every protest fair or otherwise. You assholes aren't fighting authority, you're just the reason giving their oppression legitimacy in the eyes of the people who don't want to be accidentally your targets for the lulz.
And here's some advice from my dad, "If you really want to be a rebel, live for the rebellion, don't die for it". Now, if you want to be a martyr instead ... don't take me down with you.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Bit of background: Finland has pretty strict privacy laws, and compiling personal detail lists, such as this, is subject to regulation. Very few care about that. What really matters is that storing such lists has certain requirements - and disseminating them is explicitly unlawful.
The leaked list is apparently a compilation of 10 (or more) smaller lists. Criminal Bureau are going after the person who compiled and published the list, and the morons who compiled the original lists will probably get off with less than a slap on their wrists.
The original compilations have been passed around via mailing lists. I'll let that sink in.
[Puts on the cynic hat]
What should be a wake-up call to enforce the collection and dissemination rules will be used to drum up the threat of Anonymous and increased possibility to get spammed. The real problem, namely the near-criminal negligence with which this type of data is handled, will be ignored.
In a nutshell: someone who had access to multiple lists exposed a systematic indifference to privacy laws and the utter ignorance of decent practices. The leak itself will be vilified, while the practices which allowed this to happen with such trivial effort are unlikely to be addressed.
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
Maybe one or more Finns hack one lame website organised by and for Finns.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
As is usual with these types of news the story has been blown out of proportion. Other then some social security numbers, nothing "personal" was leaked. The information in the leak ios mostly data like adresses and phone numbers which are puiblicly available in the first place.
Yes, someone could in theory use the leaked SSNs to do something malicious but that's extremely difficult. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the fact that these sorts of leaks are becomming more and more common even though you'd think the security would've improved by now, but this time it seems we got lucky. Hopefully whoever is responsible for the security of whereever the data was leaked has learned his/her lesson.
Also, as far as I know this was done by a single individual, not "anonymous".
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
cool, that makes me feel better about being too lazy to stand up for anything. now i know that doing so would only make things worse.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
When a protest group, terrorist group or even a lone gunman does something to hit the news I always want to know what it is exactly they are trying to bring attention to.
Is it co-conspiratorial to report the reason, thus giving the action a voice? Or is it serving the people who want to know?
A blog I run for the wealth
I like how the summary makes it sound like Finland is a single computer that was hacked into.
Whether this is the "real" Anonymous or not (how can something that has no set identity be real or not?), they're kind of getting out of hand.
Sometimes they have an agreeable cause (in my opinion, but that's just the thing, it's an opinion) but all the people calling for regulation and full traceability of the internet will be pointing at this "Anonymous" lot and saying "That's why".
They like to make themselves feared, but it's just going to drive more people towards wanting to do anything to protect the internet / their children / etc from them.
I posted as the AC, and I'd like to add that I now totally disagree with what I wrote. I eat babies.
You see the problem inherent in ascribing uniform beliefs to amorphous groups?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Well said. The idea of 'Anonymous' being counter-productive and merely a pretext for authoritarian moves (think of the fire of the Reichstag being used by Hitler so seize control of the parliament) has been repeated for a few months here on Slashdot.
Now, if there were a group called Anonymous and if they were convinced by such words, odds are that you could very well continue to see more hacks perpetrated in the name of Anonymous. That's the second vicious twist in this terrible idea, which consequences are the same, providing a pretext to convince the masses that Internet controlling legislation is a good thing.
Stupid stupid stupid.
Why not take down paedophile rings, drug cartels that dumb down society, dictators who impose moronic taxes?
The major players in the sex slave trade aren't in it for the laughs.
If you believe in something, have the balls to stand and die for it, otherwise you're just a coward or as history has shown, probably french. No revolution ever succeeds without real strength. Peaceful revolutions do not exist, never kid yourself otherwise. The govn was already looking for ways and reasons to control the internet and protests, this doesn't do anything to stop that. The simple fact is they have it anytime they want it and there is nothing the masses can do to stop it short of violence.
Well said, Guy Fawkes was a fascist who wanted to install a Catholic monarchical dictatorship and abolish Parliament. So personally, I find it very hard to take V for Vendetta seriously.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well said, Guy Fawkes was a fascist who wanted to install a Catholic monarchical dictatorship and abolish Parliament.
Hear, hear!
So personally, I find it very hard to take V for Vendetta seriously.
Hear, he-- wait, what?!