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Did Anonymous Take Down CIA.gov?
jfruh writes "The CIA's website has been down intermittently since Friday, apparently the victim of a DDOS attack. One of the more interesting questions of the story is whether elements of Anonymous are behind this — a question that even prominent members of the Anonymous movement can't seem to answer with any certainty. Perhaps this is obvious, but it seems that an anarchic, leaderless grouping can be hard to keep tabs on."
I think XKCD summed up this situation best: http://xkcd.com/932/
If it was a Anonymous op. plenty of people would know about it. Possibly some little group that splintered off, but Anonymous can't keep secrets.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Means that there is no hear and possibly no rule.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Any "terrorist" attack, blame it on Al-Qaeda.
Any "hacking" on any government or multi-national coroporation website, blame it on Anonymous.
Soon people will stand united against these "fringe" groups, and keep giving up their freedom in progress.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
Do you think I would talk about it when I hack the CIA? Uh... I mean IF I hacked the CIA!
If these guys in Anonymous have a tenth of common sense as they have hacking skills, they'll keep their mouths shut about specifics.
Seriously, who cares that they were able to overload a website with their botnet? It might be interesting if they were actually able to hack into it.
No one took down the CIA.gov website. Did users "take down" Twitter when it faltered under too much load? There's a difference between unavailable and taken down. During a (D)DoS, the servers are still there, still serving content to some, not taken down at all, it's just that there is more traffic than they can handle.
Compare this "taken down" to when the MPAA has a video "taken down" from Youtube. The specific video is no longer accessible, even when plenty of bandwidth is available.
That said, I wouldn't put it past Anonymous agents, that they would send a DMCA "take down" notice complaining that the CIA.gov site is infringing on Anonymous' imaginary property rights; However, I don't think it likely that such an action would result in their site being taken down (the CIA's that is).
no comment, I'm way too scared of the CIA / FBI but that's because I live in the UK...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_Act_2003
US / UK Extradition Act 2003
Perhaps this is obvious, but it seems that an anarchic, leaderless grouping can be hard to keep tabs on.
I saw an article in the paper not too long ago that talked about the Mayor of Oakland having contacted the leadership of the Occupy movement to ask them to disavow Occupy Oakland. It made me want to smack my forehead. The hierarchy drones have a fundamental lack of comprehension of "distributed."
When evils progress beyond what is sufferable, you pass a tipping point where there need be no rabble-rousers. The rabble become self-rousing. These are the warning signs that our leadership has overstepped its bounds and we need to re-examine our dedication to the principles that hold us together as a free nation and people. When the rabble start rousing themselves, we would do well to assume that the more civilized among us are likewise displeased, but with more self-control. The longer we fail to correct our course, the lower the barrier to rabble-hood becomes. It's just the nuttiest x% that are genuinely acting out right now. Soon it will be the nuttiest 2*x%.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Activate the asset.
Yes, a group dedicated to complete annonymity in a heavily anarchic environment, while committing acts of blatant illegality, are a bit difficult to keep track of...
They all left early on Friday, came in late on Monday, and have been in a meeting ever since. It'll probably be back online sometime Thursday.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
When did we stop blaming China for stuff like this? Also, the only reason I could see a "real" hacker attacking a site like this would be in hopes that one of the accounts has access to a server with "privileged" information on it.
Was CIA.gov apparently a target? Yes. Was access to it blocked for an amount of time, apparently at someone other than the CIA's will? Yes. These "attacks" credited to Anonymous are like blocking the entrance to a store or government building. Noone claimed to have "terminated" the CIA website, nor to have permanently "taken down" the website. Word in the Anon circle was that one or more servers, claimed to contain pedophilia, have been hijacked and programmed to continuously attack CIA.gov. As usual with Anonymous, its hard to confirm, pretty much need the CIA to admit what IP(s) is(are) hammering them. It's always funny seeing operations credited to Anonymous and funny to see people grumble. Realize any hacker in Russia, China, or the entire planet can claim Anonymous did it. Doesn't mean THE Anonymous did it. I would not be surprised if the Chinese Ghostnet has credited Anonymous by now. /shrug
Has anyone ever considered that "anonymous" is a wet dream for those who wish to deny freedom and destroy the net?
It's perfectly tailored - even the name, to be a problem that those fascists who wish to legislate away our freedoms online will have the perfect solution for - and I suspect that solution is going to look like an "internet drivers license" type identification scheme. They will want to remove anonymity online completely.
And as for Anonymous, they're even worse!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Technically speaking - if they don't know the culprit(s) then the culprit(s) is/are, by definition, anonymous.
And just like bin Laden, it will be kept "active" until the major objectives of our overseers are accomplished. You can guarantee yourself that the day the governments of USA/UK/China will jointly announce that they have penetrated and destroyed "Anonymous" will be the day the people controlling those governments have already executed the part of their plans which required the existence of an online "terrorist" organization.
It is no coincidence that the highly publicized assassination of bin Laden occurred shortly before massive troop draw-downs in the middle east. He was no longer necessary as a free-floating fear stimulus to provide cover for our military adventures over there, which where themselves just covers for other objectives in the perpetual game of thrones.
Just you watch, men/groups like Anonymous and Assange and PirateBay etc. will be tolerated (or indirectly propped up) in order to beat the drums of the coming Global War on Internet Terror. It's all drama.
At its core the CIA just lays the ground work in advance for an invasion/occupation. Groups like this should be rolled into the military since that's all they are.
RON PAUL 2012
I want to be retired when I grow up.
http://gizmodo.com/5884346/anonymous-explains-cia-takedown
if anonymous had any confidence whatsoever about the takedown, they'd be crowing about it.
chances are, it's the chinese, perhaps attempting to mask the attack as something that anonymous would do.
i'm starting to really dislike those communists.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
At least you have a semblance of due process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States
I LOL'ed.
There are no "prominent" members of anonymous, anyone who claims to be is some lying namefag who doesn't quite understand the concept of anonymity. And why does everything have to be a "movement". It's all about the lulz, it always has been, it always will be.
The CIA only uses that site for public relations, they've got their own separate system for all of their real work.
Yes, it was Anonymous that hit the CIA, because the person who did it used Anonymous to conceal his identity. And for the exact same reason, it was also *not* Anonymous - it was just somebody using the name.
Anonymous isn't really a group - it's a label. Among other things, it's a tool for hackers to publish their accomplishments without risking additional exposure. In an idealized sense, it's very powerful protection of our second amendment rights, if we take hacking and privacy to be the arms of the information age.
though it responded to port 443, a common port for VPN connections using Secure Sockets Layer encryption.
Really IT World? *faceplam*
but I am too much the coward
I heard they just upgraded to the latest Windows 8 Servers?
Why? Because if you're going to get paid by DDoS, the one paying you will renege on the deal.
But, in fact, these advertisers already remove this sort of thing to stop you using a script to just keep banging your webpage and upping the count. They're not dumb.
Unlike you, apparently...
When something gets hacked you blame anon.
When you invade privacy, take away rights or invade another country then its because of terrorists.
When you ruin internet freedom you blame it on piracy.
Personally who cares if anon just takes down their website, big deal they will have it back up in no time. If anon really wants to be taken seriously they need to step it up and start actually hacking cia, releasing files, uncovering stuff and really fucking with the works. Just taking a website is beyond my meger skills but still, its just a website and not like it actually does anything.
I'm so tired of hearing what Anonymous has DDoS'd now. I'm sick of them doing short sighted immature attacks that only end up giving legislators reasons to throw harsher laws on everyone else. Its just a bunch of low tech, high profile bullshit that's fucking everyone that uses the Internet FAR worse than their target.
Shows how much they know and how secure they really are now. Hire me CIA and I'll protect you! :-)
At this point, couldn't they outsource to SquareSpace and have done with it?
We have also considered that rhetoric to be merely emotional blackmail to stop what needs to be done.
It's an interesting question really. In the last years, the media have been pretty fast to put the blame of multiple take down on Anonymous. Of course, some of them were planned openly by them on website like 4chan, but let's not forget that the "victims" have other enemies too.
For instance, how much thought did the Chinese (the 21th century bad guy) put about cyber-attacking the CIA "after" they heard about Anonymous plan? I'm no expert, but don't you think there's a great opportunity for them to take advantage of the situation?
Elok
Anonymous: They use a single name to hide their numbers.
The treat about being "anonymous" is that it lacks the initiation rites. You can come and go as you please. No one will know you were here, no one will know you have left. Do you miss out on the accolades? Yes, but freedom is sweeter than accolades. Those who do not realize this, and go out to make a name for themselves rarely end up being free or anonymous at all.
What the politicians hear: "Slashdot is a tool for pirates and child pornographers to attack the USA!"
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
was anything of value was lost during this downtime ? I dont think such secret services have been serving their people's needs for a long time now.
Read radical news here
The CIA was testing some offensive DDOS tools.
Whoops...blamestorm...Anonymous, the CIA took down the CIA.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
If Anonymous is going after the CIA, that probably means that Boxxy is in the clear.
Some hackers would be found dead without any clues as to what happened... And this would keep happening until there was no more Anonymous.
lol who cares? anonymous are nobodies and ddos is for the technically inept
The website is just a flag, a sign post, a Hello World, for the CIA. It's not related to operations. OOOOH! HAXORS! This is like calling someone who guesses your password a hacker.
Speak for yourself.
Do you think I would talk about it when I hack the CIA? Uh... I mean IF I hacked the CIA!
If these guys in Anonymous have a tenth of common sense as they have hacking skills, they'll keep their mouths shut about specifics.
First of all, the CIA's website is inconsequential to their secret data, or their day to day business operations beyond PR. The CIA does not keep anything terribly interesting accessible to the Internet. Never have, never will. The best you might do is external email servers, and probably not advisable either. Whomever this is, they are basically barking at one of the largest honey pots on Earth, and only generating data that could be used against them. I would hope that Anonymous members would be more aware.