Slashdot Mirror
25 Alleged Anonymous Hackers Arrested By Interpol
PatPending sends this quote from an AFP report:
"Interpol has arrested 25 suspected members of the Anonymous hackers group in a swoop covering more than a dozen cities in Europe and Latin America, the global police body said Tuesday. Operation Unmask was launched in mid-February following a series of coordinated cyber-attacks originating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain,' Interpol said. The statement cited attacks on the websites of the Colombian Ministry of Defense and the presidency, as well as on Chile's Endesa electricity company and its National Library, among others. The operation was carried out by police from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain, the statement said, with 250 items of computer equipment and cell phones seized in raids on 40 premises in 15 cities. Police also seized credit cards and cash from the suspects, aged 17 to 40."
"The operation was carried out by police from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain, the statement said, with 250 items of computer equipment and cell phones seized in raids on 40 premises in 15 cities. Police also seized credit cards and cash from the suspects, aged 17 to 40." The way I read it is Interpol Interpol coordinated everything, and physical arrest was made by locals.
What does credit cards and cash have to do with DoS and Anonymous?!
Do they really think that Anonymous pays people for performing attacks or what? - They seriously need to look up what Anonymous is.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Legio mihi nomen est, quia multi sumus.
Surely they've been completely defeated. What a good use of time and resources.
Anonymous is a national security threat.
There is something slightly sad about kids being convinced that their elite skills mean they are undetectable finding that actually national agencies are not totally ineffective. It's a sort of hacker Dunning-Kreuger effect: people who might be able to convincingly shield their identity on-line aren't confident about it and therefore take additional precautions, while those who are confident may find their confidence is misplaced.
I have seen stuff recently asking people to let Anonymous use their computers for a DDOS on Interpol. In the past I have seen similar notices to DDOS other targets and have commented that it was a really stupid idea. This time, I never got round to saying how bad an idea it was.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Wording is what society makes it. Sorry hacking is now associated as much with the latter definition as the former and posting that is not going to change anything.
Words change. What was originally a misuse of the word 'hacker' has since become dominant over the earlier meaning.
The thing is that Anonymous is really just an idea. and as we all know, you can't just arrest an idea and throw it in jail.
Yeah. Next, let's arrest a revolution, or a book and other stuff like that. Congrats for wasting taxpayers money!
And that's why we can still say "nigger".
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
While it would be cool if they were an international police force arresting cybercriminals, Interpol is really just an organisation for information exchange between national police forces. The arrests were made by the ordinary police in the respective countries and according to local laws.
until they gave out information on the Mexican drug lords.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A cracker is a person who's modifying software to remove the copy protections, adding missing functionality (for games this would be cheat modes), shortening things, etc., to improve it.
Words do this thing where they change meaning through regular use.
It's interesting, if you're a language nerd, you're obviously not one.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
Or perhaps you thought kidnap, extortion etc were instinctive? Perhaps in your utopia we shouldn't arrest any criminals because you can't destroy their ideas?
Grow up.
filthy nosepicking miscreants
The thing is, it's not your language, my language, or any other one person's language. English is constantly evolving, and insisting on using outdated definitions of words limits your potential audience. In order to efficiently convey ideas, it's important to use words that everyone understands; this is the information age, and scientific, political, and social debate isn't limited to the elite anymore.
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
Except, of course, the headline states: "Interpol Arrests 25 Suspected Anonymous Hackers"
I know that headlines need to be short, to the point etc, but they could have rephrased it with "Interpol has 25 Suspected Anonymous Hackers Arrested", and it would be accurate.
I was called a cracker once, on the subway in New York. I don't think the intended meaning was the same.
"Interpol differs from most law-enforcement agencies -- agents do not make arrests themselves, and there is no single Interpol jail where criminals are taken. The agency functions as an administrative liaison between the law-enforcement agencies of the member countries, providing communications and database assistance."
The thing is, it's not your language, my language, or any other one person's language. English is constantly evolving, and insisting on using outdated definitions of words limits your potential audience. In order to efficiently convey ideas, it's important to use words that everyone understands; this is the information age, and scientific, political, and social debate isn't limited to the elite anymore.
u nggaz shd bettr be rdy4 txt msg spk in ur books
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Let us further put this in perspective.
Interpol finds 25 drones,who, while a microscopic part of a greater good, were too dumb to cover their tracks. Interpol pats itself on the back for generating headlines cheaply through ineffective, but showy action.
We should also consider that Anonymous exists for the purpose of Meta-vigilance in a world of unwatched watchmen and corrupt governments. Participants who stray to unofficial actions like " C.C.Fraud" have no business claiming the Anonymous banner as theirs.(obviously not too anonymous if they got caught, duh)
Let's call a spade, a spade and a club, a club.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Payback for recent Anonymous hack of Stratfor. Corrupt global economic hitmen protecting themselves by going after the whistleblowers, yet again?
Hardly. Interpol helps arrest 25 drones who participate in semi-organized cyber-guerrilla warfare against political targets. The idea that Anonymous is serving the "greater good" is not implied by their targets or by their results. Anonymous is not _coherent_ enough to have a well defined purpose. They consistently mistake what is effectively electronic graffiti for meaningful protest, and fail to convey or enunciate what they actually want. Anonymous may well have a few technically competent core hackers, but they rely heavily on their much larger community of script kiddies and poorly skilled hangers on to form the necessary crowds.
Like the fools at political rallies who throw bottles at police and overturn cars, they actively _discredit_ the political causes they occasionally espouse. They encourage police and voters to think of the genuine political movements as similar vandals. And they're not _competent_ enough to be genuine threats to those they claim to battle: they've demonstrated that again and again. If they were competent enough to actually raid corporate email or financial records and get them to Wikileaks, then I'd take them far more seriously.
u nggaz shd bettr be rdy4 txt msg spk in ur books
Thank you for a concise, graphic example of what awaits us at the bottom of a slippery slope. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need to maintain high standards.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Interpol finds 25 drones,who, while a microscopic part of a greater good, were too dumb to cover their tracks. Interpol pats itself on the back for generating headlines cheaply through ineffective, but showy action.
I expect most countries have laws at this stage to cover denial of service attacks and if they were part of it they can be done for it. Whether they were ringleaders or pawns they are still alleged to have participated in organised attacks. If their machines show evidence of participation (e.g. LOIC tools or whatever), or they confess then you can bet they'll have the book thrown at them.
Perhaps it might even dissuade other people from participating in future attacks. It amazes me that anyone is stupid enough to install tools to participate but clearly many do. If message sinks in that there are consequences and they can be caught, they might think twice.
Let us further put this in perspective. Interpol finds 25 drones,who, while a microscopic part of a greater good, were too dumb to cover their tracks. Interpol pats itself on the back for generating headlines cheaply through ineffective, but showy action.
Oh, of course. Kind of like
FBI arrests Homegrown Terrorist who tentatively decided to blow stuff up because the FBI contacted him, convinced him it was a good idea, provided him with fake explosives, and came up with the plan.
"Why are USians so obsessed with gay rape? I never hear that kind of thing in British discourse."
Because homosexual rape is routine practice in US prisons. Approximately 40% of males sent to a US prison will either rape or be raped before release. Americans who think it is a joke do so because they never think that they might one day go to prison, they don't care about what happens to prisoners, and they don't think through that allowing that culture to exist in prisons will mean the same rape culture is brought outside prison walls after prisoners are released.
Because in British prisons, the intercourse is consensual.
"Then you have the example above, where popular TV show (in Canada at least) skewers the whole movement. I dunno, maybe down the road it'll be remembered as the first internet counter-culture; something wicked cool that a bunch of kids born in the 1990s were a part of."
*facepalm*
I'm afraid generations in the decades before you beat you to it.
Whilst I'm happy to see it return to the internet, the culture of which you speak was thriving in the 80s and 90s. Look up the Chaos Computer Club, Cult of the Dead Cow, Legion of Doom, Masters of Deception, Phrack, 2600, Kevin Mitnick. Even these guys weren't the first but it was pretty prevalent before the kids of the 90s were even born, let alone walking and properly talking. It died off a little at the end of the 90s and early 00s, but now seems to be back.
A number of the older modern activists prominent right now didn't just pop up in recent years, people like Julian Assange for example were also there the first time around:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange#Hacking_and_conviction
Like the fools at political rallies who throw bottles at police and overturn cars, they actively _discredit_ the political causes they occasionally espouse.
Life rarely is that simple.
They have also given a face (literally) to the protest that could not express itself so far, because it is general unhappiness with a lot of things that are going wrong. And the only people who have been doing that kind of protest so far were the punks and anarchists that most people, even young adults, don't want to be associated with.
Anonymous gives this a much cooler and more respectable image. Yes, I said "respectable" there - look at the surface. Compare the character from V with a random street punk. Neither are exactly the good guy in the white vest, but V is a lot more likeable.
So while there is some discrediting involved, there is also a lot of mobilizing. Many people are now protesting, who would not have protested at all otherwise.
If they were competent enough to actually raid corporate email or financial records and get them to Wikileaks, then I'd take them far more seriously.
Stratfor
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You met Chris Rock on the subway?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Certainly in some cases yes. But why attacking the Chile's National Library?
What corruption could be in a library? The librarians are saint people, neither rich, nor corrupted.
If there is a corruption in the world, one still cannot attack anyone at will. Otherwise there will be a total chaos. That is why there is this mechanism in existence: the law. It is not perfect, but how otherwise to protect libraries and the likes?
problems seemingly inherent in vigilantism. Also, anarchy makes for a nice T-shirt, but in reality it ends up with bullies, thieves and fools loose in the works. ....of course that also seems to be the result of organized politics, so not sure what that adds up to in the end. People are often borked and the collective efforts of said people reflects that.
the antidote mostly seems to be education and inclusion in the uber-system dejour
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.--Mark Twain
...is money in the bank for the people declaring the war. By treating an abstraction like "Anonymous" as if it were something fungible instead of the complex nexus of behaviors, motivations, and means that actually characterize the Anonymous collective, it allows them a lot of freedom to switch targets at will to demonize anything Anonymous does. It's worked wonders for the neocons with their "War on Terror" in the US. By declaring war on what amounts to a tactic, it allows the neocons to ignore the legitimate differences in methods and motivations between various anti-American groups, and lump them all together as "terrorists." To put not too fine a point on it, the "War on Terror" allowed the neocons to generate enough fear of being branded anti-American to get the heinous Patriot Act passed with just a single nay vote. Declaring wars on abstractions is turning out to be a very powerful political tool, and you can be certain that it will continue to be used by anybody who wants to accrue political power.
>If they were competent enough to actually raid corporate email or financial records and get them to Wikileaks, then I'd take them far more seriously.
You HAVE heard of Stratfor, haven't you ;P ?