Pirate Bay Criticizes Anonymous' Attack On Virgin

judgecorp writes "Anonymous launched a DDoS attack on Virgin Media, apparently in protest at Virgin's decision to block the Pirate Bay. Now the Pirate Bay has criticized Anonymous, saying it doesn't support DDoS as a form of protest. The statement is interesting, given that Anonymous has been attacking music industry sites and other targets for some years, saying it is in support of the Pirate Bay."

Comments

It's not interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

The statement is interesting, given that Anonymous has been attacking music industry sites and other targets for some years, saying it is in support of the Pirate Bay.

How is that "interesting"? 'Anonymous' are a bunch of cyberthugs which is not the crowd of people The Pirate Bay want to be associated with and they have never wanted to be associated with. The Pirate Bay is trying to legitimately fight for copyright reform and having a bunch of script kiddies attach people in their name undermines that effort.

Re:It's not interesting

[Requiem18th]

More to the point. TPB's goal is freedom of speech and access to information. They are not about to punish someone for what the say by trashing their website.

Re:It's not interesting

[TangoMargarine]

Find and replace "Anonymous member" with "self-identifying Anonymous member."
 
There, are all you whiny twats happy yet?

Re:It's not interesting

[luis_a_espinal]

You underestimate Anonymous.

Anonymous is chaos. It's the true consequence of freedom. It's anarchy.

Anonymous is weather and piratebay a butterfly in NY. The comments will have an impact but you won't know what particular impact until after the hurricane has already passed.

That is so profound </rolls eyes>

Re:It's not interesting

[fatphil]

Pointing people in the direction of things they might be interested in is clearly exercising freedom of speech.

However, if you're prepared to obfuscate and charge the issue by calling copying "stealing" you clearly have no interest in the accurate representation of things in this matter.

Bystanders

[SJHillman]

I'd have to agree with TPB on this - DDoS has a tendency to affect a lot more than just the target. It's using a grenade to take out a single guy on a bus.

Re:Bystanders

[MightyYar]

It's using a grenade to take out a single guy on a bus.

That's very true, but it may well be that Anonymous doesn't have many other weapons. If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole :)

Re:Bystanders

[ewanm89]

Especially being how Anonymous only do extremely inefficient ICMP flood attack, the least they could do is learn to pull off a DDoS properly.

Re:Bystanders

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like using a grenade to take out a guy on a bus and hitting the wrong bus.
The actual bus the guy is on is behind the one you nailed, and all you did was get him stuck in traffic.

Re:Bystanders

[Chrisq]

I'd have to agree with TPB on this - DDoS has a tendency to affect a lot more than just the target. It's using a grenade to take out a single guy on a bus.

Yes, Anonymous are the Muslims of the cyber-world

Re:Bystanders

[neokushan]

I think it's less like a grenade and more like a shitload of spitballs. I mean, get hit with enough of those and it's going to be pretty unpleasant, plus a few are bound to miss and hit some other poor sod to the point where he's going to fell grossed out and maybe want to wipe his face a bit. But er....yeah I'm not really sure where I'm going with this analogy but I think the point I'm trying to make is that it's crude, only somewhat effective and those it "harms" aren't really harmed in a particularly dangerous way - it's more an irritant.

Re:Bystanders

[SJHillman]

In one of my security classes in college, each student was assigned a different type of attack and asked to demonstrate both the attack and countermeasures. I was assigned DoS/DDoS. Although I ran through the typical DoS/DDoS attacks, I also took one of my older PCs (a 186MHz Cyrix processor if that's any indication) to the backstage of the campus theater and beat the hell out of it - threw it off ladders, raised it on a pulley and smacked it around with a 2x4, took a grinder to it, etc. There's plenty of effective DoS/DDoS attacks if one is creative enough (and physical access always helps). Professor loved the demo. I later donated some of the parts to the PC hardware class.

Re:Bystanders

[halcyon1234]

They took out the company's website, not the service itself. So...

It's more like tossing a grenade at a parked bus with the company's name on it, that no one was using, when the real guy you wanted was taking the underground, high-speed, heavily armoured and inaccessible train to and from the comapny's skyscraper headquarters, and business goes on as usual.

Re:Bystanders

[tlhIngan]

Especially being how Anonymous only do extremely inefficient ICMP flood attack, the least they could do is learn to pull off a DDoS properly.

That's so ... ancient information. Anonymous and LOIC do NOT do ICMP Echo floods by default anymore. They do HTTP requests. The latest version of LOIC even makes the HTTP requests non-cachable (using various tricks that force a caching service to pass the request upstream so you'd need a really good CDN).

Not Virgin's fault

[iB1]

Virgin had no option but to comply with the court order that was issued. If they had ignored it, they would've been fined hundreds of thousands of pounds - probably even more than that.

I'm not a Virgin Media customer, but I understand that the block is trivial to swerve around, so Virgin Media have obeyed the letter of the law, but haven't made it particularly difficult to get around. Anyhow, DDosing a web-site is just lame.

Re:Not Virgin's fault

[Chrisq]

I am a virgin customer and there are loads of ways round it.

Re:Not Virgin's fault

[bky1701]

Funny how corporations always get away with the stuff that hurts consumers and yet end up being totally powerless against those darn governments trying to do the same. Almost makes you wonder if corporations are not paragons of virtue.

Headline

[necro81]

Pirate Bay Criticizes Anonymous' Attack On Virgin

Although Pirate Bay and Anonymous are regular /. fodder, you know this story got approved only for the headline. Let the jokes commence!

Re:Distance

[lambent]

I don't think so. They've been under attack for a long time, and have always had an irreverent attitude to the Powers That Be. They've always seemed indifferent to how they are viewed by ISP's and governments.

I don't believe there's anything ulterior to this, they probably just don't like DDoS's. No reason not to take them at face value on this.

PR

[davegravy]

Wow... The Pirate Bay is making public relations announcements. If that isn't a sign that the site now exists more for political reasons than to be complicit in piracy, I don't know what is.

Much more interesting comment...

[gstrickler]

From TFA:

“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling the issue of copyright infringement needs compelling legal alternatives, giving consumers access to great content at the right price, to help change consumer behaviour.”

I find that far more interesting than TPB distancing themselves from Anonymous.

Re:Much more interesting comment...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think

“If you want to help; start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists.”

is a much much more interesting comment.

Re:but theres more to this message

[a90Tj2P7]

I've read the whole article and they do say in other words that they don't support their types of attack... they didn't say to stop it. :)

Then you have lousy reading comprehension. FTFA:

“We believe in the open and free Internet, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us,” the group said.

“So don’t fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.

“If you want to help; start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists.”

Clarification

[neokushan]

From reading the comments, some people seem to misunderstand what actually happened. Yes, Anonymous DDoS'd Virgin Media, an ISP in the UK. However what they did was take down the main website, www.virginmedia.com - customer's broadband connections were NOT affected in any way. I know this as I am one of their customers.

Incidentally, despite being an ISP their website is pretty shoddy. I shared the link about the attack with a friend of mine who used to work for them, her response? "Well that doesn't surprise me, the bloody web site goes down if there's a stiff breeze or a bank holiday". Slight exaggeration, yes, but the point is clear.

Re:Distance

[hendridm]

I don't believe there's anything ulterior to this, they probably just don't like DDoS's.

Indeed. I'm sure they've been hit more than their fair share of times and probably loath it.

Just like it war, you may wish to kill the enemy, but a lot of folks are against torture. There's a right way and a wrong way to achieve the goal.

Captain Obvious To The Rescue

[luis_a_espinal]

It's using a grenade to take out a single guy on a bus.

No.

I think that your comment is hyberbole

No shit! Stop the presses!!!((1<<3)|3)

hyperbole /hprbl/:
Noun:Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
Synonyms: exaggeration - hyperbola - overstatement

DDoS is not like using a grenade on a bus.

</sigh> http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-01-05/

Fine, let's spell it out for you:

Definition for figure of speech:
trope: language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense.

trope /trp/

Noun:A figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression.
Verb:Create a trope.
Synonyms:metaphor

metaphor /metfôr/
Noun:A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
A thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, esp. something abstract.

All I kept thinking was

[kaizendojo]

"Pirate Bay Criticizes Anonymous' Attack On Virgin"? I hope Bieber is OK.