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Thousands of Whistle Blowers Vulnerable After Anonymous Hacks SAPS
First time accepted submitter fezzzz writes "Anonymous performed a data dump of hundreds of whistle blowers' private details in an attempt to show their unhappiness with the SAPS (South African Police Service) for the Marikana shooting. In so doing, the identities of nearly 16,000 South Africans who lodged a complaint with police on their website, provided tip-offs, or reported crimes are now publicly available."
Reader krunster also submitted a slightly more in depth article on the breach.
How on earth does this fit with Anonymous' general philosophy of helping the little guy against the oppressive regime? Nine times out of ten they take that philosophy to an insane extreme, but this seems just the opposite.
Proof that Anonymous are idiots.
Maybe someone else has a beef with some whistle blowers and wanted to expose some names.
Now you always have Anonymous to blame...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Hackers ... This, they said was “for the 34 miners killed during clashes with police in Marikana on August 16 2012”.
So to protest the miners being killed by police, the hackers hack in, steal the information of other folks who had problems with police and then release it thus exposing those same people to reprisals?
What a bunch of fuck tards!
My comment about SAPS is no better. In short, they come across as brutish, stupid thugs. They are not police, just a gang with fancy uniforms.
while the police might have a PR nightmare, the whistleblowers are caught in the middle of Anonymous' vigilantism. They will be ones who will be hurt the most, while the cops will be fired at the most.
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Live by mob vigilante justice, die by mob vigilante justice.
One of the reasons that you generally dont want vigilantes running around is that its really hard to hold them accountable... especially when their very name is "anonymity". Of course, the "real" (?) anonymous could just deny involvement, and everyone can go back to cheering them on the next time they hack the current Big Bad.
they're in it for the lulz you dumbass
the entire summary and the first half of the article is basically an agenda for discrediting anonymous and whitewashing the local cops.
the leak was in response to the complaints from citizens sent to the police department, assigned a case number, and basically ignored by the police. what were the complaints about? the shooting death of 34 platinum mine workers by the police. you dont need to worry about exposing whistleblowers because the police killed 34 mine workers during a protest pretty much describes the suspects. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10016471/South-Africa-the-Massacre-That-Changed-a-Nation-BBC-Two-review.html
Good people go to bed earlier.
...It was always vulnerable. People seem upset that 'Anonymous' has revealed the list of whistleblowers. What you have to realize is that the police had that information so poorly secured, anyone with any computer knowledge could easily access it. So the police were leaving a list of whistleblowers out there dangling in the wind for anyone who had any ability to look. All Anonymous has done is reveal what the police were doing... Poorly securing important information. Hopefully that message won't be lost as people try to pin the blame for poor security on the people who revealed it was poor. Don't blame the messenger. Blame the people who have sensitive information and don't put in the effort to secure it.
Just because someone leaves something vulnerable does NOT give anyone the right to exploit that vulnerability under some phoney guise of showing them how vulnerable it was in the first place. Thats the logic of the self justifying fool.
This article completely ignores the big elephant in the room. Why was this information on a server hosted on the Internet? Shouldn't information like this be separated on a separate subnet? It talks about Intrusion detection systems and all sorts of technology to mitigate the risk, but the answer is simple. If your business data is isolated completely from your public facing presence, you need an insider or a physical break-in to be at risk.
is finally the year of Hurd on the Desktop
Look, police informants are not whistle blowers. You may think they deserve to be protected, but the term whistle blower has a specific meaning that does not equate to police informant.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
The entire concept of informing the public is to effect change. By releasing details about 16000 complaints the chances are that the police forces involved will be forced to make sweeping changes and we would expect a lot of arrests of officers who committed some of these crimes as well as officials who allowed it all to continue.
In a country where many law abiding citizens are literally held hostage in their own homes due to the amount of violent crime and we plead for people to come forward with information and they actually do, and we have success in many cases due to these tip offs, some asshat goes and publishes the list over the Marikana issue which they most likely have no clue about since I suspect they are not from South Africa to begin with. Congratulations - innocent blood is going to be spilled because of this and its on your head. Whether SAPS was vulnerable or not is besides the point - you brought innocents into this. In fact, you could rather have used your skills to find the details of all the covered up corruption cases if you were so interested in JUSTICE.
I have 2 theories. One is Anonymous didn't do this and someone else is lying. Two is anonymous is just as stupid as they seem and just as stupid as any other hacker. Defacement, data stealing, database leaking, causing downtime, they're all considered some pretend major victory by those mostly incompetent morons and script kiddies. They pretend like they can do anything but back in real life you need vulnerable system and specific security flaws to get into something. So if they can't bring the site down and can't deface it or modify it but they found an SQL injection vulnerability in the database so they went with that because at least it's something. Also, they just wouldn't feel special and amazing in their little pretend world if they weren't able to do anything at all to SAPS. So without thinking, they leaked all the data just to prove how "awesome and all powerful" they are. Ugh, give me a break. It's no wonder most of them don't have professional IT jobs. Set aside the clear lack of skill, they have no common sense or planning ability.
From the second article, emphasis mine:
"The hackers (@DomainerAnon) â" believed to be associated with hacktivist group Anonymous..."
Has a confirmed Anon source stated that it was an Anon op? A splinter group like LulzSec? An agent provocateur?
This reeks of a frame. It's out of character.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
According to the second article above provided by krunster, the hackers posted this message with the data dump:
"South African Police Service Web site hacked saps.gov.za database and e-mails leaked. The reason for this action is to serve as a reminder to the government regarding the murders of 34 protesting miners outside the Marikana platinum mine by police. To date no officers have been brought to justice... This situation will NOT be tolerated. #OpMarikanaMiners @domaineranon.”
So in response to the alleged 34 murders, the hackers expose 16000 names of innocent people to "punish" the cops? This would be like punishing Hitler by gassing American Jews.
If even one of those 16K people is killed as a result of this, the hackers become accessories to murder, in my book.
They're trying to paint juvenile attacks and posting private data with a veneer of social justice. I've actually wasted my time digging through a couple of their dumps. They're completely arbitrary. I'm sure their membership trawls the interwebz looking for vulnerable systems, and when they're digging around one associated with a "bad guy," they post what they've found and pat themselves on the back. Real social justice is based on a philosophy more distinct than "ooh lookie what WE found!".
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
http://xkcd.com/834/
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
.....become an oxymoron
Really, how stupid is this whole "Anonymous" thing?
"Oooh. Anonymous did this!"
"Oooh. Anonymous did that!
No. this and that were done ANONMOUSLY!
First thing that came to mind when I read this, who or what gives them permission to do what they are doing? Sooner or later this had to happen. When you think that everything you do always leads to a noble outcome, sooner or later you will really mess it up if there are no "checks or balances". I'm not surprised.
mod up
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Firstly, maybe this wasn't Anonymous, maybe it was the FBI or the CIA. Anon is easy to blame.
Secondly, this leak implies that the SAPS kept a track of "anonymous" whistleblowers. It's still bad for the whistleblowers but WHY DID THE SAPS KEPT A DATABASE OF ANONYMOUS WHISTLEBLOWERS?
This means that when you log a complaint the SAPS can use it against you. Anon simply uncovered information that the SAPS should have in the first place.
But then again. I'm not suprised, authorities record absolutely everything they can all the time.
that the CIA controls anonymous members now. see lulzsec busts and many more.
How slashdot falls for this shit is beyond me.
Just because someone leaves something vulnerable does NOT give anyone the right to exploit that vulnerability.
You don't understand. The poor security of the police meant those whistleblowers were already exposed to anyone with a little computer skill. This put them at risk without the whistleblowers even knowing about it. So Anonymous took this public step that, whatever reason they said they did it for, at the very least let the whistleblowers KNOW they were vulnerable.
You're trying to say "Just because a door is open doesn't mean you can walk in". But what I'm saying is there are innnocent people who counted on that door being locked. Anonymous showing behind the door publicly is a way to warn those people that anyone could've already walked in that door.
I can't stand these small screen things they shit me I wrote a whole story in the title box and can't fix it fuck the world and its cruel technology that if you can't use it means you fucking live in slavery
I can't stand these small screen things they shit me I wrote a whole story in the title box and can't fix it fuck the world and its cruel technology that if you can't use it means you fucking live in slavery