QuakeNet: Government-Sponsored Attacks On IRC Networks

Barryke writes "Like FreeNode, it seems more and more legitimate businesses or non-profit organizations are being targeted by government subsidiaries in attempts to disrupt and spy on their users. IRC network QuakeNet has posted a press release condemning these efforts. Quoting: 'These attacks are performed without informing the networks and are targeted at users associated with politically motivated movements such as "Anonymous." While QuakeNet does not condone or endorse and actively forbids any illegal activity on its servers we encourage discussion on all topics including political and social commentary. It is apparent now that engaging in such topics with an opinion contrary to that of the intelligence agencies is sufficient to make people a target for monitoring, coercion and denial of access to communications platforms. The released documents depict GCHQ operatives engaging in social engineering of IRC users to entrap themselves by encouraging the target to leak details about their location as well as wholesale attacks on the IRC servers hosting the network. These attacks bring down the IRC network entirely affecting every user on the network as well as the company hosting the server.' One of those tactics applied by governments is the DDOS, which (perhaps not so) coincidentally, is what their suspects are accused of. Is this irony or hypocritical?"

Comments

Fuck Beta!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.

Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this [slashdot.org] in a new tab. After seeing that, click here [slashdot.org] to return to classic Slashdot.

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott [slashdot.org]

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.p... [slashdot.org]
Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org [altslashdot.org] (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))

Re: Fuck Beta!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want "pathetic and obviously ineffective", take a look at beta.slashot.org, setting a new standard for toxic waste.

Re: Fuck Beta!

[dmbasso]

Your apathy leads nowhere. Our action perhaps will bear fruits, who knows...

But you're mirroring the regular population apathy in politics. Most people take no action because "it is obviously ineffective", as The Man brainwashed you to think.

At least here it is pretty easy... if they don't listen to me (us), I'll not use the shit that's being imposed. But if I don't manifest my opinion, I can't even complain later.

So fuck beta, and FUCK YOUR APATHY.

Re: Fuck Beta!

[cervesaebraciator]

Pathetic and ineffective? It's just a bad link. Here, I'll fix it:

Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))

Re:Fuck Beta!

[Aighearach]

I've been here since the 90s, what makes you think I'm going to let Mr. Coward tell me how to mod?

Next you'll suggest I read articles! lol

As to the summary, which I skimmed, I already know about the freenode blog that it links, because I'm a freenode user. And the blog doesn't talk about the big bad gubermint DDoSing freenode. Actually it talks about cooperating with law enforcement in handling DDoS attacks, but that there aren't enough resources to track down the command and control servers so nothing is likely to get done on that front.

It is actually some insidious FUD, trying to imply that FOSS == Anonymous, which is totally absurd. Freenode is a white hat IRC network.

About the beta.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Slashdot is dying.

        One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Slashdot community when IDC confirmed that Slashdot page views has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all websites. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by the stupid fucking beta website and the wholesale discard of user feedback.

        You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Slashdot because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for Slashdot. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

        Slashdot Beta is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core users. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Slashdot users Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Slashdot is dying.

        All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in market share. Slashdot is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among S&M enthusiasts. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.

That crippling bombshell sent Slashdot fans into a tailspin of mourning and denial. However, bad news poured in like a river of water.

Fuck the beta.

Beta feedback helps

[Sowelu]

I'm not going to quote them without permission, but from talking with one of the editors, some of our sentiment about the beta is shared by them, and they really do want user feedback to help things go in the right direction. Presumably they have no power directly, but if literate and thought-out comments get submitted to the beta feedback, they will do what they can to send them upwards. Don't just complain in the comments, help the editors help you, at least some of them are on your side.

Re:Beta feedback helps

[aardvarkjoe]

We've tried that already. The feedback was ignored.

It's obvious that whoever is working on the new site either lacks the skills or the desire to match the functionality of the current interface. No amount of feedback is going to change that, and so the Beta will always suck.

Do they want to stop the complaining? That's easy. They don't have to get rid of the beta. They just have to formally commit to keeping the classic interface available, and make it straightforward to use it instead.

Re:Beta feedback helps

[demontechie]

The beta feedback discussion for the last couple days has been literate and well thought out, but there has been no public response of any kind. Not even a half-hearted "we hear you and we'll see what we can do about making classic available in perpetuity, but no promises."

And with the revelation of Dice's view of the slashdot finances projections, and the heavy handed mass downmodding it's hard to see what reason the users have to retain any faith in the editors or their superiors.

Re:Beta feedback helps

[carlos92]

If you have access to the editors, let them know that nobody is discussing the stories today. In a day or two this will be a ghost town, they don't have much time to process the feedback.

Re:Beta feedback helps

[Soulskill]

Believe me, we're well aware of what everybody is discussing.

Re:Beta feedback helps

[Soulskill]

It's all any of us are talking about today (and most of what we've talked about for the past few months). Whatever changes get made, they need time to be decided on and implemented. I'm sorry it doesn't go faster, but that's why we still have the classic site available.

Re:Beta feedback helps

[bluefoxlucid]

Soulskill, your stakeholder management is poor. Up on the front page there is a big "We are shoving this down your throat soon" message thrown at your customers--executive stakeholders, low power, high interest, low influence. You've largely shuttered them out, rather than keeping them informed; you've solicited comment and not informed them at large that their comments are heard and being discussed actively. This is producing customer backlash.

You should change the primary message in everyone's face to reflect what's been said here, and to notate that you are considering further changes and delays before moving to a full public release. Make prominent also that you have decided on the short-term availability of Slashdot Classic after launch as yet another metric. Provide a larger update page describing how this will handle--more discussion, more sampling, surveying, and then when and how you will launch. Maybe detail a launch process where everyone is set to New Slashdot by default, with a Slashdot Classic option that resets once per month at most, after major changes, so that the metric of who immediately runs back to Slashdot Classic can be re-sampled after major changes.

I suggest Tres Roeder's book "Managing Project Stakeholders" particularly for your review. The other book (A Sixth Sense for Project Management) is more useful in closed quarters, but I can recommend both.

Beta a Bust

[LordFlower]

Beta sucks. I will not be back if Beta is made mandatory.

Soulskilll and Timothy

[Princeofcups]

Give it up guys. You know that no stories are going to be discussed. Today is the end of the old Slashdot. Start sending out resumes, since this is going down in a blaze of glory.

Hey, the first story we should get on the replacement site when set up is an interview with Rob and Roblimo on why they really left Slashdot and left these incompetents in charge.

Re:Soulskilll and Timothy

[carlos92]

They won't give it up because they still don't get it. They think of the site users as the audience, as if the value of Slashdot was the articles. Just in case Dice reads this: the value is in the comments from the community, some of which are less biased and more informative than the referenced articles. Some are written by experts in the matter, or contain perspectives that a journalist doesn't have. Sure, most of the comments are junk, but the mod system helps you with that. But nobody from Dice will read this, because if they read Slashdot they would have already seen it.

Re:Soulskilll and Timothy

[Soulskill]

We know most of the discussion will be centered on the beta. Some people will want to read news anyway, so we'll keep posting.

You folks are certainly welcome to keep commenting about the beta; we're reading all of it, and we're communicating it to the Product team who makes the decisions about the design.

Re:Soulskilll and Timothy

[Soulskill]

We've had the community involved since October, actually.

Re:Soulskilll and Timothy

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't please everyone.

And hey, it's easier to get all riled up in your parent's basement than it is to get involved and give proper feedback.

What I have seen repeated many times so far, is that the pubic feedback options for Beta actually *HAVE* been used, and that the issues mentioned in that feedback has been consistently ignored, A La what happened with Metro, Gnome3, and Unity.

It looks more and more like the current crop of UI developers does not know how to accept that their architectural marvels can be so poorly recieved that people would be willing to salt the earth and nuke the site from orbit to rid themselves of it, and instead "Just cant understand why people dont love it."

There does not need to be a reason to dislike something. For instance, think of the food you most despise. Why do you despise it? Can you quantify exactly what it is about that food that sets you off, and makes you go elsewhere? Could you give insightful feedback about what might be done to improve it, (that does not involve simply not serving that food-- because that option has been categorically decried as "Unhelpful".)

Most of the time, the answers to those questions will be a resounding "no", because personal preferences dont NEED reasons, and often times, dont even really HAVE a quantifiable reason to cite. People simply dont like the thing.

When you have resounding negative feedback like this over a product, the question you need to ask is "What DO you want?", not "Oh, so you dont like the taste of liver and onions? How would you make liver and onions more palatable?" The former establishes good will-- the second one shows that you dont really care about what your consumer wants, and intend to make him eat liver and onions regardless.

In the case of /., the community HAS stated, emphatically and repeatedly, EXACTLY what they want-- They want a no-nonsense, low resource, and high data density version of classic with editing abilities for registered users, and unicode support, that does not break the commenting system and is very lean on data bandwidth and computational resources for rendering.

So far, the response from the beta team has been the sound of crickets chirping, followed by announcements that liver and onions will be served on feb 10.

If slashdot's beta team members would grow a pair like soulskill just did 2 posts up, and actually come in and discuss this matter with the community, it would really show some good will on their part.

As is, they are only just digging the hole deeper with their bullshit.

NO to Beta

[mccotter]

Do not make beta mandatory. Keep classic.

donotwant Slashdot Beta

[acid_andy]

Dice, Editors, your silence is deafening! Slashdot is News for Nerds but no true Nerd wants your Beta. Stop pretending this problem will go away. Maybe you actually hope it will go away, maybe you hope Slashdot itself will go away. Whatever - at least have the decency and respect for your long term readers to give some kind of response to all the negative feedback. Why not keep two versions of the site? If Beta was done properly it would all be a CSS skin with some scripts that could all be swapped out. You already have a mobile site, so it can't be to improve appearence on mobiles, tablets, phablets, touchscreens, etc. Oh sorry, I forgot, that wouldn't keep the advertisers happy. Slashdot was awesome while it lasted.

Save Slashdot Classic

[Bob9113]

Shame, I'd actually like to discuss this topic. But, then I'd be jeopardizing every future discussion.

Javascript dancing baloney and giant pretty pictures belong on USA Today, not Slashdot.

The meat of Slashdot, the substance that draws viewers here instead of the alternatives, is the comments. Lose those comments and you will lose the eyeballs. Lose the eyeballs and you will lose the ad revenue.

Alternatively, you can accept that you made a mistake, keep Slashdot classic, and keep the steady flow of cash. Make the right business decision, here, Dice. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Alternative alternative: Dice; make us an offer. If you really have written this thing off, give us your stats so we can crunch the numbers and tell us your price. It should be pretty clear that the path you're on will not be lucrative, so show your lowest and best offer. There's some pretty affluent folks here, and this place is important to us. If the workers at Harley Davidson could do it, surely it is possible for us to do the same.

No legitimate discussion until Slashdot classic is restored. Sacrifice a few days of discussion now to save all the days in the future. The Spirit of Mohdri Dragon Lives! (feel free to get drunk and naked while posting)

Slashdot Clone?

[Keick]

Ok, I tried the beta. Yeah its not pretty, the comment section is pretty small width wise, it looks HORRIBLE on my iPad... The client side filtering of comments completely ignores my long time preferences, etc etc.

To the point; Many have asked about cloning Slashdot, and retaking the community site. But has anyone thought about how such a mission could be accomplished? Yes I know I can go grab slashcode and standup a 16 core xeon box to toss on my 100mbps connection. But what about the users, the stories, the comments. We can't just screen scrape those to stand up a new site.

In what possible way could we honestly standup a new slashdot that is community owned?

Brett

"As we migrate our audience"

[skillrod]

That's one way to look at it what this Beta will do.

BETA SUXX0RS!!!

[tedgyz]

Sorry Dice, but I have to jump on the beta-hata wagon. I'll just point out two things:

1. Right side bar squeezes out comments. We are here for the comments, not whatever crap you want to cram down our throats.
2. Vertical spacing of text wastes tons of real estate. It looks like a High School book report padded to fill the required pages.

Dice Holdings, Inc: Please consider your next steps carefully. The /. castle was not built in a day, but it can easily be destroyed in a day. You have one chance to avoid a mass exodus. As others have said, eyeballs == advertising $$.

Stop trying to squeeze blood from a stone. The reason we come here is because most other news sites suck. If you want to throw your hat into the sucky news site ring, all I can say is good luck with that.