Journalist vs. the Syrian Electronic Army

New submitter Drunkulus writes "Journalist Ira Winkler has an article about his personal run-in with the Syrian Electronic Army. While admitting that the SEA has succeeded in hijacking the Wall Street Journal's Twitter accounts and defacing the RSA conference website, he calls them immature, inept script kiddies in this Computerworld column. Quoting: 'These people purport to be servants of the genocidal dictator of Syria and came together to support him, but they wasted their hack on what amounted to cyberbullying. This is not behavior that the SEA's Syrian intelligence handlers would condone. The SEA wasted an opportunity to promote its message, while divulging previously unknown attack vectors. ... I don't think that sort of immaturity will go over well with the SEA's Syrian intelligence bosses. And that could have implications for the influence of the group in the future.'"

Comments

Amateur? SKiddie? Takes one to know one...

[Shoten]

Ira Winkler is a journalist now? That seems odd to me. Attrition.org has an excellent summary of all the different smells of bullshit that emanate from this guy. He also got thrown out of Microsoft after conning them into hiring him to teach a class on application security where he literally used little dinosaur figures to try and teach the class. He was feckless...and this was *before* Microsoft got as good at security as they are now, before they developed their own SDLC, etc.

The U.S. is much better at attacking journalists

[Latinhypercube]

The U.S. is much better at attacking journalists.
Who needs hackers.

Wha...?!

[mr_mischief]

I used to deal with cleaning up the aftermath of the SEA daily. I see no evidence of nation state intelligence agency backing. They're mostly script kiddie exploits. They hit vulnerable older versions of popular software like WordPress and its plugins. Then they upload PHP web shells that are basically no different from r57 or c99. Spidershell would an improvement. Before the civil war they typically defaced sites with new pages decrying Israel's existence and calling for others to join them in defacing sites. Every other site defacing operation was basically the same or better.

Assad

[maroberts]

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that he may be bad, but the alternatives are far worse. In most countries it seems the Arab Spring has had little beneficial effect in terms of Freeeeedom!

Re:Assad

[Gavagai80]

Remove a dictator with a revolution and you're likely to get chaos and extremism, unless it was a short term dictator in a country with a strong history of bureaucratic institutions. Not unique to the middle east, the DRC after Mobutu is an obvious example.

GENOCIDAL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

What a load of propaganda. There's no coherent argument for Syria's state involvement in any genocide, unless you seriously debase the value of that term.

Assad is a strong-man, indeed, but he protects a multi-ethnic, woman-empowering and minority enabling nation-state. Secular modernists, Christians, Druze, Alawi, Sunni and Shia, along with unusual proto-Islamic and pre-Christian minorities are treated equally as Syrian.

The armed, "Syrian" opposition, that seeks to topple him? Not so much. These are the Wahabbist fighters sponsored by US and Qatari dollars - who'd implement whippings and stonings for teaching girls to read. They are imports from all the world's disaffected - but particularly Saudis - where it is a state policy to send these dead-enders abroad on "holy mission" and deflect their rage from the Saudi state itself, which is the natural source of their deprivations and disenfranchisement.

Who's calling Assad "genocidal"? Winkler - a spook from the NSA. That's who. He is also NOT unaffiliated with that little regional country which seeks disruption and neutralization of its neighbors. It is a pity that he is allergic to Truth.

Re:GENOCIDAL?

[buchner.johannes]

The armed, "Syrian" opposition, that seeks to topple him? Not so much. These are the Wahabbist fighters sponsored by US and Qatari dollars - who'd implement whippings and stonings for teaching girls to read.

The Syrian opposition consists of multiple parties, the one you describe being a small fraction. The sad thing is that they do not agree with each other substantially.

You are making Assad sound like a defender of his country. No doubt that is what he thinks. But he and his army have committed atrocities

The U.N. commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria confirms at least 9 intentional mass killings in the period 2012 to mid-July 2013, identifying the perpetrator as Syrian government and its supporters in eight cases, and the opposition in one.[526][527]

By late November 2013, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) report entitled “Violence against Women, Bleeding Wound in the Syrian Conflict”, approximately 6,000 women have been raped (including gang-rape) since the start of the conflict - with figures likely to be much higher given that most cases go unreported.[528][529][530]

According to three eminent international lawyers.[531] Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees. Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained and bore signs of torture. Some had no eyes; others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution.

find this and more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Indeed, not genocide, but: When the political opposition started to demonstrate, and Assad began to detain, torture and kill them systematically, these people begged the international community to step in and support peaceful demonstration. These educated, intellectuals, potential leaders -- who could have formed a new Syria -- are dead now. We left them to die. That is precisely why only the radicals are left.

Re:GENOCIDAL?

[s.petry]

Up until US propaganda started, which was during the Libyan revolution (which we paid a lot of money for, and even bombed quite a few people) Syria was known as the most modern and open society in the Middle East. These are not "stories", go read pretty much anything prior to the Libya revolt. Women in Syria could work and drive, they were not force to wear coverings. There is and was no "State" Religion, which for the Middle East is unheard of (including our 'allies' Saudi Arabia and Israel). There were plenty of Christians and Jews and yes several varieties of Muslims.

Claiming Assad is genocidal requires a new definition of the word! The people revolting have actually been "revolting" since at least the 1980s attempting to over throw the Government of Syria primarily to convert the country to Sharia Law under 1 Islamic Religion. Again, that is a fact not a "story". Syria is no more Islamic as a Country than Russia is Christian. People make that false claim based on the President's beliefs, but that would be like claiming that the US was Catholic under Kennedy and Quaker under Nixon.

Assad has been against US policy of imperialism for as long as he's been in office. He wants to remove Syria from the US Petrol Dollar (quite like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) but of course you may not see the significance. His plans to do so started around the same time as Libya, and suddenly the revolutionaries in his country gained a lot more people, money, and weapons. Kind of like Libya, wow!

If you want to say that "he's a dictator so we should hate him" then you had best look at our primary ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. Then take a close look at Israel and what they do to Palestinians. If you want to claim someone is "X" at least do the friggin homework to back it instead of taking someone's word for it.

Not Official

[enter to exit]

Their affiliation with any Syrian government is likely nil.

They seem to be an uncontrollable incoherent, loosely affiliated group without any hierarchy who just use the brand as a PR banner. Like Anonymous or Al-Qaeda.