Slashdot Mirror
BBC Taken Offline By 'Anti-IS' Group (bbc.co.uk)
New submitter shilly writes: The BBC is reporting that all its websites were taken offline on New Year's Eve for several hours, and the attack appears to be from a group calling itself New World Hacking. The group claims its raison d'être is to attack IS, but wanted to test out its capabilities first and chose the BBC as a target. A member of the group said, "We realize sometimes what we do is not always the right choice, but without cyber hackers... who is there to fight off online terrorists?"
so just terrorists then?
[The Universe] has gone offline.
Or maybe it should be "without cyber terrorists... who is there to fight online hackers?"
Did their mothers never tell them that two wrongs don't make a right? You need at least three lefts to make a right, or something.
I can't see how a non-government backed cyber-attack can work against a group with a distributed online presence. If you take down one site, wouldn't they just pop up another and use social media, or more old fashioned communications methods like email, to spread word about the new site. So are these New World hackers planning to also take down Facebook, Twitter, Sony or even the almighty Google?
Please explain how you come to that decision. I'm sure the world would like to know.
Oh, perhaps it is because it covers the 'real world' and not hicksville USA. It is also not afraid to take the UK Government to task.
To many people in the world, the BBC is a fountain of information and not propaganda like the US equivalent.
CNN-International used to be good but has gone down hill rapidly in recent years.
But hey, carry on thinking that it is some commie/socialist propaganda machine. There are a lot of people who think that the BBC is a right wing propaganda machine. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
If they wanted to 'test their capabilities' they could have just hit some obscure and unimportant site that no-one would even notice being down. Or they could have picked a target that would be a plausible target for Anonymous and let the world blame it on them - hit Sony again, perhaps, or some state-owned company in Russia. Attacking one of the world's most read and respected news organisations and the claiming credit for it publicly (Or, more likely, claiming the credit after someone else takes the BBC site down) just seems like a plea for attention.
Does IS even have websites? I've been lead by various news reports to conclude that they have an extensive social media propaganda campaign, but it isn't run through their own websites. Just an ever-shifting set of youtube channels, facebook pages, twitter accounts and so forth.
I'm guessing New World Hacking is following news of their exploits, which includes reading the comments here, so: Knock it off. You want to attack Islamic State? Go have a try at following their social media presence and report as many of their accounts as you can find to the service operators. You will probably have to learn a few additional languages though - Arabic does not do well on machine translation, and even in the areas IS operates Arabic isn't always the most commonly spoken of languages. That sounds like a better idea, with the added bonus of being legal so you can operate in the open and recruit a few more people - and you'll need them. Use those people to promote a countering narrative - spread word of their atrocities, and make fun of their idiotic proclamations. Religion is always week against mockery - once it loses respect it loses authority too.
To be fair, post-Hutton the BBC toes the government line in a way it hasn't since before the hippies invaded the ranks in the '60s. What is more, much of its research and technical infrastructure - including the transmitter network itself - has been sold off since the '90s. It really isn't the BBC it once was, which in turn wasn't the BBC that once was, but the privatisation is a real shift of control from something that had for three quarters of a century been about public broadcasting at arms' length from the State.
Just try it on the real target and if it works it works. Doing this really makes them lose any credibility.
I don't think you know what those words mean...
Jeremy Clarkson may argue that point with you.
The BBC is a British version of PBS and NPR. Has always had a pretty blatantly Leftist agenda, and in the Middle East, have been squarely on the side of the Palestinian Jihadis. Watching the BBC, for example, there is no way one would ever come to a conclusion that Israeli operations in Gaza would be in retaliation for daily rockets fired into Sderot.
Not just that, they are apologists for Muslims everywhere - from Britain to Europe to India and the Americas. Any anti ISIS/ISIL group that took down their site made the right choice for a test target. Good luck to them disrupting ISIS so that they don't get to convert our kids and friends to Islam and wage Jihad while here.
Al Jazeera is one of the largest news organizations with over 80 bureaus around the world. The North American version is actually quite liberal and certainly much more reputable than Fox News. We hosted those videos too, and Fox News has never had a problem interviewing people spouting the same sick conspiracy theories and anti-Semites of the like that are only evil to interview outside of the United States. Not to mention they have a light-weight website. They reported on the 47 executed in Saudi Arabia, which included Al Qaeda members, and they did so in a straight forward and unbiased way. Feel free to defend your argument. There certainly are a lot of things you could cite. I have errands to run and will counter later.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
What in the name of sweet Jeezus has your very exciting rant about all the perceived evils of US liberal politics got to do with the BBC?