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AntiOnline Accuses, Attrition.org Responds
borehawg writes "John Vranesevich of AntiOnline is accusing Attrition.org staff members of being involved with the "hacker" groups called "United Loan
Gunmen" (ULG) and "Hacking For Girlies" (HFG). Attrition.org responds with this press statement. "
This has to be AntiOnline's most blatant attack against their enemies yet. Their accusation relies on two unproved points: 1.) HFG == ULG This looks shabby, since the two pages are totally dissimilar, and even if they were the same it wouldn't *prove* anything. 2.) HFG == Attrition Again, totally unfounded. Attrition supplies actually documentation with their assertions, making them much more credible. JP has yet to do anything but slander. I think JP's really reaching on this one. His web page, which could be a real source of news for the underground, is instead being used to throw his vitriol. To the people who are saying "kids will be kids": we're talking about the potential ruining of careers, not slanging matches between gangs of kids. JP is in a position of power, and he's abusing that. He's the underground contact of the uninformed, and as such he can say pretty much anything with impunity. I personally think the guys at Attrition should pursue legal action.
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
This is pathetic. A sad little man trying to be a cross between Barnum & McCarthy.
I can think of better ways to use time than to piss off HNN, Slashdot, Attrition, etc. - some of us argue that they actually do a bloody good job. Before this came out, I did recall seeing a few days ago on Hacker News Network some stuff about the two groups being completely dissimilar: I'm wondering if this has been going on for a week or so and it just hasn't surfaced.
Joel.
Smegma.
SCENE 1:
That's IT Johnie, give me your portscanner! I'm putting it away, and you can't have it back until you and Timmy learn to get along without fighting and calling each other names! You can just have a TIME OUT until you learn your lesson! And then go and wash up for dinner like a good little boy!
(Oh, what's wrong with kids these days -- I thought he might start playing nicer with the other children after he graduated from college and all, but he's just as bad as ever)
SCENE 2, NEARBY:
Timmy!! You bad boy! Do you want a spanking? No? Well, in that case... absolutely NO smurf attacks or SYN flooding for a WEEK! Don't roll your eyes like that! Stand up straight! Don't talk back to me! Go to your room!
(Sigh... kids these days. They say thay learn to behave after they hit 20, but sadly, I think they're wrong about that)
Well its time to teach someone a lesson that libel is a serious crime. I know I dont like lawyers any more than the next geek, but when someone is printing such potentially ingurious falsehoods something needs to be done. Apparentally Johnny doesnt care who is hurt by his unfounded allegations. It would be nicer if he felt some moral duty to verify his claims before he makes them. The sad thing is his claims are clearly laughable by anyone who has any understanding of image making or web authoring etc, but its just the sort of dribble that the media love. It should not go unchallenged just because we can all see through it. It needs to be challenged and shown to the media how laughable it is, so they dont trash someones career.
This was posted on the CyberWire Dispatch; don't know of an archive for this, so I've put it here. I think this piece says all that needs to be said. Like any spoilt child, if Vranesevich was just ignored, he would shut up.
He is such an uptight little kid. Once upon a time, I wrote a script that spammed his hack attempts database. I sent it out to a few people who faithfully ran it. When he finally disabled it, I got an email from him taunting me and how he was keeping logs of me for future use.
I swear he is the national enquirer of the internet. The time when he put up that "Eye on the underground" thing, and someone on a webboard he was "monitoring" inserted a little bit of code, he instantly blamed the webboard owners. Not only that, but he put out a press release stating something along the lines of "AntiOnline.com was not hacked. What happened is one of the owners of a service we monitor decided to change his content..." He faithfully declared this as the gospel truth.
I swear, he will do anything for a little more press recognition. He is the ultimate media whore.
Every time he gets in one of his pointless flame wars, he uses every possible media outlet as a means of trying to humiliate his adversaries. I saw during the last little bout, he used not only all 7 of his domains, but the happyhacker site, the happyhacker mailing lists, several other that he controls, and every time he was interviewed in that time, he mentioned it.
Not to mention, he considers himself so computer savvy, but when I got that email from him, guess what the client was...yup...Outlook Express.
Wow, I amazed myself by criticizing him without saying "crack baby media whore"
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"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
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I just sent this to JP.
I don't suppose he'll care though.
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This is the funniest thing I've read in a while.
You are so high and mighty over what?? A few websites that got hacked!
I don't have anything against you, but your article is laughable. Your "Virtual Fingerprinting System"? Care to explain what exactly that is?
From your article it appears to be nothing more than grep, cat and diff.
The thing I find most amusing though is again your high and mighty attitude. As if what you're reporting _Really Actually Matters_ to anyone bar a few nerdy computer types. I freely admit to being a nerdy computer type myself. So a few websites got hacked. Did anyone die? No. Did anyone get hurt? No. A few bruised egos aside.
Anyway, I'd be *most* interested to see you respond in public to Attrition.org's response to your article.
*If* what they're saying is true you sure have a lot of egg on your face.
I personally don't have an opinion either way. It seems you're both trying to take yourselves so seriously that you can't see how totally irrelevant to anything this is.
*Catch* the hackers with some solid evidence. That'd actually be something then. As opposed to grep and diff on a few files.
Tim Harman
Try to look at the actions of antionline.com from the point of view someone not familiar with technology has (to get an idea about the readers, who believe the stuff written there, look at the awards the site displays). ./ readers (meant to include all with at least a basic knowledge of how the net works), are no more the majority amomg the people using services the net offers. There's so many J. Does out there by now, who like their point&click-apps, that allow them to get a stock quote, to send e-mail to a friend across half the globe in a second. And they are easy victims to things like antionline.com, in electronic form or not. They represent the "public opinion", they also are considered experts among their family, their friends. They might never know, that antionline's theories are, at least, controversial.
The
Disclaimer: yes, I did simplify matters. On purpose.
fl
It's sad to see someone in a position of such power to abuse it the way JV does. I read both sides of the story from an unbiased view, and in my eyes, Attrition.org wins this one hands down. JV's argument is baseless - his "evidence" is weak at best. But the really sad thing is that this isn't just children fighting - there's a very real possibility that people are going to be hurt in this war of words.
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you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
While AntiOnline isn't very credible.. and JP is a moron. To use that fact to disprove their claims (a claim which has been echoed by much of the hacker underground) is a straw man fallacy.
The truth is, Brian Martin (Attrition.Org operator) is an FBI suspect in the HFG case. He is innocent until proven guilty. BUT this fact does make JP's claims NON-libelous. Not only that, it is EXTREMELY likely that Brian Martin in fact IS HFG. It's pretty much common knowledge among most hackers in his scene. Brian Martin is also good friends with the Forbes reporter who did an exclusive interview with HFG, coincidence? maybe. Suspicious? VERY.
To those familiar with webpage hacks, there are striking similarities that set the ULG and HFG hacks apart from all the rest. And indeed, Attrition is heavily linked to the ULG case, just search the Associated Press in the last 2 weeks for the word "Attrition"
Rob did it!!!
Bored with the unchallenging and non-time-consuming tasks of admining slashdot, Rob Malda took to a life of seedy internet hangouts and irc-addict script kiddies as a way to relieve the boredom of daily life and increase his page hits.
Trust me. I profiled him. I know it. See??? He has a web page, and graphics, and is online lots. He did it. Really.
That's all the proof you get today.
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
Can we say tedious?
.gov, .mil, anyone who can spend $150 for a hammer) and make yourself look as good as you can. And nothing perks up the American public's ears like patriotism. .gov or .mil or whatever, it makes them look very good in the eye's of the public (they are helping our government fight back against those cyber terrorists) and in the eye's of investors.
:) . But those naughty boys and girls at Attrition.org are offering this information to anyone while Anti Online only offers the information to people who would never ever ever ever think of using that information illegally.
With me now, people: T-D-OUS!!
Can I get an a-MEN from you now!!
Seriously though, this Anti Online thing is such a gas, but is becoming such a bore.
John How-ever-you-spell-it has a site which is also a business. When you are a business the idea is to make money, and make money well. OK, now, how to make money in the computer/internet security arena? Two simple ways; get those people with the bucks to back you and lose the competition.
Q) How do you get those with the big bucks, when corporate America is scared out of it's Armani suits by even the word "Hacker"?
A) First, start offering your information and special privileges to those with some of the biggest budgets (i.e.
With Anti Online only offering it's information database to
Q) How do you lose the competition?
A) Look at what has been going on. Any site which offers the same or similar information is being systematically hunted and if possible, eventually, killed. I mean, I'm willing to bet that much of the texts and exploits found at Attrition.org are the same as what is found at Anti Online (although I'm sure that the picture of the guy who hunted Santa ain't there! Nearly busted a gut on that
Now, I may be off here by miles, but if I wanted to make money from information the best way to do that is to sell that information. So I start off giving the information out to a select few for free, then when there is no one else (or no one else who is any good) offering the same information I start selling it to those who are willing to pay. And if you are the only game in town, well, you charge what you like.
In all honesty, I have nothing against John or Anti Online per se. As a matter of fact, that site and it's "guide to mostly harmless hacking" were where I got my feet wet with Linux and the inner workings of computers. It was with that sites information that I made my current choice of Linux flavor, Debian.
But his actions over the last six months have really begun to bug the hell out of me, and to make his motives suspect.
Whatever his rational, IMO he would be much better off just sticking to being an information repository (open to everyone, I might add) and being an information portal. Leave the cracker chasing to the feds, and leave the competition alone.
Actually, if I were the owner of Attrition, I'd do one plain and simple thing. Just say "John, you and me, in a ring, no gloves, no ref. Whoever is left standing keeps the site up, whoever is knocked out pulls the site". But then again I am a barbarian, so I'll just drag my knuckles to the kitchen for a beer and shut up.
Killing spammers is too good for them.
Me thinks you have missed the point, it's called playing with words. United Loan is a bank, United Loan Gunmen sounds like bank robbers. United sounds like a group acting as one, lone (assume) means individual, gunmen refers to a group. Lone gunmen is a reference to the individual convicted of JF Kennedy's assasination (and the possible conspiracies surrounding that). There maybe a few other iterations there I've missed. Pretty neat name, though I have no idea what their mission is.
Playing with words is a trate in the Hacker community (as it is with people of intelligence). It's even more fun when a possible translation is a contradiction of itself!
Neil Cherry - Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
My opine on this is ULG is doing some important work...their hacks demonstrate visibly that major commerce sites and government is unsecured and IT IS A VALUABLE SERVICE they are doing by showing to the public these flaws. Wouldn't you WANT to know if Nasdaq was unsecured? I sure as shit would!
JP is a total flak so I'm not even thinking about him, but I am disturbed by this new trend in security sites to NAME the people involved in groups or to prove the groups' existances. What the hell is that? Are people ratting on each other to earn gold stars with the Feds?
I see hacking as 1. a public service and 2. art. (Stealing is different and I don't condone that)
So whoever ULG is-- who cares? What's important is that their voices are heard.
My 2 cents...
New stuff: I'll also add that Brian and all of Attrition provide one of the most valuable services in security news in that they analyze journalists' articles and point out the mistakes and mis-information; in other words, they find the "bugs" in the reporting...this service is INCREDIBLY valuable and needed as most writers don't know anything about the underground and so sometimes rely on total flaks like JP or Clown Princess for information, which in turn makes them look bad. So Attrition is really SAVING a lot of writers' asses from looking like total fools and they should be thanked for that.
And for all you admins/security/Feds reading these posts, if you've never read Attrition, start doing so now. You owe yourself and your bosses the education.
--diva
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
If the media would quit giving so much credence and attention to packet kiddies and their l33t IRC hax0rZ groups, quite a lot of them would no longer have any reason to continue.
By constantly reporting on each "terf battle" that goes on between these groups of adolescents, the media is only *encouraging* them and other groups to do things that could merit media attention.
Sad thing is, it still kinda made sense in the context of this thread. :)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?