Spamhaus Under DDoS Over Wikileaks.info 295
achowe writes "Steve Linford of Spamhaus sent this to a private anti-spam list and asked that the message get out far and wide: 'For speaking out about the crime gangs located at the wikileaks.info mirror IP, Spamhaus is now under ddos by AnonOps. As our site cannot be reached now [actually sporadic], we can not continue to warn Wikileaks users not to load things from the Heihachi IP. ... AnonOps did not like our article update, here is what we said and what brought the ddos on us.'" At the conclusion of this message: "Spamhaus continues to warn Wikileaks readers to make sure they are viewing and downloading documents only from an official Wikileaks mirror site. We’re not saying 'don’t go to Wikileaks' we’re saying 'Use the wikileaks.ch server instead.'" Here is Spamhaus's full warning.
kids these days (Score:5, Insightful)
When you have a large DDoS tool at your beck and call, who has time to bother with accuracy and trifling details like the truth? This is just further evidence that "anonymous" is some unemployed young adult.
The profile of anonymous becomes less and less one of sophistication and intelligence and more that of teenage angst and a limited understanding of technology daily.
I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they are just angry idiots with too much time on their hands. There's a reason why vigilantism is so frowned upon and force out in a civilized society: Vigilantes suck at justice. They shoot first, ask questions later. They are all about the Great Cause(tm) whatever that cause happens to be and don't do a good job thinking about any trouble they cause.
Now this is made even worse by the /b/tards because they are not very organized, operate with what they believe to be impunity, and are often kids.
So my bet is not a false flag op, just a bunch of dumbasses causing trouble. They've decided that Wikileaks will be their Great Cause(tm), until they get bored and find something else, and lash out at any perceived enemies of it without thinking about it.
Re:AnonOps part of the problem, not the solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Either inept or under orders to keep the kiddies that get caught up with them from getting real dead. Anon is kinda like the perpetual children's crusade of the Net... Brought to you by the letter 'E' as in 'ternal' and the month of September.
I wonder if they can help with the 'Grim Sleeper' case coming out of Los Angeles. They should distribute the pics to the darkest places and see if they can correlate any suspected victims with other material that might indicate whether being in the Sleeper pics is indicative of being a victim of a lone madman, or part of an underground porn ring.
This sort of thing doesn't take any talent, just knowledge of where to post.
Re:Doesnt look like anon to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:AnonOps part of the problem, not the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Their targeting is inept (they previously targeted the wrong DNS provider), their timing is inept, and Wikileaks doesn't need them to stay
That sounds *exactly* like the people from 4chan.
Yeah Yeah Blame AnonOps (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymous is very weird to understand. It functions similar to a terrorist bloc (note I am not calling anyone a terrorist).
If I toss a bomb in the middle of a street and kill 50 people - and I write "Terrorist Group X was here" - who's to say it wasn't them? Or if say a terrorist group decides to take credit for the BP spill - who's to say its not?
Its impossible to work out whether it was anon or not. Its impossible to actually call 'anon' a group. Its just a bunch of people who - at will - decide to partake in DDOS attacks. Its not a collective body, its a number of individuals - and its stupid to think otherwise. If I'm in a group with 100 people, and someone says "Lets DDOS Bank of America", if I agree with it, I'll take part. If someone says "Lets DDOS Spamhaus", and I disagree, I won't take part. There's no real leader. Its all chaotic.
So enough with blaming anonymous for this ddos. For a start you have no proof. To continue, anon isn't a group - its a bunch of people following 'random' leaders, and the ranks change frequently depending on who feels like 'some lulz' that day, and who agrees or not.
In fact how do you determine an action as being done by Anon? Done by the 'leader' ? No real leader. Done by a large amount of the group? Not a very good measure.
If I succeed in telling (say) 50% of anonymous that attacking this site is for their better - then will 'anonymous' be attacking the site? Does it matter?
Summary: Anonymous isn't a rigid structure with leaders, anonymous is an amount of individuals who individually follow a leader at that point in time because they agree with that leader at that point.
Re:I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
The United States of America is obviously not a civilized society. My personal experience with La Jolla, CA
So you've drawn conclusions about an entire society based on your experiences in one city?
Re:AnonOps part of the problem, not the solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
4chan is the very definition of stupidity.
Hanlon's Razor strikes again! (Score:5, Insightful)
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
+1 for you, sir.
Re:I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
They're just a bunch of stupid teenage script kiddies who think they're being "1337 haxxors" by running scripts other people made. They don't care if they're actually doing more to silence free speech than the US government is, as far as they're concerned, they're "sticking it to the man".
I'd wager that most of them have never even read the comic book that V for Vendetta (the movie) was based on.
Re:AnonOps part of the problem, not the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that there is no "membership" criteria to be part of Anonymous.. Anyone and Everyone who claims to be... IS. Therefore, I can go rob a bank and claim i'm part of Anonymous. It would be completely true.
That's the problem with an organization with no real structure or chain of command, there is no way to prevent people from doing things and claiming the group being responsible.
Re:AnonOps part of the problem, not the solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Faking that without unrelated members crying foul over obvious subversion attempts would be incredibly difficult, even even harder would be attempting to sway the actual anonymous DDOS attackers themselves. ...
tl;dr version: any agency attempting to spam with a target would be called out. Performing a DDOS then claiming it was anonymous without any corroboration would be equally obvious. Any attempting to sway opinion through a false majority would be promptly accused of samefaggotry and ignored.
You might as well be saying that black-ops in anti-globalization demonstrations cannot be manipulated, or cannot be themselves undercover agents, because it would be too difficult to fake a demonstration. By the way, there are videos on Youtube showing some particularly unruly of those black-ops to be members of the police force. This is the same thing here on the Web with Anonymous, but even easier to manipulate and to fake as they operate under the cover of deeper level of anonymity. Same approach, same techniques, same motives.
Re:AnonOps part of the problem, not the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a chain of command behind AnonOPs ddos attacks. The people running the anonops IRC network appear to be pulling most of the strings.
Some script kiddies have lone wolfed targets to no avail and some have organised independently to attack in groups. These small attacks always fail but the large one's are coordinated by a command hierarchy within the IRC network.
Although there seems to be allot of confusion amongst the script kiddies; some even claiming "We have no leader!" yea then who is setting the !lazor command?
Re:Yeah Yeah Blame AnonOps (Score:4, Insightful)
Impressive, you got this far down the thread without reading any comments at all.
Phillip.
PS bunch of Russian criminals != Anonymous