Anonymous Claims Responsibility For WikiLeaks Attack 183
mask.of.sanity writes "Anonymous members have taken responsibility for launching a denial of service attack against WikiLeaks this week using a custom-built tool that exploits an SQL server flaw. Field tests of the tool dubbed RefRef were launched against several websites including WikiLeaks, Pastebin and 4Chan. In a Twitter account linked to the Anonymous blog, the users were described as hacktivists with 'a personal vendetta against WikiLeaks,' adding that 'we are sorry we took you down. We are even.'"
They had it comming (Score:1, Insightful)
I am not surprised at all that someone has finally attacked them. This is not just an ordinary organization destroying documents, leaking their own sources or suing others for doing what they themselves want us to believe is our duty, ie. leaking confidential documents. This is much more. This is ignoring the fact that people are literally risk
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False flag operations are pretty easy against anonymous, because, well, anyone can do something and claim to be them. The media can claim they're in bed with Al-Qaeda and nobody would even be able to be interviewed to confirm or deny.
Re:They had it comming (Score:5, Insightful)
False flag operations are pretty easy against anonymous, because, well, anyone can do something and claim to be them.
On the other hand false flag ops against Anonymous are impossible because if someone does something and claims to be them, well then they are them.
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Not entirely true; claiming to be Anonymous while not acting and behaving in a particular manner is like a pale skinny asian kid trying to call himself a jock while trying to keep his glasses from sliding down his nose.
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I don't see how that applies. I never pointed out a specific behaviour, for one thing; just that there is a certain minimum set of parameters to meet to be reasonably considered 'Anonymous.'
That is, my statement is closer to "No Scotsman doesn't have roots in Scotland"; if someone claims to be Scottish but doesn't exhibit the core of the definition save for affecting a bad accent, then they're just playing at being Scottish.
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by Anonymous' own words
Ah, but how do you know that was Anonymous?
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Sorry for the double post, but to put it another way:
If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it probably isn't a cat, even if it insists so.
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On the contrary, at least five people would consent to be interviewed, two of whom would confirm, two of whom would deny, and one of whom would show goatse pictures to the camera.
Meanwhile, in Democracyville (Score:3)
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Amnesty International
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There is this thing called Google. It's pretty cool. You should try it out one of these days.
http://www.amnesty.org/ [amnesty.org]
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Wikileaks has been more about calling out what they see as government abuse than traditional whistle-blowing as well.
Amnesty International has never released a huge leak with unprotected civilian names, like Wikileaks has. Amnesty International has been calling out government corruption and human rights violations for years. I feel that they're overlooked in this conversation while everyone is donating money to Wikileaks.
Amnesty International has also called out Wikileaks for being irresponsible in leaking
Re:Meanwhile, in Democracyville (Score:5, Insightful)
Start with actually having evidence of corruption.
At one point, thats what Wikileaks did. That ended some time ago and hasn't been the case for the last couple of years. NYT will be happy to publish anything that gets them some readers back, but you actually have to have some sort of proof before you send it to them. They don't particularly respond well when you drop a boat load of stolen documents on their door step and say 'theres bad stuff in here, I know it because its from politicians and I don't like politicians'.
Neither does any other rational person for that matter.
Whistle blowers really don't have a hard time getting information out, when its actually something to be concerned with. The Internet makes it absolutely trivial, as proven already. The problem is as I said, learning the difference between real corruption instead of what typically is called 'whistleblowing' which is more along the lines of 'this company/politician doesn't do what I want/insulted me/won't let me have my way/insert any other childish reason you want here as it all returns to the fact that most of these people are angsty babies.
As I said, its not hard to get the word out. The problem is that 99.999999% of the people who like to think of themselves as 'whistleblowers' are just people who steal documents and break the law because they're too stupid to realize their point of view is unique to them and not the rest of the general population.
Thats the thing, one lone nut job with a irrational story about evil company/government gets overlooked and ignored quickly. Sometimes it takes a little more time, as is the case for Wikileaks who managed to build up some credibility before making it clear they never deserved any such thing.
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NYT will be happy to publish anything that gets them some readers back, but you actually have to have some sort of proof before you send it to them.
Unless anything is warrantless wiretapping by the government in the name of the war against terror -- then it will sit a year on the story, enough to make sure that the President gets reelected, just because the White House asked them to.
NSA warrantless surveillance controversy [wikipedia.org]
What the Times knew, and when it knew it [salon.com]
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Set up your blog as a Tor hidden service. Tell teh cyber police good luck.
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You'll get modded into oblivion here as everyone seems to think 'Anonymous' is the best thing to happen to the world in the last 4 billion years or so.
However, I could not agree more.
What you see here is a cat fight between two douche bags. Both groups are just a bunch of self serving pricks seeking as much attention as they can get.
The only good news is that anonymous will eventually fall apart, a bunch of script kiddies fucking around together never lasts, they'll fight amoungst themselves and tear thems
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How do you false flag anonymous when declaring yourself to be anonymous makes you anonymous?
They Sure did have it coming (Score:3)
Considering the news from just the last week:
I am not surprised at all that powerful organizations continue to attack them [techdirt.com], cheered on by the usual propaganda fan club.
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Wikileaks was down? (Score:2)
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But it's free to post a sob story asking for money.
Can you send me some?
Wow... (Score:1)
Anonymous vs. 4Chan. I predict this will be more interesting than any conflict this year.
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"We are even"
Wake me up when they're all out of kindergarten.
In the meantime, let me sleep.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Anyone else just find this nerd fight entertaining? Pass the popcorn :)
as much as z grade movies
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Yea, I always love watching script kiddies who aren't even able to form proper sentences or know the meaning of the words they are using. Its just one step below the jackass movies, or Ow my Balls.
It's a circus now (Score:2)
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Would if I could. It's being passed around alot.
Sabotage/Discrediting campaign (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure how this plays into the recent bevy of activity in the CIA's shattershot attempt to sabotage and discredit Wikileaks, but I suspect someone is getting played here. First you have Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a guy with a shady and rather thin past, come into Wikileaks and immediately start stealing documents and attempting to sabotage the operation--later participating in the discrediting campaign too by writing a book bad-mouthing Assange (and starting his own competing honeypot site to boot). Then rape allegations (the same kind that Dominique Strauss-Khan suddenly found himself facing just weeks after he began questioning [guardian.co.uk] the value of the U.s. dollar). Now all this recent uproar.
The CIA is really throwing everything at the wall here. Looks like some of it is sticking. Well played.
Some will laugh at me for saying all this. But, let's face it, this is hardly the first time they've used similar tactics [wired.com].
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So, someone alleges something in the past, which proves that the same thing is happening in the present?
Do consider that even "former CIA operatives" occasionally lie....
Re:Sabotage/Discrediting campaign (Score:4)
Never said it *proved* anything. Just says that they've done something similar before. And this isn't a court of law.
Jimmy caught stealing pie from Ms. Reynold's window. Jimmy caught stealing pie from Ms. Smith's window. Pie goes missing from Ms. Wilson's window. Police baffled.
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If the claims against the IMF head were a CIA operation, surely the US prosecutor would've actually done his fucking job and brought charges. He has a history of this sort of behavior. He's actually being protected by the US government, not attacked.
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If the claims against the IMF head were a CIA operation, surely the US prosecutor would've actually done his fucking job and brought charges
The goal was never a conviction. The goal was to discredit him long enough to get him booted as IMF head. Look at the timeline if you don't believe me. The prosecutors first admitted [nytimes.com] that their case was a joke literally TWO DAYS after a new pro-American IMF head was appointed [guardian.co.uk].
Let me help you:
February 11, 2011: Dominque Strauss-Kahn, International Monetary Fund head, makes a speech in Washington calling for the establishment of a new global currency that would devalue the U.S. Dollar
May 14, 2011: Dominque St
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Sounds plausible. But consider this [thebestpag...iverse.net] ...
If the CIA wanted DSK gone they could have created a watertight case and made him unquestionably guilty. They could easily have gotten to the defense lawyers as well. Why would they go to all that trouble only to have their great coup be unraveled by a simple 5-item timeline? It's like loose change all over again.
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If the CIA wanted DSK gone they could have created a watertight case and made him unquestionably guilty.
Again, why bother? All they needed was the accusation, a perp walk from the prosecutor, and some press coverage. You don't need an airtight case for those, just a opportunistic maid and a cooperative district attorney.
Why would they go to all that trouble only to have their great coup be unraveled by a simple 5-item timeline?
Because the press is stupid and no one will listen to the handful of "tin-foil-hat-wearing nutters" who make the connections.
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The problem is on May 14th, he resigned.
Resignation is an admission of guilt. You quit before you can be fired so no one can say 'he was fired' and you get all of your golden parachutes on the way out the door.
I'm sorry you don't recognize it, but I do. He made no attempt to fight the charges, so either he was guilty of that, or something worse that they held over his head and threatened to expose him for if he didn't resign ... again, making him guilty.
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He made no attempt to fight the charges, so either he was guilty of that, or something worse that they held over his head and threatened to expose him for if he didn't resign
Or he realized that giving up was the quickest, easiest way out. Not everyone can be the big hero who takes on the government.
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Certainly a nice side-benefit. He was a thorn in a lot of sides.
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Because you would never leverage the someone's past indiscretions when doing such a thing. No far better to pick something completely out of their character and set them up for that.
If someone has a history of drug use you would never acuse them (and plant evidence if you are being serious) of drug possession/use - no that would make it too easy. Much better to make something completely new up and set them up for that.
If someone has a prior association with prostitutes you would never simply arrange for the
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These are hardly "grand conspiracies." They're actually quite simple. The mafia has done operations WAY more complex that any of these. Hell, the average Ocean's Eleven movie heist is way more complex. Bribing someone with a shitload of money to sleep with a guy (or bribing someone who *had* slept with him) then to claim rape is as straightforward as it comes. Putting a plant inside an organization you want to stop is a no-brainier. Shit, a child could have pulled that much off. Really doesn't take much in
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Obviously, but I wasn't the one suggesting time travel as more reasonable than using things the target has a history of already.
Oh look, Conspiracy Corner open for business again (Score:3)
"The CIA is really throwing everything at the wall here"
Sure. If anything the slightest bit unfortunate happens to any hacktivist sacred cow then it - duh! - has to be the CIA. Or FBI. Or NSA. Or some government black hat organisation that only the l337 know about.
Get a fucking grip. If the CIA wanted to take down wikileaks they'd go for the people, not the infrastructure. And why do it now? 6 months ago would have been a lot more useful.
But hey , why bother thinking it through when a good ole conspiracy th
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The CIA learned a long time ago that discrediting was a WAY better tactic than anything as messy as assassination. Give them some credit for not being completely stupid. Think of it as a kindler, gentler CIA.
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Assassination of people running a website? Christ , you really are off with the pixies. I meant arresting them on trumped up charges.
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Why arrest all of them when they only need to discredit one?
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Assassination of Character.
Method, tried and true. . . pioneered by the good Senator McCarthy, from Wisconsin.
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The CIA has ALWAYS worked this way.
They assassinate when the person they are going after can not be made to look any worse than they are.
You assassinate drug cartel members, you discredit politicians.
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shattershot
Just for reference, scattershot is the word you're looking for. Shattershot is a Marvel comic book story arc.
too by writing a book bad-mouthing Assange
If you weren't such a raving fanboy you'd realize that bad mouthing Assange requires absolutely no effort what so ever, just speak about what he's done. He had a couple years early on where Wikileaks did a couple useful things. Before that, his history shows him as a complete and total douche in every aspect. He is one of the most selfish people I've ever seen. He thinks its a great idea to make
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No, all of those past allegations were only reported after-the-fact.
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Believe what you want to. I'm sure it was just a convenient coincidence that a guy who was calling for the establishment of a new international currency that would have devalued the U.S. dollar was arrested on rape charges just weeks later, with a public "perp walk" and a DA who bragged about an ironclad case. And also just a coincidence that just *days* after he lost his IMF position to a pro-American stooge, suddenly the DA admits that he really has no case and that the alleged victim is laughably uncredi
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I don't know, do *YOU* believe that CIA hasn't done these sorts of operations (and much worse) before? In South America, the Middle East, Cuba, Asia...should I go on? Maybe we should do some reading [amazon.com] and then come back to my crazy ideas. I'll put on my tin-foil hat and wait while you read.
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No, everyone knows that the CIA does that. No one is arguing otherwise.
Its just that its pretty clear that this time, they had no need to get involved. He did all the work for them before they even knew him.
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Everyone should read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [wikipedia.org]. Perkins is a little self-aggrandizing, but it's still a great insight into how our big global/corporate/military/industrial complex actually works (especially in the poorer countries we're looking to exploit).
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"You don't really believe that utterly ridiculous conspiracy theory, do you?"
I do.
I also believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bush administration and a cabal of corporate "Brothers".
I also believe that those 250,000+ diplomatic cables were initially released intentionally by the US government (They make others look far worse then the US. Where are all the other cables from those periods of time? Surely those cannot be ALL the cables during those years. Who selected these ones? Bradley? Were these the on
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I love it when morons say "facts" as if it's some magical word. They say it with the same reverence that many Christians say "Bible." They say it as if historians work with a large pile of clear, black-and-white "facts," which they just rearrange in a clear and concise manner--where history is just a chronicle of clear snippets (much like an elementary school history timeline, I suppose). That's so much more pleasant that the world that historians and journalists really work in-- a much-messier world of "ev
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Assange is hardly my guy. He's an arrogant prick in many respects, and his judgement is often rash. But that doesn't make it okay to frame him for crimes he didn't commit.
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If you want to ignore the context of his accusation, go right ahead. Let's just pretend he wasn't towards the top of the CIA's most wanted list for a massive intelligence leak that came just weeks before his arrest. Let's ignore that he had never been accused of any crime, save hacking, prior. Let's pretend that sexual assault isn't the perfect charge to use if you want to publicly discredit someone. Let's pretend similar false charges weren't aimed at Dominque Strauss-Kahn at about the same time (whom the
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lots of officals have questioned the value of the dollar.
How many of them were the head of the International Monetary Fund, in a position to actually establish a real rival global currency?
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The Assange case also involved a woman with a history of supporting the use of false rape charges for personal gain.
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You want something else to think about? Google "Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar"
This Doesn't Make Sense (Score:4, Insightful)
This doesn't make sense, though. Anon -- or at least part of Anon -- went out and slammed a bunch of credit-card companies for denying donations to WikiLeaks. And now Anon is saying they attacked WikiLeaks? I don't buy it. As recently as last week they were still expressing support for WikiLeaks, and were noting that WikiLeaks and their own servers were under attack. And 4chan? 4chan is their home turf, why would they DDoS that?
I grok that Anon is decentralized to the point of schizophrenia, but to this extent?
Re:This Doesn't Make Sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Anonymous is a mob. Like all mobs, they lack restraint or control and will eventually turn on, well, anyone they can. Including their home soil or the people they pretend to defend.
Of course they'll also a mob on the Internet, and lack the power to do anything of real consequence, like burning down a house. The result is that the whole thing is really quite funny, instead of tragic and a horrible crime.
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UM, society runs on the internet. Wait until someone takes down a bank or credit card company in a way where data is permanently lost. This you will see real damage.
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What's terrifying is if that mob start attacking poorly secured internet connected infrastructure.
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If they were all 13 year olds firing up Low Orbit Ion Cannon to DDOS some randomly selected website (by trips get of course), then yeah, Anonymous exists there en masse.
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Also, 4chan is basically the birthplace of Anonymous... Why would they attack it?
Something is VERY fishy here - the three entities attacked are the last three entities on this planet I could imagine Anonymous attacking.
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Why do rioters burn and loot their own neighborhoods?
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Also, 4chan is basically the birthplace of Anonymous... Why would they attack it?
For the lulz.
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Read the article. It was just one member, and they were just testing their tools. The article summary is written almost as poorly as the original article so it really isn't clear.
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This doesn't make sense
Are you equally perplexed when peace protesters burn buildings, or when a bunch of people unhappy about how a soccer game turned out decide to destroy a bunch of their city's infrastructure? Packs of people, mostly adolescent and presuming they can act with impunity because they're wearing real or virtual scarves over their faces, do exactly the sort of stuff you think makes no sense.
Next in the news: (Score:2)
Anonymous claim of attacking WikiLeaks originating from IP addresses owned by The Guardian...
Obligatory XKCD (Score:1)
834 [xkcd.com]
No, we did it (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, that's it. Now you have made an enemy of Just Another Fucking Anonymous Coward!
RefRef (Score:3)
Is this what took down Wikileaks?
Anonymous is a pile of useless (Score:2)
"Anonymous" and "LulzSec" - launched DDoS attacks and data thefts are about as useful a form of internet activism as the ubiquitous "Post this as your status if you want to support stopping [insert random evil here]."
Profit? (Score:2)
Step 1: Someone gets hacked
Step 2: Take credit for it
Step 3: ?
Step 4: Profit!
Wow, now I've seen it all. (Score:2)
I expect any day now for Anonymous to launch a DDoS attack against itself.
HAHAHA (Score:2)
...and the anarchist-wannabe "you're not the boss of me" teenage-brained script kiddies turn on each other. This is going to be funny.
Today's lesson: a copy of 5-year-old rootkits written by someone far more intelligent than yourself and downloaded after a Google search, plus a black T-shirt and a Front 242 CD, do not make you Che Guevara or James Bond or Robin Hood.
A candid look... (Score:2)
A candid look at the inner-circle of Anonymous leadership...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLsg0EvZozI [youtube.com]
4-Chan? Really? (1:45)
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IT IS a group.
Its a group of people who probably don't know each other, but all want to be associated with the same thing, that thing being the name 'Anonymous'.
The good news is, by doing so, every moron that flies the 'Anonymous' flag is part of a criminal organization and can be treated as such. No longer can you be punished JUST for your crime, you are also responsible for the actions of the organization you are part of.
Go ahead, keep being idiots and claiming yourself as part of 'Anonymous'. All it wi