PayPal, Symantec Hacked In Anonymous November 5 Hacking Spree 101
New submitter Journe writes "Anonymous claims to have begun a hacking spree for the 5th of November. In their spree, they've laid waste to several Australian Government sites, and, for some reason, the site of Saturday Night Live. They also claim to have leaked VMware source code, along with user and employee info from Paypal and Symantec. There's some argument however that Anonymous is falsely taking claim for Symantec."
Slashdot too (Score:5, Funny)
They also tried to deface Slashdot by correcting the spelling of "Symnatec", but the Slashdot editors kept them at bay.
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No this is the website for the Egyptian Pharoah Sym-Na-Tec
sorry...
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Wait... was that a 70s flashback? I only have these visions when I'm in my Den.
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Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Having no leadership, no structure, and no goal (beyond that afforded by the community politics of certain outspoken folks), Anonymous is free to rationalize anything however they like. There is no need for logic or restraint. In an orgy of solidarity, the "with us or against us" mentality reigns supreme. PayPal, MasterCard, government, and anybody else who opposes their attacks are just added to the list of targets.
To each individual, the notion that they could be doing more harm than good is offensive. They've already passed judgement on their enemies, and deemed them evil, and anybody who disagrees must be evil as well. Sure, PayPal, Symantec, and every other company have done some bad things in their history, and should not be lightly forgiven. However, it is important to remember that every individual has also done equally bad things, and should not be the sole judge and executioner of any person, corporation, idea, or organization.
A Religious Order (Score:5, Insightful)
They've already passed judgement on their enemies, and deemed them evil, and anybody who disagrees must be evil as well.
I see. So they're a religion.
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Like Linux users.
Or KDE advocates.
Or FOSS advocates.
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Re:Irony (Score:5, Funny)
Let he who is without transgression launch the first low-orbit ion cannon.
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Yes, it seems to be a strange form of group intelligence, this hive. They are evolving into an entity of the desires and fears of the participants. I want to envision a throng of torch and pitchfork bearing peasants on the steps of $cientology , like when it began. Instead I see the usual bullshit that wears a subculture down to a cult of hardcores, while the others move on to the "NEXT BIG THING". In like a lion, out like a lamb. Mark my words.
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It's a Guy Fawkes reference. "Remember remember the 5th of November"
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Which is sort of derived in part from the whole Guy Fawkes thing, but I bet most of Anonymous have very little idea about anything outside of that film[1].
[1] I initially meant "anything about Guy Fawkes outside of that film", but I'll leave it as it stands.
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Sadly, you're more than likely correct that Anon isn't well versed enough in history to realize it's based off of actual events.
I wouldn't doubt it if they all started blasting the 1812 Overture during this hack spree.
Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't get too upset about Anonymous. Think about it. Aren't drone strikes just like Anonymous hacks? They are acts of judgement and execution without due process wrought by anonymous people from a far away distance. Oh, and there is always collateral damage and victims can't mount a legal defense. If you want to call acts like that chicken-shit and douchy, then go ahead.
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With drone strikes, there is a public command and control structure that can be held accountable.
And there are often wedding guests that can act as witnesses.
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Aw, look, the anonybots have taken offense.
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If they are an army you are at war with then why don't the laws of war, such as treatment of POWs an alleged war criminals, apply?
The US wants it both ways. Fight a war but declare the enemy soldiers to be civilian terrorists who no rights.
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Sure, PayPal, Symantec, and every other company have done some bad things in their history, and should not be lightly forgiven. However, it is important to remember that every individual has also done equally bad things, and should not be the sole judge and executioner of any person, corporation, idea, or organization.
Really?
Really?
What was the last thing YOU did that was "equally bad" as the shitshow that is PayPal?
Or maybe you worked for Union Carbide and are responsible for the Bhopal disaster [wikipedia.org]
99% of individuals will never have the opportunity to do anything "equally bad" as a multinational corporation.
Your kind of false equivalence is a weak attempt to minimize the negative effects of corporations on the citizenry.
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What was the last thing YOU did that was "equally bad" as the shitshow that is PayPal?
For starters, this morning, on my way to work, I took a place in line at an exit ramp, delaying and irritating a few hundred other cars slightly. I do that every morning. Under a very conservative estimate of only one hundred other people irritated daily, I've managed to annoy about 10% of my city (about 36,000 people total) slightly in a year. For comparison, how many people are irritated with PayPal, and how annoyed are they? How many years of traffic disruptions does it take to equal one PayPal?
99% of individuals will never have the opportunity to do anything "equally bad" as a multinational corporation.
Almost e [youtube.com]
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For starters, this morning, on my way to work, I took a place in line at an exit ramp, delaying and irritating a few hundred other cars slightly. I do that every morning. Under a very conservative estimate of only one hundred other people irritated daily, I've managed to annoy about 10% of my city (about 36,000 people total) slightly in a year. For comparison, how many people are irritated with PayPal, and how annoyed are they? How many years of traffic disruptions does it take to equal one PayPal?
More false equivalency.
I assume you weren't intentionally setting out to irritate a few hundred people per day,
but even if you were, as a society we understand that rush hour is annoying and it is something we all deal with.
On the other hand, Paypal doesn't have to be a dick, intentionally or unintentionally.
The corporate honchos choose to create and enforce policies that are anti-consumer.
Almost everyone is evil, in some small part. Yes, there are some that commit their trespasses all at once in heinous acts of negligence, apathy, or malevolence, but most "evil" effects come from individuals doing things they don't think are wrong. Small offenses like bringing home pens from work or delaying others' commute add up to a far greater total of distress in the world.
More false equivalence.
Taking home a pen from work is not the same as going on a shooting spree.
Delaying others' commut
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Anonymous is free to rationalize anything however they like
Even just using the word "they" to describe Anonymous implies that it's a specific group when, in fact, it should be treated literally as "anonymous." Perhaps we need to lose the capital "A" at the start of the word; it has incorrect implications that most people are too stupid to see past...
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For instance: "Bakers are excellent. They make delicious things for me to eat."
If you think bakers are a more concrete group than Anonymous then you're kidding yourself. Anonymous is simply "anyone who identifies as Anonymous in some context".
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You've pretty much summed up most Slashdot users. They favour mostly one platform (Linux in this case) and in turn have a bias opinion on any competitor of their favourite platform.
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...but that's only because the competitors are demonstrably inferior.
No, really... I have a demonstration all ready to explain how the NT kernel's scheduler is 27% less efficient than the Completely Fair Scheduler (under a particular workload, with particular hardware, during a particular phase of the moon)! This means that Windows users are losing several milliseconds every day because of their scheduler's inadequacy. I've done some research into the amount of multitasking that Windows users do, and I've c
Political motivation? (Score:2)
and, for some reason, the site of Saturday Night Live
It's not broadcast here but 4 years ago it got media mention because of Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impersonation. Have they perhaps hurt the feelings of a particular candidate's supporters this time round?
Re:Political motivation? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think believing that these attacks are targeted that finely, or that there haven't just been a bunch of random people attacking anything that looked vulnerable isn't realistic.
What probably happened is they searched for particular sites running particular combinations of software (it's not all that hard to find out what someone *claims* to be running), or even had just an automated sweep which returns a few likely candidates (my web server is hit all the time by people looking for proxy / malware PHP files that obviously only exist if you're vulnerable / infected already).
I mean, there were Ghanan consulates in that list and all sorts. I think it's more a question of "what was vulnerable" when a particular date for a hacking spree was decided upon rather than any political message (although, sure, one of the hackers might have a motive, or they might look at certain websites first, etc.).
And the age-old argument - Anonymous is not "any one person". It's not even a coherent group. Just about anybody that hacked a site and bothered to tell Anonymous would have been listed there because, by their own admission, they have no idea who their members are / are not and they have no "entry requirement" as such.
It seems much more random to me. If you wanted to make a political statement, you could have gone for US presidential candidates or particular organisations and made the news. But obviously most of those places secure their stuff quite well.
So we end up with PayPal (who are currently denying that anything happened, which I wouldn't be shocked about - there's been a lot of "didn't actually happen" hacks lately where people just post convincing lists of usernames as if they are hacked data), an antivirus vendor and an embassy in some African state.
It's hardly targeted anarchy. It's more like "who left their window open?".
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and, for some reason, the site of Saturday Night Live
It's not broadcast here but 4 years ago it got media mention because of Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impersonation. Have they perhaps hurt the feelings of a particular candidate's supporters this time round?
You're cute, with your attempts to ascribe rational motivations to an unruly group of monkeys.
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Right - Sarah Palin was a Republican candidate - unruly groups of irrational monkeys consistently vote Democrat.
BAZINGA!
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Hmm. Interesting and possibly true.
OTOH.
I would think that most of you techie, anti corp, end justifies the means people are the ones that applaud SNL for that.
Could be wrong , but I think the odds are on my side.
Saturday Night Live? (Score:2)
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I know, I just changed all my passwords because twitter said my account had been compromised, now I have to do it all again! A growing percentage of our waking lives will be consumed creating and changing passwords until that's all that any one does!
Symantec Hacked? (Score:1)
You would think a company like Symantec would be able to protect themselves against hacking..? Jeez.
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They could but they stubbornly insist on using their own snaik oil.
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They are so secret you don't even know if you're a member or not, until it's too late!
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Leiberman
Who?
Posted Anonymously for obvious reasons.
Pray explain!
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Stick it to the man (Score:4, Insightful)
by releasing user and employee data from paypal and others? So only us regular people actually suffer the consequences.. good move!
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It's just random. They hack (or claim to hack) whatever low hanging fruit they can find (often using other peoples exploits) and then claim that they were targeted attacks. Why else would the supposed targets be so randomly assorted?
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It's just random. They hack (or claim to hack) whatever low hanging fruit they can find (often using other peoples exploits) and then claim that they were targeted attacks. Why else would the supposed targets be so randomly assorted?
They are desperate for attention. Their last two hacks turned out to be false. One more and they won't even be relevant anymore.
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There have been suggestions that Anonymous has been turned and will attack more or less anybody as long as they're from civilised countries. The lack of leadership means that technically savvy but young/naive hackers don't really question the targets they're given, meaning many of these sort of pointless attacks which prove/demonstrate nothing other than that a lot of badly defended sites exist.
paypal? (Score:2)
Think the paypal is a mistake, it's on the link to the imageshack & symanetc info, but no mention of it there.
Re:paypal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's [thehackernews.com] an article I found (by clicking through a few times from TFA). For those who don't want to read:
However according to PayPal’s head of PR, they claim to be investigating the alleged hack, but so far they have stated that they are unable to validate any evidence that there has been a security breach which we can only take to be a good thing.
They also say 28,000 accounts, which means the odds of an individual being hacked are very very low (considering there are over 110 million users). Even still, it's a good idea to change your password, at least.
Is there intelligent life within Anonymous ? (Score:2)
and, for some reason, the site of Saturday Night Live
So TFA thinks that Anonymous actually does things for solid and ponderable reasons, subject to logic ? Interesting...
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Kind of makes you wonder at the level of maturity the average Anonymous member has.
Profile: pickly-faced youth, average age about 15.4 years, dwells in mum's basement, no sexual experience to speak of, no political sensibility, pot-smoking and rootbeer-swilling, more computing power at his fingertips than is good for him... or for you and me, that is.
There, FTFY.
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Mountain Dew-swilling*
Rootbeer has no caffeine.
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Barq's root beer has caffeine (although, less than half the amount in MD)
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A few minutes of not being in the news, and they pull a stunt - a rather weak one at that which only reinforces the governments agenda of net surveillance.
Does that not make you question whether or not it is "anonymous" at all"? After all it does further many governments agendas in relation to the internet.
Falsely taking claim for VMware too (Score:3, Informative)
The VMware source is old and has been on Pirate Bay for six years. Nothing new there.
Saturday Night Live (Score:3)
Now that he has sobered up, he can't even "Remember, Remember The Fifth of November".
Not quite correct (Score:1)
HTP (HackThePlanet) were responsible for ImageShack and Symantec: http://bin.par-anoia.net/?797d5dc59c69b7e5#lgN8gF9nPwZ+eFLKtVq7vfskyj6uatkrAB2VbsTfH54=
Rationalized vandalism (Score:1)
That's all it really is. A bunch of kids who think it's cool to throw bricks through store fronts; running around looking for a march to do it in.