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Security Network The Internet United States

Anti-Racism Sites Hit By Wave of Cyberattacks (bbc.com) 248

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Cyber-attacks against anti-racism organizations shot up in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a leading provider of protection services says. Cloudflare, which blocks attacks designed to knock websites offline, says advocacy groups in general saw attacks increase 1,120-fold. Mr Floyd's death, in police custody, has sparked nationwide civil unrest in the US. Government and military websites also saw a notable increase in attacks. Cloudflare says that after Mr Floyd's death and the ensuing violent clashes between police and protesters, it saw a noticeable jump in the amount of requests it blocked -- an extra 19 billion (17%) from the corresponding weekend the previous month. That equates to an extra 110,000 blocked requests every second, it said.

The problem was particularly acute for certain types of organizations. One single website belonging to an unnamed advocacy group dealt with 20,000 requests a second. Anti-racism groups which belong to Cloudflare's free program for at-risk organizations saw a large surge in the past week, from near-zero to more than 120 million blocked requests. Attacks on government and military websites were also up — by 1.8 and 3.8 times respectively.

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Anti-Racism Sites Hit By Wave of Cyberattacks

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04, 2020 @08:11AM (#60144348)
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  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @08:12AM (#60144350) Homepage Journal

    Look for a new set of invasions by our buddies in Russia or China while the US is distracted.

    • Look for a new set of invasions by our buddies in Russia or China while the US is distracted.

      Signed "OrangeTide".

      (LOL)

      • Almost assuredly a funny coincidence considering the low 6-digit UID. Either that or the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than you could ever imagine.
      • The Orange Party is like the Red Party but they are more Yellow.

    • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @10:50AM (#60144904)

      This is an Evasion by Russia and China.
      They don't need to use weapons, because they can obtain their objectives by other safer means.
      These countries are playing both sides. Making sure the Liberal Leaning folks feel really strong about their Liberal agenda, and the Conservative leaning folks feel really strong about their Conservative agenda.

      So if you are Liberal Leaning there is enough fake news and memes and propaganda that makes you lean further left, to a point saying communism is good.
      If you are right leaning there is enough fake news and memes and propaganda that makes you lean further right, to a point saying a fascism is good.

      The real target it towards our main institutions, including the separation of powers, and representative democracy. This works for these countries favor in the long run, because the longer America acts like a 3rd world nation, and leadership having fits, and keeping us divided, they are safer, and other smaller countries will turn to them as the adults in the room, to have their agenda pushed.

      American Greatness came out of the fact that our core infrastructure was never hit during WWII. So during the Rebuilding period for the rest of the world, the US had the strongest position, and tried to use its strong position to put its best foot forward to show how great the nation is. It wasn't our military, or technology that convinced the world, but Hollywood and Support for human rights, and democracy that help make a good portion of the world alley with us. Vs the USSR who had to occupy land to be in its influence.

      No I am not saying America is or Was perfect. During this time we did a Lot of stupid stuff, that has long term repercussions, and internally we still have a lot of problems that needed to be dealt with. However as Americans we were unified as Americans and powerful because of it. Making us Red State vs Blue State. Liberal vs Conservative and really trying to bring out the worse traits in our systems. Is greatly weakening America, and creating a power vacuum for other countries to take up.

      • by Koreantoast ( 527520 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @11:39AM (#60145084)
        For China at least, they just need enough street chaos and a few juicy video clips that they can use to create false equivalencies between street protests in the United States and Hong Kong. Then, they can use it to justify the bloodletting that Hong Kong is about to get from the communists. Never mind also the fact that if Chinese protestors were protesting in front of Zhongnanhai the way American protestors are in front of the White House, the People's Liberation Army would have already run them over with tanks and sent the survivors off to the Gobi Desert for "re-education."
      • by leptons ( 891340 )
        > to a point saying communism is good.

        You're making the mistake of conflating "communism" with "democratic socialism", which are VERY different things. Democratic Socialism is not "socialism" in the way that communism uses it. Maybe if people would open their fucking eyes for once in their lives, they would actually realize the differences.
    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      Look for a new set of invasions by our buddies in Russia or China while the US is distracted.

      Well, there is the spate of scuffles and subsequent troop buildups along the Indian-Chinese border that hasn't really hit the news much. And of course we have China basically removing Hong Kong's freedoms, but that's a little more visible.

  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @08:32AM (#60144402)
    It is insane how hard Silicon Valley techies trying to tip the scales. Well, the results at the poll will be more and harder blowback by people's FU voting for Trump. Not because he is a good candidate, but because FU for trying to silence the opposition.
    • I disagree (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @10:08AM (#60144730)
      your average Trump voter is loyal to Trump because they're completely trapped in a media bubble.

      Take Trump's response to the "Bunker Boy" moniker. He used the Military to fire tear gas on peaceful protesters so he could walk to an Episcopal church, snap a photo with a bible that wasn't his, and walk back. This was clearly done in response to that moniker, and there is video of the tear gas, the peaceful protests and of the Bishop of the church furious that he came without notice and didn't pray, only staying long enough to get the picture.

      If you just watch Fox News though there was no tear gas, the church leaders were thrilled to have him and he prayed.

      If social media, which seems to be the only outside media his base has any chance of exposure to, begins to fact check him on every Tweet & post then he's done. The spell's broken. The Emperor has no cloths and everyone will see.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        your average Trump voter is loyal to Trump because they're completely trapped in a media bubble.

        Good strategy. Double down on the condescension that got Trump elected in 2016. This time it will work.

        • Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)

          by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @12:55PM (#60145440)

          your average Trump voter is loyal to Trump because they're completely trapped in a media bubble.

          Good strategy. Double down on the condescension that got Trump elected in 2016. This time it will work.

          Exactly. I think ratcheting up the rhetoric from 'deplorable' to 'racist child molesters' will do the trick. If not, there is always the next swamp castle.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Nah, Trump is on track to lose heavily. Maybe the worst defeat for a century.

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        Considering that pollsters blew it last time, why do you think this time is different? Who in their right mind would tell some rando on the phone they are voting for Trump? Especially if there is non-zero chance this will be used to attempt to fire them and/or ANTIFA thugs showing up to smash their windows?
    • I've no idea how you've connected those particular dots. Tell me: how does a bunch of racists attacking anti-racism organizations lead to more votes for Trump?

    • It is insane how hard Silicon Valley techies trying to tip the scales. Well, the results at the poll will be more and harder blowback by people's FU voting for Trump. Not because he is a good candidate, but because FU for trying to silence the opposition.

      Could you explain in a step by step manner the mechanism that gets Trump reelected from cloudflare reporting that anti-racism sites are being hit by bots, because it's not obvious to me how that works?

    • It is insane how hard Silicon Valley techies trying to tip the scales.

      By providing anti-DDoS service? Man the quality of discord here has gone down since states legalised weed.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Are people on the right gonna start calling the victims "AntiRa Terrorists" and celebrate the attacks that counter progress?
  • Friendly reminder (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BringsApples ( 3418089 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @10:21AM (#60144794)

    Facts:
    Not all cops are thugs: no problem
    Not all black people are thugs: no problem
    Not all white people are thugs: no problem
    Not all protesters are thugs: no problem
    Some cops are thugs: problem
    Some black people are thugs: problem
    Some white people are thugs: problem
    Some protesters are thugs: problem

    What can be done for problems?
    Some cops are thugs:
      We need a better pool of people to pick from. Currently a very limited set of people with very similar mentalities apply to become policemen and policewomen. It's important to realize that the job of the police is by nature, very tempting to take advantage of. Not a lot of policing the police.

    Some black/white people are thugs:
        This starts in the home and is true even for pets. If you're always upset and act violently, expect the same from your kids

    Some protesters are thugs:
      These are prety much the same thugs as above, but here you may find random people that hide their thugginess for the most part, and they're using these riots as a release, and chance to loot freebies.

    Conclusion:
      Some people are making life suck for the rest. This has been going on forever. It won't end, ever. Adjust your expectations for the universe to accomodate a mentality that is capable of accepting that the universe isn't perfect, and doesn't care to be.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.

      Tragically true.

      • Even if all of the anti-racist websites disappeared from the Internet tomorrow, the only thing that would change is that the outrage industry would instead have to write, say, science fiction or children's books instead of stoking the dying embers of racism.

        Even if all of the anti-racist websites disappeared from the internet today, it wouldn't undo the love and charity I've given my fellow humans. It wouldn't stop me from loving others.

        Even if all of the anti-racist websites disappeared tomorrow, the

  • Security experts said that these cyberattacks originated from the White House.

    On a serious note, I find it sad and disgusting that such a finding would not surprise me.

  • by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @02:43PM (#60145982) Journal

    Not sure who said it, but "the first casualty of war is truth". So anti-racism sites get DoS'd. On twitter the opposition is doing everything they can to take over hash-tags like #ExposeAntifa and #WhiteLIvesMatter.

    The losers in this war are people like myself who would like to be able to go to the sources and see what's being said. That's in the short run. A long term loser is the value of things like hash-tags, news sites, and google searches in the first place. They lose their utility when you have to weed through a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with what the tag is supposed to represent, or when the web site is down, or when the search results are rigged and/or censored. A really long term loser may be historians looking for primary sources; but they'll probably have an algorithm for analyzing what's a primary source vs. what was being used to cover up a primary source by the opposition... which I suppose is also a kind of primary source. That's assuming any of the data survives, and there's a good chance it will just go into the bit bucket anyway.

  • by microbox ( 704317 ) on Thursday June 04, 2020 @04:02PM (#60146250)
    I'd have some sympathy if the anti-racists weren't themselves, so god damn racist.

    We need to take back the fight against racism from the critical race theorists. Just because they're labelling themselves as "anti-racist" does not mean that they are good or sane actors.

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