'Anonymous' hacktivists become web vigilantes

[MIJ-VI]

Re free speech: President Fred Phelps...

 

[Kwesi]

Your opinion would change drastically if some one thought you needed to be shut up and shut down. If we start saying people like WBC need to have their rights taken away because what they say offends some people, then it's nothing for some one to say your rights should be taken away because you're saying offensive things. The entire concept behind freedom of speech is that people have the right to say what they choose, regardless of how offensive it may be. As detestable as it is, you've got to protect Joe Blow's right to call some one a ****** just like you have to protect some one's right to give an acceptance speech.

There are very few things that actually upset me and the WBC is one of them. Everything I've seen, read and heard supports that the world would be a better place without them. I don't defend their particular right to free speech but there ain't a damn thing I can do about it without being put in jail and no matter much I dislike them I'm not willing to waste my life to hand deliver the organization a slap on the wrist. I hope somebody does something to at least slow the spread of their hatred. Counter-protesters (those guys are awesome!), hackers, the government, anybody. The likelihood of that happening is pretty close to zero unless the WBC crosses the line of the law but I can hope.

Ah yes. Quite a few people have shared the same sentiments Kwesi, can you guess which ones?

 

[Bard2dbone]

There are very few things that actually upset me and the WBC is one of them. Everything I've seen, read and heard supports that the world would be a better place without them. I don't defend their particular right to free speech but there ain't a damn thing I can do about it without being put in jail and no matter much I dislike them I'm not willing to waste my life to hand deliver the organization a slap on the wrist. I hope somebody does something to at least slow the spread of their hatred. Counter-protesters (those guys are awesome!), hackers, the government, anybody. The likelihood of that happening is pretty close to zero unless the WBC crosses the line of the law but I can hope.

I like pretty much everybody. If I don't like you, then it's a pretty strong sign that there is something very very wrong with you. I hate the WBC.

Everything they've done publicy fills me with either loathing or rage. I just can't understand what could posess something to spew such evil bile so often and so needlessly. Much like you I am not willing to be the guy who destroys his life to slightly inconvenience them.

But when they do finally enrage the father/brother of some slandered dead marine/soldier enough that he kills the entire congregation, I'll donate to his legal defense.

 

[Kwesi]

I like pretty much everybody. If I don't like you, then it's a pretty strong sign that there is something very very wrong with you. I hate the WBC.

Everything they've done publicy fills me with either loathing or rage. I just can't understand what could posess something to spew such evil bile so often and so needlessly. Much like you I am not willing to be the guy who destroys his life to slightly inconvenience them.

But when they do finally enrage the father/brother of some slandered dead marine/soldier enough that he kills the entire congregation, I'll donate to his legal defense.

If I were old enough to do so legally I'd buy you a beer and assure you the position of second in command when I bring about my New World Order .

 

[Ziltoid]

Can't really agree with Anonymous' ways, but they can beat on westboro's and I won't mind.

 

[thumpbass1]

Wow! This Anonymous group sounds about as fascist and cowardly as the Westboro Baptist family cult does in my book. And oh yes, the moral coward, and alleged wife and child abusing Freddie Phelps( Search the net for the sworn testimony of Fred's estranged son, and his claims of domestic violence, within the family.) has sent his rabid family up to my hometown of Omaha Nebraska often enough to spew their brand of hate, preaching a twisted gospel that is of Fred's own making.

As much as I despise the Phelps clan and what they stand for, I'm completely against what Anonymous is proposing, which is the use of suppression and harassment of a technological and criminal nature; with their group claiming a moral superiority they appoint unto themselves, just like the twisted Phelps clan does. I do agree with the view that Anonymous has of the Phelps bunch on many key points, however I'll take an open public forum any day of the week to fight people as twisted as the Phelps clan is, without their rights and freedoms being suppressed via the criminal methods of Anonymous. To do such a thing also benefits the Phelps bunch, as they love to be portrayed as poor misunderstood martyrs of righteousness

 

[theNoseBleedKid]

Ah yes. Quite a few people have shared the same sentiments Kwesi, can you guess which ones?

The censorship board, a non-elected body that govern what can and can't be said. Am I right?

Anonymous rock. Personally, I see a large difference between shutting down a website for a few hours and denying someone the right to free speech (apparently do many of the recipients of their attacks, which is interesting).

 

[Simo98]

For all the people who didn't bother read the followup:

Dear Phred Phelps and WBC Phriends,
So we've been hearing a lot about some letter that we supposedly sent you this morning. Problem is,
we're a bit groggy and don't remember sending it. Our best guess is that you heard about us on that
newfangled TV of yours and thought we might be some good money for your little church.
You thought you could play with Anonymous. You observed our rising notoriety and thought you
would exploit our paradigm for your own gain. And then, you thought you could lure some idiots into a
honeypot for more IPs to sue.
This is not so foreign to us; as you may have heard, we trade in Lulz. You just do not have enough to
offer right now.
While Anonymous thanks you for your interest, and would certainly like to take a break and have some
fun with you guys, we have more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.
But, we will keep this application on file, and will certainly contact you if any openings become
available in future.
Next time, don't call us. We'll call you.
Additionally, as your "Press Release" failed to understand: When Anonymous says we support free
speech, we mean it. We count Beatrice Hall among our Anonymous forebears: "I disapprove of what
you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Do some among our number hate you and your cynical exploitation of your human rights for monetary
gain? Of course. But the MoralFags are also the first to admit that they are, in fact, your rights to
exploit.
In closing, let us assure you: We are not BAWWWING sissies, nor are we afraid of your false god;
we're just really busy. Stay tuned, and we'll come back to play another day.
We promise.
To the Media: Just because it was posted on AnonNews doesn't mean every single Anon is in
agreement, in fact in this case it doesn't even mean a single Anon is in agreement. Next time, if you
could give us a few minutes to put all our paperwork in order, we'll be sure to let you know what we're
up to. (LOL)
To Anonymous: It's a trap. They've got their ports wide open to harvest IPs to sue. Don't DDoS, and
boycott Operation Westboro. If you really want to continue messing with them, just send them a few
male prostitutes and faxes of goatse. Nothing more.
(Note: This letter was written by more than 20 Anons, at the same time, and none of them were inbred
family members. Unlike that other, ****** "Press Release".)
We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.

 

[BioDriver]

'Just a guess, but the W.B.C.'s servers are likely to be quite secure...

Actually they're just going from a different angle. Let's just say that the WBC has done many things that the Kansas Bar Association might be interested in reviewing....

 

[Batmensch]

For all the people who didn't bother read the followup:

So basically Anonymous is claiming the original threat supposedly from them, is in actuality a scam by Phelps? Quite frankly, I find that entirely believable.

 

[knumbskull]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,"

E.B. Hall

if you use freedom of speech to harm the freedom of others - through preaching hatred - then you don't deserve it.

 

[stevetx19]

couple of things...


From what i understand, the proposed attack does not intrude on the website illegally. It simply requests service from the website in the same way that visiting the site does, only 10,000 times per second. Are you going to tell me that it is or should be illegal to request service from a website?

"Anonymous" is not the justice system, congress, the CIA, or any arm of the government. Some of them probably aren't even American. Think of it as a group of citizens telling another to shut up, maybe backing it up with practical jokes. This isn't going down a slippery slope of freedom of speech...

edit: That followup sounds quite a bit more like the actual anonymous. When i read the initial letter, i was a bit skeptical of the language used. It's a Tarp!

 

[DwaynieAD]

Your opinion would change drastically if some one thought you needed to be shut up and shut down. If we start saying people like WBC need to have their rights taken away because what they say offends some people, then it's nothing for some one to say your rights should be taken away because you're saying offensive things. The entire concept behind freedom of speech is that people have the right to say what they choose, regardless of how offensive it may be. As detestable as it is, you've got to protect Joe Blow's right to call some one a ****** just like you have to protect some one's right to give an acceptance speech.

that does not mean what you say is beyond consequence.

freedom of speech does not work like this: "you can say whatever you want"

it works like this: "you can say whatever you want, however there may be consequences that you will have to deal with"

 

[MIJ-VI]

couple of things...


From what i understand, the proposed attack does not intrude on the website illegally. It simply requests service from the website in the same way that visiting the site does, only 10,000 times per second. Are you going to tell me that it is or should be illegal to request service from a website?

"Anonymous" is not the justice system, congress, the CIA, or any arm of the government. Some of them probably aren't even American. Think of it as a group of citizens telling another to shut up, maybe backing it up with practical jokes. This isn't going down a slippery slope of freedom of speech...

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I'M KIDDING! no.., really.

If anyone uses the JS LOIC (which can be easily tracked--see the .pdf link in the OP) against the WBC, they may harvest one's IP address and sue any American attacker they can wring $ out of.

GOD
LOVES
LITIGATION

LOIC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - Contributed By: Invalid Link Removed​

Developers associated with Anonymous, the international pro-piracy and pro-WikiLeaks association of hackivists, are working to correct deficiencies in the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) software used in recent distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaigns.

The current version of the LOIC code leaves participants vulnerable to identification by authorities, but that did not stop Anonymous organizers from making the tool available for mass download anyway.

More than 88,000 copies of the program were downloaded from the website SourceForge.net alone over a one week period. There are also mobile versions available of the tool available, so hacktivists on-the-go can join into the brouhaha.

Two Dutch teens were arrested for participating in DDoS attacks coordinated by Anonymous against sites including Visa, MasterCard, and Amazon.

What can we expect with further distribution of the LOIC tool?

Anyone with a website who manages to offend more than a few thousand people for one reason or another may find themselves the target of a DDoS attack.

Businesses, non-profit organizations, politicians, bloggers, news media, government agencies, and more could soon find themselves at the mercy of irate factions.

"When we look back years from now we'll see this as a tipping point in 'hactivism' going from largely a theoretical threat to something that's more a day-to-day issue," said Ted Julian, an analyst with the Yankee Group.

The Low Orbit Ion Cannon could well be the biggest advancement in public censorship since the advent of the public book burning.

Given the amount of effort involved in mounting long term educational campaigns that seek to shape public opinion through reasoned discourse, the LOIC seems to be a logical alternative in this, the age of instant gratification.

Hopefully the stark irony that such a tool would be spawned by the radical proponents of free speech and freedom of information will not be lost on historians.

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Wednesday, January 05, 2011 - Contributed By: Invalid Link Removed​

I found this on pastebin today and after reading through it, I have to re-consider some of the idea that there is a core group of competent hacker types running the show at Anonymous:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

What really caught my eye is the section in red, the admonition about “if you get caught” This is the most egregious set of instructions that I have ever seen and will only serve to land those of the “hive mind” in courts across the globe with a fair chance at getting truly buggered.

Let me take it point by point here:

1) DO NOT PROXY. It will affect the proxy, not the target. That’s why you use VPN.

VPN? VPN? ***? What VPN are you talking about there skippy? If you use a VPN, then you are concentrating the traffic to a single IP exit node as well as making it just as easy to track. Which brings me back to “what VPN?” You have a service somewhere? Usually you only see VPN’s used in companies or personal use for secure access to systems behind firewalls.

Now, on the other side of this, umm yeah, proxy-ing the traffic for the LOIC makes sense and should have been used. As far as I have seen, the LOIC is just a glorified F5 key script. If you proxy then you will just be polling a site via proxy (hopefully without logging) to port 80 http. So, there may be more traffic on nodes of whatever proxy you use, but, the traffic should get there if the proxy is robust enough.

2) DO NOT attack on a school, work, or company owned network; your traffic is heavily monitored. You will get caught.

Ehhhhh depends on the company or school doesn’t it? I mean many colleges are still lacking in controls over their Internet traffic. However, I would say that they would be right.. Unless the traffic were VPN’d to a proxy outside. Then you would have something.

3) DO NOT attack by yourself or in small numbers, you will get caught. While in larger numbers, it’s minimal if non-existant, and if server goes down it’s impossible to recover corrupt data on who attacked.

Say what? No matter the volume of users, if the systems at the receiving end are configured properly and able to log the traffic, then ALL of your IP’s will be logged! As I suspect you will all soon find out after the Feds have audited those seized servers and logs from those who got DDoS’d

4) DO NOT “bot net” it is illegal. DDoS with LOIC is legal, however.

BAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA! Ok kids, Law 101 here. If you PARTICIPATE in a DDoS no matter if you use LOIC or a Botnet, you ARE in fact COMPLICIT in an act that is against the law. You don’t get any extra points for carrying out said attack for motives nor method of attack. This is especially true when you use a tool that does NOT obfuscate your IP addresses as you perform it. Whoever collaboratively wrote these do’s and don’t is culpable in your crimes too… As well as for the crime of stupidity.

5) CHANGE your MAC IP after destroying the internets, or risk having your e-mail MAC IP traced back.

***? Your MAC IP? Would you perhaps be meaning your MAC address as well as your IP address? Ya know, the IP address that you are not masking at all when you use LOIC to “destroy the internets” ?? OMFG, Here’s the “internets” manual RTFM please! This is even below skiddie level.

6) If you are v& (vanned) declare you had no participation in this event. Note you are using a dynamic IP address and that many different people use it, because it’s dynamic. If they prove that it was yours, then tell them you are a victim of a “botnet virus” that you had no control or knowledge of. Additionally if you set your wireless to unsecured or WAP prior to LOIC you can claim someone hacked your wireless. Case closed.

Once again, you have no real grasp of how the Internet works do you? Let me break it down for you…

A) Dynamic IP addresses do change, but, tend to remain the same for users a long time. Depending on the lease time set by the ISP you could have it for days. So trying to say that you are on a dynamic IP is pointless.

B) Any dynamic IP is going to be logged as to what account holds the IP address during that session in the logs!

C) Yeah, claiming there was a botnet malware package installed on your PC will do no good, unless you actually do that yourself before you do all of this.. and even THEN forensically it is easy to tell that you installed it and LOIC. Any way you slice it, unless you physically smash your machine or fully encrypt it with something like TrueCrypt AND shut it off before the feds knock your door down… You are fraked.

D) The un-secured wifi argument can work, but, I will go back to the forensics argument again.. We can see you. You lose.

In the end, this whole thing has been run like a train wreck. Anonymous has failed to think this all through and certainly has no idea about the legalities here to be telling anyone of these kids out there using LOIC that they are going to be ok. It may be all about the lulz, but soon it’s going to be all about CYA and lots of lawyers fees kids.

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Denial-of-service attack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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How to stop a DDoS attack
Google

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Conclusions

For a number of days the websites of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and others are attacked by a group ofWikiLeaks supporters (hacktivist). Although the group calls itself “Anonymous”, researchers at the DACS group of the University of Twente (UT), the Netherlands, discovered that these hacktivists are easy traceable, and therefore anything but anonymous.

In this report we present an analysis of the two versions of the tool named LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon, which is used by the hacktivists to perform their attacks.

The main conclusion is that the attacks generated by the tool are relatively simple and unveil the identity of the attacker. Therefore, the name of this hacktivists group, “Anonymous Operation”, is misleading: the hacktivists’ original IP address is shown in clear.

If hacktivists use this tool directly from their own computers, instead of via anonymization networks such as Tor, the real Internet address of the attacker is included in every Internet message being transmitted, therefore making it easy to be traced back. We also found that these tools do not employ sophisticated techniques, such as IP-spoofing, in which the source address of others is used, or reflected attacks, in which attacks go via third party systems. The current attack technique can therefore be compared to overwhelming someone with letters, but putting your real home address at the back of the envelop.

In addition, hacktivists may not be aware that international data retention laws require that commercial Internet providers store data regarding Internet usage for at least 6 months. This means that hacktivists can still be traced easily after the attacks are over.

University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

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Here's the log file from a server which was subjected to
a brief DoS attack by a single JS LOIC via Tor bundle:

[This invalid link has been removed]
​

The column of figures on the far left-hand side are the IP addresses of the attacking machine (there's more than one due to Tor being an anonymizing network).

And here is Invalid Link Removed which can be used to get info on said IP addresses--including the geo-political location of the attacking machine and its ISP's identity.

Also, please note that the server log includes the date & time of each request transmitted during the attack, the type & version number of the web browser used, plus a range of other stuff I haven't identified yet.

In short, participating in a DoS or DDoS attack runs the risk of uh-oh...

 

[stratovani]

Best thing to do with the WBC is completely ignore them. That's what you do with three-year-olds throwing a temper tantrum. That way there is no question of "rights" being violated and there is nothing they can do about it. And when it comes to protesting at funerals, there's a 20x20 ft "free speech zone" about a thousand yards down the road where protesting is permitted. You'll find it surrounded by a huge PA system pumping out death metal!

 

[sloasdaylight]

that does not mean what you say is beyond consequence.

freedom of speech does not work like this: "you can say whatever you want"

it works like this: "you can say whatever you want, however there may be consequences that you will have to deal with"

I know that, and I never said "you can say whatever you want". What I said was in direct response to Kwesi talking about having the WBC shut down cause he finds them objectionable.

 

[MakiSupaStar]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

 

[thumpbass1]

Best thing to do with the WBC is completely ignore them. That's what you do with three-year-olds throwing a temper tantrum. That way there is no question of "rights" being violated and there is nothing they can do about it. And when it comes to protesting at funerals, there's a 20x20 ft "free speech zone" about a thousand yards down the road where protesting is permitted. You'll find it surrounded by a huge PA system pumping out death metal!

Exactly! We've had to contend with them in my hometown for a number of years now. I support speaking out against them, and it should continued to be done. The fine people of Omaha and around the nation have also stood up to the plate for the most part, to shield the preselected victims of the Fred Phelps clan, from their hateful public displays within the law.

Sadly some have attempted to cross the line of the law, into assault and battery, and other unlawful acts against them, and it only fuels this crazy bunch. It gives them the gift of martyrdom. They don't deserve that. They also anger the majority of conservative and orthodox christians in the Omaha community, and around the nation, who are also under the condemnation of Fred Phelps. More than a few pastors have come out, to speak out against this small, but noisy family cult and their ideology and message. I say deal with them strongly,and loudly, but stay within the law, and don't give them any more attention than what is needed in dealing with them.

 

[MIJ-VI]

A man told his grandson: "A terrible fight is going on inside me -- a fight between two wolves. One is evil, and represents hate, anger, arrogance, intolerance, and superiority . The other is good, and represents joy, peace, love, tolerance, understanding, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, and compassion. This same fight is going on inside you, inside every other person too."

The grandson then asked: "Which wolf will win?" The old man replied simply: "The one you feed." - Anon.

Link Removed​

 

[Clark Dark]

Last I heard of WBC there was news of them planning a protest at the funeral of 9y.o Christina Green. If they even for a second nurished that thought, in my opinion the lot of them are pure rubbish.