The Glade 4.0

I don't know if anybody else has been following the news of these two groups of loosely affiliated "hacktivists'" activities, but I noticed that Hellfire's been pretty silent on these various break-ins and site defacements.

Nobody can deny that they seem to feel pretty much invincible and untouchable, and that they're getting very ambitious and brazen in their choice of targets.

I've started seeing a few stories of arrests being made on some hackers suspected to be linked to these groups, and recent attacks on targets like the CIA have me wondering when the governmental crack-down/retaliation will come, and what it will look like. I figure that's probably a good topic for discussion here on the Glade.

Let me first establish a ground rule, though -- let's not link to any examples of leaked/stolen information dumps, and let's not give any big brothers (be they government or workplace overlords) any cause to think that any Glade members are involved in these activities.

So, what do you guys think of recent events? Are these groups motivations sound, admirable, and/or constructive, as they claim? Where do you think things are headed?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I don't think we can guess at the motivations, especially for the entire group. While some of the stated motivations (the attacks on Sony to protest Sony's wrongful prosecution of GeoHot) are good, I suspect many individuals were really just looking for an excuse. Lately it looks like it has turned into an all-out cyberwar.

This is not a war Anonymous or other such groups can win. By taking such a high-profile campaign public, they have doomed themselves. If they were smart, they'd take this opportunity to lie as low as possible until the heat dies down. But I don't think they're smart, not in this respect, anyway.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Lulzsec just wants attention. They don't really have a cause.

"Hacktivists" are retarded. If they want to protest do it non-anonymously in a form on non-violent protest. What they do is childish and more likely to get governments to crack down on internet freedom, not let up. They are naive and it's impossible to know the true goals of an anonymous "organization." The merit of their actions aren't even worth considering.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Anonymous are motivated by some warped sense of justice. Lulzsec is literally in it for the laughs. I think they will both be good for the world in the long run, if for no other reason than forcing companies to have a more strict eye on security and updates.

That's roughly along my lines of thought, Wwen.

Regardless of whether the merit of their actions is worth considering, we are forced to consider their actions, and how best to respond to them. Letting them run around and expose private information is both damaging and expensive.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I think they're good practice for companies who could face larger threats in the future. (except for Sony, they already lost a ton from their debacle)

They'll end up as examples for the next generation.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Considering the controversy over Julian Assange, and how the U.S. is still harassing him (or pressuring various European countries to harass him), I strongly suspect that within the next five years we will see the emergence of legislation to regulate the internet, citing "cyber terrorism" as the necessity.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I highly doubt it. It can't be regulated at this point. Maybe in 2005 or earlier or something, but right now it's too late.

I think that's a pretty unrealistic theory, Lex.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

How can they regulate it then?

-Heavy cultural resistance - people would constantly be screaming in Twitter, Facebook, etc. about it

-Resistance from ISPs and major websites like Google

-Millions of computer programmers in the U.S., many of which wouldn't care for such laws and would work around it

-Legal jungle of telling all the ISPs what to do

-Domain names that are registered outside of the U.S., legal issues in seizing them

-Technological costs and difficulties of actively monitoring all traffic, especially with the government high on debt

-Increase in usage of peer-to-peer technologies, which would develop much faster with a higher demand for anonymity.

-Government is incompetent in general and wouldn't know how to regulate the Internet

How long do you think resistance from major websites is going to last, as big targets get taken down and brought to the cleaners in court? Do you think Sony is anti-regulation, now? Every site these "hacktivists" target is more support for regulation. Every user whose account info is leaked is less public/cultural resistance.

As for ISPs, once the government has enough backing to wage a war against cyberterrorism, the ISPs will be presented with a choice: cooperate or be taxed/fined into oblivion along with having their protected monopoly statuses removed. Faced with that, they'll cooperate, or cease operations in the US, and the void will be filled by people who will cooperate.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The resistance would last indefinitely, due to cultural reasons. In places like China, the people literally don't care or don't know enough. The ISPs and websites would not give up. Also this would only increase hacking from people upset at the government. You can't regulate things like SSH.

There's also so many sites that spread new information like wildfire nowadays, almost completely unregulated... that will never change. Too high of a demand for them.

Yes, yes it can. The US owns 9/13 of the Internet's DNS servers and has substantial control over the other four. While blacklisting sites from the DNS servers technically wouldn't make them totally unavailable, it would to 99% of the people using the Internet.

That's rather irrelevant to hacker types. There are alternative DNS servers, and a lot of them. The real problem for them will be when they are exposed and prosecuted like terrorists.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Well, the subtext was that the government would use the "cyberterrorist threat" as an excuse to control the flow of information on the Internet, which would certainly work by blacklisting sites off the DNS servers. Is it really a bad thing if the US government finds a way to prosecute the "hacker types"?

Also, If alternative DNS servers really did start becoming well known and easy enough to access that the average person was using them to access blacklisted sites, the US government would have no trouble squashing them. These sites would have to handle a huge amount of bandwidth, unlike the P2P sites that just host torrent files. You think a major ISP hosting an alternative DNS in lets say Sweden isn't going to back down if the US says take that site down or we'll blacklist all your customers from all sites hosted in or controlled by the US?

How can they be exposed?

Obviously we don't know, or they wouldn't be anonymous! It is naive to think that no one will ever be caught, though. It may only take one slip, who knows how many FBI, etc are looking into this now.

The more cyberattacks they make, the closer the noose will tighten. They'll catch them. (Hence my argument above that the hackers would be well advised to abandon their current campaigns and lay low for a couple years.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Turns out Lulz is also in it for the money: http://www.unveillance.com/latest-news/ ... statement/

Oh, yeah. I'd been thinking of posting something on the topic for a couple weeks, now. I closed down the news stories I'd been saving up to do so, though, over the weekend here at work. That was one of 'em.

Let's just say, I wasn't surprised. Especially since, from the way this guy describes the resources they were trying to get access to, they were also trying to bully him into contributing his botnet to their resource pool to wage future DDOS attacks in the process.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The curious thing about a group like Anonymous is that they are not composed entirely of internet script kiddies. There are people within the organization - and I use that word very loosely - who are truly talented individuals. The best and brightest will end up getting recruited by major companies for a variety of technical positions. It shouldn't be a surprise, as it has happened before. This, ultimately, will prove to be their undoing.

When the crackdown does occur, those wielding the hammer will be the very individuals that the best and brightest of Anonymous would become fifteen years from now after working in a department with an actual budget, on projects with actual scopes and deadlines. What currently protects groups like Anonymous and Lulzsec isn't their skill, or anything about their organizational structure, but rather the fact that they are a small time nuisance rather than a real threat. When that changes, they're going to discover how little protection the veil of internet anonymity actually affords them.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I think that changed a few months ago.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yes and no. They haven't pissed off precisely the wrong people, yet.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.