Is WikiLeaks engaged in 'cyber war'?
This is is the headline on CNN this morning: Is WikiLeaks engaged in 'cyber war'? source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/12/09/wikileaks.cyber.attacks/index.html?hpt=C1
Cyber war has been declared because of the wiki leaks.
There are some similarities between 911 and WLeaks:
1) Central 'bad guy' figure (Julian Assange vs Osama Bin Laden)
2) Incredible (ie not credible) lapse of US security for attack to take place (Lady Gaga CD vs. NORAD stand down)
3) Good excuse to take away liberties when no reason previously existed
4) Suspicious connections to the CIA (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/assange-rape-accuser-cia-ties/ vs Al Qaeda in Afghanistan)
I've also read some stories on Alex Jones and CNN about attacks on PayPal and Mastercard. I'd guess it would take very skilled and organized people to accomplish such an attack so quickly. Again a government agency such as the CIA comes to mind.
Finally, it is a constitutional right to publish information obtained from a whistle blower and in fact in the US laws have been made to protect the source of the story.
- geoffritchey's blog
- Login to post comments
Reaching the Tipping Point?
Time will tell whether the WikiLeaks incident is staged or real. But even if it is partially or totally staged, there's one big difference between the 9/11 incident and the WikiLeaks incident. After 9/11, most in the mainstream intelligentsia completely betrayed truth. But now, the WikiLeaks plight (even if staged) has become a rallying point. I'd even venture to say the power structure has already lost their fight against WikiLeaks (or screwed up their plan, however you see if) because they've lost the hearts and minds of the masses. If you doubt this, check out the "Journalists in defense of WikiLeaks, part X" series in the following link. Many of the comments are very insightful and inspiring.
http://wlcentral.org/
Below is just one such comment. And the more WikiLeaks is seen as being persecuted by the power structure, the greater the resolve of those in defense of truth.
Jack Hunter, The American Conservative: The Conservative Case for WikiLeaks
"No one questions that governments must maintain a certain level of secrecy, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who told Time that “Secrecy is important for many things … [but it] shouldn’t be used to cover up abuses.”[...] To say that government must keep secrets is not to say that all government secrets must be kept.[...]
But the worst hypocrisy throughout this controversy has been in conservatives reflexively defending the government and attacking WikiLeaks. Since when have conservatives believed that Washington should be able to shroud any action it likes in secrecy and that revealing government’s nefarious deeds is tantamount to treason? Isn’t it government officials who might secretly work for corporate, ideological or transnational interests — and against the national interest — who are betraying their country?
Interestingly, Wikileaks’ founder espouses the traditionally conservative, Jeffersonian view that America’s constitutional structure limits and lessens government corruption. [...]
Decentralizing government power, limiting it, and challenging it was the Founders’ intent and these have always been core conservative principles. Conservatives should prefer an explosion of whistleblower groups like WikiLeaks to a federal government powerful enough to take them down. Government officials who now attack WikiLeaks don’t fear national endangerment, they fear personal embarrassment. And while scores of conservatives have long promised to undermine or challenge the current monstrosity in Washington, D.C., it is now an organization not recognizably conservative that best undermines the political establishment and challenges its very foundations."
"I'd guess it would take very skilled and organized people"
You'd guess wrong, then. It's as easy as clicking a mouse.
This article explains how it's done.
Trusting the Sidney Morning
Trusting the Sidney Morning Herald for the truth about these attacks is similar to trusting CBS for the truth about 911. It is easy to attack a site with sloppy security. It is not easy to attack a well maintained site that implements the standards force upon companies that deal with financial transactions.
"LOIC is basically a bot and it does the same thing that hacker and cracker botnets do but it's a voluntary botnet, it's people volunteering to have their machine taken over remotely and then the hivemind can direct the attacks."
Can you imaging 911 activists doing something like this. It would be immoral. 911 truthers have a very moral core. Anyone truly concerned with free speech would be similar to a 'truther'.
Not really
It's not much different from a sit-in at a peace demonstration.
Technically, the traffic generated is exorbitant, but all it does is create bandwidth load, and if the three-way handshake is completed, followed by a GET request, web server resources are consumed.
Everything I just described is hard to describe as 'illegal', the only thing that supposedly makes it illegal is the intent. It does not compare in the slightest to the traditional meaning of (criminal) 'black hat' hacking: gaining unauthorized access to a system, with the intent behind it possibly making the case more severe, depending.
Throughout my life, I've always marveled at how ridiculous, digitally illiterate suit & ties have been able to blow internet mischief out of proportion.
Considering that USCYBERCOM saw fit to do it to Wikileaks, they should now be charged as well. Somehow, nobody is interested. It's the ultimate hypocrisy.
Although I've never hacked websites (not that I recall), I've been on hacked systems (I'd better not get into details), and I hacked my school network back in 2000. I feel no guilt whatsoever. I guess it's just the way I feel. Should we have a very long discussion about this, I might be forced to admit these actions were illegal and perhaps immoral. But then, so is jaywalking, and being drunk in public.
Ask yourself this question:
What if we all telephoned a House representative simultaneously, 10000 of us, for a few hours, to protest against the blocking of the first responder health care bill?
Six years in the hole for all of us?
By the way: the rhetoric I'm now hearing from behind the scenes is that things are going to get nasty. Professionals might get involved, and who knows what will happen then. At the same time, the majority of us feel powerless.
You are describing a DOS type
You are describing a DOS type attack. The article called the program a 'hack and crack' type of attack. These are two very different animals, but even a DOS type attack can (probably) be controlled by throttling unusually large amounts of traffic from a specific site. And it should be relatively easy to track down the owner-volunteers of the zombie machines.
DDOS
I was describing a DDOS attack, introduced by the workings of a single node in such an attack.
'hack and crack', sounds like somebody using words they don't understand. I don't even feel many in hacker community themselves understand it, or want to understand it, in their endeavor to put themselves in a good light.
Me, I don't understand this statement:
"but even a DOS type attack can (probably) be controlled by throttling unusually large amounts of traffic from a specific site."
Yes, possibly, but normal people don't have access to 10Gbit pipelines.
"And it should be relatively easy to track down the owner-volunteers of the zombie machines."
And that is why they are script kiddies. Because there exist other ways, but this looks like an army of Spartacus. I sympathize.
P.S., the fact that they are volunteers precludes their machines from being "zombies", lest their version of LOIC is infected with a trojan, which turns their machines into a bot node after all.
Yeah that would
discombobulate the DRWS shard but i thought the PPS maze would have done it good enough without the need for repeated de-linifications
You got me! - I dont know what I'm talking about =)
I'll read into the comments to learn though
Happy New year to one and to all !
By that logic maybe the people of
Sherwood Forest should have killed the man in green tights who was redistributing the wealth downwards as he was clearly false flag in order for the Sheriff of Nottingham to impose martial law.
Or just stop pointing the finger at Assange until you're sure.
(Another friendly fire incident i guess - really need to sort out the friend or foe identification.)