WikiLeaks Defenders Threaten Amazon 703
healeyb writes "CNN is announcing that, starting at 11 AM EST, the hackers (coined Operation Payback) responsible for the DDoS attacks on MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, and PostFinance have promised to commence an attack against Amazon for their revocation of the WikiLeaks EC2 account. They released a do-it-yourself hacking tool online Thursday so other people can help with the attacks they say took down the websites of MasterCard and Visa..."
M.A.D. (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow I don't see escalation of online actions being to anyone's benefit in the long run.
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Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who's the terrorist? The one who did the *acts* reported in the documentation? Or the one who's letting others know they did it?
I know which it is, and it's not the one's letting the cat out of the bag.
That's right, the good ole US Gubernment is the terrorist now.
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Re:M.A.D. (Score:4, Funny)
Anyone who wants to flay is a terrorist. The only way to stop terrorism is molesting people. They haven't found any bombs yet, but that's proves that it's working.
Doesn't that depend on what you want to flay? I mean, flaying a deer is okay. Flaying a TSA agent, not so much.
Re:M.A.D. (Score:4, Funny)
There has been a few days (and a few harrassing plane tranfers) where the flaying of a TSA agent would have been welcome...
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Re:M.A.D. (Score:4, Informative)
If you actually read Assange's writings, what comes across is that he views the world through the lens of conspiracies. In his view, conspiracies are networks of people who communicate privately to achieve some end. His insight is that an authoritarian conspiracy can't function without private communicaton. If conspirators are reluctant to communicate for fear of being exposed, then the network loses effectiveness. For an example of how this would work, consider how it would become harder for organized crime to conduct their operations if they knew that their communications were being intercepted by the police.
As far as I can tell, Assange is out to undermine authoritarian conspiracies and he views the United States as one of those. What follows is that in the release of these documents, Wikileaks isn't functioning as a whistleblower calling attention to individual misdeeds. Wikileaks is trying to undermine the effectiveness of the entire network, the entire conspiracy that is the U.S. government. That's why they plan to release all 250,000 cables, rather than just the cables that show evidence of wrongdoing. If you think Assange is out to point out a few bad apples, you're thinking too small. Assange wants to burn down the whole damn orchard. The damage done to American foreign policy isn't collateral damage, it's the entire point of the leaks.
Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll just call anybody a terrorist nowadays, won't we?
Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then they came for the Terrorists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Terrorist.
So the jews are the terrorists in this story?
It's a nice analogy, except that being a fascist is pretty vague (and really isn't illegal, and really, average citizens are typically not called fascists), being Communist isn't illegal, but being a terrorist certainly is illegal (or doing what terrorists do, anyways.)
One of these things is not like the other, one of these things aren't the same ...
The original was about Communists, trade unionists and Jews.
Re:M.A.D. (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty much. There always an "ist" of some sort to battle against. There were fascists, that went away. Then came communists, that got old. Now it's terrorist.
How do I move it along to lobbyist?
You have to tell people who the bad guys are or else they start looking at what you've been up to.
From Bob Dylan's "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" at the end once the narrator has picked over his friends and family and everyone else with a fine tooth comb:
Well, I fin'ly started thinkin' straight
When I run outa things to investigate.
Couldn't imagine doin' anything else,
So now I'm sittin' home investigatin' myself!
Hope I don't find out anything . . . hmm, great God!
Someone needs to update that song for DHS and TSA.
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Not the same, but related.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZM4Bpt3xZU [youtube.com]
Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty much. There always an "ist" of some sort to battle against.
Christ!
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Statistically, there are no terrorists. They already don't exist -- even those which are CIA false flags or FBI entrapment.
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Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Informative)
because nobody remembers the term "phreaking"
Of course we do (and if we don't, we can look it up), but "phreaking" was always about mucking with phone systems and the like. The term is too specific.
"Crackers" is a better term, but really, "script kiddies" works just fine too.
And lots of the "phreakers" were just "script kiddies" and lots of them were true "hackers".
Let those with no terror, cast the first IED (Score:3)
Quiet you terrorist, or you're next!
Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this will likely have the effect of governments exerting greater control over the internet - exactly what the script kiddies would be most outraged by.
Re:M.A.D. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, voluntary DDoS attacks are a legitimate form of non-violent resistance, assuming people use their own computers, probably not corporations. And these are these first opt-in DDoS attacks being seen sympathetically by the main stream press (outside the U.S.). So big win!
Btw, Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) is NOT a hacking tool. It's just a opt-in DDoS tool.
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Essentially they are saying that if you don't agree with them and/or support their cause, they are going to blockade your business.
It's not a boycott and it's not a protest. It is actively interfering with business. No different than parking a cement truck in front of the doors.
If this becomes acceptable, then no one with a web presence is immune to wackos with a grudge or those with legitimate beefs.
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It is acceptable isn't it? This is the online version of thousands of protesters turning up and blockading bricks and mortar businesses. So far they haven't been banned.
Welcome to the digital age.
Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, it's almost like if a group of people came in and took all the seats in the local diner and refused to leave, just because said diner refused to serve them.
Actively interfering with business can be a legitimate form of protest. In this case, I don't feel that it's right, since Amazon was forced to either capitulate or risk significant reprisals from the US government. It would be like blacks staging a sit-in at a privately owned diner, that was ordered by the feds to segregate, the owners of the diner aren't really the ones you should be pissed at.
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No, Amazon choose not to do business with Wikileaks . They did not block Wikileaks actions in any way.
Wikileaks is free to find someone else to perform what Amazon's former function.
Re:Double standards much? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're just not getting it. Here's another analogy that will hopefully clarify why they are two completely different things.
Suppose Julian wanted to print out a thousand page book containing the classified material and sell it in Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble doesn't really want to have something like that on their shelves so they decide not to sell it. Then some protesters proceed to block the entrance to the stores, not allowing anyone in or out just because they wouldn't sell Julian's book of CLA
Re:Double standards much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not authorized to publish? Wikileaks does not need the U.S. government's permission to publish anything. They have no official presence in the US. And even if they were an American company, there is a little thing called freedom of speech and the freedom of the presses which would protect them. Also, they have not yet been designated a terrorist group (or similar), so the only thing here that is illegal (aside from the private who initially leaked the cables - but he's in jail) is the US State Department trying to intimidate American businesses into not interacting with Wikileaks. THAT is illegal. The response from Anonymous is probably also (technically) illegal, but when the government misbehaves, law goes out the window.
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So if I don't like the comments on Slashdot, it's perfectly acceptable for me to rent a botnet and DDOS shut Slashdot down?
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There was no business reason for Amazon to quit working with Wikileaks, they did nothing illegal.
Wrong!
Amazon has a business reason to do anything that makes them money, or avoids costing them money.
A shitload of people in America (which does not include me, but you've got your head in the sand if you don't notice the sentiment over this) are seriously pissed at Assange and WikiLeaks and want them prosecuted in all kinds of ways that, frankly, are not legally possible.
Do you think Amazon would make more money by dumping WikiLeaks, or by letting the frothing mob above boycott them?
There are more people
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Actually, since MADD seems to be completely prohibitionist, rather than simply against drunk driving, they probably should chage the name to MAD -- Mothers Against Drinking.
I prefer DAMM -- Drunks Against Mad Mothers.
DIY hacking tool? (Score:5, Funny)
Is wget in a while loop insufficient?
Re:DIY hacking tool? (Score:5, Funny)
It would be more interesting if they could run the tool from within EC2.
just sayin'
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So (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes it is, but "wget &" in a loop is more what they're going for... except they modify wget so that it does not also kill your machine...
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So all you really need is wget, while, and nice.
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And a process list which can be longer than the number of sockets you can open at once...
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Re:DIY hacking tool? (Score:4, Interesting)
Take a look at LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon). The sourcecode is on sourceforge and everything=). An encyclopedia dramatica page on the subject can be found here [encycloped...matica.com]
Re:DIY hacking tool? (Score:5, Funny)
1. Post article on
2.
3. Success!
Re:DIY hacking tool? (Score:4, Informative)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hivemindloic/files/Source/ [sourceforge.net]
Hackers? (Score:3, Insightful)
DIY hacking tools (Score:5, Insightful)
This news did nothing more than re-direct a lot of people to Amazon.com just to see if it was working. Then, they got distracted searching for something cool and subsequently made a few purchases.
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Good tactic.
Get millions of people to buy tons of stuff and return it the next week.
That isn't fixable with a few server upgrades.
This makes it worse (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:This makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
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Rhodesia.
Gandhi's boycott of British textiles.
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Re:This makes it worse (Score:4, Interesting)
The US government now has another excuse for an internet-wide crackdown. Thanks assholes.
What makes you think this isn't a false-flag operation? Duck, signed comms coming this way.
Re:This makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
While I do think their heart is in the right place, this is a woefully misplaced effort. If they could instead boycott all these places. If they could get say an 80% reduction in customers of PayPal and Amazon for a month, that would seriously damage them. If they could get a global effort of people to not use their Visa or MC for 6 months, that would make everyone take notice. But sadly, like much of the current social spectrum, they'll have a kneejerk reaction, applaud themselves and then forget about it. But the gov't's and corporations will NOT. We will all pay for this type of behaviour.
I'm left to ask: Why Wikileaks? Why not fight for the stack of equally as good social causes and try to stop the mountain of injustice we have? Oh, yeah, cuz this is the hot topic du jour.
Re:This makes it worse (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm left to ask: Why Wikileaks? Why not fight for the stack of equally as good social causes and try to stop the mountain of injustice we have? Oh, yeah, cuz this is the hot topic du jour.
The US government is perpetrating quite a lot of the social injustices these days IMHO.
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What is it we say around here? The more you tighten your grip the more star systems will slip through your fingers? Or something like that.
Bring it. You're a shuddering fucking pansy who fears the government. The government should fear YOU.
Re:This makes it worse (Score:4, Insightful)
The government should fear YOU.
This is no more true than my employer should fear me. Government and citizenship should be a positive relationship not a conflicting one.
I am aware that it does not usually work out this way, but I am really sick of the Vendetta quotes.
Court order on coverage? (Score:2)
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Is this really hacking? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Is this really hacking? (Score:5, Insightful)
If dropping Wikileaks ends up disrupting their sales, then maybe they'll think twice before dropping a customer that the State Department dislikes. The DDoS attacks are giving them a business reason NOT to drop Wikileaks.
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No. The DDoS attacks are giving all sorts of companies strong reasons to never so business with Wikileaks, and to think twice about making their TOS even more oriented around making it easy to give jackass users the bum's rush. Do you really think that being attacked by a bunch of rebel-without-a-clue script kiddies who are doing this strictly because it's passingly fashionable is actually going to make Amazon want to host content fo
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If that were true, Amazon would probably want to stop selling the ebook of the cables in question.
Amazon's reason not valid (Score:3)
What, that WikiLeaks did not "own" the documents? Copyright infringement? Under U.S. law, material produced by the government are public domain - it belongs to the public. How is a bogus claim of copyright infringement "valid"?
This one could actually hurt (Score:4, Insightful)
If they were able to actually knock Amazon offline, which I think is mostly unlikely to happen, it would be the first to make a serious economic impact. Mastercard's website may have been unreachable, but their credit processing facilities were just fine, as I demonstrated with my own card several times over the past few days. Amazon, on the other hand, is in the middle of their holiday rush, which is crucially important to them. IIRC, it is the reason they had the cloud infrastructure in the first place: their immense holiday resources went unused during the rest of the year. The last thing they need is a DDoS attack right now. I wonder if they might try to appease the mob with some kind of nod to anon in the form of a daily book deal or similar...
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DDOSing Amazon will be a challenge (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering Wikileaks rehosted to Amazon to escape their original sites getting DDOSed exactly BECAUSE Amazon is damn hard to DDOS, I wonder whether Payback can actually do that.
Maybe they just consider it a challenge they can't resist.
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Remember that no resources on planet earth are infinite. Amazon knows this. If 15,000 people initiate these DDoS attacks, Amazon will be in trouble. Bad press also does no good.
DDOSing (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that those holding the reigns of the botnets doing the current DDOSing are making massive mistakes employing them at this time. Not only that, the targets they are choosing are not valuable. Take for example visa.com and mastercard.com. Have you ever been to those sites? For all intent and purposes they are superficial, and have nothing to do with the logistics of the financial services they provide. If you go to either site and try to view financial information you will be given a list of banks that issue that type of card, which provides links to the respective banks that actually issue cards.
Furthermore, the various governments of the world are watching this whole affair with intense scrutiny, and the powers that be will be alarmed over the power wielded by these botnets. It will serve as a wake-up call. By utilizing their resources, these people have shown their hand and provided the evidence and forensics needed to aid in the dissemination of those nets.
As far as Amazon goes, they are so distributed and have such massive resources that I doubt a DDOS attack would have much effect. I might be wrong, but there is a world of difference between Amazon and public relations sites like visa.com and mastercard.com.
Re:DDOSing (Score:4, Insightful)
No official attack orders yet (Score:4, Informative)
11:50EST and the target change off api.paypal.com hasn't taken place. There is serious internal strife as to weather or not to attack Amazon at all given that they so far haven't been able to reliably take out paypal.
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DDoS Attacks, or Rightful Protest? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't having a script to continually request a page for one web site the technical equivilant of marching back and forth in front of a building holding a picket sign?
Why should people have the right to do both if they are unhappy with - and wish to protest a government, company or organization?
I am *not* saying it is right or legal for people to write trojan horses to set up botnets to con others' computers to unknowingly (or unwillingly) do ones bidding - but isn't it completely within an individuals right to do this themselves, from their own homes, with their own equipment?
P.S. I don't think the Wikileaks leaks did *any* damage whatsoever. It may have "undignified" a few "dignitaries" - but that's it. Period. In reality, I think it does the world a *lot* of good when everyone suddenly can see everyone elses cards - and know their thoughts and opinions.
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I don't disagree with you strongly, but I think there are a few points that make the situation a little murkier.
Protesters outside buildings carry signs that indicate why they're pissed off. When you DDOS a website, all you can do is take it offline. There's no way to see the protestors' messages online, so most of the citizenry who hear about this are going to hear about it from a news source. And as you know, the news sources in our country are much better at being entertainment than being unbiased or inf
Inaccuracy? (Score:2, Interesting)
LOIC is a tool that has been around for a while. Why would they say it was released Thursday?
Shunning (Score:3)
Going Off Half-Cocked (Score:2, Insightful)
What's more likely, that these tech companies received National Security Letters and can't talk about them under threat of theft, caging or worse, or that these tech companies all just fell over and made up legally and technically bogus excuses because they're idiots?
The only positive result that can come out of these attacks is that the next tech companies might push back against the government harder, but if there's a chance you're taking out innocent bystanders you're doing wrong - end of story.
Going from stupid to outright insane... (Score:3, Insightful)
When someone who says "X is violating the freedom of speech rights" and tries to shut him/her/it up as punishment, than that person has not yet grasped the principle of "freedom of speech".
On the tactical level: Disrupting Amazon such a short time before christmas? Fox will have a field day.... At best it will convince the average man/woman on the street, that Wikileaks is evil (since they won't distinguish between Wikileaks and their anonymous supporters). It's like saying "We are facing a supperior enemy, let's make more of them". To mee it looks like some kind of Anti-Sun-Tzu or Clausewitz-in-reverse. Is there goal beyond "venting frustration"?
CU, Martin
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Amazon? (Score:3)
How exactly do you take Amazon's servers offline? Amazon is the people you cloud your servers to when you're out of capacity. Visa / Mastercard / Paypal... Sure. Plausible targets. DDosing Amazon is like trying to DDos Google, and only 1 hop away from ddosing 127.0.0.1.
Now, if they specifically targeted one part of Amazon's infrastructure... say, their payment validation server, they might be somewhere. But all of Amazon?
Digital riot (Score:4, Interesting)
A bunch of angry idiots decide to have themselves a little riot, do some burning and head-cracking, and so far hardly a comment questioning whether this is in any way appropriate? I don't like the efforts to destroy/discredit Wikileaks any more than most here, but I hope the perpetrators of these "retaliatory" crimes feel the full weight of the law coming down on them. Absolutely disgusting to be violently attacking a business because that business made a decision that you disagree with. I have no patience or sympathy for these criminals (and I'm about out of patience with the fucktards who call themselves Anonymous).
You want to call a boycott? Fine. I might even join you. But the second you start attacking them and doing damage, you have crossed the line and deserve to be thrown in jail. There is no valid reason for this, just a bunch of thugs looking for some amusement.
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But the second you start attacking them and doing damage, you have crossed the line and deserve to be thrown in jail.
If there is permanent damage done to the site, yes, it's clearly vandalism in the worst form, and clearly punishable by law in any country.
A DDoS however, is more akin to a blockade, which occasionally happens in real world too. Even here there are variations of course, from the absolutely peaceful standing passively in the way, to the outright aggressive.
If the DDoS is performed by botnet's it's clearly equivalent of bearing arms, which sometimes leads to individual prosecution. The same should go for the
Inviting prosecution (Score:4, Informative)
The use of this LOIC tool that this group are encouraging people to download onto their PCs and fire up to launch these DDoS attacks will be easily detectable and tracable. I'm sure that the companies that are being attacked will be keeping records of the malicious traffic, to be passed on to the police who will, in turn, be able to tie the IP addresses back to broadband connections.
So, I wouldn't be surprised if we see raids, confiscation of computer equipment and (in the UK, at least) charges brought under the Computer Misuse Act. I wonder what the average decline in income is, due to one's inability to get certain jobs because of a criminal record.
And, by the way, those who think that they can get away with it by claiming that it must be a virus infection are deluded - forensic examination will reveal the deliberate downloading of the LOIC tool.
Self-defeating (Score:4, Insightful)
The powers that be: You need strong government and law enforcement because most people are unruly vandals.
Anonymous: We believe in a more anarchistic world, and so we're going to vandalize things until disorder comes about.
Silent Majority: Guess the powers that be called that one right.
BAD idea (Score:4, Interesting)
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Morally, ethically, and legally sound, yet completely ineffective.
Useful link. (Score:3)
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/civil_disobedience.html [aynrandlexicon.com] :)
Stop using the word 'Attack' (Score:4, Insightful)
These are not attacks. This is not a war. A politically motivated DDOS is exactly analogous in form and function to a lunch counter sit-in. These should be called 'protests' or 'online sit-ins.' Use of the words like 'war' and 'attack' only fuels a belief that there is no justified ethical motivation for these protests.
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How do you ask a DDoS to leave and when they do not comply have them hauled out by the cops for trespassing?
Operation Foot Bullet in full swing! (Score:3)
So this is either a misguided attempt to help wikileaks, or a damn clever attack on wikileaks by destroying any chance they have of working with anyone else. Either way it seems to me (and what the hell do I know) that this going to backfire.
Any Substance to This? (Score:3)
I'll usually believe something if it appears in the media but I'm not sure I believe this one. OTFA, The blogger says the group in question has a DIY hacking tool, yet there's no link.
If this is all made up, OTOH, I could see how governments publicizing supposed attacks by Wikileak sympathizers would sway general opinion against WikiLeaks as being aggressive nuisances.
Let me put it simply and bluntly : (Score:3, Insightful)
people talk 10+ hours for minimum wage. people tend their kids. people are studying in colleges by paying to them, in order to have a chance at future. those who have established some career, are busy paying bills.
they dont have the time or resources or the means to mount and run nation-spanning political campaigns, engage in social activity for prolonged periods. they have lives that they are forced to attend to.
and, in the end, because of all these necessities our current dog-eat-dog capitalist system enforces upon people (its always good to cut benefits, social security, and wages for profit after all, aint it
hitting 'like' button on facebook, doing comments under online news stories, discussing in forums, instant messengers, online blabber. maybe donating a few bucks to a ngo. and the most extreme of what they can do online, ends up being DDOS. they cant even do serious hacks, they dont time or the means to learn and further any knowledge in that area.
and they do this. ddos. because, this is the travesty of a situation our current society manufactures, and then pays for. the ironic thing is, the very perpetrators, creators of this situation, the big corporations, end up on the receiving end of this. hunter hunted.
no, ddos may not be ethically so justifiable. but, as said, if you leave the only option for people to DDOS, they will DDOS.
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The sites themselves are hypocritical. Mastercard and Visa both stopped accepting payments for Wikileaks for policy breach (or some shit like that) yet you can still make donations to the goddamn KKK through them. Paypal admitted that the US state department forced them to drop their Wikileaks account. Amazon was just peachy fine with hosting Wikileaks and then mysteriously they kicked them out. Same with the swiss bank that was happy to hold an account for them up until recently, and also the random reappe