Cyber Attacks/Terrorism

Hacking the FBI is inherently bad?

Anyway, did they actually do that? The article I found just said they were taunting them.

Oh, they used a SQL injection. Yeah, that's not really a high-end superattack, there

edited 4th Jun '11 11:25:48 AM by Tzetze

Considering the precedent it leads to? Yes.

People worry about the government shutting down freedoms on the internet for security? Well THESE GUYS ARENT HELPING.

And I"m pretty sure the SQL was just for their first attack.

edited 4th Jun '11 11:26:47 AM by Thorn14

I'm not interested in defending anons, but I think there's a similarly negative precedent in declaring all attempts at stealing government data bad.

Anyway, apparently Lulzsec did not hack into any FBI anything. They defaced the website of Infragard, an association of private business and other organizations with the FBI. That's quite different.

I can't think of any good reason for our government having information stolen.

What if someone had managed to get the Watergate tapes, for example?

There's a distinct difference between stolen and released.

Personal information: Stolen

Conspiracy: Released

Also note that conspiracies don't happen that much, though it's still good when they get uncovered.

There's also a difference between information on people who have done no wrong and information like the Watergate Tapes.

I'd like LulzSec a lot more if they had not leaked people's personal information; all it does is alienate their cause from sympathetic parties.

Yeah, it's difficult to see releasing PSN user data as anything about reckless. It's not like they did anything wrong (besides trusting Sony, but that's hardly criminal, they didn't know).

What they did to Sony was bad, unforgivably bad considering Sony's current situation...but thinking about it....they could do a lot of good if they worked for sites similar to Wiki Leaks.

Release every single secret government is hiding. Release details of every single secret operation, etc. to the world.

edited 4th Jun '11 1:11:43 PM by Signed

As long as you make a distinction between secret and private.

No I don't need them to release pictures of Obama taking a shower...I mean secret spendings, missing tapes of certain scandals, secret operations, hiring hackers doing this and that, etc.

@Usht: they are not attacking random companies. People fail to see that the companies attacked by Anon, Anon Ops, Lulz Sec, Pirate Bay and related groups are the companies lobbying for heavy legislation of the internet. Read about ACTA-related drama and you'll probably understand their rage. While I don't approve of certain actions (releasing personal info from PSN for example), I'm always there to support less morally ambigous actions (including hacking) taken to keep the internet the way it is

Well, gee, maybe it would be more helpful then to instead of, say, get neutral customers involved in crossfire, to instead attack the parts of the company that contain the people trying to take over the internet? No matter how you slice it, this isn't contributing to a free internet, this is contributing to theft and more hard feelings. In other words, these aren't "hacktivists", they're just annoying hackers kicking up some dust that means nothing while getting it in other people's eyes.

Again, I don't say that I approve of this particular action. I approve of the fight against what lobbyists and politicians try to do to the internet as a whole. I just don't like the fact that the whole movement is treated like terrorist organization right now

But they probably are because all people are seeing are self righteous groups attacking and causing crimes that harm normal, neutral people and then claim to be doing it for their rights. You want people to start backing such groups? Then have them practice what they preach and quit having the majority of them attack the customers. Until that happens, they're just criminals on the internet.

And now you assume that every single pro-internet freedom group does something like this. Truth is, most of them limit themselves to attacking the servers or websites without stealing any data (other than occasional data on the likes of hbgary). And while I think that attacking the customers was an extremely bad idea, it's pretty scary that it's the only thing that gets them heard. Nobody gave a fuck about it before, other than people already 'connected' to internet culture

"Nobody gave a fuck about it before, other than people already 'connected' to internet culture"

Why should they? If you're not part of the subculture or involved in teh internetz why should you give a shit? They're not helping our cause. Defacing sites with funny messages and links to info about what the companies are doing, or even posting the dirt right on the hacked sites page would be far more beneficial.

Let's just say it can be done and probably will quite soon

Quick question:

Why should they give a fuck?

The internet will probably stay the same no matter the outcome for most people. You could go on about how corporations are taking over and such, but they've already managed to invade most the US market but we're still living our lives as usual. You can fight for Wikileaks or whatever, but most people are not involved in that sort of thing. The fact of the matter is, so long as their lives are normal, they don't care what happens. And the thing is, "free internet" or otherwise won't effect the vast majority of us. All the meanwhile, they're just asking not to be made victims of the whole ordeal while hackers ineffectually keeping stepping on the toes of companies that people have come to feel are normal. Free internet is a romantic idea and all, but I honestly don't see it being any different after lobbyists and politicians do whatever they're going to do. It's still the internet and trying to control it is like trying to control of the cockroaches in the world, you can't do it. People go on and on about how Google is become an empire, but for most of us, it doesn't effect us in any meaningful way. The hacking, however, does. So, first you got to have an actual threat for people to care, then they'll pay attention and no be angry at the hackers.

If you had an idea about ACTA, Australian internet censorship, Internet killswitch etc. you wouldn't say so. Of course, most of those ideas were castrated, dropped or stopped being enforced but the similar ones are being proposed over and over again (e.g. a few weeks ago one of Polish ministers tried to pass an act that would require ever Polish citizen on the internet to use real name everywhere). We're getting lucky now but try reading some of proposed internet laws and you'll know why you should give a fuck. Some brilliant ideas you probably haven't heard of:

• ban on posting of naked women with small breasts
• ban on linking to websites containing illegal material (the way it was stated would ban most of search engines)
• obligatory monitoring of websites you visit by ISP
• an ability to cut your internet connection temporarily by administrative decision if you get accused of piracy 3 times (yes, accused, even if you are innocent; also, administrative so no 'due process of law' here)

Actually, the banning of women with A-Cups extends outside of the internet...

Australia really hates Pettanko.

Next question, how many of those actually passed?

Sorry if I have some faith in legislative process and feel that a lot of this could be even more easily avoided if these focused on rallying people instead of alienating them.

Most of those didn't pass but there are continous attempts at making them pass. And actually many of those were attempted to be passed as secretly as possible (ACTA again)

Hey ho, that happens all of the time in politics. You don't want to know the number of shady, secret bills that various groups try to pass monthly. It's a good thing that these people still have it in their contracts to read this stuff through before voting on it though.