Yes Virginia, There Are Hackers and Spooks On Militant Boards…

A prominent poster on the elite password-protected jihadi web site Shumukh has told fellow forum members his account on the site has been hacked to send spyware to fellow forum participants.

The user, who goes by the handle “Yaman Mukhadab,” posted on August 28 that “it seems that someone is using my account and is somehow sending messages with my name to the members,” according to Flashpoint Partners, which translated the discussion for Danger Room. Shumukh uses software from vBulletin, which allows members to send private messages to each other.

Mukhadab’s handiwork has attracted attention beyond the forum. He was one of the contributors to the site’s lame recent attempt at creating a fantasy target wishlist comprised of American security industry leaders, defense officials and other public figures.

From Wired

Yeah, yeah, yeah, once again Wired got a little tidbit from Evan Kohlmann to keep his Flashpoint company relevant and in the news. Blah blah blah. Look, Adam is it? Yeah, Adam, there is much more that goes on on this site and the myriad others that Evan isn’t telling you. Sure, this guy Yaman got a little twitchy and he is right to be so lately. There has been A LOT of other things going on on both sides of the fence lately that ol’ Evan hasn’t let you in on, or more likely, has no clue of.

• There are hackers, both at the behest of the government and those not avowed going at these sites. Some are just knocking them down for periods of time (Jester etc)  Some who are auditing the sites and actually interacting at times with the players after owning them, and SOME who are just hacking the shit out of the sites and wreaking havoc. The latter was seen back a month or two ago with the take down of Ansar. They just RM’d that sucker, but, the jihadi’s had a backup and they were online within days. (which you mentioned.. good)

• Most of these sites have sections where the the newbies are being taught hacking skills. Some of these tutorials are low level (like the lulz types we saw not too long ago *protect your MACIP’s) Others are quite well versed in hacking and have tutorials on the level of something to worry about. In fact, some of these sites contain the works of friends of mine in the security community that they have posted as research. Within these sections we have areas where the jihadi’s have an assortment of upload/download sites for malware (mostly these are older packages) but some of the newer posts have malware and creation kits that are up to today’s standards (which you failed to mention)

• The version of AQAP’s “Inspire you talk about was tampered with *cupcakes* as well as one version did in fact have a trojan. (which you failed to mention)

• The list of targets wasn’t so much lame as it was a new call to the “lone wolves” on these boards to act on it. There is a change in the way these guys are waging jihad that is not really covered by Evan and you. Did you know for instance that there is a Facebook Jihad (propaganda war) that is ongoing? As well as guys like Abu Hafs Al Suni Al Suni are advocating for a ‘stealth jihad’ ? Yeah, they are, and they have been busy trying to propagandise and get the word out to those lone nutjobs that might in fact try something like say, pick a name off of that ‘lame’ list as you called it. It wouldn’t be so lame after they actually whacked someone would it?

Sure, a good deal of this and the other jihobbyist sites are full of dreck, but, there are pockets of true believers, and your little piece in Wired downplays it all.

For more:

GCHQ/SIS AQ Media PSY-OP: Messin With Jihobbyists

Also try this little Google Search for spyware posts on the board. They have been busy.

As a side note, the Jihadi’s also went further and opted to go after the MEMRI organization as well. In a later post by Yaman, they list out the leaders of the org as targets as well. What makes me wonder is which one of them has a log and pass for MEMRI (hint hint MEMRI check your logs)

 

 

 

All in all, another bang up job Wired… *sarcasm implied*

K.

LulzSec/Sabu Paedo Hack = Turd Shining, Disinformation, or Lulz?

The recent dump on pastebin of what the alleged “Sabu” claimed was a ‘paedo’ (Pedophilia) site has pretty much turned out to be a lie. What could have been a good thing in outing a paedo ring, has instead turned out to be the hacking of an anime site and the outing of email addresses for the users of ‘densetsu.com’, a defunct site that featured Japanese anime/hentai. Now sure, one might look at the imagery that the Japanese tend toward (young schoolgirls being raped in their school uniforms by demons or alien plants) as a form of paedophilia, however, it is technically not by the law. So, in reality this alleged hack is non sequitor to any kind of legal or moral aegis.

When I looked at the site from the perspective of Googling, then looking at it historically I saw a site that did not contain child pornography. However, when you look at the site closely now, you can see, as the Duck Pond Blog has, that a couple images have been uploaded on the 28th of August post the hacking of the site by users unknown. So, what was the idea here? Being that I was a part of the panel at Defcon that mentioned why not use your hacking skills to take down paedo sites, I had thought on the face of this, that it was at least a step in the right direction.

I was wrong.

 

So, who did this and why? Could it be that the Lulz team just felt bored in these last few days before going back to school and decided to pick on an easy target? Perhaps they wanted to appeal to the masses a little bit with hitting an ‘alleged’ paedo site because they have been losing popularity? Or, was this even Lulz at all who did this? Perhaps it was just someone else doing it for the kicks and decided to pin it on Lulz? Net/net though, they have only served to out innocent people’s email addresses to the masses who may not know any better as to what really happened with this site. From what I am hearing at present, some of these people may in fact be currently being harrassed by people because now their addresses and names have been tagged to the idea that they are paedophiles, and that is just stupid.
I’m sorry kids, but this is just useless and once again you miss the mark on making any kind of difference. Had this site been trafficking in large amounts of imagery and you outed them, I could say ok, you did half the job right. The other half would have been to instead of doxing them on pastebin, I would have dropped a note to the FBI…

But..

Wait, wouldn’t that just go against everything you have said lately? Indeed, where would FFF (Fuck FBI Friday) be if you actually were helping “The Man” right? Well, at the very least you should be able to agree that this type of behaviour (paedo) is wrong and drop the dime on it.. But, I don’t think you all really care, and this is what brings me back to the Rogues Gallery and my assessment of the Lulz/Antisec movement. The short and sweet of it is that you all seem to be displaying narcissistic tendencies. In this instance, whoever did this obviously just did it for the kicks and attention because there was nothing here to warrant the action against densetsu.com that can be found.

Duck Pond goes further into the background of the site and proves out what I am saying here too but I think it would be just pedantic to go over it again. Please go read their post because they did a good job. For my part, I will sit back again and watch the goings on. I am sure things will slow down a bit as the kids are, like I said, headed back to the school room or the dorms and will be busy for a bit.. But sure enough come November/December it will be digital Animal House all over again.

For those of you out there in Anon who are re-thinking all of this, you may want to consider the ways you all could change your image a bit and perhaps do some real good. The protests at Bart were a good thing… Keep that up.. Though, I am not so sure of the whole Wall Street sit in… Word on the street there is that the AQ/AQAP set want to join in. If that were to happen (say you protest and then a bomb goes off) it would be a double blow. First there would be deaths, the second would be the reaction of the government on actual protests, writing all of our rights of assembly off due to terrorism threats.

Be careful.

K.