Handwringing, Moralizing, Anonymous, Paedophilia, and Digital Vigilantism

Preamble:

I recently posted about the Hidden Wiki and its prevalence in hosting paedophilia content. This post may or may not have left an impression on some of the  anonymous collective to take action and perhaps sow good will for their group by hacking into the “Lolita City” site within the DarkNet and releasing thousands of users email addresses and personal data (such as it is on such a site) for the Internet to feast upon. The Anon’s are doing this for their own reasons, but the upshot of it all is that they are causing the paedophiles pain in making it hard for them to get their content as well as potentially outing them online as purveyors and consumers of this wretched content.

Since my post applauding them and giving them some direction as to how to become more of an intelligence gathering apparatus for the LEO community, some in the infosec world have come forward and voiced concerns about this line of thought. All of the talk about the morals, legalities, and philosophical aspects of Anonymous undertaking such actions has gotten me thinking quite a bit.It all raises some interesting questions and philosophical challenges.

Anonymous and Digital Vigilantism:

What I think that most people with reservations about Anonymous taking up such operations as the DarkNet op have are that these people are for the most part kids without training and without any kind of oversight. Oversight in that they could get too big for their britches (one could say that many already have) and think that they are invulnerable to attack never mind the respective laws of our society. That said, it would seem that Anonymous, Antisec, and LulzSec have already decided to take up the mantle of vigilante’s already. However, the targets have been, for the most part, varied parties that could be seen as hapless victims or as malefactors, it all depends on the point of view really.

In the case of Scientology, well, aside from religious freedoms (trust me, they are not a religion) generally the Scientologists have been pretty much seen as getting what they deserved. Today though, years later, Anonymous has begun to take on the governments of the world as well as the likes of Paedophiles online. Once again, generally, people see what they want to concerning whether governments are good or bad. Paedophiles though, pretty much are outlawed universally. So, when Anonymous decided to attack, I could not fault them one bit. However, I could perhaps fault their methods.. Only in that they were bound to only let the paedo’s get away in the end.

I have said it before and I will say it again.. “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist” It all depends upon your perspective really. While I do not think all of their targets have been chosen wisely, I cannot fault the true believers out th4ere that they are doing something out of conscience and good. This is not to say that a certain element of the movement is in fact just in it for the lulz (i.e. Antisec and LulzSec) There certainly are factions at play who just want to see the world burn as well as garner themselves digital street cred.

Overall though, the term Vigilante denotes a person or persons (committee’s) who dole out justice summarily when the law is seen as ineffective by them. In this case, the Anon’s have taken up the mantle of vigilante in order to rid the DarkNet of paedophile content because law enforcement seems unable to effectively. Now this is also the crux of the issue in another way, as the police generally are not allowed to hack into sites and dump the dirt so to speak.. The Anon’s are unhindered here. Just as they have felt the same way about other operations where they have denied service to corporations (likening it to a digital sit in) they have crossed the line of the law, but, their methods and motivations are free of it… Until they get caught that is.

The essence of the thing is this.. “Don’t do the crime unless you can do the time” If they believe in it strongly and act upon it, then they must accept the risks of being caught and incarcerated. So far, much of the motivation I have seen by a good deal of anon’s has been motivated by convictions and beliefs. All others have been for Lulz, which is what made LulzSec even more of a problem as they just did not care. The current Antisec movement that LulzSec begat also seems to lack the conviction of their beliefs and seems more driven by ego than anything else by their writings.

And this is the difference between the chaotic Joker like actors and the Batman types.

Anonymous vs. PLA, vs. Patriot Hackers:

Pulling back a bit now, I would like to look at the macroscopic view of Vigilante behaviour versus nation state sanctioned or perhaps, a better word for it would be “condoned” actions and groups. I have written in the past about groups like the Honker Union in China as well as the colourful character known as th3j35t3r. both of these entities have had an effect on the collective consciousness concerning digital vigilante justice and I think it important that they form the contextual base for Anonymous’ actions in Operation DarkNet.

First off, ALL of these entities have been doing what they do (Jester DDOS of Jihadi sites and Anonymous, Honker, hacking against the enemies of China, and Anonymous, attacking sceintology, the gov, and paedo’s) with a mind toward doing “good” In the case of Jester, he thinks DDoS-ing jihadi sites out of a patriotic bent that will stop them from communicating. In the case of the Honker Union, they are patriots to their homeland and attack others who would do their country slight or harm. Anonymous though, started out of /b/ … Which really is a band of miscreants for the most part. However, a core group decided to take on the mantle of doing right somewhere down the line and we find swaths of them today supporting Occupy Wall Street and other political agenda’s.

The basic idea here is that they are all motivated by a belief in some greater good.. Mostly. I am sure there are on individual levels, many more motives (ego, greed, ego… the list goes on) but I will just put it to a gross generality that these people want to effect some kind of change.

At least I hope that this is the case…

What is really different though is that in the case of Jester and the Honker Union, they both are condoned if not outright supported efforts by the countries they reside in. In the case of the PLA and the Honker, there is clear connection between the state and their actions. In the case of Jester, there are allegations (made by him) that his is state sponsored.. But, I think more to the point he is condoned. Either way, the Anon’s may indeed be getting some support (moral or other) from state sponsors and not even know it. In the case of Anon, they could just become the tool of another nation state and not know any better.

Which is pretty scary.

All of these entities though, have had a greater or less effect upon the internet these last few years through their online shenanigans via hacking. The secret is this, they are just the first. There will be others to be sure.. The genie is out of the bottle on this one.

Anonymous vs. LulzSec & Antisec:

Conversely, we have LulzSec and Antisec, who both wreaked havoc on the corporations and the police of the world lately. Their reasons for doing so pretty much have been stated as “because we are bored” At the core though, there seems to be a couple of motives here from postings online. One is the afore mentioned Lulz, the other, seems to be a kind of abject hatred of authority and police. In recent hacks on the police though, there seems to be a bent toward supporting the Occupy movement as the police have had some transgressions against them. So.. They hacked the police and dumped all their data to spite them. Frankly, I see no value to this and once again, even if motivated by supporting the movement, it has no real effect on the police other than to make them more angry and reactive against the protesters.

Basically, I still see Antisec as the Penguin & Joker while Lulz as The Riddler though while Anonymous has become more like The Batman in certain quarters

Anonymous on the other hand has had its lulz, but seems to be growing up a bit and maturing. The social conscience of anon has begun to take shape and within it (movement wise) may well be the lasting component that will be its Raison d’être in the end. Time will tell though, and I hope that this is the case more so than just a bunch of malcontent’s seeking attention and excitement.

The Hand Wringing by The Infosec Community At Large:

Alright, back to the hand wringing and the moralizing post the Op DarkNet…

Certain people in the community wrote that while the empathised with what Anon was trying to do with Op DarkNet, they felt that these people were not the folks they would have doing this to start. Most of this comes from the fact that many of the players are not trained investigators and not LEO’s. I can agree with this from the perspective of legal proceedings later on. If Anonymous hacks a server and then dumps data, it could have an effect on the court case from a few perspectives;

1. Contamination: The defense could claim that the server was hacked and the data planted
2. The data could have indeed been tampered with by anon’s
3. The backend of the server/dbase could in fact be shared and all those who share could be swept up in the legalities/implications
4. The hack is enough to raise reasonable doubt

So, yes, it could be counter productive to have a vigilante force actually hack a system and report it to law enforcement. However, I would advocate that in the case of Anonymous and the paedo’s at the least, they not just hack and dump data, but instead give that data to law enforcement to start an investigation. For that matter, if Anonymous just located the servers and authenticated (sans hacking) that the content was there, they could in fact just tip off the police.

And this is at least part of what they did with Lolita City in the DarkNet. They tried to locate the server location and this alone could be a great boon for the authorities.

On the other hand, there are moral/ethical objections on the parts of some who think that perhaps letting Anonymous do this type of thing, or even encourage it is setting a bad precedent. To them, Vigilante’s are outside the scope of good behaviour and the law.. They cannot be tolerated. Personally, I think that that is a sanctimonious load of crap, but, that’s just me.

Sometimes when the system cannot function other means need to be taken to effect change. In this case, within a network that is anonymized and the authorities have had little success in catching anyone trading in paedophilia, I see no harm in Anonymous outing them.. Though, I would rather they just passed the intelligence to the LEO’s instead. It is my opinion, that if done correctly, intelligence gathering of this type with a tip off to the police has a better chance at actual arrests and convictions than to just let them go on about their peddling of child pornography.

Just one man’s opinion…

Philosophical and Ethical Stands On Being The Digital Batman:

Utilitarianism:

This is the philosophical and ethical standpoint I take in being the digital Batman. Strict utilitarianism dictates that maximizing overall good is key. In this case and perhaps others, the taking down of the paedophile’s content and capturing their login credentials is enough “good” to allow for the action to be seen as acceptable. This is really the basis of The Batman’s ethics in the comics and ideally, for me on this particular incident with Anonymous.

Now, this does not mean I agree with all of their operations as well as certainly not agreeing with the bulk of the actions carried out by the Antisec movement. However, the perspective is the key I suppose. It’s a slippery slope I admit, but, in this case of OpDarkNet, I agree with the greater good being served in this case.

Deontology:

Here we have the Deontologists like Sam Bowne. Deontology is a nice thing to cling to the ethical rules of a governing system of laws. However, it seems to me, and others here, that this system of laws is not working against these offenders in the hidden wiki. Sure, you could say that the LEO’s have ongoing investigations, but, just how many busts have there been as opposed to the massive amount of content located on the hidden wiki and within i2p, Freenet, and TOR?

So far, I have not seen law enforcement really winning this battle.

Oh well, the Deontologists have their point of view and others have theirs. The key here is that Sammy and others like Packetknife are entitled to their point of view. They are right for themselves, and that is the issue with all philosophy and ethics arguments. Like I said, it’s all about your world view. However, I do not ascribe to a moral absolute unlike someone like Sammy.

There are no right answers. There is only what you are willing to accept for yourself.

Legal Aspects of Digital Vigilantism:

Now, on to the legal aspects here.

18 U.S.C. § 2252 : US Code – Section 2252: Certain activities relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors 

The US code on activities related to sexual exploitation of minors alludes to the fact that one has to “knowingly” access such content and to have more than 3 pieces of “content” to be considered guilty of child exploitation/pornography. This of course also alludes to the trafficking thereof etc etc in legalese. Where this is important for the digital Batman is where there are caveats.

(c) Affirmative Defense. - It shall be an affirmative defense to
a charge of violating paragraph (4) of subsection (a) that the
defendant -
(1) possessed less than three matters containing any visual
depiction proscribed by that paragraph; and
(2) promptly and in good faith, and without retaining or
allowing any person, other than a law enforcement agency, to
access any visual depiction or copy thereof -
(A) took reasonable steps to destroy each such visual
depiction; or
(B) reported the matter to a law enforcement agency and
afforded that agency access to each such visual depiction.

So, as I said before, if you are trying to take one of these sites down, then do turn off your browser’s images capabilities.. Hell, why not just use Lynx for that matter so as to negate the issue. However, there is a key point here that you all should take into account. It’s the bit about making the LEO’s aware of the content. This is what I was trying to get at before. If Anonymous or anyone is going to go after this content, then it would be best if you tipped off the LEO’s to the site and the content. Now, the above statement implies that if you make the tip, then you are going to let the police have your system to look at… And we all know Anonymous is not going to do that. So, just be judicious about your tip off’s to the authorities. Do your homework and dump the data to them directly, not on Pastebin.

Of course, then there are the issues of hacking a system in the first place… Well, in the DarkNet, the only thing as I see it that is key would be not leaving a trace that you were there. You know, kinda like the whole hiking ethos of only leaving footprints.. But in this case I would suggest not even a footprint should be left behind. It seems to me, that if you hack a paedo site, even with good intentions, you could get the double whammy from the authorities of hacking as well as accessing child porn…

And that could really be problematic.

So, in the end, I circle back to recommending that you become intelligence gatherers and locate the sources to report. If you locate them, and you get some good details for the authorities without having to SQLi them, all the better. You will be doing a good thing AND you will be satisfying the Deontologists in the room.

Keep your wits about you kids.

K.

The Lulzboat Sailed The Internets and All I Got Was This Stupid Garbage File!

That’s it? All we get is this stinkin garbage file?

Well, it seems that the Lulz are over for now as last night saw the Lulzboat sail into the sunset. In a post on twitter and a rapidly seeded file dump on Pirate Bay, the LulzSec collective decided to hang up their tophat claiming that they were basically going to pull a Costanza at the top of their game.

Within the torrent file the following parting words were sent:

Friends around the globe,

We are Lulz Security, and this is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. 50 days ago, we set sail with our humble ship on an uneasy and brutal ocean: the Internet. The hate machine, the love machine, the machine powered by many machines. We are all part of it, helping it grow, and helping it grow on us.

For the past 50 days we’ve been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could. All to selflessly entertain others – vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It’s what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.

While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn’t that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.

Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we’ve gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don’t stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.

So with those last thoughts, it’s time to say bon voyage. Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind – we hope – inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.

Thank you for sailing with us. The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon.

Let it flow…

Hrmmm.. 50 days? Is there any real significance to this other than perhaps the party van was pulling up outside your doors and you had to dump the garbage file quick like? Honestly, the files that you dumped, while in sheer numbers of passwords and logon’s to a few sites is well, kinda weak. In short, there is nothing revelatory here. I mean, jeez at LEAST the garbage file in the movie had some interesting malware shit in it right?

The Files:

So, we have some AT&T data from inside that cover some frequency ranges, and some manuals, minutes from meetings etc that are kind of interesting. There is a scan of the FBI.gov site that shows a vuln, and they managed to add Pablo Escobar to the Navy jobs database.

Whoopee.

All in all I have to give the Lulzsec crew a big “MEH” on this as well as their other dumps really. Sure, they have pointed out that low hanging fruit is abundant on the internet, but, really, who in the security or hacking world did not know this? Further more, what does the average everyday end user care? I mean, if their passwords are stolen, they will reset them. If their money is stolen they are insured by the Fed… Is there a great hue and cry from the masses because Lulz were had by the general populace to have the Lulzboat crew hoisted on the yard arm?

Not that I have seen.

In short kidz, you have only served to amuse yourselves and others out there but if you had anything else in mind about bringing change to the scene, I don’t think you have succeeded. People are creatures of habit and sloth. Short of taking the whole system down for the count, nothing will be so epic as to make corporations secure their networks and perform due diligence. Those who have done so out of worry because of your antics will go back to their peaceful Luddite slumber.

Leaving So Soon?

So, on to your sudden departure from the scene. I have the feeling that as I had written about before, you were coming to realize that perhaps you could never be as clever or wily to evade detection and prosecution given your penchant for the dramatic you all seem to have. Your propaganda machine and communication channels were leaking, this you could see from the A-Team dumps.

You guys have tried variations of your names, you have attempted obfuscate as much as you could, but, in the end, your re-use of favored screen names was your undoing. You see, the jester has been scouring the internet (I am sure with help from others) looking for any connections to those screen names or iterations thereof. I myself have done this and came up with analogous data to what jester and others have posted. With each successive day, your true identities are being uncovered if they have not fully been as of now.

However, this re-use of nick names and ties to email addresses aside, you guys just were immature enough to do yourselves in with petty disputes and the use of non trustworthy assets. This whole outing of each other thing was one of the most stupid things I have seen. Sure, some of it could be digital chaff, with you trying to set out disinformation, but I think that is not the case. Your own hubris shall be the thing that ends up placing the party vans on your collective front steps.

Lets face it, you played the game of spooks and I think in the end, you will lose. In fact, I think that you should probably have been better off had you just gone off seeking some sharks with frikkin lazers on their heads in your volcano lair instead of playing with the fire that you have been. Once they do pop you, you all are going to see some very interesting things inside jail as the governments kluge together terrorism charges on you.

Your Legacy:

Well, I guess we will have to see if anyone decides to take up the Lulzsec mantle. For now, we all await the party van posse to pick you all up sooner or later. You have spawned some more fools though like Team Poison who want to up the ante with releases of data like old Tony Blair stuff… That was kinda lame too frankly and made so sense when they claimed to still have access.. Why dump what you have and then claim to still have access? If it was current, I am pretty sure they have yanked the plug on that mail server and ‘five’ has it.

Oh, did you take that into account? I mean, he is Tony Blair after all… They are MI5… ‘Expect them’

So where was I?… Oh yeah..

In all of your dumps you delivered nothing worth your or our time. You proved a point that SQLi is prevalent but who didn’t know this? You have proved that you were pretty immature and likely suffer from Asperger’s yourselves… Well that will be the claim that your lawyers make to the judge won’t it huh? I mean that is the mental illness du jour as excuses go for immature hacking antics today isn’t it? I don’t think that will work though, the government just doesn’t care, they will medicate you and then put you on trial. You see Asperger’s is not a form of insanity, and the insanity plea, as some of us know, is NOTORIOUSLY hard to use as a defense in court. Nope, you guys really actually suffer from inflated ego’s and too much jolt cola.. That’s my diagnosis, for what its worth.

So, yeah, legacy… Well, you certainly have tried to do your best imitation of SPECTRE, but instead you came off as Bighead. I am sure there will be others following in your footsteps, but, in the end I don’t think you have launched a new SPECTRE.

Nope, I expect your real legacy will be the creation of more draconian laws by the government as a backlash to your antics. Laws that will make all our lives a bit more less private and a lot more prone to being misused. I also expect that the lulz will continue, though at your expense once you are all caught and put into the pokey.

… And those lulz will also be epic fail.

K.

LulzSec: How NOT To Run An Insurgency

Oh how the Lulz turn…

Lulzsec seems to be imploding a bit with the pressure put on them by their own interpersonal issues as well as the likes of Th3j35t3r and the Web Ninja’s on their backs as well. I however, would like to point out the Lulz tactical failures that are directly leading to their ultimate party van special that seems to be coming soon. I say ‘seems’ to be coming because who really knows what will happen. Perhaps some of these guys will actually skate because they were smart enough to keep some of their personal details.. well.. personal.. Maybe not though as is evidenced by the ‘doxing pastebin-palooza’ of late.

Secrecy is important:

LulzSec seems to have misunderstood that secrecy is really really important when you are doing something like a digital insurgency. Sure, you can try to rely on all the technologies like proxies to hide your IP, but, you also have the human element to contend with. It is here where the Lulz have not thought things out too clearly. They attempted to use the Anonymous model, but, unlike Anonymous, they, had a smaller crew and a central core that, well, has been rather chatty. Chatty mind you, on IRC channels that have been compromised and monitored.

Loose lips sink ships.. Yeah, I went there…

Nope, while Lulzsec has been attempting to be secret, they failed to follow through and actually carry out their insurgency behind a wall of utter secrecy or even a cell based infrastructure it seems. Of course most of these efforts have been planed out and talked about on said IRC channels (even the sooper sekret ones) and advertised so others could revel in the lulz.

This and the other things I am going to mention will be their undoing.

Communications Should be COVERT:

Ok, so,  how long did Osama have runners with USB keys on donkey’s going to Peshawar Internet cafe’s without being caught? Oh, yeah, 10 friggin years! It took the CIA a long time to catch on to the runners/couriers and even then they did so only from a VERY FEW pieces of hard SIGINT. The key here kids is that the AQ guys were practising ‘tradecraft’ unlike the Lulzsec kids. They took pains to insure that their communications were not easily picked up by the NSA or anyone else listening and watching.

You guys in Lulzsec? Not so much….

Instead, you have relied on technology to keep you safe while flagrantly whipping out your collective pee pee’s and waving them at forces who are much better equipped, trained, and funded to hunt you down and make you go bye bye. Some might see that as daring… Others see it as just plain stupid. Either way, since you have failed to use real covert channels that you do not advertise, you have highly increased the likelihood that you will soon see those party van’s you speak of so often (mockingly) in your yards as they start taking all your computers out the door, and you to the local orange jump suit palace.

Next time, just have your meetings in the parking lot of the local PD. It will cut out the middle man.

Ego is the mind killer:

I must not have too much Ego. Ego is the mind-killer. Ego is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my Ego. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the Ego has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Ah yes, I have been ruminating on this one for some time and even adjusted this quote from Dune, which I think fits nicely. Your ego’s have been writing checks that you aren’t likely to want to have cashed kids. You have said that you do it for the lulz, you have also made intimations that its about how poor security is within the internet ecology, but, I think mainly your motivations have been ego driven. What this means is that you are getting quite the buzz off of being so darn smart and snarky. You have been having fun poking the badgers in the eyes and feeling invincible.

Well, you aren’t geniuses and you aren’t invincible. Eventually everyone gets caught, especially those who do not take care to cover their tracks and act smartly.

Simply, your ego’s have done you in… Be sure to check that ego at the door to the federal penitentiary that will be your new home, because there are bigger and nastier people in there who will be trading you for smokes soon. Oh, and remember to buy a lot of tucks pads.. You are going to need them.

Untrustworthy Assets Should NOT be Trusted With Operational Details:

This brings me to the bust of your minimally affiliated IRC op Ryan. It seems from all of the press and from the kids history, that he was unstable to start. This is the guy you want to trust with any data, no matter how small, on who Lulzsec is and how they operate?

Really?

Well then, who else do you have running your servers and running errands? Because I think they are likely to be just as whacked as Ryan and likely to be caught and roll within the first few minutes of interrogation!

Bravo, well done!

If you guys had any operational smarts, you would have to know that you cannot trust anyone with the whole picture. You pretty much are claiming that now after his arrest, but I think secretly you are all leaving fudge stains in your pants presently. According to the police Ryan had A LOT of data laying round and how are you to know who he talked to and how much he really knew about you all? Even IF you tried to be as careful as possible, you more than likely slipped up and gave him information that he will be giving.. Nope.. wait.. HAS GIVEN to the FBI and the Met.

Another failure on your part in the game of insurgency… I guess you will learn the hard way. Just as you will learn that outing your pals yourselves because they decided they wanted out, or did something to piss you off, will only lead back to you. Not the smartest of moves should any of these guys have data on you that they can use to turn against you.

“Never burn an asset unless you burn them and then shoot them between the eyes.. Or they will come back at you”

LulzSec Fall Down.. Go BOOM:

Finally, as if you could not tell from everything I said above, you are going to go down and likely go down hard. It will be a learning experience for you and for everyone else who wants to let their ego run free to gather 220K of followers on twitter by poking the badger. I am imagining that Ryan and his volumes of digital data, are being disseminated throughout the community of Feds and other agencies as I write…

Oh well, like I said, there’d daring and then there is stupid… Remember what John Keating said in “Dead Poets”

“Phone call from God. If it had been collect, that would have been daring!”

Be seeing you soon as your being put in the back of the party van kids…

K.

//SIGINT FOR ANALYSIS: DD0S: CHINA/S.KOREA/WORDPRESS “So Ronery”

THREE stories in the news recently have me pondering the tit for tat nature of what may be Kim Jong Il’s mostly impotent attacks against the outside world. It would seem that Mr. “ronery” may have been a little miffed of late because South Korea decided to float balloons laden with leaflets over into the Northern side after the Middle East began to protest against repressive regimes.

I laughed til I cried when I saw this on the news, poor Kim Jung! What’s even more hilarious is that I have also heard that the South Koreans also put KJI’s image on the pamphlets because it is a crime to destroy or defile any image of the “dear leader” So, the North Koreans must have fits and starts when these balloons start coming down! Net net though, the information makes it to some in the closed country, and one hopes that they are seeing what is happening outside in the real world… At least a little.

Post the balloon launches (Feb 25 2011) we are now seeing some interesting things happening on the internet that may in fact be KJI and North Korea acting out against everyone, especially the South Koreans. Both attacks on the face of it, may not be related, however with a closer look one may see that they could very well be related;

WordPress traces 2nd DDoS assault to China

Shock

By John Leyden

Posted in Enterprise Security, 7th March 2011 12:27 GMT

Free whitepaper – The Register Guide to Enterprise Virtualization

Blogging service WordPress suffered a further series of denial of service assaults on Friday, days after recovering from a particularly debilitating attack.

WordPress.com, which serves 18 million sites, traced the vast majority of the attack traffic of the latest assault back to China. Analysis pointed to a Chinese language site as one of the principal targets of the attack.

This as-yet-unnamed site is blocked by Chinese search engine Baidu, prompting speculation that the attack might be politically motivated. However, a closer inspection of events led WordPress to conclude that commercial motives were probably behind the attack, TechCrunch reports [1].

Separately the French finance ministry has admitted that it came under a sustained and targeted attack in December, targeting files related to the G20 summit that took place in Paris two months later. More than 150 computers at the ministry were affected, the BBC reports [2].

Paris Match magazine, which broke the story, quotes an anonymous official who told it: “We noted that a certain amount of the information was redirected to Chinese sites. But that [in itself] does not say very much.” ®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/07/wordpress_ddos_reloaded/

South Korea Probes Internet, GPS Disruptions

South Korea is investigating the latest high-technology assault against it. The attack targeted government computers and users of the GPS navigation system. It came as South Korea and the United States hold an annual military exercise that North Korea calls a prelude to an invasion.

Fifteen million South Koreans logging online Monday received an alert from the country’s Internet Security Agency. It instructed them to download a vaccine program to thwart a foreign online attack against Web sites of key government agencies and financial institutions.

Officials Monday said the government is trying to figure out who ordered the attack on the Internet sites last Friday and Saturday. Targets included the presidential Blue House, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the National Intelligence Service, South Korean military headquarters, the U.S. military forces in the country and several other agencies.

They were hit by what is known as a distributed denial of service attack. It was done by overloading targeted sites with Web page requests from about 80,000 personal computers infected with malicious software.

Suspicion as to who masterminded the attack falls on North Korea. But Park Kun-woo, a spokesman at Ahn Lab, a leading South Korean maker of security software, says there is no clear evidence Pyongyang orchestrated this one.

Park says nothing is certain at this point because malicious computer hackers tend to disguise themselves in various ways. It is clear, he says, however the attack did not originate in South Korea and was dispersed via a number of countries.

The National Police Agency says the attacks were routed through computer servers in numerous places, including Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Russia, Taiwan and Thailand.

Internet security companies say, as of Monday, more than 100 of the so-called zombie computers that were used to carry out the online attack have seen the contents of their hard drives erased by the malware that the computer owners unsuspectingly downloaded.

This incident did not last as long as a similar disruption over five days in July 2009, but it targeted more Web sites. Officials have said the 2009 attack was traced to an Internet protocol address in China used by North Korea’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

Other attacks also have been traced to China.

Experts say North Korea has an Internet warfare unit that targets South Korean and American military networks.

Also Monday, the South Korea Communications Commission confirmed that interference to Global Position System signals on Friday came from a location in North Korea that was pinpointed as the source of a similar disruption last August.

The incident reportedly affected GPS receivers in military equipment and mobile phones as far south as Seoul. It also took place, as was the case last August, while a military exercise with the United States was under way here.

The U.S. military command in the country is not confirming whether the GPS jamming disrupted the exercise. A spokesman says as a matter of policy, the command does not comment on intelligence matters.

The Yonhap news agency quotes a South Korean defense official saying the GPS disruption did have a slight effect on military artillery units.

Now, WordPress was attacked around the same time as the South Korea attacks. However, the linking factors for me are twofold:

1) Both have Chinese elements

2) Both are aimed at political targets (wordpress has said that there seemed to be a foreign political nature in the attacks)

While N. Korea does not have an infrastructure in house to set off attacks, they do indeed have connections with China and certain Chinese telco/internet backbone providers that they have worked with in the past on such occasions. While the attacks seem to be a bit more wide spread as attacking systems go, both would be timed in such a way that tips me to believe both are the work of North Korea. So far, no one has really made this connection that I have seen in the news as yet, but, it’s not such an outlandish idea.

Now, KJi has nukes, and he has all kinds of other weapons of war, but, he seems to be lacking in one area, “cyber” as the press might put it. Since his regime is SO repressive that they have no infrastructure, it is likely that any such programs would be run out of the south of China. North Korea likely has many programmers/military types working in the south China area at facilities that are Chinese run working on cyber war capabilities. Were N. Korea actually to get its own infrastructure I have no doubt they would be read to go. That they don’t at present is only a small stumbling block.

It is also well known that the Chinese and others will easily rent out bot-nets for the work as well as be paid for information/cyber operations of this nature. So, the attacks are really only cogently linked together here from their connections to pissing off N. Korea. Frankly, I am kinda surprised the attacks didn’t also have some Facebook DD0S as well…

All in all though, the DD0S did not do permanent damage anywhere and for me, just seem to be more a cry for attention on the part of Mr. Ronery…

Sad panda.

K

Weapons Of Mass Disruption: Cyberpocalypse-a-palooza

To avoid a digital doomsday, Clarke and co-author Robert Knake argue that America needs to treat cyberattack capabilities as nothing less than weapons of mass destruction that can “skip over the battlefield” to target civilian life. That sort of threat, like nuclear weapons, calls for a multi-tiered response: treaties, transparency, beefed-up defenses and a focused concern on rogue states.

Cyberwar treaties face a problem that traditional ones don’t. An enemy could easily hide the source of attacks by routing them through hijacked computers in another country or attributing them to independent criminals.

But Clarke contends that a government could be held accountable for helping to track down any cyberattack originating within its borders, just as the Taliban was held responsible for harboring Osama bin Laden. Although attribution on the Internet isn’t as simple as in traditional warfare, cyberattacks can be traced. Clarke says forensic hackers can follow the trail of bits when they’re given time and leave to breach enemy computers.

“The NSA can do that. And the NSA tells me that attribution isn’t actually a problem,” he says bluntly.

Full article HERE

Dick, Dick, Dick, I am with you in so many ways.. BUT, when you start talking about DPI of the WHOLE INTERNET, then you lose me pal.

Sorry *shrug*

I personally don’t want the whole of the internet being siphoned even MORE than it already is by DPI at every providers NOC with a NARUS STA6400 system installed.

Nope, no thank you.

Now, on the other things likes accountability for nations with server on their soil I am with you. If a server is public/private and is on your soil, there should be “some” responsibility there. At least there should be enough to enforce security practices be carried out to prevent it from becoming the botnet slave in the first place no? Of course Obama wussed out on that one here didn’t he? No rules will be created to enforce that type of accountability here in the private sector.. No sir! It would put an undue strain on the private sector!

*tap tap* Uhh sir, most of the infrastructure is in “private” hands… Umm without making them do some due diligence we are fucked mmmkay?

Yeah…

Meanwhile, lets talk to the italicized and BOLD text. Back in the days of yore, when pirates roamed the seas, there was a thing called a “Letter of Marque” basically, government would give a pirate hunter the letter and say “go git em” This is what we need today I think. Of course this is touchy, but, this is pretty much what Dick is alluding to. He says that he “knows” that were the NSA given a letter of marque, they could not only penetrate the systems involved, but also run the forensics to attribute where the perp really is.

“Whoa” to quote Neo…

Yes, it’s quite true. Not only the NSA could do this though. Go to the BlackHat or Defcon and you would have a plethora of people to choose from really. So this is no mysterious mojo here. Its just that this type of action could cause much more ire than the original attack maybe and lead us into that physical war with the nukes. Who knows.

I guess though, that what has been seen as the model for the future “internet” with cyber-geographic demarcations might just be the real future state we need. At least that is what Dick’s advocating here and I can sorta see that as a way to handle certain problems. If we break up cyberspace so to speak, into regions (like the whole .XXX debacle) then we can have set rules of governance. At present the internet is just a giant wild west stage complete with digital tumbleweeds and an old whore house.

*pictures the dual swinging doors and spurs jangling*

The one thing that rings true though, is that there needs to be some accountability.. Just what form that will take is anyone’s guess. For now though, we will continue on with the lame government jabbering and frothing with the lapdog that is the so called “press” lapping it all up and parroting it back to the masses.

Smoke em if ya got em…

CoB

Buy this fake purse… Or else…

New York (CNN) — A shootout Thursday between a police officer and a street peddler in busy Times Square — crowded with holiday shoppers and tourists — left the suspect dead but no one else harmed, New York police said.

New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said gunfire was exchanged after a police sergeant confronted two men who were selling goods on the street. The sergeant, a member of a task force on street peddlers, believed he recognized one of the men as using “aggressive” sales tactics and coercing tourists to buy unwanted items, Browne said.

One of the men fled, pulled a Mac-10 pistol and fired two shots at the officer, Browne said. A bullet shattered glass in the window of the box office of the Marquis Theater and the other bullet hit a nearby souvenir shop, Browne said. See iReport on shooting

The officer returned fire and hit the suspect, a 25-year-old man who was later pronounced dead at a hospital, Browne said.

Browne said the suspect’s gun jammed, with 27 rounds remaining in the weapon. See WABC report on the shooting

Police found a business card for a gun dealer on the victim, Browne said. On the back of the card was a handwritten note saying, “I feel sorry for a cop who thinks I’m getting into his paddy wagon.”

The gun was reported stolen from the Richmond, Virginia, area in October, Browne said.

Wow, just wow. Having been a resident of NYC and just been standing in the area of the shooting a few weeks back, I can’t help but to see this all play out in my head real time like I was there. So here are some observations…

1) So, street vendors can be arrested for “aggressive” sales tactics?

2) A friggin Mac-10! DAMN, this guy was fixin on some killin

3) Hmm Mac-10 Jamming? Damn lucky

4) Damn fine shooting on the part of the officer

5) Interesting this gun dealer card with the “You’ll never take me alive coppers!”

6) Ok, I am a New Yorker because NO street vendor is making me buy ANYTHING I don’t want.. Unless they pull a Mac-10 on me..

I have to say, out of all the time I lived in NYC, I never saw anything like this…