Hacktivist for good claims takedown of Wikileaks (CNN)

[Infohawk]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/29/wikileaks.hacker/index.html?iref=obnetwork

A computer hacker who calls himself "The Jester" claimed responsibility for the cyber attack which took down the WikiLeaks site Sunday, shortly before it started posting hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables.
The Jester, who describes himself as a "hacktivist for good," said he took the controversial site down "for attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, 'other assets' & foreign relations."
He normally attacks Islamist websites, announcing "TANGO DOWN" on his Twitter account when claiming to have attacked a site. "Tango Down" is Special Forces jargon for having eliminated a terrorist.

If true, it's a little disturbing that all this is turning into a street brawl between thieves and 'hackers.'

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Good for him. I support his cause. And no, I am not trolling.

 

[yllus]

Much more useful would be a real hack of a site (either WikiLeaks or Islamist ones) and then providing credentials to law enforcement/security agencies. Of course, that would take actual skill whereas a DOS attack can be managed by any chump. Lame.

 

[5150Joker]

Regardless of whether his attack on Wikileaks is right or not, he's breaking the law and announcing it. He should be arrested for DoS attacks just like any other script kiddy would be.

 

[theeedude]

Like trying to catch the rain.

 

[Darwin333]

Please tell me its something better than a DOS attack.

 

[Lemon law]

Does it really matter, our so called hacker for "good" has only marginally slowed down but not stopped Wikileaks. In short, all that was gained was maybe one of two days of time.

Worse yet its alerted Wikileaks to the realization they have to increase their security making hacking as a damage containment strategy even more difficult in future.

 

[Icepick]

Good for him. I support his cause. And no, I am not trolling.

I was on the fence until this was brought to my attention today during a discussion on NPR. Now that I've had time to look into Wikileaks and what it does I support their cause. I like them even more now that they're preparing to bring to light a scam by some major banks.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

He's using a DDOS attack, which means he either infected millions of computers with a virus or uses millions of computers infected by a virus released by someone else. Which means he's breaking the law and should be locked up for quite some time.

But that's not going to happen. Breaking the law is only bad when governments don't benefit from it.

 

[PeshakJang]

I was on the fence until this was brought to my attention today during a discussion on NPR. Now that I've had time to look into Wikileaks and what it does I support their cause. I like them even more now that they're preparing to bring to light a scam by some major banks.

Yeah, who cares if it severely damages international relations or degrades our national security... right?

Do you think something like this would have been acceptable 50 years ago? How about during WWII? Journalists wouldn't dare publish such sensitive information, and anybody involved would be tried for treason or espionage. The same needs to happen today.

 

[PeshakJang]

He's using a DDOS attack, which means he either infected millions of computers with a virus or uses millions of computers infected by a virus released by someone else. Which means he's breaking the law and should be locked up for quite some time.

But that's not going to happen. Breaking the law is only bad when governments don't benefit from it.

You have to ask the question though... is it a crime if you are acting in the prevention of a felony?

 

[bl4ckfl4g]

You have to ask the question though... is it a crime if you are acting in the prevention of a felony?

You would maybe have a point if it didn't rely on the infection of thousands or more of potentially innocent victims to launch the attack.

 

[Jimmah]

You would maybe have a point if it didn't rely on the infection of thousands or more of potentially innocent victims to launch the attack.

I would like to add, Assange didn't commit any felony in the US, your laws have no ground in this matter.

Personally, I think Mr. Assange deserves a medal.

 

[Gamingphreek]

While both DoS and DDoS are illegal, a DDoS attack does not necessarily have to utilize a botnet.

For instance, I could write a TCP SYN/ACK packet and modify the return address so when server A gets hit with the SYN request, server B gets server A's ACK response. If I have multiple computers that are legally under my control, it is plausible that this variant of attack could consume a LOT of bandwidth. Since it isn't 1 specific computer doing the attack, it would then be labeled a DDoS attack.

You have to ask the question though... is it a crime if you are acting in the prevention of a felony?

Granted this is a bit of a reach, but if someone is in their home, notices they are being robbed, feels endangered, and shoots the suspect, he/she has not committed a felony.

As for those who are saying that taking the site down for 1 day does no good, if you read a couple articles regarding this particular person, he explains what he typically tries to do:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/patriotic-hacktivist-claims-wikileaks-site/story?id=12272776&page=2

th3j35t3r said he only takes down sites for 30-60 minutes.

"I could pull them down forever but i choose to do sporadic bursts," he says, so that authorities will either be alerted to the hacked website, and so they can continue monitoring its visitors if they had been doing so already.

He says he has a strategy to his hacking.

"I hit some sites a lot and other sites not so much," he says. "this is a tactic by hitting one site less it herds the target of these sites into it where they are easilt monitored, its easier to monitor a smaller space."

I read Wikileaks moved to the Amazon cloud - I would love to see TH3J35T3R bring it down again. Topping 10 Gb/s of traffic would be pretty insane though...

-GP

 

[Gamingphreek]

I would like to add, Assange didn't commit any felony in the US, your laws have no ground in this matter.

Personally, I think Mr. Assange deserves a medal.

Now that Interpol wants to bring him in, you better believe that if Interpol gets a hold of him, they will extradite him to the US.

 

[jackstar7]

Yeah, who cares if it severely damages international relations or degrades our national security... right?

Do you think something like this would have been acceptable 50 years ago? How about during WWII? Journalists wouldn't dare publish such sensitive information, and anybody involved would be tried for treason or espionage. The same needs to happen today.

The same needs to happen today? Can you support that position with reasons?

The most likely reason for the leaks is because we have increased communication between departments all done in an effort to better prosecute the 'war on terror'. You think we'd be better off with the "Someone Talked!" rhetoric?

I see the glass as pretty full on this situation as now a public that generally doesn't give a rat's ass about foreign relations gave this about 12 seconds of their collective attention. I don't see the "lives in danger" that people keep throwing around rhetorically. Can some be pointed out? Surely, with your vigilance you can protect them here -- from the internet!

 

[nonlnear]

I see the glass as pretty full on this situation as now a public that generally doesn't give a rat's ass about foreign relations gave this about 12 seconds of their collective attention. I don't see the "lives in danger" that people keep throwing around rhetorically. Can some be pointed out? Surely, with your vigilance you can protect them here -- from the internet!

Not to mention the "lives in danger" line is a pathetic diversion fromt he patently obvious fact that there is only one entity capable of putting American military lives in danger: the US government. Once you go down the interventionist path, complaining that other entities put lives in danger is just infantile deflection. American lives are in danger only because Congress willed it to be so.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Not to mention the "lives in danger" line is a pathetic diversion fromt he patently obvious fact that there is only one entity capable of putting American military lives in danger: the US government. Once you go down the interventionist path, complaining that other entities put lives in danger is just infantile deflection. American lives are in danger only because Congress willed it to be so.

As you said, you could argue they were forced to put their Assets/Troops lives in danger BECAUSE OF the threat from other entities.

You call this infantile but; honestly, is 9/11 not recent enough for you people!?! Would you rather us walk around with our hands over our eyes screaming "You can't hurt me because you aren't out there?" Entities ARE out there that want to harm the US and its citizens... you can't pretend otherwise!

-GP

 

[nonlnear]

As you said, you could argue they were forced to put their Assets/Troops lives in danger BECAUSE OF the threat from other entities.

You call this infantile but; honestly, is 9/11 not recent enough for you people!?! Would you rather us walk around with our hands over our eyes screaming "You can't hurt me because you aren't out there?" Entities ARE out there that want to harm the US and its citizens... you can't pretend otherwise!

-GP

I didn't say there is anything wrong with Congress putting lives on the line either. There is a time and a place for everything. However toppling a couple governments, getting mired in insurgency and then complaining that headlines about a couple thousand pages of political gossip is what's causing blood to be wasted is a rhetorical truck that would put the Ministry of Truth to shame.

 

[Kommander_Kink]

Let's arrest this bastard hacker, it's easy to find him, he's at his desk in the CIA in Virginia, does the U.S. government thinks we are stupid to believe the hacker is a civilian?

 

[Infohawk]

Let's arrest this bastard hacker, it's easy to find him, he's at his desk in the CIA in Virginia, does the U.S. government thinks we are stupid to believe the hacker is a civilian?

There are vigilante 'hackers' all over the world. Take your tinfoil hat off. He's not necessarily government.

 

[Lemon law]

The other point to note is that Assange is not acting alone. Assange is acting as the public face of Wikileaks, and even if someone jails Assange, the work of wikileaks is likely to go merrily along. As some other person maybe becomes the public face of wikileaks.

 

[Gamingphreek]

I think something that people in this thread fail to realize is the importance of information in general.

While we may see only "political garbage" and what not, a foreign intelligence operative may see it differently. Classified data is not all interesting, it is not all relative to the average person; however to the people it is relative to it is a significant finding.

My degree was in Computer Science. If a Chemist came up to me and said "WOAH - This [insert topic] is revolutionary. It changes the way we do [insert topic]". Given I am a computer scientist I probably wouldn't understand or care. That doesn't make the information any less revolutionary or important.

-GP

 

[RightIsWrong]

Much more useful would be a real hack of a site (either WikiLeaks or Islamist ones) and then providing credentials to law enforcement/security agencies. Of course, that would take actual skill whereas a DOS attack can be managed by any chump. Lame.

There isn't a law enforcement agency around that could use that information because it would obviously have been obtained illegally.

Re: the thread title, there is no such thing as a "hacker for good" considering hacking is illegal. The only ones that could be even remotely considered "good hackers" are the security experts that are hired to do penetration testing and they are obliged to abide by very strict practices such as; no taking the site offline, no changing or modification of any files, no storing of any information found, etc.

 

[flexy]

I like how the media and uneducated people actually buy into that story.

Here are the facts:

Assange has actually ties to real hackers, namely people from CCC (chaos computer club in Germany) who are famous for several hacking stunts in the 80s, 90s. ( But its likely that many of you are too young to know about CCC, just as a sidenote )

The thought that a hacker would be DDoSing a server to "protect our troops" is utterly ridiculous...so is the name "Hacktivist for Good" with THAT agenda It would be the first conservative hacker in history while the rest are all pretty far on the left side of the political spectrum, to say it mildly.

Despite the controversy around Assange and whether what he did is good or bad, i think its hilarious because everyone with half a brain cell knows who is really after him now - and i dont think it's "Sweden" nor some single, angry rightwing/patriotic Hacker sitting at home alone and DDoSing Wickileaks.

Who buys such nonsense?