Telstra Fears LulzSec Attacks, Hesitates On Internet Filter | Hacker News Reader

Telstra Fears LulzSec Attacks, Hesitates On Internet Filter

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118 pointsa904guy44 comments

Okay - if this is true then it's really quite astonishing. That these groups might be having a deterrent effect on corporations is pretty incredible.

I wonder if all those ISPs considering implementing draconian piracy controls are fearing the same kind of retribution.

Could it be that it will be these few and scattered children which arrest the slide into fascist information control toward which we seem to be headed? It still seems incredibly unlikely - yet for the first time it suddenly seems possible.

Could it be that LulzSec/Anonymous are the revolutionaries of the next decade?

Early revolutionaries are always seen as criminals. Only in retrospect and only after they provoke major changes in the society does the society recognize them as some kind of heroes. But until that happens, they will be persecuted and some of them caught and treated like criminals. And I'm not saying they are completely innocent or anything. But all revolutionaries eventually provoke some damage. But that damage is insignificantly small compared to the changes they eventually cause.

Things are definitely getting really interesting, and I think this is just the beginning. The more the Governments will try to censor the Internet (which seems like the case lately), the more of these people will rise to fight against them. My money is on them.

Anon has somewhat of a cause they're fighting for, they are pretty consistent when it comes about picking targets and their motives. But despite the amount of media attention it still feels like a drop on a hotplate to me.

LulzSec on the other hand just wants 'lulz', they'll try to hack anyone and anything, and probably fail a lot, but when they succeed they get a lot of media coverage. They pretend to be doing it to make people aware of security, but either it's a front or they're just that naive.

Anon has a goal, and what they do is an attempt to achieve it, LulzSec's goal is to do damage. I for one fear that LulzSec will push governments into cracking down on w/e is left of the 'free' internet.

Anon started out doing pretty silly things, too, I believe, and soon their mission "matured" and became more serious. I'm starting to feel the same trend for LulzSec, and they even said so in a very recent BBC interview. They were asked if the "lulz" and the "antisec" missions are at odds with each other. They said for now they will keep doing a bit of each, but they think they'll start getting more serious as it's more fulfilling to have a cause like bringing down a few notches the corrupt officials, etc.

So we'll see if that's what will happen. They are pretty unpredictable, but I think they'll get caught up in this and continue doing it for the good of everyone.

What BBC interview?

This one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13912836

Lots of talk in there about goals beyond lulz.

Early revolutionaries are criminals by definition since the system of which they revolt against cast them as such. To rebel is to be an outcast of any label.

Early revolutionaries are always seen as criminals.

Relevant quotes:

"Those who make revolutions half way only dig their own graves" and "History is written by the victors."

Here's an IRC log that will give you some insight into how Anonymous thinks:

http://th3j35t3r.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/time-to-speak-up-p...

These people are certainly not the Thomas Jeffersons of our time.

Of course they aren't. Thomas Jefferson wasn't on the battlefield, he was in the Continental Congress writing things to inspire people.

Y'know, like... here.

Yeah, they're not George Washingtons either.

Curious. Anonymous went after a slough of aussie government and telco sites a few years ago when the blacklist was announced, but that action was limited to DDoSes. At the time, there was only a minimal acknowledgement from Conroy et al of the downtime, and nothing from telcos. This seems to be entirely different. It seems that Telstra is conflating LulzSec with Anonymous, and presuming that the blacklist (something Anon hates) will attract the ire of LulzSec, whose attacks have been far more damaging than Anon's.

It's easy for somebody who follows the issues closely to deride this as misinformed paranoia, but I wonder what a lay person, even one who had heard of the two groups, would think about their respective motivations and capabilities. It could well be that the people who advise on these decisions simply saw the name "LulzSec" and, knowing something about Internet culture, assumed they were connected to Anonymous and shared common desires. What's scarier, that person could rightly be considered an expert on the matter in most lay groups.

I would think that LulzSec and Anon's membership have a high degree of intersection...

Membership, sure, but motives, no. Anon goes after perceived wrongs against Freedom of Expression, and LulzSec goes after...everyone.

Same happened in Turkey this month (#22agustos). The Anon DDoS was portayed as a failure in Turkish media, and the government took credit for successfully fighting off the "cyber-attack". I wonder what would happen if it was LulzSec instead of Anon.

LulzSec was actually front page of a newspaper (free) in Australia. I believe the article was about one of the irc server host owners being arrested. They've certainly been in the fear mongering propaganda.

The Sun in the UK (don't blame me, I work on a radio station and we get it there!) had LulzSec on the front page, I think twice this week.

Once when someone got arrested (headline "HACK THE LAD"), and once an 'exposé' about the arrested teenager sniffing gas (headed "OFF HIS INTERNUT!").

When they hacked Sony, it was in the ABC radio stations' hourly news bulletins (second story I think). "Lulls Security".

If ever the LulzSec issue was one of black and white to me, it has now become gray.

The symbol of the French revolution was the guillotine. The freedom of the people wasn't won with good behavior. Just saying.

The freedom of the people wasn't won with the guillotine, either. What are you talking about?

The guillotine certainly went a long way toward securing the freedom of countless peasants, and the effects of the French Revolution reverberated throughout Europe for the next 100 years at least.

>The guillotine certainly went a long way toward securing the freedom of countless peasants

Uh, I disagree. (What did you read? Are you being sarcastic?)

The French Revolution and accompanying Reign of Terror were symptoms if wild political instability, in which hundreds of people were wrongly killed at the same time the government troubled itself with renaming every month (for lulz?).

This instability was seized upon by Napoleon, who restored the rule of law at the cost of dictatorship and many _extremely_ costly wars.

The effects of the _idealism_ of the French Revolution reverberated around Europe, yes. But the effects of the blood and turmoil did, as well.

You don't think that instability contributed to the ending of feudalism?

All bs. It's a funding ploy. I don't believe Telstra really fears LulzSec. But I bet they can convince the police (government) they do. Means more money for the project.

I would be more hesitant to doubt the validity of this. I'm sure after witnessing what happened to Sony, corporations will be a little more hesitant to deny freedom of use to their users.

Here's the link to the original article: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/hackers-put-te...

We (who care about freedom speech) need to get the politicians to listen to us...

We need a more effective way to jerk their chain than by committing crimes: with 4Chan/LulSec, we risk losing the propaganda war, dramatically.

Can somebody explain to me why investing in something like CiscoGuard does not obsolete this kind of attack? Eight years ago I heard about this technology, the ability to drop packets at line speed, and I have been confused since that DDOS has remained effective. I understand cost barriers, but again, that was eight years ago.

My understanding is that Cisco has EOL'd Guard.

Modern switches can also drop packets based on reasonably complex ACLs (which in practice is much of what DOS products did). The real cost of DDoS attacks is the focused engineering time required to design and implement mitigation for each and every one of them.

Awesome, LulzSec could end up becoming the internet's Batman

Well, considering their morally ambiguous status, I think the alternative title "The Dark Knight" might be more appropriate.

Not the current Internet. The current "Internet" is too vulnerable. We need something more implicitly secure, and if desired, anonymous. Something that can't be filtered or censored.

Batman's gotham is also too vulnerable. Their police department is understaffed and underequiped (except for when the story demands) the general civilians are too afraid to raise their voices. The current internet actually sounds like Gotham but just that the joker is a government department.

You know Batman isn't the good guy, right? He's a fascist archetype that operates as a paramilitary force in service of and in reaction to a weakened liberal democratic state. He's about as jack-booted thug as you can get.

Don't you think The Joker would be more apt?

That's probably the "Jester" hacker. In the end Batman was a vigilante, so I think it kind of suits them.

Makes me glad I have never given them my credit card info. I bet they are looking at dozens if not hundreds of unpatched / out of date servers and realising they are basically wide open with no way to upgrade those things in anything like the timeframe they have available. In fact, they probably realised they can't even do an internal audit to find that out in 2 months. In the past they would probably laugh it off, but seeing what happened to Sony I bet they are seriously contemplating what could happen to their business.

I would assume that this 'fear' is really dissenters within the company trying to create FUD to ward off further censorship or filtering. It's either that or it is a PR campaign to get more funding.

LulzSec, as a Telstra customer, thank you!

Are you switching from Telstra though? From seeing how the Internet breaks in USA [0] and China [1], it's discerning and goes against network neutrality.

Some people I spoke to that are against the Internet filter say they are not switching because of the contract. I pointed out that the filter is not voluntary for Telstra customers and so it's not part of contract unless they remain within a period of time. Then they tell me they don't want change.

[0] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comcast#Netwo...

[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Google_China#...

You can't quit Telstra. It's almost a monopoly in rural Australia.

Someone high up at Telstra has something to hide

You may be right.

This is certainly an interesting development if at all accurate and not just a ploy for funding like many claim.

What I think of, though, is that now that Telstra has announced they are scared of LulzSec (whether or not they really are), they made themselves the perfect target. They have admitted they are willing to be coerced. So what should LulzSec do? They should target Telstra hard, immediately, and just sit on the information. Wait and see what Telstra does, and once they start acting on something LulzSec doesn't like, threaten to drop the information. And then of course they will do it anyway at some point because they are in it for the lulz. But in my mind, Telstra has made themselves target #1 for LulzSec over the next few days.

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