Paypal gives FBI the list of IP Address of 1,000 Anomymous hackers
thehackernews.com
thehackernews.com
really? were they mounting a DDOS attack using a pocket calculator attached to 4800 baud modem?
I just checked wikipedia and there's indeed a protocol for them, but I've never seen one in the wild. In my day it was 300, 1200, 2400, 9600, 14400, 16800, 19200, 28800, 33600, 56k ...
So, back on topic, wouldn't it be more likely he was channel bonding two 2400 baud modems?
My problem with this isn't that they're reporting participants; it's that the participants and organizers are going to be dealt with an order of magnitude more harshly than if they'd done the same thing minus a computer.
And DDoSes don't result in you being dragged across the floor by your arms.
Why? Because that's the point where they're non-analogous. If you participate in a DDoS, you'll wind up getting your computers confiscated while the FBI crime labs scour them for evidence. If you sit on the floor of Kentucky Fried Panda, you'll get dragged out by your arms.
the participants and organizers are going to be dealt with an order of magnitude more harshly than if they'd done the same thing minus a computer
because it's not "the same thing", it's a slightly different thing, somewhat more pernicious and dangerous, because the cost to a protestor of carrying out a sit-in is large, whereas the cost of carrying out a DDoS is large.
I find it's always useful, when determining the legitimacy of a given political tactic, to assume that it's being used by someone we hate rather than someone we like. So let's suppose the Westboro Baptist Church gets up one morning and decides to target businesses owned by gays. If they do this via sit-in, then they can probably only target one business at a time, and they have to sit around all day getting jeered at. But if they do it via DDoS, they can take down businesses at their leisure.
These are both illegal and illegitimate forms of political protest, but the DDoS is potentially much worse than the sit-in.
Always assume that the questionable tactic is being used by the Illinois Nazis (I hate those guys) or the Westboro Baptist Church. Because if it's okay for Martin Luther King to do it, then it's gotta be okay for Fred Phelps to do it too.
The point is not the reference but what the reference points to.
"You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue."
The point of nonviolent activism isn't to harm someone else or their economic well-being (though the latter is often a side effect). It's to force a rupture or break in the institutions of a community to resolve what King calls an underlying tension in that community. By forcing people in power to use violence against nonviolence, it disrupts the ruling ideology by pointing out its hypocrisy and forcing action by threatening the breakdown of the social order predicated on that ideology.
Of course, a neo-Nazi may well try a sit down, but that's likely to be ineffective as it's not exploiting any inherent tension and isn't going to cause any huge community squabbles that have the potential to degenerate into violence.
As to why it's okay to threaten the social order... well, in effect because laws and order exist to establish justice, and we are compelled by moral law to oppose unjust laws. Which is, you might say, just saying we should do this because this is right. Perhaps. But it's a difficult proposition to say every action can be be considered individually and judged without moral context. Occupied Resistance in WW2 fought the Nazis and broke many laws (including not just vandalism but murder). A slave in pre-Civil War America who ran away, and anyone who helped that slave run away, was breaking many federal and state laws, as well as seriously disrupting the economy and commerce. Those were unjust situations, though, and so it was right.
>These are both illegal and illegitimate forms of political protest, but the DDoS is potentially much worse than the sit-in.
I believe you overestimate the power of DDoS. Lest you forget: well over 1000 people were involved in the attacks. This is just the 1000 most notorious. If the Westboro Baptist Church had thousands of adherents, they could indeed take down many businesses via sit-ins. However, they only have a few.
It takes a lot of people to voluntarily DDoS a large website. Perhaps several thousand. This is enough to shut down a whole lot of restaurants.
Is it? Participating in a sit-in is about the same thing as signing a confession and begging the police to haul you to the judge. A DDoS is a shadow crime with elements of failure to report a crime (hiding behind a distant IP address) and betrayal (ISP ToS), with elements of malicious premeditation (geographic distribution, covert command and control network).
... the participants and organizers are going to be dealt with an order of magnitude more harshly than if they'd done the same thing minus a computer.
If you could secretly conduct a sit-in of, say, all Bank of America offices using a spoon, the FBI would most certainly drop the hammer on you. And the terms of your parole, if you ever got out, would most certainly ban you from using utensils.
Isn't it likely to not even be script kiddies, but machines that are part of a botnet owned by script kiddies?
If this were actually some kind of conspiracy to take down Paypal, the organizers would have created a botnet trojan and encouraged everyone to distribute it and infect others with it.
The people that are most likely to 'suffer' now are the ones that downloaded a ~thing~ and said 'I want to protest against Paypal'. Okay, maybe they know that this is a grey area or technically nor legal, but.. Still. They are not 'bringing down' anything on their own.
I hope you don't compare it to a mob either - it seems far too 'peaceful' for that.
Regarding 'shut down a business': What do you call it if all employees go on a strike? What if activists block a train route to stop nuclear wastage: Are they not harming the business (both by blocking the rails for other trains and by causing immense costs for everyone involved)?
While I'm not even sure I agree with the way this group tries to make a point, I DO think you should grab some colors that are not black or white..
Remember, the world is full of folks who hate other folks. Sometimes for legit reasons, sometimes for stupid reasons.
Easy. Write something. Put forward a rational, logical and coherent argument about why you disapprove of X, and publish it somewhere. Instead of just inconveniencing others with your temper tantrum, you might convince them to come around to your point of view.
One person with a sensible argument is far more powerful than a hundred thousand people with a poorly thought out chant.