Anonymous hijacks Syria's government pages

The text loads slowly. It actually freezes if you're in another tab, which IMO is a poor implementation decision; it means you actually have to sit and watch it come on the screen word by word.

For those who either don't want to wait for it to load, or didn't get to it before it got taken down, here's what it says:

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To the Syrian people: The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side - tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become. We salute your determination to be non-violent in the face of the regime's brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is next.

To the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be tried for treason. No outside enemy could do as much damage to Syria as Bashar Al-Assad has done. Defend your country - rise up against the regime! - Anonymous

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Once the text has loaded, it links to several revolutionary sites, and also scrolls images across the top that apparently link to youtube videos.

i agree - you've got javascript doing both of the text animations, plus the huge graphics and scrolling images.

Loaded for me fine in less than 2 seconds and I'm on a 150kb/s connection.

Kids these days huh! Never knowing when and when not to use javascript and how to implement things in the most accessible manner.

Wonder how well it worked on IE6 and how many Syrian people run that browser or the latest ones...

Anyone have any stats?

IE6 8.53%

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-SY-monthly-201007...

In case you don't want to wait for the page to load, here's what you'll see:

http://postimage.org/image/75ivivdw/

The actual text:

To the Syrian people: The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side - tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become. We salute your determination to be non-violent in the face of the regime's brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is next.

To the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be tried for treason. No outside enemy could do as much damage to Syria as Bashar Al-Assad has done. Defend your country - rise up against the regime! - Anonymous

This is a very good hack and also a reminder for Western countries and political actors that these kind of break-ins are not necessarily criminals acts but may be political demonstrations. If a break-in is non-destructive and has as motivation a political demonstration, in a democracy it should be treated as such and not be brushed aside as "criminal".

It's far too easy to jump to "if the non-digital equivilent happened.." comparisons without realising that they don't actually line-up right.

If I broke onto an MoD base in person, no matter how little damage I did or how much my motivation was politically driven, I'd be arrested pretty damn quick. And I'm talking about countries like the UK/US, not Syria.

Greenpeace did that lots of times. They usually went straight to the roof of the company building and unrolled a large sign with their protest text ("{companyname} polutes {someplace} with {somesubstance}" etc.

The beginnings of protests try to call attention for a cause. It gets media attention and people notice it. Now people know and can actually support the cause. If it can get a majority, the initial "illegal action" changed the law by forcing the government to react to what people actuallt want.

That's the essence of democracy: to make the government do what the people want and not the other way around.

I am really surprised (not positively) that this sparked a big discussion.

A break-in, by definition, is criminal regardless of the motivation. This would be like breaking into city hall to stage a protest -- the protest part is democratic, the break-in part is criminal.

The Syrian government has already said the protests are illegal. So if we follow pure logic, they are all criminals and should be locked up. This comes back to a fundamental question of democracy, who owns the government?

How about when the folks making the laws are criminals?

Perhaps we should be more concerned with right and wrong than following the rules.

The OP's post was about standards in a democratic/free country. You're referring to an oppressive regime.

Those are both relative. How many countries is Syria actively at war with?

No, acts such as these are political expression no matter the particular flavour of the oppression the host countries government engages in.

When the folks making the laws are criminals, breaking the law is still criminal. By definition.

Whether it's right or wrong is a different and more nuanced question; but it's not the question addressed by the parent. I sympathise with your perspective, but I dislike "debate drift."

Every time someone says "By definition" as if it means something, a little vomit rises to the back of my throat.

On the contrary, "by definition" has a very clear meaning in mathematics and logic. On HN and other forums with logically-slanted people, it's used to reduce ambiguity in drifting debates like this one.

Agreed, "definition" its an absolute .. By definition gravity pulls you down as an example.

In that case, using the word 'criminal' as if it's at all relevant to the situation is 'debate drift'. It's a loaded word and its use as a label carries well known connotations. I'm not disputing the tautological definition, I'm disputing the implicatons of invoking it.

Put another way, you don't often hear Gandhi or Martin Luther King referred to as 'criminals', even if by definition it's the truth. There's a reason for that, and there's a reason why I'd tend to be pretty skeptical of someone who chose such a label for those men in conversation, technically factual though it may be.

That's not the way I read the original use of "criminal," but that's a legitimate argument to make. The thing to do would have been to say something like "I agree with you denotatively, but disagree with your connotations," and explain why. Not to fight debate drift with more debate drift.

The age old debate of chaotic good vs. lawful good

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_%28Dungeons_%26_Drago...

>When the folks making the laws are criminals, breaking the law is still criminal. By definition.

some other definition:

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "

This gets to be a complicated question. Basically, if you believe that your government is corrupt and no longer represents you, you may have the right or even a responsibility to revolt [1]. This gets fuzzy with right and wrong. You see if you pull off a revolution, you get to set the rules. You may even be able to call the losers criminals and try them as such. In some cases you could even make up laws and try the prior government members for them retroactively and get away with it if enough people think that what you are doing is right and just. However, until you win, the current government will consider you a criminal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution

General McArthur, after the fire bombing of Tokyo and other large cities in Japan said that if the US doesn't win the war, he will be a war criminal. the definers tend to be the winners at least initially. From the longer term historical perspective, not so much, for example, Japanese internment during WW2.

If you consider this criminal, then I consider "criminal" to be a merit-less allegation.

The page is nearly unresponsive. If the idea is for the Syrian people to see it, this is an unfortunate side effect of being on the top of Reddit/HN.

Mirror's here: http://zone-h.org/mirror/id/14599065

Better link (without the frameset): http://zonehmirrors.net/defaced/2011/08/08/mod.gov.sy/

Fyi, mod = ministry of defense

Great production values.

How are people in Syria accessing the net? If it's mostly mobile and/or ie6 then I hope this was tested on those platforms.

Well it works great on android at least.

The traffic seems to have killed the site. Here's a mirror showing what it looked like when it was still responsive:

http://zone-h.org/mirror/id/14599065

Kudos. I am hoping Anon do more than just deface for moral support, but actually ruin and undermine as much of their systems as possible.

Well done Anonymous. Although it may seem like an empty gesture based on what the U.S. government has (or hasn't) done.

Anon is not buddies with the US gov. Anon does what it can do.

And now it seems Syrian "hackers" defaced Anon+. http://anonplus.com/

I can't load the page so don't know if the text was in English only or also in Arabic. I was in Syria in October 2009 on business and.. about 80% (or perhaps even higher) of the population did not speak any English, so this text isn't going to help much.

EDIT: Ok, I see from the mirror that it is in both English and Arabic.

There are 3 links to mirrors or images in this thread. It would have been trivial to find out that the text was both in English and Arabic.

Make sure you wget :)

good idea!

dear anonymous, thanks. Please do libya also. And if you could access their fire control systems, I have friends who could make use of that access.

Agent Provocateur....

could also do something about www.house.gov

Bravo.

I don't think there's anything more to say.

Exciting!