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This doesn't sound like what I would think of as "cyber attacks". This is a traditional leverage of a militarized police force as a weapon. The same could easil

by x1798DE 11y ago

This doesn't sound like what I would think of as "cyber attacks". This is a traditional leverage of a militarized police force as a weapon. The same could easily have happened before the internet, and I suspect it was less common and less intense because before there were SWAT teams it wasn't possible.

kaitai 11y ago
This couldn't have happened before the internet: many of the attacks are automated and many take advantage of the fact that you don't have to pay extortionate long-distance rates for international phone calls, both direct consequences of the ease of communication enabled by the internet of today. Calling in pizza, gravel delivery, police, and hourly death threats from Finland in 1991 would have been quite expensive.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Additionally, it was really hard to piss people off who lived far away from you before the internet took off. Even if a Finn could do all these things in 1991 (phone phreaking to bypass the high cost?) they would have no motivation since they'd probably never get that pissed off at somebody in the US.
  - Buge 11y ago
    And what they want is a reaction. Without the internet they would not be able to see any reaction.
brbsix 11y ago
It certainly wouldn't have been called swatting. Prior to the 1990's, only large metro departments like the LAPD had SWAT teams. The Internet really is necessary for this sort of sustained attack to be successful. It requires a large number of distributed, anonymous actors. This wouldn't be possible without message boards and the like. Had this been one bad actor with a vendetta in the pre-Internet era, they would have been found and stopped. Of course they are also leveraging some fairly modern services: TTY relay services for the hearing impaired, Tor (to include onion services), as well as commercial cybercrime services available via private and darkweb markets. Without these resources, it is much easier to identify people.

by x1798DE 11y ago

kaitai 11y ago

This couldn't have happened before the internet: many of the attacks are automated and many take advantage of the fact that you don't have to pay extortionate long-distance rates for international phone calls, both direct consequences of the ease of communication enabled by the internet of today. Calling in pizza, gravel delivery, police, and hourly death threats from Finland in 1991 would have been quite expensive.

mikeash 11y ago
Additionally, it was really hard to piss people off who lived far away from you before the internet took off. Even if a Finn could do all these things in 1991 (phone phreaking to bypass the high cost?) they would have no motivation since they'd probably never get that pissed off at somebody in the US.
- Buge 11y ago
  And what they want is a reaction. Without the internet they would not be able to see any reaction.

brbsix 11y ago

It certainly wouldn't have been called swatting. Prior to the 1990's, only large metro departments like the LAPD had SWAT teams. The Internet really is necessary for this sort of sustained attack to be successful. It requires a large number of distributed, anonymous actors. This wouldn't be possible without message boards and the like. Had this been one bad actor with a vendetta in the pre-Internet era, they would have been found and stopped. Of course they are also leveraging some fairly modern services: TTY relay services for the hearing impaired, Tor (to include onion services), as well as commercial cybercrime services available via private and darkweb markets. Without these resources, it is much easier to identify people.