6 ms·

With donations against cancer, the Pr0gramm community has made cancer aid crash

95 points by usernam33 9y ago

usernam33 9y ago
Following the doxxing of the people behind pr0gramm.com the community knew that retaliation by ddos or other bad methods would not work for Brian Krebs, who enjoys DDOS protection by google. So they started a donation raid on the German Cancer Help Foundation, because Krebs literally tranlates to cancer in german. The raid is ongoing and unconfirmed sources talk about 11k donations. The avarage ammount seems to be > 15€ with at least one single donation of 10k€ rel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16678536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16678536
- jstanley 9y ago
  I don't understand? They're getting back at Krebs by donating to a charity?
  - tscs37 9y ago
    Cancer translates to Krebs in germany, they're donating to "fight against Krebs" so to speak.
  - namibj 9y ago
    They are DDOSing a german cancer help, krebshilfe. See the substring match?
    - lawl 9y ago
      They aren't (intentionally) DDoSing. The site simple couldn't handle the legitimate load of thousands of donations.
  - lweber 9y ago
    The word "Krebs" in German translates to crab as well as cancer. They are donating to the charities that work against cancer and are commenting "Krebs ist scheiße" which would translate to "Cancer is shit" as well as "[Brian ]Krebs is shit".
    - ChrisSD 9y ago
      But aren't they still, in essence, donating to charity to get back at Krebs?
      - lawl 9y ago
        I think it's more of a peaceful protest against his questionable journalism practices rather than getting back at him. But yes.
      - Tomte 9y ago
        Yes, that makes it so beautiful, IMO. And since the server crashed, they donated to other charities, as well. DKMS saw many donations, as well.
  - IAmEveryone 9y ago
    Yeah, I was having a bit of trouble as well... They're not (intentionally) DDOSing the charity. The charity's website is simply overloaded from visitors seeking to donate. The charity's slogan is "Cancer (Krebs) is one of the worst problems of our time". So I guess it makes sense. Somehow. It's the sort of passive-egressive altruism that quite elegantly straddles the divide of childishness and maturity.
- wjnc 9y ago
  That's a big plus in hacker humour, considering DDoS, swatting and other malicious stuff (get it) flung at Krebs. Edit: are they DDoSsing or donating? If the former, than it's even worse form. Had my hopes up for a second. The article talks about a failing site because of many donations, but other replies here about DDoS.
  - cabraca 9y ago
    They are donating and posting their confirmation mails on pr0gramm.com. The servers cant keep up with the amount of donations.
    - kurthr 9y ago
      Hmmm... it's interesting if true. Or we could be being trolled by the same group along with Von Lars Wienand. It would still be a bit sad if a cancer donation site could be brought down with so much less than 1 donation per second, but I'd use occam's razor.
      - tmz 9y ago
        The institutes which have been donated to are confirming a huge amount of Donations, which started last night. So there are very many real donations.
        kurthr 9y ago
        Awesome! There were 4000 (plus 73) donations at the time and I hear that there have been more than 10k over the last day for more than 100k euro. Still we don't know if that brought down the server accidentally or on purpose. It's a question of intent, and their desire for publicity. Sadly, it only takes one.
  - lawl 9y ago
    No DDoSing, the site is collapsing from donations.
lawl 9y ago
Krebs = Cancer in german This is apparently in protest of this article by Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/03/who-and-what-is-coinhive/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/03/who-and-what-is-coinhive... Which according to some screenshots on pr0gramm also contains bullshit users fed to Krebs in an attempt to toll him. [0] But the obvious problem here is the unnecessary doxing of people, just because Brian doesn't believe someone can compile a CPU miner with emscripten as one single person. [0] http://img.pr0gramm.com/2018/03/28/b99c8ddc182d29f0.png http://img.pr0gramm.com/2018/03/28/b99c8ddc182d29f0.png
rostigerpudel 9y ago
From the article: Am Abend änderte sich die Auseinandersetzung dann, nachdem ein Nutzer, "BassT87", einen Screenshot als Beleg für eine 25-Euro-Spende an die Krebshilfe postete. "Ich habe den Rummel um Herrn Krebs mal zum Anlass genommen, meinen Teil gegen Krebs beizutragen. Vielleicht macht der ein oder andere es ja (statt dem drölftausendsten Meme) ja nach...". In english: In the evening, the dispute changed after a user, "BassT87", posted a screenshot as proof of a 25 euro donation to Krebshilfe. "I took the hype about Mr. Krebs as an opportunity to do my part against cancer[Krebs]. Maybe one or the other will (instead of the thrwelvethousandth meme) imitate it...". This is really the kind of absurd humour I like... (Edit: format)
kerkeslager 9y ago
Man, this is a complicated story. The strategy of protesting Krebs' writing by donating to an German anti-cancer website (Krebs = cancer in German) is definitely interesting. At the surface level, it's an attack on Krebs, but there's a secondary thing going on here. Krebs' main investigation was on Coinhive, a group which embeds Monero mining scripts in pages which run on page visitors' machines. But in his criticism of Coinhive and its association with Pr0gramm, it seems he may have cast too wide a net, doxxing and accusing Pr0gramm users who may not have anything to do with Coinhive. Instead of apologizing for this, he doubled down on it, typifying Pr0gramm users as basement dwellers who anonymously post nastygrams and threaten journalists with death. Donating to cancer research is a direct response to that: it shows that Pr0gramm users are at least not only bad--they also do things generally considered altruistic, like donating to cancer research. Both sides have definitely dirtied their hands: at least some Pr0gramm users are mining cryptocurrency on other people's machines through Coinhive, and Krebs has definitely made the false insinuation that Monero's anonymity is only useful for criminal activity. The open question is whether this behavior is typical of Pr0gramm or Krebs has actually accused Pr0gramm users who weren't involved in Coinhive. I don't know who is in the right here--I simply don't have enough information to know. What information I do have comes from sources which are clearly biased. But it's interesting to see how even at this level, security cases are being tried in the court of public opinion.
- eropple 9y ago
  > Donating to cancer research is a direct response to that: it shows that Pr0gramm users are at least not only bad--they also do things generally considered altruistic, like donating to cancer research. I don't know any particulars of this specific situation, but I would caution folks against accepting this sort of claim at face value. The GamerGate "movement" sprinkled donations to charity in with telling women that they wanted to rape and kill them. There are gradations here.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    I think we can agree that donating to charity doesn't excuse bad behaviors. The point which Pr0gramm users are making is that the Pr0gramm users donating to cancer research and the Pr0gramm users mining through Coinhive might be different people, and lumping them together because they all use Pr0gramm would be unfair (this is the argument they're making--I don't know whether it's true).
npstr 9y ago
I think uncovering the person / company behind Coinhive is not a bad idea. However, in doing so, Brian Krebs did several extremely questionable decisions and moves: - publishing material by users he knew had trolled him to further the agenda that this is a right-wing site (it is not, the site has a huge fan base of Bernie Sanders and other leftist politicians) - look at his tweets and headlines (on Vice Motherboard for example) that are used to promote the story: They are almost exclusively focusing the the Mathias Moench part, which is completely irrelevant to pr0gramm, Coinhive, and even the mindmap. Given that, his whole article reeks of sensationalism, not journalism. This is fake news. Seeing reporters report about a thing you know well instills me with me with dread about how I believe their articles about the things I don't know well. I lost all the respect I had for Mr. Krebs work, and I am one step closer to losing respect for all journalists. Which isn't a bad thing, being aware how biased and badly researched publications are is not a bad thing. €dit: typos
- npstr 9y ago
  And yes, I understand that "German nazi separatist site registered on millionaires son who hired a hitman to kill his parents with a machete responsible for hottest crypto malware of the year" sounds great to push the story. Except that it could not be farther from the truth. I just wasn't expecting someone who calls themselves an investigative journalist like Brian Krebs to try to beat the Sun (or Bild, for Germany) at their game.
- gr__or 9y ago
  I used Pr0gramm to kill time in university ~4 years ago and I'd definitely say that it has become more right-wing. Sure there are still discussions and people from all over the spectrum around, but right populism does seem to dominate.

95 points by usernam33 9y ago

Following the doxxing of the people behind pr0gramm.com the community knew that retaliation by ddos or other bad methods would not work for Brian Krebs, who enjoys DDOS protection by google. So they started a donation raid on the German Cancer Help Foundation, because Krebs literally tranlates to cancer in german. The raid is ongoing and unconfirmed sources talk about 11k donations. The avarage ammount seems to be > 15€ with at least one single donation of 10k€ rel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16678536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16678536

jstanley 9y ago
I don't understand? They're getting back at Krebs by donating to a charity?
- tscs37 9y ago
  Cancer translates to Krebs in germany, they're donating to "fight against Krebs" so to speak.
- namibj 9y ago
  They are DDOSing a german cancer help, krebshilfe. See the substring match?
  - lawl 9y ago
    They aren't (intentionally) DDoSing. The site simple couldn't handle the legitimate load of thousands of donations.
- lweber 9y ago
  The word "Krebs" in German translates to crab as well as cancer. They are donating to the charities that work against cancer and are commenting "Krebs ist scheiße" which would translate to "Cancer is shit" as well as "[Brian ]Krebs is shit".
  - ChrisSD 9y ago
    But aren't they still, in essence, donating to charity to get back at Krebs?
    - lawl 9y ago
      I think it's more of a peaceful protest against his questionable journalism practices rather than getting back at him. But yes.
    - Tomte 9y ago
      Yes, that makes it so beautiful, IMO. And since the server crashed, they donated to other charities, as well. DKMS saw many donations, as well.
- IAmEveryone 9y ago
  Yeah, I was having a bit of trouble as well... They're not (intentionally) DDOSing the charity. The charity's website is simply overloaded from visitors seeking to donate. The charity's slogan is "Cancer (Krebs) is one of the worst problems of our time". So I guess it makes sense. Somehow. It's the sort of passive-egressive altruism that quite elegantly straddles the divide of childishness and maturity.
wjnc 9y ago
That's a big plus in hacker humour, considering DDoS, swatting and other malicious stuff (get it) flung at Krebs. Edit: are they DDoSsing or donating? If the former, than it's even worse form. Had my hopes up for a second. The article talks about a failing site because of many donations, but other replies here about DDoS.
- cabraca 9y ago
  They are donating and posting their confirmation mails on pr0gramm.com. The servers cant keep up with the amount of donations.
  - kurthr 9y ago
    Hmmm... it's interesting if true. Or we could be being trolled by the same group along with Von Lars Wienand. It would still be a bit sad if a cancer donation site could be brought down with so much less than 1 donation per second, but I'd use occam's razor.
    - tmz 9y ago
      The institutes which have been donated to are confirming a huge amount of Donations, which started last night. So there are very many real donations.
      - kurthr 9y ago
        Awesome! There were 4000 (plus 73) donations at the time and I hear that there have been more than 10k over the last day for more than 100k euro. Still we don't know if that brought down the server accidentally or on purpose. It's a question of intent, and their desire for publicity. Sadly, it only takes one.
- lawl 9y ago
  No DDoSing, the site is collapsing from donations.

lawl 9y ago

Krebs = Cancer in german This is apparently in protest of this article by Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/03/who-and-what-is-coinhive/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/03/who-and-what-is-coinhive... Which according to some screenshots on pr0gramm also contains bullshit users fed to Krebs in an attempt to toll him. [0] But the obvious problem here is the unnecessary doxing of people, just because Brian doesn't believe someone can compile a CPU miner with emscripten as one single person. [0] http://img.pr0gramm.com/2018/03/28/b99c8ddc182d29f0.png http://img.pr0gramm.com/2018/03/28/b99c8ddc182d29f0.png

rostigerpudel 9y ago

From the article: Am Abend änderte sich die Auseinandersetzung dann, nachdem ein Nutzer, "BassT87", einen Screenshot als Beleg für eine 25-Euro-Spende an die Krebshilfe postete. "Ich habe den Rummel um Herrn Krebs mal zum Anlass genommen, meinen Teil gegen Krebs beizutragen. Vielleicht macht der ein oder andere es ja (statt dem drölftausendsten Meme) ja nach...". In english: In the evening, the dispute changed after a user, "BassT87", posted a screenshot as proof of a 25 euro donation to Krebshilfe. "I took the hype about Mr. Krebs as an opportunity to do my part against cancer[Krebs]. Maybe one or the other will (instead of the thrwelvethousandth meme) imitate it...". This is really the kind of absurd humour I like... (Edit: format)

kerkeslager 9y ago

Man, this is a complicated story. The strategy of protesting Krebs' writing by donating to an German anti-cancer website (Krebs = cancer in German) is definitely interesting. At the surface level, it's an attack on Krebs, but there's a secondary thing going on here. Krebs' main investigation was on Coinhive, a group which embeds Monero mining scripts in pages which run on page visitors' machines. But in his criticism of Coinhive and its association with Pr0gramm, it seems he may have cast too wide a net, doxxing and accusing Pr0gramm users who may not have anything to do with Coinhive. Instead of apologizing for this, he doubled down on it, typifying Pr0gramm users as basement dwellers who anonymously post nastygrams and threaten journalists with death. Donating to cancer research is a direct response to that: it shows that Pr0gramm users are at least not only bad--they also do things generally considered altruistic, like donating to cancer research. Both sides have definitely dirtied their hands: at least some Pr0gramm users are mining cryptocurrency on other people's machines through Coinhive, and Krebs has definitely made the false insinuation that Monero's anonymity is only useful for criminal activity. The open question is whether this behavior is typical of Pr0gramm or Krebs has actually accused Pr0gramm users who weren't involved in Coinhive. I don't know who is in the right here--I simply don't have enough information to know. What information I do have comes from sources which are clearly biased. But it's interesting to see how even at this level, security cases are being tried in the court of public opinion.

eropple 9y ago
> Donating to cancer research is a direct response to that: it shows that Pr0gramm users are at least not only bad--they also do things generally considered altruistic, like donating to cancer research. I don't know any particulars of this specific situation, but I would caution folks against accepting this sort of claim at face value. The GamerGate "movement" sprinkled donations to charity in with telling women that they wanted to rape and kill them. There are gradations here.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  I think we can agree that donating to charity doesn't excuse bad behaviors. The point which Pr0gramm users are making is that the Pr0gramm users donating to cancer research and the Pr0gramm users mining through Coinhive might be different people, and lumping them together because they all use Pr0gramm would be unfair (this is the argument they're making--I don't know whether it's true).

npstr 9y ago

I think uncovering the person / company behind Coinhive is not a bad idea. However, in doing so, Brian Krebs did several extremely questionable decisions and moves: - publishing material by users he knew had trolled him to further the agenda that this is a right-wing site (it is not, the site has a huge fan base of Bernie Sanders and other leftist politicians) - look at his tweets and headlines (on Vice Motherboard for example) that are used to promote the story: They are almost exclusively focusing the the Mathias Moench part, which is completely irrelevant to pr0gramm, Coinhive, and even the mindmap. Given that, his whole article reeks of sensationalism, not journalism. This is fake news. Seeing reporters report about a thing you know well instills me with me with dread about how I believe their articles about the things I don't know well. I lost all the respect I had for Mr. Krebs work, and I am one step closer to losing respect for all journalists. Which isn't a bad thing, being aware how biased and badly researched publications are is not a bad thing. €dit: typos

npstr 9y ago
And yes, I understand that "German nazi separatist site registered on millionaires son who hired a hitman to kill his parents with a machete responsible for hottest crypto malware of the year" sounds great to push the story. Except that it could not be farther from the truth. I just wasn't expecting someone who calls themselves an investigative journalist like Brian Krebs to try to beat the Sun (or Bild, for Germany) at their game.
gr__or 9y ago
I used Pr0gramm to kill time in university ~4 years ago and I'd definitely say that it has become more right-wing. Sure there are still discussions and people from all over the spectrum around, but right populism does seem to dominate.