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LulzSec Topples EVE Online, Minecraft, League of Legends and other Servers
- pspeter3 15y agoNot that LulzSec has made sense up until now but why bother taking out online video games? I feel like that's alienating the population that would normally support or at least be indifferent about a group like LulzSec.
- Roritharr 15y agoNot to be too cheezy, but i'd like to quote The Dark Knight here: "Some men just want to watch the world burn."
- pspeter3 15y agoValid point and a great quote. It's just hard to believe such people exist outside the realm of comic books.
- hammock 15y agoThink of the Lulzsec activities as more of an art than an act of vandalism. (Most taggers/spray painters feel the same way, and are also known to deface their own stomping grounds) edit to the downvoters: I'm not defending their actions, just putting myself in their frame of mind
- Overd0se 15y agoThe do because they can. and the immense butthurt of the gamers is music to their ears.
- DrJ 15y agothey are also called trolls, sometimes they have a lighter, sometimes they don't.
- Jach 15y agoThe clinical term is "Antisocial personality disorder" and such people need help.
- Apocryphon 15y agoThe internet brings out the worst in people.
- sorbus 15y agoPseudo-anonymity brings out the worst in people, rather. (Or: If there is no risk of being punched in the face or otherwise given a strong physical disincentive, then behavior tends to deteriorate.)
- wladimir 15y agoPseudo-anonymity also brings out the best in people, such as unbounded creativity. The spread is very large.
- bermanoid 15y agoThere's something that's just...well, for lack of a better word, special, about being the on the same playing field as everyone else, but working under a completely different set of rules and deciding for yourself how the game is scored. The best example I can give is how my brother used to grief Counterstrike on TK-enabled servers - he didn't do this by killing his own teammates, or by cheating against the other team. Rather, he would lure his teammates into killing him often enough that they got auto-banned from the server; his rationale was that everyone was too freaking good at CS anyways, might as well make the game more interesting and difficult for himself, at least. :) When you decide for yourself which game you're actually playing, sometimes the lulz are just too tasty to resist... That said, DDoSing a bunch of game servers for games that are completely unrelated and haven't done anything in particular worthy of retaliation is moronic. There's no poetry there, just a bunch of children playing around with the 2011 equivalent of AOHell (and yes, I realize that most of them are probably to young to even know WTF I'm talking about).
- mindstab 15y agoIt's seems like they are almost a caricature. Maybe they really are, or see my conspiracy theory http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2655040 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2655040
- wladimir 15y agoAgreed. It looks very much like a front, or weird viral/marketing operation. Not sure it is by a government but that'd be possible. They piss off literally everybody, and don't even have the remote resemblance of anything like ethics. Smells like a caricature. They hack company after company in such a short time, are very vocal and cocky about it, but still manage to not make mistakes and get caught. "Too good to be true" rings a bell? Maybe they're trying to lure people in somehow? I couldn't even guess what the goal is, but it's weird.
- itg 15y agoThey were taking requests for ddos targets. I don't think they care who they piss off since it is all about the " lulz" to them.
- dexen 15y ago> UPDATE: The group now claims to have taken down the League of Legends login servers as well as eight other sites requested by users phoning in. Their claim is to have taken on phone-in DRM that pissed off users -- to the point the users wished the servers to crash and burn. Pretty much similar reasoning to Sony hacks, if you ask me...
- redthrowaway 15y agoThey don't care. They're doing to to amuse themselves. That's really all it is. No overarching strategy or cause, just lulz.
- Goladus 15y agoI think they want to project power. I don't think they want anyone to be indifferent about them. Beyond that, it's almost impossible to know their motivations.
- hugh3 15y agoThink "Revenge of the Nerds" if it were a horror movie instead of a comedy.
- mindstab 15y agoAnyone want to go conspiracy theory with me and wonder if some government agency wants more power to go after groups like anonymous and wikileaks and so are doing this themselves to get both people and the rest of government on board to give them more broad and exciting new powers (at our expense) to go after the real groups?
- rbanffy 15y agoThat would certainly explain how they managed to piss off so many people and still remain undetected.
- mindstab 15y agopublic broadcaster one day government the next game servers the next trying to hit every demographic :/
- rbanffy 15y agoAnyone willing to suggest something we could do? Because the title on the top of this site will get very unpopular in the next couple weeks.
- daeken 15y agoPromote security. Discuss secure coding techniques, perform security analysis on software (and closed-source services with bug bounty programs!), make sure your own projects/products are secure, and generally just keep security -- not just attacks -- in the limelight.
- blhack 15y agoI keep hearing this conspiracy theory pop up in almost every thread both here and on reddit about lulzsec's activities. Can somebody give me a "worst case" scenario for a government crackdown on the internet? What's to stop me from running tor? From VPNing out of the country myself? How would this alleged crackdown affect me? And are you all new to the internet? Hacker groups like this have been around since...ever. I will admit that their publicity seems to have been waning in the last 5-6 years, but we're not really seeing anything new here. The only new thing about it is that this time it's happening on twitter. This isn't a government cover-up. This isn't a conspiracy. It's one or several nerds doing what most nerds love to do: cause trouble. It's just that this time, it's happening on a much more public forum.
- Jach 15y agoWhy is this article suggesting people change their login details? Is this anything more than a ddos, have the servers actually been compromised? Or is it a warning to change before they get compromised?
- blutonium 15y agoBetter safe than sorry. After the DDoS, CCP took the entirety of EVE down to do a security audit. Minecraft seems sure that it was only a DDoS, but they don't personal details on their servers like CCP does.
- run4yourlives 15y agoThese idiots won't be happy until the internet is locked up into a corporate controlled gated community. Being a p.i.t.a is not cool. Throw the book at them.
- citricsquid 15y agoWhen they're attacking Sony it's "righteous" and "good", when they're attacking companies we like they're "bad" and "immature". They've always stated their intention is to create "lulz" and just do whatever damage they can, apparently people overlooked this when they were attacking people everyone "hated". Luckily Minecraft wasn't down for too long, some of us are directly affected by this stuff, sigh. The internet is a shitty place.
- lwat 15y agoThese attacks are annoying and damaging but in the long run they make our internet stronger. If these didn't happen so often people would care a lot less about security and robustness.
- Cushman 15y agoIf these didn't happen so often people wouldn't need to. Why should Random Internet Game care about security aside from dicks like these guys?
- daeken 15y agoBecause people that actually want your credit card info, game source, etc aren't talking about it on the web. They're just doing it. If you care about the integrity of your data, you damn well better care about your security.
- btilly 15y agoAbsolutely true. My credit card number was used from Turkey this week. I have absolutely no idea which website was compromised. And I am pretty sure that whoever was compromised has no idea either.
- Vivtek 15y agoMight not be a website - my wife's and my debit cards were compromised last year within two weeks of one another. The only thing they had in common was that they're at the same bank; she has never even once used her card online. Our conclusion was that Chase Manhattan had been compromised. That's kind of scary, really. They have to be spending serious money on security.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoHonestly (ex-Riot Games, League of Legends contractor) I wondered how well the infrastructure choices for their login server would hold up. There was a huge amount of complexity involved in it, which is REALLY hard to get right. I just hope it wasn't code that I actually wrote that let them in. :) If I was betting, though, I would bet that it was a vulnerability in Adobe LiveCycle Data Services.
- sbarre 15y agoAs far as I can see, they didn't hack game servers, they DDOS'ed them...
- Apocryphon 15y agoI wonder if there's an ideological "faction" (not an actual group or organization) of Anon hackers, the ones behind the hacktivism (pro-Wikileaks, anti-dictators, anti-corruption in democracies), who feels like groups such as LulzSec are tarnishing the reforming image of Anonymous. Prior to this month, they were getting almost mainstream approval as supporters of liberation movements in the third world.
- hugh3 15y agoIsn't this exactly what we're seeing? A split of "anonymous" into folks who want to piss on things for (often misguided but still there) political reasons and folks who just want to piss on things for the, as it were, lulz?
- shareme 15y agoSomething does not add up.... Notice that certain targets are avoided? What I mean by targets is that everything is low hanging fruit only..a sql injection here and sql injection there...nothing really highly skilled. Also targets missing from the list is heavy duty military and gov sites. For example, a low level FBI contractor was attacked not FBI itself, not CIA, non DoD,etc. The conclusion I come up with is that LulzSec was infiltrated to get anonymous by government agents. After they get anonymous they might figure that they than have info on how to get wikileaks.
- william42 15y agoOr, Hanlon's Razor, LulzSec aren't magical security geniuses and they're taking low-hanging fruit precisely because it's low-hanging.
- dmix 15y agoFor those wondering what the motivation was, earlier in the day there was a thread on escapist complaining about LulzSec hacking into Brink. So LulzSec decided to take down that site and what I assume were a bunch of other easy gaming targets.
- sigzero 15y agoFreaking idiots! Get off my lawn!
- quizie 15y agoThey have an twitter account, thus a quick phonecall to twitter from US gov for an IP and mac address should put an end to all of this. Also they have a site up, so simply check their dns and domain provider for a whois (most likely private - so might require pushing). They are also on The Pirate Bay, so they might have some IP data too. meh
- spdy 15y agoDo you honestly think that they make such rookie mistakes? It wont be that easy to track them down. But im pretty sure the .com domain will be seized soon.
- mrlase 15y agoNo. Not that easy. They use VPNs offshore chained together not to mention the off shore vps' they have. Of course they would use protection when even just getting on Twitter, so a phone call from the government would do very little as the give would receive an IP from somewhere offshores that doesnt give a damn about US law, providing time and security to lulzsec.
- 9999 15y agoI wonder how secure those VPN providers are. Regardless, my bet is that these guys will get taken down via a Kaczynski vulnerability. That is, someone that personally knows them will figure out that they are responsible and report them to the authorities.
- romland 15y agoI doubt they use only "paid for" services in their chain. There are very likely normal user-boxes (like your moms) and "forgotten" servers involved as well. It's not easy to back trace when you have to send in someone to do forensics on a computer.
- meric 15y agoWhere did "Kaczynski vulnerability" come from? Your comment is the first result I got googling it. http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Kaczynski&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&source=hp&q=Kaczynski+vulnerability&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=2d73352299cad304&biw=1192&bih=664 http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=...
- corin_ 15y agoHow is it that so much coverage of LulzSec still hasn't understood their motives? The group's agenda isn't entirely clear right now Yes, it is, they're doing it because they find it funny.
- calebmpeterson 15y agoyou'd think their name would make this motivation apparent...
- thinkalone 15y agoI think it's dismissive to jump to that conclusion - they're likely turning a healthy profit by dumping lists of emails, credit card numbers, and zero-day vulnerabilities on the black market.
- intended 15y agoIf they wanted to do that, then I don' think they would announce it. Offering someone a bunch of private data, 0 days, credit card info, but then making it useless in a few hours because you announce it to the world, hardly seems like a viable/profitable business.
- thinkalone 15y agoThat works under the assumption that they release everything, when they have explicitly said that they do not. Specifically - information gained in the Bethesda http://pastebin.com/i5M0LB58 http://pastebin.com/i5M0LB58 and whitehat http://pastebin.com/MQG0a130 http://pastebin.com/MQG0a130 raids has not been released.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- marcamillion 15y agoThis is just getting tired and dumb now. It's no longer funny. It's like the joke you told at a party that everybody laughed at. Then you told it 5 more times before you left the party. Unfortunately, I don't see them stopping any time soon. Soo....
- hugh3 15y agoAh, but to them, the more you complain that it's not funny any more, the funnier it gets. It's kinda like a destructive version of people who say "That's what she said".
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- felipemnoa 15y agoVery true, indifference would make them stop.
- marcamillion 15y agoAgreed. I wasn't going to say anything about it, but then every other day I see a new story and I roll my eyes in disbelief that they have struck again - then I don't say anything thinking it will be the last and wake up 2 days later and the cycle repeats itself. So I had to say something this time. The most ironic thing about all of this though is they are likely destroying the very feature (anonymity) that they are exploiting. All this does is give ammo to the record companies that want tight restrictions on the internet. Once that happens, it's game over. They can't win that one.
- shadowflit 15y agoCCP statement: http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4616&tid=1 http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4616&... I admit, I was at work for the entire downtime so it didn't bother me, but I am pleased with their response to the situation. Hitting the big red button may be a drastic step in response to DDOS, but at least they were willing to take security seriously.
- trotsky 15y agoActing like defacers wasn't low brow enough, now they're just borrowing a ddos botnet? What's next in this high tech crime spree, supergluing all the lock tumblers at the local mall? Is the lulz from laughing with them or at them?
- felipemnoa 15y agoWith them my friend, with them.
- noonespecial 15y agoI just hope that the league of american white old men doesn't meet and decide that the answer to Lulzsec is naturally the removal of more freedoms for the sake of security and much easier wiretapping by the FBI.
- hugh3 15y agoReally? You had to bring race into it?
- thebooktocome 15y agoIf he's talking about the FBI, he's talking about USGOV. If he's talking about USGOV, the demographics of Congress, the Cabinet, and the Supreme Court are pretty clear.
- noonespecial 15y agoIt has apparently become unfashionable to mention this fact. I hereby retract "league of american white old men" and substitute instead "league of american over-reacting nannystate citizen-leaders of indeterminate age, race, or sex".(1) (1) They also may or may not have formerly said "Ni!" Hacker News, like Camelot, can sometimes be a very silly place.
- abcd_f 15y agoThere is a good expression for cases like this - To break is not to build meaning it is much easier to break something than to build it in the first place. And it holds so very true for virtually any networked app or service.
- itswindy 15y ago'Hackers' used to have a special status, but soon enough they'll be considered like pirates were in the 17th century. It's just isn't cute anymore. Or harmless.
- felipemnoa 15y agoBut pirates are considered cool by a lot of kids.
- PaintBucket 15y agoI doubt Minecraft is too upset by this. The free publicity probably gained them many more customers.
- yayadarsh 15y agoDoes anyone else see this as an excuse to limit Net Neutrality by various world governments? I hope these actions which are carried out for the sheer 'lulz' don't lead to more concerns with the freedom of our wonderful worldwide web. That, is the opposite of 'teh lulz.' :|
- goombastic 15y agoMakes me think how much of this is going to be used as a pretext for new legislation.
- geoffreyvanwyk 15y agoLulzSec is like Al Qaeda, sponsored by the CIA. All these hacks all of a sudden will be used as an excuse by the geniuses in the world's governments to take control of the Internet.