8 ms·

In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

94 points by d0ne 15y ago

smokeyj 15y ago
How exactly does one take an IP number and point a finger to the person who caused that transmission? If a computer can be hijacked by an undetectable virus from a Sony cd, can we really say for sure who caused any transmission from a PC? What if you framed your neighbors unsecured wifi? Or target someone's home? It's like a modern day witch hunt!
- mcphilip 15y ago
  Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Whatever happened with that judge's ruling that an IP is not a person? Did it get overturned? http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person-bittorrent-case-judge-says-110503/ http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person-bittorrent-c...
  - ryusage 15y ago
    Until the supreme court rules on it themselves, I'm pretty positive other judges are still free to make their own judgments on the matter.
- wmf 15y ago
  How exactly does one take an IP number and point a finger to the person who caused that transmission? Good thing that's not what the FBI is doing. can we really say for sure who caused any transmission from a PC? If a computer is seized from a teenager's bedroom and it has LOIC installed and it isn't malware-infested...
  - SwellJoe 15y ago
    If a computer is seized from a teenager's bedroom and it has LOIC installed and it isn't malware-infested... Are you not bothered by the notion of a warrant being issued for search of your home and seizure of your computers based on nothing but an IP address? I'm extremely bothered by that, personally, because I know enough about networks to know how very shaky that "evidence" of identity is.
    - wmf 15y ago
      I'm more bothered by the idea that the architecture of the Internet would be turned into a "get out of jail free" card. Unless your attacker is completely incompetent, the only evidence you'll have is an IP address; if you can't use that then you have nothing.
      - SwellJoe 15y ago
        I hate to parrot quotes as an argument, but I feel like this one is appropriate here: "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" - William Blackstone (various others have said it over the years with "ten" replaced by some other value, usually even higher than ten) Given that having your computers and data seized is already punishment for a lot of people, possibly significant and life-altering punishment, I think courts should be damned careful about allowing police to take that action. I've known people who's businesses have been destroyed by computer seizure. And I've known people who have only gotten their computers back years later (which effectively is the same as "never", because computers have a relatively short shelf life), despite no charges ever being brought against them. My business probably wouldn't currently be destroyed by the loss of all of my personal computers, but it would certainly be a very serious hardship, far beyond what I feel would be just punishment without a trial. And, seizure of all of my servers (including the ones where the backups are stored) probably would very nearly destroy my business and cost me tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales and data. A search is one thing, effective theft of my means of putting food on my table is something altogether different, and I think police ought to have to have a pretty damned good reason for taking away my livelihood for an indeterminate period of time.
    - starwed 15y ago
      Err, you do understand how warrants work, right? You don't get one by proving someone is guilty, but by showing there is probable cause. >The standard for a search warrant is lower than the quantum of proof required for a later conviction. The rationale is that the evidence that can be collected without a search warrant may not be sufficient to convict, but may be sufficient to suggest that enough evidence to convict could be found using the warrant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant#United_States_of_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant#United_States_of...
tshtf 15y ago
The newly released affidavit was offered in support of a search warrant for the home of an Arlington, Texas couple and their son, who were among the July 19 targets, and have not been charged. The house was the source of 3,678 packets in about two-and-a-half hours starting December 8. So they're going to arrest a kid for sending an average on one packet every two seconds, over the period of two-and-a-half hours?
- andreyf 15y ago
  They probably won't arrest him. I'm a bit surprised that this was enough to even get a search warrant...
  - melvinng 15y ago
    Considering that most DDOS attacks come from zombie bots installed on programs when people Torrent, I'm suprised that there were arrest made based on IPs
    - geekam 15y ago
      I know. I was thinking the same thing. How does an IP address translate to a human being?
      - fleitz 15y ago
        The issue is not how to translate it but whether an IP address identifies a person beyond reasonable doubt, especially given Anonymous's ability to defeat FBI/CIA and other military grade networks including those the FBI/CIA employ to protect them. It really raises question as to whether you can trust something as flimsy as an IP header given the technical sophistication of Anonymous. These people could well be innocent and in fact victims of anonymous directing attention away from itself and towards these innocent victims. When Anonymous can gain control of HB Gary and FBI/CIA assets imagine what they could do to an off the shelf system that hasn't been through the rigorous security protocols that HB Gary, the FBI and CIA follow. Given the mutability of data on a USB stick I'd also be very interested to see the chain of custody on that data and how it might have been modified. Also, the defense should request access to the source code for the IDS system in question so that it can be examined for bugs and problems that may affect its ability to generate reliable evidence.
eschulte 15y ago
To echo a good question posed in the comments of the original article. "what is the digital equivalent of civil disobedience and protest?"
- 9999 15y ago
  Here's the thing with Civil Disobedience: you take a certain amount of risk when you do it. In fact, if there is no risk, there's little point in the "disobedient" action at all. So when these guys go to jail for DoSing a server, they've actually partially succeeded. Now when a majority of the populace cares that they've been punished for their actions, and believes the disobedience was a just action against an invalid law, then they'll have actually succeeded. Put another way (and translated into meatspace), environmental protesters don't win when they chain themselves to a tree to stop it from being cut down. They win when they are confronted by the authorities, hauled off to jail, and covered by the media, making people aware of their protest. Simply blocking access to the site and hoping there will be no repercussions is basically pointless.
  - michaelchisari 15y ago
    Simply blocking access to the site and hoping there will be no repercussions is basically pointless. Not necessarily. Some civil disobedience is symbolic, as you describe, some is direct action. Some acts of civil disobedience have succeeded even though there have been media blackouts, mostly because the cost of continually arresting protestors who refuse to back down exceeds the downsides to negotiation.
- _delirium 15y ago
  Maybe LOIC is it? If one part of civil disobedience is sending the state a stream of low-level "law-breakers", it's relatively successful, because now the government is wasting time and resources arresting people who sent 5 megabytes of packets somewhere.
- groby_b 15y ago
  This would be civil disobedience if they turned themselves in after committing what is considered a crime, to point out the unjustness of the law that makes it a crime. I didn't see Anonymous turn themselves in, did you?
kkowalczyk 15y ago
I'm not necessarily against feds going after DDOSers, but this is a shameful, politically motivated retribution. The "crime" here is not sending packets to DDOS PayPal but criticizing the goverment. The goverment is in turn showing they're not afraid to destroy lives of those who do. DDOS attacks are pretty much an epidemic on the internet. I'm pretty sure every major company like Google or Microsoft or Amazon has to deal them on a regular basis (http://mashable.com/2009/12/24/ddos-attack-amazon/ http://mashable.com/2009/12/24/ddos-attack-amazon/ for just one example of an attack that was actually successful and well publicized). Huge botnets make it relatively easy to launch an attack. This is not some new fact - existence of bots, DDOS attacks on many hosts, that's been known for years and yet this is one of the few times where feds lifted a finger to combat it and certainly the first time where it's done on such a scale and based on such a flimsy evidence and small transgressions like an individual running a DDOS tool (which, by itself, is not nearly enough to bring a website down, it only works if many people are doing it at the same time). This is not a coincidence and not really that surprising - you fight the goverment, the goverment will fight you.
- xioaqmajtt 15y ago
  welcometo: http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jordan,prada,, also including the jeans,shirts,bags,hat and the decorations. All the products are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept the paypal payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time. free shippingcompetitive priceany size availableaccept the paypal ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== jordan shoes $32nike shox $32Christan Audigier bikini $23 Ed Hardy Bikini $23Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15ed hardy short_tank_woman $16Sandal $32christian loubo utin $80 Sunglass $15 COACH_Necklace $27handbag $33AF tank woman $17puma slipper woman $30 ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com =====
- Shenglong 15y ago
  That could be one explanation. However, it's also true that this series of attacks has been some of the highest profile attacks ever publicized. Even if the government wasn't attacked, they'd probably have to do something to appease the general public. "We're doing nothing" probably wouldn't fly.
bsiemon 15y ago
Wouldn't most of these ip addresses be in a bot net?
shareme 15y ago
I do not think the FEDs main target was these arrests.. Why? The FEDs targets would be the financial, administration of the botnets used in the DDOs attacks.. The arrests are to put pressure on the alleged criminals to turn in the others.. The FEDs are after who is controlling the botnets in the DDOS attacks in the long term.. And you will not see the arrests of those for awhile as far as what appears in the press a the FBI can lock that down for 90 days as far as anybody knowing that you are being investigated..
- dwilson718 15y ago
  if this is their tactic i can only laugh. for the most part, the members of anonymous dont even know who the other members are.
coderdude 15y ago
I really wish people would stop submitting articles about Anonymous getting in trouble for doing stupid things. They bring out the worst comments. You get a bunch of people who can't imagine why you might get in trouble for damaging (or attempting to damage) private property and bunch of other people who somehow think that damaging private property is civil disobedience -- as though they're fighting unjust laws. For example, PayPal didn't want to support WikiLeaks? Attacking them is vandalism, not civil disobedience. If you don't like it when kids get in trouble for damaging the property of people and companies they disagree with then stop encouraging it by pretending they're doing some kind of good for humanity. This isn't about big bad governments crushing the will of innocent children.
robryan 15y ago
So I would assume they are going to be getting the most clueless kids here that probably caused minimal harm. I assume the real organisers of this kind of action wouldn't be DDOS'ing PayPal with easily identifiable packets from their home IP addresses.
phunehehe 15y ago
The link is returning 404. Probably something readable can be found by searching http://www.google.com/search?q=threatlevel%202011%2007%20op_payback http://www.google.com/search?q=threatlevel%202011%2007%20op_...
ljf 15y ago
Would be interesting to see them putting the same resources in getting to the bottom of who was DDoSing Wikileaks at the same time. But I have a feeling they never will.
trotsky 15y ago
The newly released affidavit was offered in support of a search warrant for the home of an Arlington, Texas couple and their son, who were among the July 19 targets, and have not been charged. The house was the source of 3,678 packets in about two-and-a-half hours starting December 8. Man, they executed a federal raid with FBI agents over something that amounted to a few thousand "slowlaris"ed GET requests over a few hours? How much does something like that cost? What, 2-4 agents, 4-8 hours, seizure, paperwork, court filings, etc. Tens of thousands of dollars, right? I want a tax refund.
blauwbilgorgel 15y ago
I find it a strange position for Wired to be in. On the one side, they offer quality articles and have quality resources. They seem to favor the hackers. On the other side, this article was written by Kevin Poulsen, who had a part in turning over a whistleblower and journalist source to the authorities. Kevin Poulson has made himself too related to anonymous and WikiLeaks to be regarded as objective on these matters. I know that isn't reason to judge any article of his, but the extra care I'm forced to take when Poulson is involved (consider his sources, morals and agenda), leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth and an inability to enjoy reading this article.
rajpaul 15y ago
I see a lot of anger directed at the FBI. Remember that ‘Anonymous’ gave these tools to children and encouraged them to use them knowing exactly what the consequences for the kids would be.

94 points by d0ne 15y ago

How exactly does one take an IP number and point a finger to the person who caused that transmission? If a computer can be hijacked by an undetectable virus from a Sony cd, can we really say for sure who caused any transmission from a PC? What if you framed your neighbors unsecured wifi? Or target someone's home? It's like a modern day witch hunt!

mcphilip 15y ago
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Whatever happened with that judge's ruling that an IP is not a person? Did it get overturned? http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person-bittorrent-case-judge-says-110503/ http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person-bittorrent-c...
- ryusage 15y ago
  Until the supreme court rules on it themselves, I'm pretty positive other judges are still free to make their own judgments on the matter.
wmf 15y ago
How exactly does one take an IP number and point a finger to the person who caused that transmission? Good thing that's not what the FBI is doing. can we really say for sure who caused any transmission from a PC? If a computer is seized from a teenager's bedroom and it has LOIC installed and it isn't malware-infested...
- SwellJoe 15y ago
  If a computer is seized from a teenager's bedroom and it has LOIC installed and it isn't malware-infested... Are you not bothered by the notion of a warrant being issued for search of your home and seizure of your computers based on nothing but an IP address? I'm extremely bothered by that, personally, because I know enough about networks to know how very shaky that "evidence" of identity is.
  - wmf 15y ago
    I'm more bothered by the idea that the architecture of the Internet would be turned into a "get out of jail free" card. Unless your attacker is completely incompetent, the only evidence you'll have is an IP address; if you can't use that then you have nothing.
    - SwellJoe 15y ago
      I hate to parrot quotes as an argument, but I feel like this one is appropriate here: "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" - William Blackstone (various others have said it over the years with "ten" replaced by some other value, usually even higher than ten) Given that having your computers and data seized is already punishment for a lot of people, possibly significant and life-altering punishment, I think courts should be damned careful about allowing police to take that action. I've known people who's businesses have been destroyed by computer seizure. And I've known people who have only gotten their computers back years later (which effectively is the same as "never", because computers have a relatively short shelf life), despite no charges ever being brought against them. My business probably wouldn't currently be destroyed by the loss of all of my personal computers, but it would certainly be a very serious hardship, far beyond what I feel would be just punishment without a trial. And, seizure of all of my servers (including the ones where the backups are stored) probably would very nearly destroy my business and cost me tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales and data. A search is one thing, effective theft of my means of putting food on my table is something altogether different, and I think police ought to have to have a pretty damned good reason for taking away my livelihood for an indeterminate period of time.
  - starwed 15y ago
    Err, you do understand how warrants work, right? You don't get one by proving someone is guilty, but by showing there is probable cause. >The standard for a search warrant is lower than the quantum of proof required for a later conviction. The rationale is that the evidence that can be collected without a search warrant may not be sufficient to convict, but may be sufficient to suggest that enough evidence to convict could be found using the warrant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant#United_States_of_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant#United_States_of...

tshtf 15y ago

andreyf 15y ago
They probably won't arrest him. I'm a bit surprised that this was enough to even get a search warrant...
- melvinng 15y ago
  Considering that most DDOS attacks come from zombie bots installed on programs when people Torrent, I'm suprised that there were arrest made based on IPs
  - geekam 15y ago
    I know. I was thinking the same thing. How does an IP address translate to a human being?
    - fleitz 15y ago
      The issue is not how to translate it but whether an IP address identifies a person beyond reasonable doubt, especially given Anonymous's ability to defeat FBI/CIA and other military grade networks including those the FBI/CIA employ to protect them. It really raises question as to whether you can trust something as flimsy as an IP header given the technical sophistication of Anonymous. These people could well be innocent and in fact victims of anonymous directing attention away from itself and towards these innocent victims. When Anonymous can gain control of HB Gary and FBI/CIA assets imagine what they could do to an off the shelf system that hasn't been through the rigorous security protocols that HB Gary, the FBI and CIA follow. Given the mutability of data on a USB stick I'd also be very interested to see the chain of custody on that data and how it might have been modified. Also, the defense should request access to the source code for the IDS system in question so that it can be examined for bugs and problems that may affect its ability to generate reliable evidence.

eschulte 15y ago

To echo a good question posed in the comments of the original article. "what is the digital equivalent of civil disobedience and protest?"

9999 15y ago
Here's the thing with Civil Disobedience: you take a certain amount of risk when you do it. In fact, if there is no risk, there's little point in the "disobedient" action at all. So when these guys go to jail for DoSing a server, they've actually partially succeeded. Now when a majority of the populace cares that they've been punished for their actions, and believes the disobedience was a just action against an invalid law, then they'll have actually succeeded. Put another way (and translated into meatspace), environmental protesters don't win when they chain themselves to a tree to stop it from being cut down. They win when they are confronted by the authorities, hauled off to jail, and covered by the media, making people aware of their protest. Simply blocking access to the site and hoping there will be no repercussions is basically pointless.
- michaelchisari 15y ago
  Simply blocking access to the site and hoping there will be no repercussions is basically pointless. Not necessarily. Some civil disobedience is symbolic, as you describe, some is direct action. Some acts of civil disobedience have succeeded even though there have been media blackouts, mostly because the cost of continually arresting protestors who refuse to back down exceeds the downsides to negotiation.
_delirium 15y ago
Maybe LOIC is it? If one part of civil disobedience is sending the state a stream of low-level "law-breakers", it's relatively successful, because now the government is wasting time and resources arresting people who sent 5 megabytes of packets somewhere.
groby_b 15y ago
This would be civil disobedience if they turned themselves in after committing what is considered a crime, to point out the unjustness of the law that makes it a crime. I didn't see Anonymous turn themselves in, did you?

kkowalczyk 15y ago

I'm not necessarily against feds going after DDOSers, but this is a shameful, politically motivated retribution. The "crime" here is not sending packets to DDOS PayPal but criticizing the goverment. The goverment is in turn showing they're not afraid to destroy lives of those who do. DDOS attacks are pretty much an epidemic on the internet. I'm pretty sure every major company like Google or Microsoft or Amazon has to deal them on a regular basis (http://mashable.com/2009/12/24/ddos-attack-amazon/ http://mashable.com/2009/12/24/ddos-attack-amazon/ for just one example of an attack that was actually successful and well publicized). Huge botnets make it relatively easy to launch an attack. This is not some new fact - existence of bots, DDOS attacks on many hosts, that's been known for years and yet this is one of the few times where feds lifted a finger to combat it and certainly the first time where it's done on such a scale and based on such a flimsy evidence and small transgressions like an individual running a DDOS tool (which, by itself, is not nearly enough to bring a website down, it only works if many people are doing it at the same time). This is not a coincidence and not really that surprising - you fight the goverment, the goverment will fight you.

xioaqmajtt 15y ago
welcometo: http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jordan,prada,, also including the jeans,shirts,bags,hat and the decorations. All the products are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept the paypal payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time. free shippingcompetitive priceany size availableaccept the paypal ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== jordan shoes $32nike shox $32Christan Audigier bikini $23 Ed Hardy Bikini $23Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15ed hardy short_tank_woman $16Sandal $32christian loubo utin $80 Sunglass $15 COACH_Necklace $27handbag $33AF tank woman $17puma slipper woman $30 ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com ===== ===== http://www.fullmalls.com http://www.fullmalls.com =====
Shenglong 15y ago
That could be one explanation. However, it's also true that this series of attacks has been some of the highest profile attacks ever publicized. Even if the government wasn't attacked, they'd probably have to do something to appease the general public. "We're doing nothing" probably wouldn't fly.

bsiemon 15y ago

Wouldn't most of these ip addresses be in a bot net?

shareme 15y ago

I do not think the FEDs main target was these arrests.. Why? The FEDs targets would be the financial, administration of the botnets used in the DDOs attacks.. The arrests are to put pressure on the alleged criminals to turn in the others.. The FEDs are after who is controlling the botnets in the DDOS attacks in the long term.. And you will not see the arrests of those for awhile as far as what appears in the press a the FBI can lock that down for 90 days as far as anybody knowing that you are being investigated..

dwilson718 15y ago
if this is their tactic i can only laugh. for the most part, the members of anonymous dont even know who the other members are.

coderdude 15y ago

I really wish people would stop submitting articles about Anonymous getting in trouble for doing stupid things. They bring out the worst comments. You get a bunch of people who can't imagine why you might get in trouble for damaging (or attempting to damage) private property and bunch of other people who somehow think that damaging private property is civil disobedience -- as though they're fighting unjust laws. For example, PayPal didn't want to support WikiLeaks? Attacking them is vandalism, not civil disobedience. If you don't like it when kids get in trouble for damaging the property of people and companies they disagree with then stop encouraging it by pretending they're doing some kind of good for humanity. This isn't about big bad governments crushing the will of innocent children.

robryan 15y ago

So I would assume they are going to be getting the most clueless kids here that probably caused minimal harm. I assume the real organisers of this kind of action wouldn't be DDOS'ing PayPal with easily identifiable packets from their home IP addresses.

phunehehe 15y ago

The link is returning 404. Probably something readable can be found by searching http://www.google.com/search?q=threatlevel%202011%2007%20op_payback http://www.google.com/search?q=threatlevel%202011%2007%20op_...

ljf 15y ago

Would be interesting to see them putting the same resources in getting to the bottom of who was DDoSing Wikileaks at the same time. But I have a feeling they never will.

trotsky 15y ago

The newly released affidavit was offered in support of a search warrant for the home of an Arlington, Texas couple and their son, who were among the July 19 targets, and have not been charged. The house was the source of 3,678 packets in about two-and-a-half hours starting December 8. Man, they executed a federal raid with FBI agents over something that amounted to a few thousand "slowlaris"ed GET requests over a few hours? How much does something like that cost? What, 2-4 agents, 4-8 hours, seizure, paperwork, court filings, etc. Tens of thousands of dollars, right? I want a tax refund.

blauwbilgorgel 15y ago

I find it a strange position for Wired to be in. On the one side, they offer quality articles and have quality resources. They seem to favor the hackers. On the other side, this article was written by Kevin Poulsen, who had a part in turning over a whistleblower and journalist source to the authorities. Kevin Poulson has made himself too related to anonymous and WikiLeaks to be regarded as objective on these matters. I know that isn't reason to judge any article of his, but the extra care I'm forced to take when Poulson is involved (consider his sources, morals and agenda), leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth and an inability to enjoy reading this article.

rajpaul 15y ago

I see a lot of anger directed at the FBI. Remember that ‘Anonymous’ gave these tools to children and encouraged them to use them knowing exactly what the consequences for the kids would be.