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Paypal gives FBI the list of IP Address of 1,000 Anomymous hackers

28 points by diggericon 15y ago

luu 15y ago
To be fair the names on the list will probably be the bottom feeding script kiddies rather than the hackers at the top of Anomymous's greasy pole Isn't it likely to not even be script kiddies, but machines that are part of a botnet owned by script kiddies?
- maqr 15y ago
  Usually, yeah. In this particular case, however, it was more about political activism and voluntary participation. People organized to use their individual computers to make their collective voice heard. If this were actually some kind of conspiracy to take down Paypal, the organizers would have created a botnet trojan and encouraged everyone to distribute it and infect others with it.
- smokeyj 15y ago
  In related news, one thousand soccer moms using internet explorer six have been raided!
ja30278 15y ago
"They have not been charged yet, but the house was the source of 3,678 packets in about two-and-a-half hours." really? were they mounting a DDOS attack using a pocket calculator attached to 4800 baud modem?
- thelema314 15y ago
  3678 packets / 2.5 hours = One packet every 2.44 seconds * 1500 byte MTU = 3.5KB/s Yup, a 4800 baud modem.
  - tedunangst 15y ago
    You don't multiply packet size by interval, you divide (or multiply by the inverse). And baud is measured in bits. But the numbers come out close anyway. 3678 / (2.5 * 3600) * 1500 * 8 = 4904.
    - moe 15y ago
      Did 4800 baud modems even exist in volume? I just checked wikipedia and there's indeed a protocol for them, but I've never seen one in the wild. In my day it was 300, 1200, 2400, 9600, 14400, 16800, 19200, 28800, 33600, 56k ... So, back on topic, wouldn't it be more likely he was channel bonding two 2400 baud modems?
- biot 15y ago
  Perhaps someone at that house was having trouble connecting to PayPal (because of the DDoS) and left a ping running, but forgot to hit ^C to stop it.
saulrh 15y ago
The closest equivalent to a voluntary, publicized DDoS is a sit-in. While those do lead to arrests, they don't lead to wholesale confiscation of (expensive!) property, and even the organizers don't get more than a few months in jail. Furthermore, the computer-use ban you can get for "hacking" is incomparable to any punishment for a sit-in or occupation. My problem with this isn't that they're reporting participants; it's that the participants and organizers are going to be dealt with an order of magnitude more harshly than if they'd done the same thing minus a computer.
- corin_ 15y ago
  To an extent you have a point, but consider the difference in amount of potential damage. I sit in at, say, a bank branch, it takes the police 24 hours (for some weird reason) to remove me. I DDoS that bank's servers, their online operations are offline for 24 hours. It's hard to argue against the idea that the digital version has, at the very least, the potential to be a lot more serious, and therefore more worthy of punishment.
- hugh3 15y ago
  The closest equivalent to a voluntary, publicized DDoS is a sit-in. While those do lead to arrests, they don't lead to wholesale confiscation of (expensive!) property And DDoSes don't result in you being dragged across the floor by your arms. Why? Because that's the point where they're non-analogous. If you participate in a DDoS, you'll wind up getting your computers confiscated while the FBI crime labs scour them for evidence. If you sit on the floor of Kentucky Fried Panda, you'll get dragged out by your arms. the participants and organizers are going to be dealt with an order of magnitude more harshly than if they'd done the same thing minus a computer because it's not "the same thing", it's a slightly different thing, somewhat more pernicious and dangerous, because the cost to a protestor of carrying out a sit-in is large, whereas the cost of carrying out a DDoS is large. I find it's always useful, when determining the legitimacy of a given political tactic, to assume that it's being used by someone we hate rather than someone we like. So let's suppose the Westboro Baptist Church gets up one morning and decides to target businesses owned by gays. If they do this via sit-in, then they can probably only target one business at a time, and they have to sit around all day getting jeered at. But if they do it via DDoS, they can take down businesses at their leisure. These are both illegal and illegitimate forms of political protest, but the DDoS is potentially much worse than the sit-in.
jrspruitt 15y ago
Since it is an act of political protest, I wonder how this plays out. Seems it is a lot like the cyber version of picketing/marching/protesting at a business, government building or any physical location like that. Where would you peaceably assemble online, in such a way it makes a statement? If everyone joins a chat room so what? Only they notice it, where if you protest in public, you get noticed, for disrupting the day to day flow of things. This seems like one of the few ways to accomplish that same effect online.
- hkolk 15y ago
  You can't call this action picketing/marching/protesting.. This group has brought down multiple websites, with the malice as the intent. The next best real-world comparison would have been a riot. Attempting to shut down a business is in my eyes not something the police would let slide in real-world situations
  - jrspruitt 15y ago
    Yeah they do give off more of a riot like atmosphere, with the breaking and entering tactics. For this to be more equivalent, they'd need a permit to take up so much traffic on public roadways, or in this case, internet connections. Plus there is no clear cut description of what is causing the disruption. If a building was surrounded by protesters, there would be plenty of signs, clearly stating what the group of people felt was so terrible that they needed to protest about. The way it is now, average person thinks the website is having technical difficulties, and knows no different, until the news informs them. Which gives the media all the power in framing what the protest was about. Still regardless of this particular incident, I wonder if it is a tactic that could be used to any sort of degree of effectiveness, as a means for people to express their displeasure in the virtual world of the internet. We the People are powerful only as a group. People doing evil things, might not always respond to a PR attack through Twitter or Facebook.
  - darklajid 15y ago
    Maybe. The people that are most likely to 'suffer' now are the ones that downloaded a ~thing~ and said 'I want to protest against Paypal'. Okay, maybe they know that this is a grey area or technically nor legal, but.. Still. They are not 'bringing down' anything on their own. I hope you don't compare it to a mob either - it seems far too 'peaceful' for that. Regarding 'shut down a business': What do you call it if all employees go on a strike? What if activists block a train route to stop nuclear wastage: Are they not harming the business (both by blocking the rails for other trains and by causing immense costs for everyone involved)? While I'm not even sure I agree with the way this group tries to make a point, I DO think you should grab some colors that are not black or white..
genieyclo 15y ago
I thought we banned thehackernews.com ?
wmf 15y ago
Flagged; this is a poor quality "article" and we already had this discussion yesterday.

28 points by diggericon 15y ago

luu 15y ago

To be fair the names on the list will probably be the bottom feeding script kiddies rather than the hackers at the top of Anomymous's greasy pole Isn't it likely to not even be script kiddies, but machines that are part of a botnet owned by script kiddies?

maqr 15y ago
Usually, yeah. In this particular case, however, it was more about political activism and voluntary participation. People organized to use their individual computers to make their collective voice heard. If this were actually some kind of conspiracy to take down Paypal, the organizers would have created a botnet trojan and encouraged everyone to distribute it and infect others with it.
smokeyj 15y ago
In related news, one thousand soccer moms using internet explorer six have been raided!

ja30278 15y ago

"They have not been charged yet, but the house was the source of 3,678 packets in about two-and-a-half hours." really? were they mounting a DDOS attack using a pocket calculator attached to 4800 baud modem?

thelema314 15y ago
3678 packets / 2.5 hours = One packet every 2.44 seconds * 1500 byte MTU = 3.5KB/s Yup, a 4800 baud modem.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  You don't multiply packet size by interval, you divide (or multiply by the inverse). And baud is measured in bits. But the numbers come out close anyway. 3678 / (2.5 * 3600) * 1500 * 8 = 4904.
  - moe 15y ago
    Did 4800 baud modems even exist in volume? I just checked wikipedia and there's indeed a protocol for them, but I've never seen one in the wild. In my day it was 300, 1200, 2400, 9600, 14400, 16800, 19200, 28800, 33600, 56k ... So, back on topic, wouldn't it be more likely he was channel bonding two 2400 baud modems?
biot 15y ago
Perhaps someone at that house was having trouble connecting to PayPal (because of the DDoS) and left a ping running, but forgot to hit ^C to stop it.

saulrh 15y ago

The closest equivalent to a voluntary, publicized DDoS is a sit-in. While those do lead to arrests, they don't lead to wholesale confiscation of (expensive!) property, and even the organizers don't get more than a few months in jail. Furthermore, the computer-use ban you can get for "hacking" is incomparable to any punishment for a sit-in or occupation. My problem with this isn't that they're reporting participants; it's that the participants and organizers are going to be dealt with an order of magnitude more harshly than if they'd done the same thing minus a computer.

corin_ 15y ago
To an extent you have a point, but consider the difference in amount of potential damage. I sit in at, say, a bank branch, it takes the police 24 hours (for some weird reason) to remove me. I DDoS that bank's servers, their online operations are offline for 24 hours. It's hard to argue against the idea that the digital version has, at the very least, the potential to be a lot more serious, and therefore more worthy of punishment.
hugh3 15y ago
The closest equivalent to a voluntary, publicized DDoS is a sit-in. While those do lead to arrests, they don't lead to wholesale confiscation of (expensive!) property And DDoSes don't result in you being dragged across the floor by your arms. Why? Because that's the point where they're non-analogous. If you participate in a DDoS, you'll wind up getting your computers confiscated while the FBI crime labs scour them for evidence. If you sit on the floor of Kentucky Fried Panda, you'll get dragged out by your arms. the participants and organizers are going to be dealt with an order of magnitude more harshly than if they'd done the same thing minus a computer because it's not "the same thing", it's a slightly different thing, somewhat more pernicious and dangerous, because the cost to a protestor of carrying out a sit-in is large, whereas the cost of carrying out a DDoS is large. I find it's always useful, when determining the legitimacy of a given political tactic, to assume that it's being used by someone we hate rather than someone we like. So let's suppose the Westboro Baptist Church gets up one morning and decides to target businesses owned by gays. If they do this via sit-in, then they can probably only target one business at a time, and they have to sit around all day getting jeered at. But if they do it via DDoS, they can take down businesses at their leisure. These are both illegal and illegitimate forms of political protest, but the DDoS is potentially much worse than the sit-in.

jrspruitt 15y ago

Since it is an act of political protest, I wonder how this plays out. Seems it is a lot like the cyber version of picketing/marching/protesting at a business, government building or any physical location like that. Where would you peaceably assemble online, in such a way it makes a statement? If everyone joins a chat room so what? Only they notice it, where if you protest in public, you get noticed, for disrupting the day to day flow of things. This seems like one of the few ways to accomplish that same effect online.

hkolk 15y ago
You can't call this action picketing/marching/protesting.. This group has brought down multiple websites, with the malice as the intent. The next best real-world comparison would have been a riot. Attempting to shut down a business is in my eyes not something the police would let slide in real-world situations
- jrspruitt 15y ago
  Yeah they do give off more of a riot like atmosphere, with the breaking and entering tactics. For this to be more equivalent, they'd need a permit to take up so much traffic on public roadways, or in this case, internet connections. Plus there is no clear cut description of what is causing the disruption. If a building was surrounded by protesters, there would be plenty of signs, clearly stating what the group of people felt was so terrible that they needed to protest about. The way it is now, average person thinks the website is having technical difficulties, and knows no different, until the news informs them. Which gives the media all the power in framing what the protest was about. Still regardless of this particular incident, I wonder if it is a tactic that could be used to any sort of degree of effectiveness, as a means for people to express their displeasure in the virtual world of the internet. We the People are powerful only as a group. People doing evil things, might not always respond to a PR attack through Twitter or Facebook.
- darklajid 15y ago
  Maybe. The people that are most likely to 'suffer' now are the ones that downloaded a ~thing~ and said 'I want to protest against Paypal'. Okay, maybe they know that this is a grey area or technically nor legal, but.. Still. They are not 'bringing down' anything on their own. I hope you don't compare it to a mob either - it seems far too 'peaceful' for that. Regarding 'shut down a business': What do you call it if all employees go on a strike? What if activists block a train route to stop nuclear wastage: Are they not harming the business (both by blocking the rails for other trains and by causing immense costs for everyone involved)? While I'm not even sure I agree with the way this group tries to make a point, I DO think you should grab some colors that are not black or white..

genieyclo 15y ago

I thought we banned thehackernews.com ?

wmf 15y ago

Flagged; this is a poor quality "article" and we already had this discussion yesterday.