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>The trend of half-baked hacktivism involving everyday internet users is now growing into sites and games that encourage users to become part of DDoS (Distribut
by tsol 5y ago
>The trend of half-baked hacktivism involving everyday internet users is now growing into sites and games that encourage users to become part of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks against some Russian digital assets. For the same reasons mentioned above, randomly sending attacks without thinking through the consequences and potential collateral damage are feel-good actions that amount to shooting in the dark. Also unknown are the consequences for users that were part of this campaign. Are users aware that they could have their IPs logged by a potentially aggressive and vindictive target? It’s an incredibly irresponsible action that gives tools to ordinary users without the due diligence it deserves, putting innocent lives at risk on all sides.
I agree. I can imagine a day where the public passes along links for fire to DDOS hackernews until silicon Valley puts more regulations against fake news, or children on social media, or some other issue. Vigilantism is always a bad idea, people get carried away and before you know it anyone can be a target because of a tenuous link to something considered bad. If the story about the tool overwriting files on Russian computers is true, then that just leads to another huge set of problems that can occur.
- suifbwish 5y agoIf you own popular websites you can embed code that causes the visitors to repeatedly background download large files from some web server you don’t like. If someone is hosting in AWS people can deliberately drive up their bill by scanning their site for the highest file size and just mass downloading that one file around the clock. I dont support this behavior but it happens.