9 ms·

Polish Internet community goes nuts against ACTA

170 points by pawelwentpawel 15y ago

Tomek_ 15y ago
According to this text: http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/9637 http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/9637 (in Polish, from a lawyer who is against ACTA), there was no real attack on any of the mentioned sites, it was just that there was so much interest in the case that some sites went down due to naturally increased traffic. Case in point: his own website went down, even though he is against ACTA.
- gcb 15y ago
  how can you tell requests to a site with the intention to DoS it and the regular ones if they were promoting in-browser tools for regular people?
  - Mad_Dud 15y ago
    The simplest way is to use netstat and check amount of connections from each host. If you see plenty hosts with many connections established, that's DDoS. If there is plenty hosts, but each one has few connections, thats DoS (aka slash dot effect), mentioned by Tomek_. PS: DDoS - distributed denial-of-service attack. Deliberate attack which involves dedicated software; DoS - denial-of-service. Server can't handle all requests, because suddenly there is more of them (because of link on frontpage etc)
- hastur 15y ago
  Well, so let's be more specific about the alleged attack. 1) At least one target was attacked quite literally. The website of the Polish Parliament was defaced and subsequently taken down by its admins. [This is the supposed deface image: http://bit.ly/wkygL4 http://bit.ly/wkygL4. The caption reads "Nothing is impossible! Cheers, gentlemen!"] 2) ACTA is a very new thing to the wider public (even the "trendy" internet public). First, on Jan 20 it made the front page of the biggest newspaper of record, Gazeta Wyborcza. And today ACTA was mentioned in the main TV news program (Wiadomosci on TVP1). The latter almost certainly triggered a wave of searches and attempts to access various sites. In result many website failures (the lawyer's, the Panoptykon Foundation, perhaps even Ministry of Culture) can be attributed to a sudden spike in interest. [The lawyer mentioned in previous post has stated specifically that he has investigated the nature of the traffic and it doesn't look like a DDoS. Which is kind of credible, since each machine participating in a DoS sends gazillions of requests from the same IP, so it's distinctive from a visitor sending like 5 requests in total.] 3) That said, it's not an outlandish assumption that someone also had their way with the biggest sites of the Polish Government. A DDoS could have contributed to the whole mess.
hastur 15y ago
As I got up on a late Sunday morning, all major news outlets are talking both about the alleged attacks and about ACTA itself. Sunday talk shows are talking about ACTA. The Govt spokesman starts assuring people that they won't rush anything and ACTA will be consulted. ACTA suddenly came into mainstream public debate. Where else did that happen in the world? I'm friggin proud of my country. :] Oh, and BTW, signups on Facebook for the street protest against ACTA have jumped from 13,000 to 19,000 in 12 hours. :]
kolinko 15y ago
My mom (55y.o.) just called me and asked what is that ACTA thing. My Facebook feed is filled with ACTA posts & discussions... amazing.
- hastur 15y ago
  Very cool. :)
pawelwentpawel 15y ago
Update - 80,000 new people joined the case since yesterday, street protests started literally right now (Gdansk - around 2000 ppl expected), new government websites down.
test1663 15y ago
Check the biggest web portal: http://www.onet.pl/ http://www.onet.pl/. The top (bold) news item is about ACTA, and there also is a featured "10 things you need to know about ACTA" article on main page. Same in all TV and radio.
pawelwentpawel 15y ago
Update - street protests in 13 cities are planned for next week. The biggest one seems to be in Warsaw (over 13,000 people joined the event).
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
jstepien 15y ago
It's worth being noted that the latest attacks on government's websites are top headlines on majority of Polish news sites at the moment. Both the attacks and ACTA are being covered on news TV channels and radio. Apparently, taking down government's website is a remarkably good method of raising interest of media.
- viraptor 15y ago
  I just hope it doesn't get interpreted in media as "hackers destroy government property using pirated software - that's what ACTA is supposed to stop". I wouldn't be surprised at all if that happened.
jakubw 15y ago
Some simple instructions + JS web applications allowed thousands of people from Poland to DDoS those websites on their own Willful participation in a DDoS doesn't sound like a good idea (being a criminal offense in Poland) just as much as the whole concept of getting the government to change their mind by taking down their websites (especially those belonging to parties not involved in the ACTA ratification process). One thing that folks behind this seem to have failed to learn from the SOPA battle is to make it impossible for the government to present the protesters as the bad guys in this situation in the mass media.
- molmalo 15y ago
  Yes, but I think that much of the public sentiment is that the very same mass media not covering ACTA is the one behind this kind of policies. So, they try to make it impossible for them not to cover the story. Sadly, I fear that this kind of action may be presented as valid examples of why the Internet must be regulated.
- choros12 15y ago
  Polish people tend to always think that protesters are right just because they protest and the Government is wrong just because it is the Government. Hence, I wouldn't worry too much about this what the Government will tell to the public about the protesters. The public will know better as it always does in Poland. Actually, this is just one of the reasons why I live in Poland even though I'm an US citizen. People just distrust the Government and the media here so much. It is fantastic!
  - jakubw 15y ago
    I'm Polish myself and I'm not sure I can fully agree with your optimism as there have been a few cases under the current administration in which controversial laws managed to pass thanks to the government's ability to "properly" depict their target groups (the football stadium ban is one example). You might be right that it might not be effective in this case. Still, my point was that there are many lawful ways to bring the media's attention to the problem. In the case of SOPA, shutting down Wikipedia and other sites for one day was a great example. It not only had a major impact on many people's lives but actually was an argument in itself (What would a post-SOPA world look like?). What point does killing a bunch of .gov websites prove?
zeratul 15y ago
Let me know if I can help anyway: scripts, source code, bandwidth.
- pawelwentpawel 15y ago
  Most of the information (in english) about joining/current progress are being twitted in here - https://twitter.com/#!/AnonymousWiki https://twitter.com/#!/AnonymousWiki They've taken down quite a few websites that I wouldn't really associate with acta. There is also quite a lot of people making general mess around the situation. Nevertheless, I've never seen an action like that in the Polish "corner" of the Internet, quite remarkable.
hastur 15y ago
Oh man, I would have missed it, if not for HN! :) I'm definitely going to the protest.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pawelwentpawel 15y ago
If there is anybody reading this from Poland - you can sign up a petition against ACTA - http://www.petycje.pl/petycjePodpisyLista.php?petycjeid=8316&podpis_rodzaj=1 http://www.petycje.pl/petycjePodpisyLista.php?petycjeid=8316...

170 points by pawelwentpawel 15y ago

According to this text: http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/9637 http://prawo.vagla.pl/node/9637 (in Polish, from a lawyer who is against ACTA), there was no real attack on any of the mentioned sites, it was just that there was so much interest in the case that some sites went down due to naturally increased traffic. Case in point: his own website went down, even though he is against ACTA.

gcb 15y ago
how can you tell requests to a site with the intention to DoS it and the regular ones if they were promoting in-browser tools for regular people?
- Mad_Dud 15y ago
  The simplest way is to use netstat and check amount of connections from each host. If you see plenty hosts with many connections established, that's DDoS. If there is plenty hosts, but each one has few connections, thats DoS (aka slash dot effect), mentioned by Tomek_. PS: DDoS - distributed denial-of-service attack. Deliberate attack which involves dedicated software; DoS - denial-of-service. Server can't handle all requests, because suddenly there is more of them (because of link on frontpage etc)
hastur 15y ago
Well, so let's be more specific about the alleged attack. 1) At least one target was attacked quite literally. The website of the Polish Parliament was defaced and subsequently taken down by its admins. [This is the supposed deface image: http://bit.ly/wkygL4 http://bit.ly/wkygL4. The caption reads "Nothing is impossible! Cheers, gentlemen!"] 2) ACTA is a very new thing to the wider public (even the "trendy" internet public). First, on Jan 20 it made the front page of the biggest newspaper of record, Gazeta Wyborcza. And today ACTA was mentioned in the main TV news program (Wiadomosci on TVP1). The latter almost certainly triggered a wave of searches and attempts to access various sites. In result many website failures (the lawyer's, the Panoptykon Foundation, perhaps even Ministry of Culture) can be attributed to a sudden spike in interest. [The lawyer mentioned in previous post has stated specifically that he has investigated the nature of the traffic and it doesn't look like a DDoS. Which is kind of credible, since each machine participating in a DoS sends gazillions of requests from the same IP, so it's distinctive from a visitor sending like 5 requests in total.] 3) That said, it's not an outlandish assumption that someone also had their way with the biggest sites of the Polish Government. A DDoS could have contributed to the whole mess.

hastur 15y ago

As I got up on a late Sunday morning, all major news outlets are talking both about the alleged attacks and about ACTA itself. Sunday talk shows are talking about ACTA. The Govt spokesman starts assuring people that they won't rush anything and ACTA will be consulted. ACTA suddenly came into mainstream public debate. Where else did that happen in the world? I'm friggin proud of my country. :] Oh, and BTW, signups on Facebook for the street protest against ACTA have jumped from 13,000 to 19,000 in 12 hours. :]

kolinko 15y ago

My mom (55y.o.) just called me and asked what is that ACTA thing. My Facebook feed is filled with ACTA posts & discussions... amazing.

hastur 15y ago
Very cool. :)

pawelwentpawel 15y ago

Update - 80,000 new people joined the case since yesterday, street protests started literally right now (Gdansk - around 2000 ppl expected), new government websites down.

test1663 15y ago

Check the biggest web portal: http://www.onet.pl/ http://www.onet.pl/. The top (bold) news item is about ACTA, and there also is a featured "10 things you need to know about ACTA" article on main page. Same in all TV and radio.

pawelwentpawel 15y ago

Update - street protests in 13 cities are planned for next week. The biggest one seems to be in Warsaw (over 13,000 people joined the event).

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

jstepien 15y ago

It's worth being noted that the latest attacks on government's websites are top headlines on majority of Polish news sites at the moment. Both the attacks and ACTA are being covered on news TV channels and radio. Apparently, taking down government's website is a remarkably good method of raising interest of media.

viraptor 15y ago
I just hope it doesn't get interpreted in media as "hackers destroy government property using pirated software - that's what ACTA is supposed to stop". I wouldn't be surprised at all if that happened.

jakubw 15y ago

Some simple instructions + JS web applications allowed thousands of people from Poland to DDoS those websites on their own Willful participation in a DDoS doesn't sound like a good idea (being a criminal offense in Poland) just as much as the whole concept of getting the government to change their mind by taking down their websites (especially those belonging to parties not involved in the ACTA ratification process). One thing that folks behind this seem to have failed to learn from the SOPA battle is to make it impossible for the government to present the protesters as the bad guys in this situation in the mass media.

molmalo 15y ago
Yes, but I think that much of the public sentiment is that the very same mass media not covering ACTA is the one behind this kind of policies. So, they try to make it impossible for them not to cover the story. Sadly, I fear that this kind of action may be presented as valid examples of why the Internet must be regulated.
choros12 15y ago
Polish people tend to always think that protesters are right just because they protest and the Government is wrong just because it is the Government. Hence, I wouldn't worry too much about this what the Government will tell to the public about the protesters. The public will know better as it always does in Poland. Actually, this is just one of the reasons why I live in Poland even though I'm an US citizen. People just distrust the Government and the media here so much. It is fantastic!
- jakubw 15y ago
  I'm Polish myself and I'm not sure I can fully agree with your optimism as there have been a few cases under the current administration in which controversial laws managed to pass thanks to the government's ability to "properly" depict their target groups (the football stadium ban is one example). You might be right that it might not be effective in this case. Still, my point was that there are many lawful ways to bring the media's attention to the problem. In the case of SOPA, shutting down Wikipedia and other sites for one day was a great example. It not only had a major impact on many people's lives but actually was an argument in itself (What would a post-SOPA world look like?). What point does killing a bunch of .gov websites prove?

zeratul 15y ago

Let me know if I can help anyway: scripts, source code, bandwidth.

pawelwentpawel 15y ago
Most of the information (in english) about joining/current progress are being twitted in here - https://twitter.com/#!/AnonymousWiki https://twitter.com/#!/AnonymousWiki They've taken down quite a few websites that I wouldn't really associate with acta. There is also quite a lot of people making general mess around the situation. Nevertheless, I've never seen an action like that in the Polish "corner" of the Internet, quite remarkable.

hastur 15y ago

Oh man, I would have missed it, if not for HN! :) I'm definitely going to the protest.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

pawelwentpawel 15y ago

If there is anybody reading this from Poland - you can sign up a petition against ACTA - http://www.petycje.pl/petycjePodpisyLista.php?petycjeid=8316&podpis_rodzaj=1 http://www.petycje.pl/petycjePodpisyLista.php?petycjeid=8316...