5 ms·

Does anyone know why Ubuntu would be targeted by pro-Iranian activists? I'm perplexed by the connection.

at-fates-hands 5mo ago
Canonical is a UK company, so its a symbolic attack against a Western agent. Ubuntu is used by a lot of tech companies so they knew this attack would get a lot of visibility in the tech community. I'm assuming they think this will garner support from the tech community as well.
- shaftoe 5mo ago
  Exactly as described in "how to win friends and influence people". Break their stuff and extort money.
- Gualdrapo 5mo ago
  Still it feels quite odd that from all western tech companies (and several more influential than Canonical) they chose precisely one that is highly involved with open source
  - alephnerd 5mo ago
    Welcome to war. This was why the Qatar attack was so destabilizing. Iran's position is that any organization that is in any shape or form aligned with the US and West is a target. And being an anti-war westerner won't help you. People are forgetting that the Iranian government detests Israel and the entirety of the West. The core principals of the revolution which is the IRGC's entire ideological basis is reversing westoxification (Gharbzadegi) and returning to the norms of the Imam Husayn (Velayat-e Faghih).
    - leereeves 5mo ago
      Judging from their behavior against their own people and their Islamic neighbors, it seems like the IRGC's hatred isn't limited to the West.
      - alephnerd 5mo ago
        The whole point of the Islamic Revolution was to export it. Khomeinei preached that Shia and Sunni is an arbitrary divide and that the ummah needed to be unified and guided by clerics (who just so happened to be Shia) and to purge decadent Western culture back to an idealized norm of the Imam Husayn. In action, it meant funding insurgencies and revolutionary corps out of a mix of idealism and raw power projection, and those organs used to protect the revolution ended up taking over the entire state and economy for their own economic benefit. Imagine if the Red Guard and the Gang of Four weren't purged in China in 1976 and the footsoldiers of the Red Guard became actual leaders - that is what Iran is today. And like China under Mao during the Cultural Revolution, it alienated all of it's neighbors. Westerners who dislike Israel or even the US think Iran would ally with them, but the entire regime views Westerners irrespective of political leaning with disdain. An undercurrent of the Iranian revolution was also Iranian nationalism and the view that Iran is a civilization state, and that the west and westerners are culture-less, decadent, loose, and immoral and that the entirety of western culture needs to be burnt to the ground (Gharbzadegi).
  - culi 5mo ago
    All these comments saying it's just a salient target are making it up. Canonical is a military contractor. They literally have an entire DoD team. That's why they're being targeted. They're far from the only military contractor to be targeted by Iranian hackers this year
    - junofan 5mo ago
      Is this written down anywhere? All I can find is an announcement from the group and a follow-up message threatening Canonical if they do not negotiate. What does a DDoS accomplish if the contracts are signed and a team embedded? Why take down security.ubuntu.com? Surely even cyber jihadis need security updates?
      - culi 5mo ago
        Canonical doesn't share many details but its far from a secret https://canonical.com/blog/meet-the-canonical-federal-and-dod-team-at-alamo-ace-2023 https://canonical.com/blog/meet-the-canonical-federal-and-do...
- thewebguyd 5mo ago
  > I'm assuming they think this will garner support from the tech community as well. I don't understand their thinking if this is the case. DDoSing widely used project is going to turn people against you, not generate support.
anotherviewhere 5mo ago
[flagged]
- throwuxiytayq 5mo ago
  There is such a thing as being too open-minded to form an accurate perception of reality.
  - b00ty4breakfast 5mo ago
    I think the saying is "so open-minded your brain fell out"
    - dirasieb 5mo ago
      sometimes they don’t even have a brain to begin with
  - turdistheword 5mo ago
    [dead]
everdrive 5mo ago
Almost certainly a target of opportunity. The UK has really made a point of staying out of this fight, but is also seen as a close ally of the US. Perhaps the calculus is: - Iran was able to attack Ubuntu.com - Iran sees it in its interests to stress the UK / US relationship (albeit in a small way)
- geerlingguy 5mo ago
  Why would Ubuntu problems cause stress in the US/UK relationship?
  - CamouflagedKiwi 5mo ago
    I suppose the idea was that Canonical is a UK-based company and they're being threatened by the US's enemy. Having said that, I really can't believe that either Trump or Starmer will give a shit about this, especially given the recent friction in that relationship.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  - spwa4 5mo ago
    Perhaps it's just that Iran believes it's only chance for victory is maximum public attention, and they don't have any real hacker know-how. So they pick a soft but well known target. It's what they do to students inside Iran.
- ifwinterco 5mo ago
  UK has been trying to thread the needle of staying out of what is obviously a complete cluster** of a war while also not annoying the US too much, but US bombers are taking off from air force bases in the UK to bomb Iran all the time. Because of that and the general ingrained hostility of the permanent UK security state to Iran, they view us as a legitimate target albeit not a particularly important one because we’re just not that powerful anymore
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
b00ty4breakfast 5mo ago
It's a well(ish) known org with well known product, and they seem to have been vulnerable. If they had attacked a deli in Newark, would we be having this conversation?
- culi 5mo ago
  Canonical literally has a DOD team. They are a military contractor
theultdev 5mo ago
Terrorists will generally target anything of opportunity. It was also perplexing when Iran was shooting missiles at their allies, until you realize they aren't rational humans.
- skeledrew 5mo ago
  > until you realize they aren't rational humans How did you get to that realization?
- AlecSchueler 5mo ago
  > they aren't rational humans. Would you be able to point to any rational humans?
  - _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
    Maybe ones who don't follow supreme religious leaders that called for the gunning down of 3000 men, women, and children in the streets. And then approve beatings/the murder of doctors that treated them. Imagine that being your moral leadership. And 3000 is the official Iranian number. Some claim as high as 30,000. Those religious leaders are calling for more murder/death in todays Friday prayers. I don't know how anyone who calls for (or especially signs off on in a religious theocracy) murder can be called spiritual leaders or anyone could follow their 'teachings' . Edit: Just highlighting the horrors/behaviors you are normalizing/waive away as 'shared by everyone' with your statement 'but what humans aren't like this'.
    - AlecSchueler 5mo ago
      > Maybe ones who ... Ok but could you point to anyone or any people and tell me that they're rational? I didn't just ask for a possible condition of rationality and "maybe" feels like a very flimsy foundation for the acidity of what you're saying.
    - lossolo 5mo ago
      I think you're conflating "rational" with "moral". The question was about rationality, and from their POV (given the goal of keeping the regime going) everything was rational.
_DeadFred_ 5mo ago
Iran is targeting random ships crewed by third world/unaligned national crews in the straight. Iran's goal is do whatever it takes to put pressure. They are willingly threatening the food supply of large unaligned parts of the world because it gives them leverage/puts on pressure. Iran's proxies murdered random grandmothers on Oct 7th and uploaded the video to the internet to get a message across in order to promote their agenda. Why would a random tech company be odd from people funding the murderer of grandmas and their entire families in their homes execution style? The UK called in the ambassador from Iran this week because they were calling for Iranian expats in the UK to give up their lives for Iran (followed the next day by attacks on jews in the UK).
culi 5mo ago
Canonical partners with organizations like the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and Platform One to provide secure software and AI/ML capabilities. They have an entire DOD team.
- leereeves 5mo ago
  I can't find much info about that (especially with their website down). Is Canonical's work with the DOD more like Raytheon or Pizza Hut? Raytheon: providing products specifically for the DOD Pizza Hut: selling their usual product to the DOD
  - culi 5mo ago
    Pizza Hut does not have a permanent DoD team. Canonical has actual contracts. You'll have to wait till their site is back up to read about it https://canonical.com/blog/meet-the-canonical-federal-and-dod-team-at-alamo-ace-2023 https://canonical.com/blog/meet-the-canonical-federal-and-do...
    - leereeves 5mo ago
      Pizza Hut has plenty of locations on military bases, each with a team dedicated to selling their product to the military.
      - culi 5mo ago
        I see your point. To answer your original question, yes Canonical's military relationship is fundamentally different from Pizza Hut. More comparable to something like Palantir that sells SaaS or IaaS
        leereeves 5mo ago
        So more like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and most big tech companies than either Pizza Hut or Raytheon? Perhaps most like Red Hat (who also sell to the DoD)? I think it would be unusual to call them all military contractors (as you called Canonical in another comment).
DetroitThrow 5mo ago
They work with US military.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
input_sh 5mo ago
An actual answer because all you've received so far is complete nonsense: because they want press attention as they're using these attacks to advertise their DDoS-as-a-Service tool. Literally every single statement they release (on Telegram) includes text saying that their attacks are "100% powered by $websiteEndingWithDotSu". They also attacked the likes of Vrbo, Expedia and eBay, but they get more press by targeting Mastodon, Bluesky, Ubuntu and the likes, so they go after those now. People are desperately trying to somehow tie those victims to some ideological nonsense, but it's just advertising.
- lostmsu 5mo ago
  It might be "just advertising", but this also moves them from "I am pretending to retaliate" to "fuck everyone", and eventually will lead to formal recognition of Russia as terrorist state with targets painted at their backs. There's also Anonymous that for the time being forgot about Russia.
ranger_danger 5mo ago
313 Team claims their attack is vengeance for killing Khamenei.

Canonical is a UK company, so its a symbolic attack against a Western agent. Ubuntu is used by a lot of tech companies so they knew this attack would get a lot of visibility in the tech community. I'm assuming they think this will garner support from the tech community as well.

shaftoe 5mo ago
Exactly as described in "how to win friends and influence people". Break their stuff and extort money.
Gualdrapo 5mo ago
Still it feels quite odd that from all western tech companies (and several more influential than Canonical) they chose precisely one that is highly involved with open source
- alephnerd 5mo ago
  Welcome to war. This was why the Qatar attack was so destabilizing. Iran's position is that any organization that is in any shape or form aligned with the US and West is a target. And being an anti-war westerner won't help you. People are forgetting that the Iranian government detests Israel and the entirety of the West. The core principals of the revolution which is the IRGC's entire ideological basis is reversing westoxification (Gharbzadegi) and returning to the norms of the Imam Husayn (Velayat-e Faghih).
  - leereeves 5mo ago
    Judging from their behavior against their own people and their Islamic neighbors, it seems like the IRGC's hatred isn't limited to the West.
    - alephnerd 5mo ago
      The whole point of the Islamic Revolution was to export it. Khomeinei preached that Shia and Sunni is an arbitrary divide and that the ummah needed to be unified and guided by clerics (who just so happened to be Shia) and to purge decadent Western culture back to an idealized norm of the Imam Husayn. In action, it meant funding insurgencies and revolutionary corps out of a mix of idealism and raw power projection, and those organs used to protect the revolution ended up taking over the entire state and economy for their own economic benefit. Imagine if the Red Guard and the Gang of Four weren't purged in China in 1976 and the footsoldiers of the Red Guard became actual leaders - that is what Iran is today. And like China under Mao during the Cultural Revolution, it alienated all of it's neighbors. Westerners who dislike Israel or even the US think Iran would ally with them, but the entire regime views Westerners irrespective of political leaning with disdain. An undercurrent of the Iranian revolution was also Iranian nationalism and the view that Iran is a civilization state, and that the west and westerners are culture-less, decadent, loose, and immoral and that the entirety of western culture needs to be burnt to the ground (Gharbzadegi).
- culi 5mo ago
  All these comments saying it's just a salient target are making it up. Canonical is a military contractor. They literally have an entire DoD team. That's why they're being targeted. They're far from the only military contractor to be targeted by Iranian hackers this year
  - junofan 5mo ago
    Is this written down anywhere? All I can find is an announcement from the group and a follow-up message threatening Canonical if they do not negotiate. What does a DDoS accomplish if the contracts are signed and a team embedded? Why take down security.ubuntu.com? Surely even cyber jihadis need security updates?
    - culi 5mo ago
      Canonical doesn't share many details but its far from a secret https://canonical.com/blog/meet-the-canonical-federal-and-dod-team-at-alamo-ace-2023 https://canonical.com/blog/meet-the-canonical-federal-and-do...
thewebguyd 5mo ago
> I'm assuming they think this will garner support from the tech community as well. I don't understand their thinking if this is the case. DDoSing widely used project is going to turn people against you, not generate support.

anotherviewhere 5mo ago

[flagged]

throwuxiytayq 5mo ago
There is such a thing as being too open-minded to form an accurate perception of reality.
- b00ty4breakfast 5mo ago
  I think the saying is "so open-minded your brain fell out"
  - dirasieb 5mo ago
    sometimes they don’t even have a brain to begin with
- turdistheword 5mo ago
  [dead]

everdrive 5mo ago

Almost certainly a target of opportunity. The UK has really made a point of staying out of this fight, but is also seen as a close ally of the US. Perhaps the calculus is: - Iran was able to attack Ubuntu.com - Iran sees it in its interests to stress the UK / US relationship (albeit in a small way)

geerlingguy 5mo ago
Why would Ubuntu problems cause stress in the US/UK relationship?
- CamouflagedKiwi 5mo ago
  I suppose the idea was that Canonical is a UK-based company and they're being threatened by the US's enemy. Having said that, I really can't believe that either Trump or Starmer will give a shit about this, especially given the recent friction in that relationship.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- spwa4 5mo ago
  Perhaps it's just that Iran believes it's only chance for victory is maximum public attention, and they don't have any real hacker know-how. So they pick a soft but well known target. It's what they do to students inside Iran.
ifwinterco 5mo ago
UK has been trying to thread the needle of staying out of what is obviously a complete cluster** of a war while also not annoying the US too much, but US bombers are taking off from air force bases in the UK to bomb Iran all the time. Because of that and the general ingrained hostility of the permanent UK security state to Iran, they view us as a legitimate target albeit not a particularly important one because we’re just not that powerful anymore

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

b00ty4breakfast 5mo ago

It's a well(ish) known org with well known product, and they seem to have been vulnerable. If they had attacked a deli in Newark, would we be having this conversation?

culi 5mo ago
Canonical literally has a DOD team. They are a military contractor

theultdev 5mo ago

Terrorists will generally target anything of opportunity. It was also perplexing when Iran was shooting missiles at their allies, until you realize they aren't rational humans.

skeledrew 5mo ago
> until you realize they aren't rational humans How did you get to that realization?
AlecSchueler 5mo ago
> they aren't rational humans. Would you be able to point to any rational humans?
- _DeadFred_ 5mo ago
  Maybe ones who don't follow supreme religious leaders that called for the gunning down of 3000 men, women, and children in the streets. And then approve beatings/the murder of doctors that treated them. Imagine that being your moral leadership. And 3000 is the official Iranian number. Some claim as high as 30,000. Those religious leaders are calling for more murder/death in todays Friday prayers. I don't know how anyone who calls for (or especially signs off on in a religious theocracy) murder can be called spiritual leaders or anyone could follow their 'teachings' . Edit: Just highlighting the horrors/behaviors you are normalizing/waive away as 'shared by everyone' with your statement 'but what humans aren't like this'.
  - AlecSchueler 5mo ago
    > Maybe ones who ... Ok but could you point to anyone or any people and tell me that they're rational? I didn't just ask for a possible condition of rationality and "maybe" feels like a very flimsy foundation for the acidity of what you're saying.
  - lossolo 5mo ago
    I think you're conflating "rational" with "moral". The question was about rationality, and from their POV (given the goal of keeping the regime going) everything was rational.

_DeadFred_ 5mo ago

Iran is targeting random ships crewed by third world/unaligned national crews in the straight. Iran's goal is do whatever it takes to put pressure. They are willingly threatening the food supply of large unaligned parts of the world because it gives them leverage/puts on pressure. Iran's proxies murdered random grandmothers on Oct 7th and uploaded the video to the internet to get a message across in order to promote their agenda. Why would a random tech company be odd from people funding the murderer of grandmas and their entire families in their homes execution style? The UK called in the ambassador from Iran this week because they were calling for Iranian expats in the UK to give up their lives for Iran (followed the next day by attacks on jews in the UK).

culi 5mo ago

Canonical partners with organizations like the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and Platform One to provide secure software and AI/ML capabilities. They have an entire DOD team.

leereeves 5mo ago
I can't find much info about that (especially with their website down). Is Canonical's work with the DOD more like Raytheon or Pizza Hut? Raytheon: providing products specifically for the DOD Pizza Hut: selling their usual product to the DOD
- culi 5mo ago
  Pizza Hut does not have a permanent DoD team. Canonical has actual contracts. You'll have to wait till their site is back up to read about it https://canonical.com/blog/meet-the-canonical-federal-and-dod-team-at-alamo-ace-2023 https://canonical.com/blog/meet-the-canonical-federal-and-do...
  - leereeves 5mo ago
    Pizza Hut has plenty of locations on military bases, each with a team dedicated to selling their product to the military.
    - culi 5mo ago
      I see your point. To answer your original question, yes Canonical's military relationship is fundamentally different from Pizza Hut. More comparable to something like Palantir that sells SaaS or IaaS
      - leereeves 5mo ago
        So more like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, and most big tech companies than either Pizza Hut or Raytheon? Perhaps most like Red Hat (who also sell to the DoD)? I think it would be unusual to call them all military contractors (as you called Canonical in another comment).

DetroitThrow 5mo ago

They work with US military.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

input_sh 5mo ago

An actual answer because all you've received so far is complete nonsense: because they want press attention as they're using these attacks to advertise their DDoS-as-a-Service tool. Literally every single statement they release (on Telegram) includes text saying that their attacks are "100% powered by $websiteEndingWithDotSu". They also attacked the likes of Vrbo, Expedia and eBay, but they get more press by targeting Mastodon, Bluesky, Ubuntu and the likes, so they go after those now. People are desperately trying to somehow tie those victims to some ideological nonsense, but it's just advertising.

lostmsu 5mo ago
It might be "just advertising", but this also moves them from "I am pretending to retaliate" to "fuck everyone", and eventually will lead to formal recognition of Russia as terrorist state with targets painted at their backs. There's also Anonymous that for the time being forgot about Russia.

ranger_danger 5mo ago

313 Team claims their attack is vengeance for killing Khamenei.