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Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network
- leepowers 14y agoMy guess is someone wants to "send a message" to MIT and so they're attacking the most vulnerable, most exploitable part of MIT's infrastructure: a non-critical system run by student volunteers. I doubt it's anything personal against Alex or other MIT students. Imagine if a thousand members of Anonymous staged a non-violent protest at MIT, marching across campus. This would inconvenience some students, possibly even prevent them from attending class. Should this protest be condemned as an unconscionable attack on students? Of course not. It's a perfectly acceptable form of civil disobedience. Why shouldn't this extend to online protests via DDoS?
- Permit 14y agoWhy is it perfectly acceptable to inconvenience people from their studies? Man, this kind of attitude makes me want to encourage harsher penalties on people who pull this bullshit. You do your movement no favours when you inconvenience the same people you want on your side.
- wonnage 14y agoYou must not live in the US, as we have freedom of assembly here
- Permit 14y agoJust don't expect sympathy from anyone you've inconvenienced when that right is infringed upon.
- sethist 14y agoThere seems to be a common misunderstanding of what protest rights you have in the US. The first amendment does not give you the right to protest anything, at any point, in any manner that you want. In fact, the government has a duty to protect my rights if your protest in infringing on them. The Occupy movement is another group that completely failed to understand that fact. You are legally allowed to protest, but preventing someone from going to work or class is a quick way to get your protest shutdown. I don't think it is unreasonable to extend that same logic to DDoS attacks.
- leepowers 14y agoCivil disobedience is illegal by definition. DDoS attacks are illegal. Marching down the middle of the street is illegal. But are these acts immoral?
- sethist 14y agoIf they seriously infringe on the rights of other individuals, then yes I think they are immoral. Putting your own political motivations (no matter how righteous) above the rights of others is a selfish act.
- rprasad 14y agoMarching down the middle of the street is not illegal. Indeed, many fundamental cases of constitutional law note that the street is a "per se" public forum, i.e., the most public a forum can be, and is thus subject to the highest protections for speech. Marching down a street and merely disrupting traffic is thus quite legal, however, if your marching causes dangerous disruptions to traffic (i.e., accidents), then it is not.
- tedunangst 14y agoThe easy answer if you want to march down the street is you tell city hall and get a parade permit. Did anybody tell MIT and apply for a packet storm permit?
- aeonsky 14y agoYou can't assemble if it infringes on any one elses right to get to a public destination.
- leepowers 14y agoI'm not a member of any movement, Anonymous or otherwise. The point I was trying to raise: civil disobedience is disruptive by nature and will inconvenience and annoy - but it is far from immoral. Why should a DDoS be considered any differently? The methods of physical and virtual protest are different but their ends are the same.
- bzbarsky 14y agoBut methods matter, unless you want to argue that the ends justify the means. Which would be a bit of a stretch in this case, by the way, since the most likely ends range somewhere between nothing and causing a bunch of problems for people who have had nothing to do with this whole story.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- FireBeyond 14y agoYou must not have read the part about Aaron not actually being an MIT student at all - hence the trespass charges.
- subsystem 14y agoThe trespassing charges were dropped. He was indicted for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.
- FireBeyond 14y agoNone of which makes my point untrue. That he was not a student there. He may not have been charged with trespass, but MIT was not his alma mater, and thus owed him nothing in that regard.
- simonster 14y ago> My guess is someone wants to "send a message" to MIT and so they're attacking the most vulnerable, most exploitable part of MIT's infrastructure: a non-critical system run by student volunteers. I doubt it's anything personal against Alex or other MIT students. But they're not sending a message to MIT, because the systems they are attacking don't matter to the faculty or administration. They're just creating a mess for the student volunteers.
- armored_mammal 14y agoWho should blame the administration instead of the DDOS'ers.
- pdonis 14y agoAnd suppose they do. What then? MIT has already said an investigation will be conducted. Is the DDoS going to continue until it's finished? How does that help anyone? Or should the students demand heads immediately, without waiting for the full facts? How does that help?
- leepowers 14y agoAdministration and faculty should care about students and they should listen to their students. If a service outage occurs and effects thousands of students I have no doubt faculty is going to be made aware of it - regardless of who is responsible for maintaining the service. Maybe we are giving the attackers too much credit. They may not be sophisticated enough to understand the relationship between the system they're attacking and the rest of MIT's infrastructure. More likely this was low-hanging fruit, an easy to attack, ergo it was attacked.
- wavesounds 14y agoTo me this feels a bit like a lunch counter cook complaining all these black people showing up in his restaurant are causing him extra work. The whole point of a protest is to put pressure on the system your trying to change. Start a walkout/go on strike if you dont want to deal with the problems the organization you're working for caused. The school only gets power from its students. Without the students there is no school. You have more power then you think. Take a stand, make a difference.
- Permit 14y ago>To me this feels a bit like a lunch counter cook complaining all these black people showing up in his restaurant are causing him extra work. Are black people notorious for eating or something? That kind of came out of left field, there.
- koenigdavidmj 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins
- lotso 14y agoI think it is referring to the sit-ins that occurred in the 60s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-ins#Civil_Rights_Movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-ins#Civil_Rights_Movement
- jamesjporter 14y agoHe's analogizing DDoS attacks to the lunch counter sit ins that were used as a means of nonviolent protest during the civil right movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins
- wavesounds 14y agoYeah I was comparing a DDoS to lunch counter Sit-ins of the 60s. During the civil rights movement blacks and other protestors would overwhelm a restaurant taking up all the space at the counter until the owners agreed to meet their demands. It's a proven non-violent protest that works and is very similar to what DDoS does, except instead of human bodies filling up a restaurant you're using http requests to fill up a server. Sorry for the lack of context in the original post.
- luxxx 14y agoPlease stop using simple tools to exploit our outrageously insecure ethernet setup!
- paupino_masano 14y agoI'm just getting a blank page - is that what others are seeing?
- rcchen 14y agoMirror: http://pastebin.com/TesKihYZ http://pastebin.com/TesKihYZ
- lwf 14y agoWorks for me.
- sp332 14y agoThe content is actually hosted on blogblog.com, one of Google's Blogger servers. Do you have a problem accessing that?
- VaucGiaps 14y agoScreenshot: http://i.imgur.com/affVX.png http://i.imgur.com/affVX.png . Links: [1]Scripts http://scripts.mit.edu/ http://scripts.mit.edu/ [2]IS&T http://ist.mit.edu/ http://ist.mit.edu/ [3]SIPB http://sipb.mit.edu/ http://sipb.mit.edu/ [4]Alex Chernyakhovsky https://plus.google.com/115426459041235345279/posts https://plus.google.com/115426459041235345279/posts
- thorum 14y agoAre you using NoScript or something like it? The page needs JS to render.
- paupino_masano 14y agoHmm, it does seem that the page is being returned but I get JS errors in Chrome, Firefox and Safari on OSX (blogger not defined). Oh well, never mind - the Pastebin and screenshots above give the gist of the story!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- 14y ago
- thorum 14y agoI don't go to MIT, but a commenter on a previous article about this said that MIT's network had been having trouble for weeks. That is, before the Aaron Swartz tragedy. Is there some other reason why someone would be DDOS'ing MIT?
- mayneack 14y agoI'm guessing that a non trivial number of people heard about it and decided to join the attack, regardless of whether or not it was actually an attack to begin with.
- thorum 14y agoThat actually does sound likely, knowing the internet.
- geofft 14y agoThat was me, I think, and I believe we now know that they are uncorrelated (although I'm not paying as much attention to all of this as I should). If I recall correctly, the symptoms from a few weeks ago were with the ISPs MIT connects to, not internal to MIT's own network.
- thorum 14y agoAh, I see. Thank you.
- saraid216 14y agoI've noticed some really weird blips with ISPs in general in the past several months. Nothing I can pin down, but my working knowledge is incredibly low, so I don't know the tools. For instance, I run a Mumble server on a Linode, nothing special, and last night, all of my SF/BayArea friends had a storm of disconnect-reconnects. I didn't have time to diagnose at the time, but I doubt I would have found anything either.
- tubbo 14y agoPlease Stop Attending MIT
- Apocryphon 14y agoI suppose the one silver lining is that this could be useful data for MIT admins to locate weaknesses in their network.
- mayneack 14y agoGood timing too as I assume IAP is an off peak time for people's work getting disrupted.
- danielweber 14y agoIt's not supposed to be a hardened network that freaks out whenever anyone connects to it. Or is that the goal? To make MIT stop being so open?
- kylec 14y agoI think that's a false dichotomy. It's possible to make the network and the attached services more resilient to a DoS without making it less open.
- mpyne 14y agoMaybe they could, I don't know, filter out requests from certain malicious MAC addresses? Start dropping packets from the wrong IP address? Surely that would suffice, right?
- 14y ago
- latj 14y agoI do not condone the attacks that may be occurring. However, if you are trying to get someone's attention- it makes more sense to get the attention of the students rather than the administration. Today's MIT students are tomorrow's death-ray designers, robot-maintainers, and policy makers. They are tomorrow's administration- and they may not have made up their minds yet about ethical issues of intellectual property or the nature of doing and sharing science. It doesnt make sense to target the administration of today. They have already made up their minds.
- mayneack 14y agoI'd say it's even more counterproductive then. No one at mit hadn't heard of the scandal at this point, but a few people's minds might get changed on hacktivists in general. Putting up the messages on those department sites won't inconvenience a bunch of people, but this might.
- geofft 14y agoMIT politics is, and has long been, that the students of today hate the administration of today. This might be correlated to the number of folks in the MIT administration who are not MIT alums, incidentally. Fix that, and everything else follows.
- danielweber 14y agoI think that's the eternal position. The complaint in my day was "the administration ignores the students," so the administration asked for student input on the next controversial decision, and then did what they were going to do anyway.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoWho do you think should fix it if not the MIT students? Why don't they go and physically remove administration from the MIT and never let it back? It seems impossibly unlawful when I write this but you know, there were times when students had a political agendas and they used to run over campuses, barricade them and battle the police. And now it's like "we're gonna hate them for life and not do a thing". I understand I'm telling other people what to do but then again, the OP tells other people what to do[n't].
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- RobotCaleb 14y agoAre you drunk?
- IheartApplesDix 14y agoSorry, did I go over your head?
- tubbo 14y ago<3 just a joke my friend. in all seriousness if anyone is attacking MIT that's retarded.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoThe new blogger does not let me to zoom in by the means of ctrl+. It's so pathetic that I don't understand why people use it. You can turn that off can't you? Back to the content of an article: Aaron suffered for nothing, but the student thinks that he should be extempt from suffering for nothing. What makes him think so? Life is pain. He should be feeling shame right now, excruciating one, but instead he tells other people what to do and don't.
- darkarmani 14y agoPlease let me read your blog page without needed to turn on lots of javascript. The page is blank without whitelisting JS content.
- hnriot 14y agoThis is as expected. If you want to disable the browser, you should a blank page. Javascript is as much a part of web content as html. If you're worried about security, run Linux or OSX as your operating system.
- darkarmani 14y agoWow! That is not a comment I expected from HN. You do know that Java7 (also part of the web) has a cross-platform 0day exploit. Your OS will not save you here (layered defense might help though). Something as inelegant as click-jacking will not be prevented by your silver-bullet OS of choice, either. > Javascript is as much a part of web content as html. Why is javascript required to see content for a simple blog page?
- bjhoops1 14y agoSeriously? Still on the disable-JavaScript kick? scratches head
- Tuna-Fish 14y agoMost of the internet is unambiguously better with js off.
- CamperBob2 14y agoWell, that sounds like the definitive word on the subject.
- yk 14y agoIs there a possible way to use the internet without? At least it is my experience, that without NoScript any given site will either take half an hour to load, or have some annoying ads, as an overlay over the content. ( Not to mention videos which start to play automatically, flash banners and sound effects.) Seriously I have no problem with an advertisement which just displays a picture or text. But any possible use of JS in a ad is a use I do not want.
- armored_mammal 14y agoIf the students have failed to vehemently distance themselves and protest to the administration, or even quit MIT for somewhere else, then they are just as guilty. Their attendance abets the status quo. Especially since it's a private university. Quit whining.
- gfosco 14y agoReally?... It's not their battle. Why does a student at MIT have to have a position on this at all?
- armored_mammal 14y agoWhat, do you think people have no social responsibility towards the institutions they support? If you belonged to the Westboro Baptist Church or some other group it'd be legit to claim you're responsible for their actions to a certain degree. Why do MIT students get a special exemption from the chain of responsibility that applies to everyone else? If you are a member of a collectivist institution it's also your responsibility to take what action you can to shape its moral aspect. And to be silent is to abet.
- ewillbefull 14y agoWhat makes you think students at MIT aren't trying to make a difference? Do you expect something to happen within days of a tragedy? This takes organization, and outrage, and discussion. People searching for solutions. The wrong message would be to attack students, who are also ultimately victims of information monopoly. I fear you're cutting off the nose to spite the face. And these frequent DDoS attacks are partly to blame for Aaron's death, it's the reason why prosecutors are so hardcore about "hacking" or anything vaguely similar to it.
- btilly 14y agoWell trolled. I am not associated with MIT. However I consider Abelson's forthcoming report as being more representative of the organization, than whatever random administrator was dealing with the prosecutor. Abelson was undoubtably there before the administrator in question, will be there after, and is far more widely known than the currently faceless administrator. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Abelson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Abelson then get back to me on whether that is a reputation that a student should be proud of or rejecting.
- gojomo 14y agoAs I'd mentioned on an earlier submission about W3C's site being inaccessible: A cool thing about Aaron's activism was that it involved building things, circumventing censorship, and spreading information, rather than sabotage and denial-of-service.
- BrokenPipe 14y agoTrue but Aaron's activism resulted in him being bullied until he took his own life. It's a difficult topic. If you assume that ddos from a collective is similar to blocking a road by a collective during a strike or manifestation then I must say that some people won't be able to get to work that day and in general nobody would get hurt. This sort of pacific interruption raises awareness, which by itself is very important for a functioning democracy.
- gee_totes 14y agoBut why protest student blogs and class websites? Why not target the prosecutor's office? Blockading a key port that is shipping war supplies or preforming a DDOS attack against government websites can be legitimate form of protest, but those actions are very hard to plan and pull off. This attack (if it is an attack) just seems like someone is going after the low-hanging fruit of MIT's network.
- analog 14y agoThis is a common argument against activism and it's a classic logical fallacy. You're doing X, but Y would be more effective, therefore X is pointless. In reality what happens is that someone does X and someone else does Y, and it's not uncommon for the same group to do both. Fwiw, I don't have any view on whether this attack (if it is one) is justified. I haven't read enough on what MIT have/haven't done so I can't comment.
- vor_ 14y agoThe post you're replying to doesn't say anything about being pointless, but besides that, surely it's not a logical fallacy to point out that one action is more effective than another.
- paulhauggis 14y agoNow you know why I hate anonymous
- BrokenPipe 14y agoYou hate everyone and nobody then. Peaceful protest to raise awareness in my view.
- rikacomet 14y agoCan we just all calm down? there isn't proof(I haven't seen one yet) that proves that it was DDoS'd, nor do I believe that anyone has come forward to claim it. So why jump to assumptions. When you say,RIP it means to let a friend rest in peace. If any problems are faced by MIT, it shouldn't be blamed on well-wishers of Aaron. Posting it on YC, seems ridiculous to me, as if its a clear accusation, and if its posted here, anyone who did it would just stop. Indeed it does raises eyebrows, the timing of this, but lets not jump to conclusions without solid facts. -1 for this article. Sorry Sweettea, No offence meant.
- ryguytilidie 14y agoI feel like this guy could not miss the point by much more distance. How much of a shell do you have to live in to think "well sure, someone died after fighting for the rights of millions of people, but jesus, you people are going to inconvenience us for a few hours? this is just ridiculous!"
- alecdbrooks 14y agoAs I read it, the point of the post is that the student workers are the only ones being inconvenienced and that Anonymous should be targeting the administration directly. In particular, note this part: "Scripts is MIT's largest web host but it's run entirely by student volunteers. Any and all attacks that are supposed to get the attention of the administration are instead being handled by SIPB members." Presumably, the author would feel differently if the ones actually affected were those responsible for Aaron's death, even if the author was personally inconvenienced.
- Confusion 14y agoSo after someone important to me dies, I can come over to your place and annoy you for a few hours? What exactly does that accomplish? Lumping everything connected to 'MIT' together as the same evil thing is shortsighted and counterproductive.
- MrScruff 14y agoI'm beginning to wonder if all the people preaching this 'Aaron died for your benefit so now you must suffer' line are Catholics. Taken to the extreme, this line of reasoning is what makes certain terrorist groups think killing random civilians is acceptable. After all, if you're a citizen of a country then you should be held personally accountable for all the perceived crimes perpetrated by your government, right?
- aaron695 14y agoThis cause is trying to change the access across the world for scientific articles and you're complaining for a short period "A few class websites are inaccessible, a few friends' blogs are down, and web development is a bit annoying" That's the most selfish thing I've seen today. No argument why this form of protest won't work just it interrupts your current lifestyle. And IMO it will help, it keep momentum and adds publicity to the other means also going on.
- simonster 14y ago> This cause is trying to change the access across the world for scientific articles and you're complaining for a short period Many MIT professors make their academic articles freely available on their lab websites. As Anonymous continues to attack the MIT network, they are making it more difficult for members of the general public to access academic articles. This isn't about open access. It's about exacting revenge for Aaron Swartz's death. Unfortunately, it's targeting the wrong people. > No argument why this form of protest won't work just it interrupts your current lifestyle. MIT students would support an effective protest that interrupts their lifestyles, but attacking student-run websites won't work because the only people who suffer are students who have to clean up after you. The people responsible for Aaron Swartz's prosecution couldn't care less.
- aaron695 14y ago>"They are making it more difficult for members of the general public to access academic article" Given what may happen if change can be made is this really anything? This is how most of the mostly 3rd world student/academics live 100% of the time for most articles. They are not attacking students sites AFAIK they are attacking the MIT network I really doubt the Faculty are not seeing this and thinking. This is an attack for unproportionately persecuting someone for trying to free up scientific information. I don't see it as revenge for his death. DoJ won't change, but academics might.
- 3327 14y agowhy should they stop? MIT has blood on its hands. maybe you should email your schools president for an apology? maybe all the students should? Why are you the victim? why are students of MIT the victim? there is only 1 victim here and its nor you or the students of MIT.
- j0j0r0 14y agofuck you MIT! fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
- GeorgeTirebiter 14y agoGiven that eloquent pair of sentences, I must ask: what do you know about MIT?
- j0j0r0 14y agowell, in this case, enough to know that the organization should suffer shame. so, i do apologize if i upset you, and didn't intend to speak to _everyone_ associated with the organization. in other cases, i would admit that beautiful and wonderful things have come from _individuals_ at MIT...but that is not the context within which my eloquent pair of sentences were made. however, in this case, it seems that academic snobbery and/or greed was a contributing factor to the suicide of a great individual, and that is enough for me to make my comment. :)
- hakaaak 14y agoI think it is B.S. when hackers take down an easy target for no apparently good reason. I respect those that take chances to risk their freedom for the good of humanity. For example, if a government were lying to its people about something that was negatively impacting them or their future, and only bad was coming from that information being restricted, then I could not argue with those that took on risk to release that information. I could not support doing anything illegal, but I would at least respect it. But, busting on MIT has no value I can see, and in-general attack-oriented hacking is just as bad as the Cobra Kai.
- rdl 14y agoWould there be any legal problem with essentially "hellbanning" those responsible from any online service you operate (with the possible exception of E911, etc.)? If we find out who at MIT was responsible, as well as Ortiz and Heymann, refusing to allow them to create accounts, or putting their accounts into a horrible tarpit with no outside connectivity, would seem like a much better form of protest than DDoSing MIT.
- rdl 14y agoThe other great protest is that any HS senior (or grad student applicant) who has an offer from MIT and from another comparable school (Stanford, CMU, etc.), tell MIT no, and tell them why you're saying no. I suspect if 5-10 people who got MIT "yes" did this, MIT admissions and the MIT President would go batshit. (You can do this even if you were on the fence about MIT, or even if you intended to go somewhere else anyway.) Anon should promote this plan to HS seniors on the admissions boards and other forums likely to be frequented by top school applying seniors.
- cwoebker 14y agoGiven how many applicants MIT gets I do not think that 5-10 people would be enough to seriously upset them. Don't forget they can just get a couple more students with perfect SATs if they want. Furthermore, like the author said, it wasn't MIT as a community that went after Aaron, it was the administration.
- rdl 14y ago5-10 who write means hundreds more who feel the same but didn't write
- canttestthis 14y agoUnless you were planning to not attend MIT in the first place, I would absolutely not recommend this. Its not worth compromising your future to send a message.
- noonespecial1 14y agostill cant believe this school pushed for jail time