I can’t help but admire a lot of what I have read about the work Anonymous has undertaken, but does anyone know how enduring some of it is?

There is a report in the Telegraph today that says they just took down the KKK website, for example, but how long will the interruption last? And what will the cost to the KKK ultimately be?

Likewise their declared war on Daesh. After Paris they threatened to hunt down every extremist online and take out their accounts, but how effective were they? And how sustained was their response?

I think the phrase ‘more bark than bite’ seems to cover it.

I think it’s particularly ironic that Anonymous – a clandestine, secret and very powerful organisation with no oversight, transparency and certainly no publicaly ellected body, exists to try and combat the threat of similarly contstructed organisations.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/oiSB1De.jpg[/img]

Not very is my guess – I think the BBC had a story some weeks back and all the terrorist info that had been published by Anonymous was available via Google searches etc. rather than complex hacks.

DDoS attacks are also a very blunt tool and you risk disrupting much more than you wanted. In the case of the KKK for example the website is likely hosted by a service provider, how many innocent sites have also been affected? Sure you can argue it serves the ISP right for hosting such content but if it’s legal then where’s the line drawn and do we want hacktivist groups drawing that line? The other sites using that service are also unlikely to have known about the KKK site being hosted by their provider and may be going out of business through no fault of their own.

As to the impact on the target of a DDoS – depends very much on the nature of the website. If it’s e-commerce then it can be crippling (especially on smaller companies that can’t rapidly shift to another provider). On informational websites then the impact is much smaller, it can be reputational (it doesn’t look good if your website isn’t available) but then I guess for an organisation like the KKK they probably could care less.

What media often get wrong is the implication that a website being ‘hacked’ by DDoS means the backend systems are hacked. It shouldn’t if there’s a modicum of security in place. One of the clients I work on has a totally separate front-end informational website that’s a very high profile target for DDoS but those attacks (even when it’s brought down) have zero impact on any of the IT systems the client uses in it’s day-to-day business.

My personal opinion of them has always been that whilst they proclaim to be a sort of online morality police, they’re mostly in it for the giggles, or maybe I’m still annoyed about them taking down the PlayStation network…

either way, whilst I’m probably morally aligned with them, I can’t condone them, they’ll attack organizations for perceived attacks on free speech, when it suits them, they’ll also attack people for saying things (via their websites) that they don’t agree with – an unfortunate side effect of free speech is that it applies to almost everyone as long as they stay within the law, not just people who agree with you.

As for the disruption, they don’t often last long, but that’s not always their goal – whilst the DDoS gets the headlines, they often use it as a cover to steal data – last time they attacked the KKK they published a full member list.

or maybe I’m still annoyed about them taking down the PlayStation network…

That was Lizard Squad.

Lulsec. They were the ones in it for the lulz.

…and the informing.

The Anonymous Scotland facebook group was a beautifully ironic thing that sprouted from the indy ref. Still expocting them, not heard anything they’ve done yet…

Anon is ded. m00t is dead. RIP 4chin.

(Most of the actual talented coders got board when Op Chanology hit the mainstream)

He wrote a lot of good poetry.

End to end encryption hurts them badly. WhatsAp, Facebook etc covering their arses – “if we can’t intercept it we cannot stop it being sent or posted”

Anyone putting time aside in an attempt to do good gets my respect… of course, some anons are a touch misguided, but for the most part, they kick ass in a world where governments often do more harm than good.

I think it’s particularly ironic that Anonymous – a clandestine, secret and very powerful organisation with no oversight, transparency and certainly no publicaly ellected body, exists to try and combat the threat of similarly contstructed organisations.

Except they don’t murder people, decapitate them on camera, enslave them and sell the younger women into sexual slavery.
Subtle differences, but differences all the same.

End to end encryption hurts them badly.

It hurts everyone as it aint secure 😆 It’s leakier than a seive. Also they do retain your dataz read the small print

WhatsApp may retain date and time stamp information associated with successfully delivered messages and the mobile phone numbers involved in the messages, as well as any other information which WhatsApp is legally compelled to collect. Files that are sent through the WhatsApp Service will reside on our servers after delivery for a short period of time, but are deleted and stripped of any identifiable information within a short period of time in accordance with our general retention policies.

Anyway back OT. Anon do have some good ideas IMHO. Op Deatheater was a worthy cause. But you are always going to get a bunch of skidz with LOIC doing it for the lulzzzzzz.

That’s true, to an extent. End to end encryption means that (assuming they have not implemented a rubbish system) the contents of the communication are secret but who is talking to who (otherwise known as traffic analysis) is not.

Pretty much the big breakthrough of Bletchley Park in WW2 wasn’t the cracking of the Enigma code but the realisation that traffic analysis told you so much. You didn’t always need to know the content of comms, just the volume of it and where it was happening.

Rachel

Reminds me of the superhero type stories where is not clear how much of the hero’s work is selfless dedication to good and how much is ego trip.

I’d say the encryption thing is pretty irrelevant to hacker groups as it’s very hard to get access to the stream of traffic, unless you’re the NSA and can force ISPs to route it all to you.

Most of their attack methods are exploits to access the end user’s computer, in which case you can get the traffic at source, before encryption.

molgrips – Member

Reminds me of the superhero type stories where is not clear how much of the hero’s work is selfless dedication to good and how much is ego trip.

I think practically none of it is a selfless dedication to good. It’s more or less “Well I’m a troll and I like spoiling people’s days and vandalising stuff. But I’m going to be a bit discriminating in who I mess with”. The joy is still in vandalism and messing with people, not in actually doing good. And tbh they’re pretty honest about that.

I’m OK with that personally… But the lack of actual outcomes goes against them- they screw up, they target the wrong people, and they don’t deliver on enough of their threats. And they distract from more effective people.

Buuut at the end of the day… They’re never going to give up hacking and trolling and take up gardening or visiting the elderly. And once you accept that, this is better than most of the alternatives. And some of it is pretty good…