Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks • Hacker News Board

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#41

Post by blockmarker » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #7

Anti-racism sites are being knocked offline... and some people still think that white nationalists and nazi's are completely uninvolved in the street violence we've been seeing. Yeah right. This is Anonymous/4chan M.O., and it and "Antifa" are fake labels which white nationalists are using to cloak their violent plans.

So, some script kiddies buy a botnet and take down a few websites, and that means that the arson, looting and general violence is all the fault of white supremacists? That makes no sense.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#42

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #18

zozbot234 wrote: post #7

Anti-racism sites are being knocked offline... and some people still think that white nationalists and nazi's are completely uninvolved in the street violence we've been seeing. Yeah right. This is Anonymous/4chan M.O., and it and "Antifa" are fake labels which white nationalists are using to cloak their violent plans.

Why not arrest and interrogate the ones causing violence and find out if they’re white nationalist, antifa, or something else? It’s not like we’re forced to just spitball conspiracy theories here.

We have. Unfortunately it turned out to overwhelmingly be locals, and people who maybe got a bit too swept up in the groupthink mentality of a protest - which doesn't help either side and so nobody really cares to mention it.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#43

Post by tarkin2 » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

How much do foreign actors help? There are, of course, US groups that want to attack these sites.

But bigger pocketed foreign actors will want, it's suggested, to spread division and mayhem to keep the US occupied.

That is, the Aleksandr Dugin's 'foundations of geopolitics' strategy regarding the US: support both sides to divide the country thereby keeping the state too occupied to command itself elsewhere.

Now our media, societies and communities are online this becomes possible, much more so than before, to those outside the geographical borders of a country.

The democratisation of the media, virtual communities and targeted-advertising attacks the weakness of democracy: mass emotional manipulation to turn democratic choices into unmanagementable tribal warfare that ends in a totalitarian state.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#44

Post by blueatlas » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

Is the assumption here that racist groups are the source of the DDoS attacks? Might be interesting to know where the majority of the attacks originate. I wonder if the attacks are nation sponsored. Adversaries of the U.S. like to see it on its knees these days, and injecting more FUD is certainly a way to increase anger & hate.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#45

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

blockmarker wrote: post #41

zozbot234 wrote: post #7

Anti-racism sites are being knocked offline... and some people still think that white nationalists and nazi's are completely uninvolved in the street violence we've been seeing. Yeah right. This is Anonymous/4chan M.O., and it and "Antifa" are fake labels which white nationalists are using to cloak their violent plans.

So, some script kiddies buy a botnet and take down a few websites, and that means that the arson, looting and general violence is all the fault of white supremacists? That makes no sense.

[deleted]

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#46

Post by bArray » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #21

I would like to see an estimate in how much a person paid in the black market to buy access to the botnets that did this. $5? $50? $100? What is the going rate for 110k requests per seconds?

I'm not sure, but it doesn't sound like much shared among all of them (assuming a good number have popped up). I think many people here regularly deal with those sorts of numbers in legitimate traffic.

> One single website belonging to an unnamed advocacy group

> dealt with 20,000 requests a second.

20k requests per second doesn't sound crazy to re-produce. Assuming you only need a 100 byte TCP packet to make a request [1], that's 800 bits. Bump up to 2000 bits assuming some overheads from somewhere, a 100Mb/s internet connection could send 50k requests a second.

Seems like a single person with a decent internet connection could flood them with 20k request per second. If the attacker picks a page that requests database access or a large payload return, you could easily sink a small web server.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14526139/what-is-the-min...

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#47

Post by scoutt » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

ginko wrote: post #35

scoutt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in "in the last few decades" you could dream about owning a computer, today you have a supercomputer in your pocket that you can use to complain about the remainder of unresolved issues of our imperfect human society. And we are reading your messages from all the continents in the world. Think! before talking about "globalization" as inherently "bad".

I'm not agreeing with OP, but I don't find the "but there's iphones now" argument all that convincing. Having a gadget when you can barely afford rent or medical care is a small comfort.

Phones is just one example. I didn't wanted to write "... including, but not limiting to, ...". But I am sure you knew when you read it.

Still being billed for an universal human right (as health) is a problem, but you can use your phone to call an ambulance wherever you are.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#48

Post by stevespang » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

By the way, both of the recent black men who were dealt with by police were FELONS with extensive criminal records.

George Floyd once terrorized, robbed and beat a pregnant women at gunpoint for money and drugs . . . he had at least 9 run-ins with the law . . . https://twitter.com/i/status/1267678541602308096

Ahmaud Arbery had an extensive rap sheet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwIazUQWRtc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqHMM5G8Hn8

. . . and in the case of Manuel Ellis death of March 3rd, he walked up to Tacoma Police Officers and said, 'I have warrants, I need to talk.' As soon as the police officer got out of the car, he assaulted one of them and slam dunked him into the ground.” What do you expect ? Police are supposed to give him a lollipop ?

Also, this isn't a "black" thing, many more whites are killed by police each year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#49

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

jedieaston wrote: post #33

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #10

I feel bad for Cloudflare saying this, but I really think this shows we need to democratize DDoS protection. It's become essentially mandatory if you're running a site which might face controversy, and in the long term I'm not sure we can rely on the continued goodwill of a handful of companies to make sure it's widely available.

What does that actually mean in practice? Government subsidized compute doesn't seem like something I'd trust all that much in practice (seems like it'd be ripe for censorship). So it'd have to be decentralized. If only IPFS was ready for prime time....

I really don't know what it means in practice. I don't have a silver bullet in mind.

Re: Anti-racism sites hit by wave of cyber-attacks

#50

Post by bogwog » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

I hate how the internet makes everyone think they're smarter than everyone else. Scheming malicious losers write fake news and propaganda to incite anger in stupid and naive people, then skeptics come across it and become paranoid and angry, and then they make fake news and propaganda to incite anger in stupid and naive people. But in the end, everyone involved is a stupid naive scheming malicious paranoid loser.

Regardless of who is behind these cyber attacks, whether its white supremacists, BLM protestors, anarchists, foreign state actors, or edgy 15 years olds in a Discord server with waifu profile pics, the end goal is the same: to make people angry, and possibly incite more riots. And it's going to succeed. And if you think about it too much, you'll just turn yourself into an angry paranoid wreck.

Maybe the internet (or social media) wasn't such a good idea after all? The technology moved faster than our monkey brains could keep up.