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CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

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Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#71
post #3

Hilariously, the massive media frenzy surrounding the site outage will send the site enough traffic to DDOS it, even if LulzSec never meaningfully impacted it in the first place.

I doubt it, most of these sites tend to be behind Akamai or some sort of similar CDN/reverse proxy network.

This actually serves two purposes:

1) provides some security by sufficiently isolating the actual system from public access (it can be locked down to only serve requests from the CDN)

2) Prevent the type of DDoS described in the parent comment. Akamai is designed to handle the load from things like the Grammies or Superbowl.

For example, it's been documented that the White House uses Akamai extensively.

Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#72
post #24

The Jester, greyhat patriot who hacked Talibans' websites and forced Wikileaks to change their hosting, is now going after LulzSec. This is a lot more entertaining than TV: https://twitter.com/#!/th3j35t3r

Just a note, he also had the Westboro Baptist Church's websites down for about 2 months (Feb-April of this year).

Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#73

Could LulzSec actually be working for the Government to help create that "civilized" Internet Sarkozy was talking about. They've certainly created the "worst case scenarios" that politicians can point to now. But the most surprising thing about them is how confident they are they won't be caught. Can they really be that sure that they will never be caught doing these attacks? Or are they just reckless? But if they ar…

The crazy thing is (I believe) large botnets are worth a lot of money on the black market. It makes no sense that they would waste their network to take down government websites "for the lulz". Something is missing about the situation.

PR firms don't plant news stories about botnets; actually using botnets to take down high-profile targets does.

In that case, the publicity could translate into dollars.

Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#74

Works for me. It puts me on edge that these idiots would pick such media-friendly targets to strafe with their clueless bandwidth wastage; not looking forward to the next round of "cyber security" laws one bit. "Hey dad, tell me just one more time about how when you were a kid you used to be able to make TCP connections freely and without the connection first being authorized by the NSA." "Go to sleep, son."

[deleted]

Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#75

Could LulzSec actually be working for the Government to help create that "civilized" Internet Sarkozy was talking about. They've certainly created the "worst case scenarios" that politicians can point to now. But the most surprising thing about them is how confident they are they won't be caught. Can they really be that sure that they will never be caught doing these attacks? Or are they just reckless? But if they ar…

They've certainly created the "worst case scenarios" that politicians can point to now.

Briefly DDOSing a government website is not a "worst case scenario" by anybody's reckoning.

Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#76
post #59

Works for me. It puts me on edge that these idiots would pick such media-friendly targets to strafe with their clueless bandwidth wastage; not looking forward to the next round of "cyber security" laws one bit. "Hey dad, tell me just one more time about how when you were a kid you used to be able to make TCP connections freely and without the connection first being authorized by the NSA." "Go to sleep, son."

I'm wondering if LulzSec is a false flag operation very well engineered.

It isn't, there's no point in doing that, not to mention how illegal that would be. The US govt doesn't need any more scandals of this nature (wiretapping is enough I think).

Also, whenever a government really wants to do something, they'll use any excuse that's available. For example; PATRIOT ACT, DMCA, Iraq Wars, etc. etc. For cyber-security, if none of this Anon or LulzSec stuff happened, it would be Russian or Chinese hackers that are infiltrating and by god we must protect Americans from those evil foreign hackers. Or they would rely on the terrorist excuse: the terrorists are losing in real life so they need to re-build support and attract younger people so why not hack some sites and gain new supporters that way? Beheadings and suicide bombings really fuck up the recruitment rate for terrorist organizations.

See how easy it is to come up with an excuse that the internet needs to be locked down?

Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#77
post #24

The Jester, greyhat patriot who hacked Talibans' websites and forced Wikileaks to change their hosting, is now going after LulzSec. This is a lot more entertaining than TV: https://twitter.com/#!/th3j35t3r

Patriotism and nationalism are two of the greatest diseases that humankind has ever known.

I bet The Jester is as middle-class as the LulzSec people.

Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#79

Works for me. It puts me on edge that these idiots would pick such media-friendly targets to strafe with their clueless bandwidth wastage; not looking forward to the next round of "cyber security" laws one bit. "Hey dad, tell me just one more time about how when you were a kid you used to be able to make TCP connections freely and without the connection first being authorized by the NSA." "Go to sleep, son."

More each day, I'm feeling like an old gun slinger watching the freedom of the wild west die, from my rocking chair in front of the cafe as one of those new-fangled automobiles goes smoking down the street. I enjoy John Wayne's The Shootist more and more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JUfOIglaSc "Books, this is nineteen-ought one, the old days are gone and you don't know it."

I think we are just approaching the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

"God made crackers, Metasploit made 'em equal."

Re: CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility

#80
post #76
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering if LulzSec is a false flag operation very well engineered.

It isn't, there's no point in doing that, not to mention how illegal that would be. The US govt doesn't need any more scandals of this nature (wiretapping is enough I think). Also, whenever a government really wants to do something, they'll use any excuse that's available. For example; PATRIOT ACT, DMCA, Iraq Wars, etc. etc. For cyber-security, if none of this Anon or LulzSec stuff happened, it would be Russian or Ch…

"It isn't, there's no point in doing that, not to mention how illegal that would be. The US govt doesn't need any more scandals of this nature (wiretapping is enough I think)."

Wiretapping scandal became public circa late 2005 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...

Random collection of additional federal political 'scandals' since 2005:

1) This goes from 2001 - 2008 so skip to 2006 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scand...

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scand...

Additional 'scandals' with solid link to US Government:

1) http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/gps/

2) http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110218/02143213163/more-h...

3) http://www.thenation.com/article/161057/wikileaks-haiti-let-...

4) http://www.ban.org/ban_news/2010/101022_caught_exporting.htm...

5) http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1026810/us-governme...

6) http://www.elizabethwatson.org/featured/wikileaks-reveals-a-...

Just some random examples I pulled in 5 minutes. I don't believe the argument "...not to mention illegal that would be." or "The US govt doesn't need any more scandals..." has any bearing whatsoever on their decision making process at the level of authority needed to authorize something as a false flag operation for various reasons.

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