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In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

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Re: In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

#41

Post by GHFigs »

fleitz wrote: post #21
geekam wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I was thinking the same thing. How does an IP address translate to a human being?

The issue is not how to translate it but whether an IP address identifies a person beyond reasonable doubt, especially given Anonymous's ability to defeat FBI/CIA and other military grade networks including those the FBI/CIA employ to protect them. It really raises question as to whether you can trust something as flimsy as an IP header given the technical sophistication of Anonymous. These people could well be innoc…

These people could well be innocent and in fact victims of anonymous directing attention away from itself and towards these innocent victims.

This is wishful thinking, but there is a sense in which it is true. People running LOIC are typically if not exclusively clueless mooks duped into doing so by people who know better.

For all the mythos around Anonymous "having no leaders", I doubt very strongly that you'll find many examples of people who spontaneously downloaded LOIC and started flinging packets at PayPal. Instead what you'll find is people who say they got the idea from an image posted on 4chan (or elsewhere) or from "some guy" on IRC.

All you have to do is convince someone to willingly join a botnet (or anything else) is that 1) this is a way to relieve their angst and 2) other people are doing it. The affidavit even includes examples of the kind of image instructions that accomplish exactly this. The "orders" spread as would memes, and the originators of those orders put themselves at almost no risk to distribute them, while "innocent" members of the herd get caught.

Re: In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

#42

Post by burgerbrain »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #30
andreyf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably won't arrest him. I'm a bit surprised that this was enough to even get a search warrant...

Maybe, I'm not so sure though. If you participate in a mob that went down to some local business to throw rocks through their window, should you expect to be let off easy because you just threw a pebble? On balance I think the idea that DDoS is "ok" and should be tolerated is not a good road to travel down.

The equivalent of a DDoS is a sit in, not stoning people in the streets. Do they serve search warrants for people who participate in those?

Re: In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

#43

Post by robtoo »

fleitz wrote: post #21
geekam wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I was thinking the same thing. How does an IP address translate to a human being?

The issue is not how to translate it but whether an IP address identifies a person beyond reasonable doubt, especially given Anonymous's ability to defeat FBI/CIA and other military grade networks including those the FBI/CIA employ to protect them. It really raises question as to whether you can trust something as flimsy as an IP header given the technical sophistication of Anonymous. These people could well be innoc…

When Anonymous can gain control of HB Gary and FBI/CIA assets

Indeed: "When..." But AFAICR, Anonymous didn't gain control of either FBI or CIA assets. Hacking a self-described FBI "affiliate" and DDOSing cia.gov are hardly the same thing.

Also, holding up HB Gary Federal as an example of an organisation with "rigorous security protocols" is an amusing claim with no real evidence.

Re: In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

#44

Post by InclinedPlane »

burgerbrain wrote: post #42
InclinedPlane wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, I'm not so sure though. If you participate in a mob that went down to some local business to throw rocks through their window, should you expect to be let off easy because you just threw a pebble? On balance I think the idea that DDoS is "ok" and should be tolerated is not a good road to travel down.

The equivalent of a DDoS is a sit in, not stoning people in the streets. Do they serve search warrants for people who participate in those?

Sit ins are not legal either, you can be arrested for trespassing on someone's property if you've been told to leave. The purpose of a sit in is to draw attention to an issue through non-violent means, and it's accepted that there may be consequences to that (including jail time) but the cause justifies the risk.

Regardless, it's questionable whether a DDoS and a sit-in are comparable. For one, DDoS does not require the presence of the individual, this makes it more difficult to form a connection with their cause and the activity. For another, a sit-in doesn't typically totally shut down a business, let alone at a national scale. With a DDoS a very tiny minority of people are able to disrupt the business activities of millions. This is not the sort of thing that we want to become accepted a legitimate form of protest. You may think it's all well and good when people who are "fighting" for causes you believe in are "sticking it to the man" but if it becomes the norm then everyone with a grudge will use it. And then it won't be the "good guys" wielding the power it'll be the people most fanatical in its use who will get what they want.

If you want to find a form of protest that mimics a sit-in, fine, go ahead, by find something other than DDoS, because that isn't it.

Re: In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

#47

Post by andreyf »

rayiner wrote: post #29
kkowalczyk wrote: post #9

I'm not necessarily against feds going after DDOSers, but this is a shameful, politically motivated retribution. The "crime" here is not sending packets to DDOS PayPal but criticizing the goverment. The goverment is in turn showing they're not afraid to destroy lives of those who do. DDOS attacks are pretty much an epidemic on the internet. I'm pretty sure every major company like Google or Microsoft or Amazon has to…

If you read the article, this list of "protestors" is the list of IP addresses who hit PayPal with the most DDOS packets.

They were still simple home connections. Big companies suffer attacks far greater than the bandwidth any one of the people arrested.

Re: In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

#48

Post by burgerbrain »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #44
burgerbrain wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent of a DDoS is a sit in, not stoning people in the streets. Do they serve search warrants for people who participate in those?

Sit ins are not legal either, you can be arrested for trespassing on someone's property if you've been told to leave. The purpose of a sit in is to draw attention to an issue through non-violent means, and it's accepted that there may be consequences to that (including jail time) but the cause justifies the risk. Regardless, it's questionable whether a DDoS and a sit-in are comparable. For one, DDoS does not require…

Reading compression. I am not suggesting that sit ins are legal. I am asking if participating in one is enough for the police to get a warrant to thrash your house.

Furthermore, sit ins are by definition denial of service attacks. Assertions about differences of scale are 1) irrelevant, 2) questionable (most DDoS fail miserably).

This has nothing at all to do with my approval or disapproval of the politics.

Re: In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

#49

Post by trotsky »

The newly released affidavit was offered in support of a search warrant for the home of an Arlington, Texas couple and their son, who were among the July 19 targets, and have not been charged. The house was the source of 3,678 packets in about two-and-a-half hours starting December 8.

Man, they executed a federal raid with FBI agents over something that amounted to a few thousand "slowlaris"ed GET requests over a few hours?

How much does something like that cost? What, 2-4 agents, 4-8 hours, seizure, paperwork, court filings, etc. Tens of thousands of dollars, right?

I want a tax refund.

Re: In ‘Anonymous’ Raids, Feds Work From List of Top 1,000 Protesters

#50

Post by pyre »

darksaga wrote: post #32
kkowalczyk wrote: post #9

I'm not necessarily against feds going after DDOSers, but this is a shameful, politically motivated retribution. The "crime" here is not sending packets to DDOS PayPal but criticizing the goverment. The goverment is in turn showing they're not afraid to destroy lives of those who do. DDOS attacks are pretty much an epidemic on the internet. I'm pretty sure every major company like Google or Microsoft or Amazon has to…

After reading the article, it appears as though Anon were lured into the attack by PayPal. Then it sounds like the Feds already had all their stuff in place to collect the data while the attacks were happening.

  > Then it sounds like the Feds already had all their
  > stuff in place to collect the data while the attacks
  > were happening.
[citation needed]

My read says that PayPal had some sort of network monitoring system in place which allowed them to capture data during the attack. They then handed this information over to the Feds.

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