Am I the only one who doesn't find this all that positive? I already think scientology is bad/evil/dangerous, and I think that illegally getting access to their secrets might make the opposition (us) look worse in the public eye. Everybody has dirty secrets, both sides, and it's a bit low to go after the other side's private emails. It'd be much easier to fight/debate against their public image, which is easy enough,…
Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
31–40 of 156 posts
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because uploading it to a free file hosting service can easily be done via a compromised machine and/or tor (don't know how well uploading large files over tor works though) - maybe even a library/public computer, making it quite hard to trace (though when using a public computer you need to take other precautions, like avoiding surveillance cameras). Also since nothing is made public instantly you have time to erase…
> With bittorrent you need at least one seeder that is available long enough to feed the swarm (in decent time), during that time a lot of things can go wrong (if anything goes wrong when uploading to a free hosting service you just start over, nothing lost). Don't most clients support web seeding[1] these days? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol)#Web_seed...
I'm guessing that few hosting companies make that easy to do, since you often have to go through some form of queue to even get the ticket needed to download it.
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was assuming someone from anonymous could handle figuring out how to setup tor to seed. More importantly hosting via hidden service is not worse than uploading to depositfiles. Hidden services protects both the uploader's and the downloader's anonymity and it is much, much, much more resistant to censorship. I am not sure what "hosting gets breached" has to do with the discussion.
I guess it’s not a major issue when just hosting some static content, but still if someone gets access to your server sitting behind Tor, you better make sure you don’t have any activity that can tie you to that server. This is how some people running CP sites via Tor were caught.
This is completely tangential, but can you point me to the Tor investigations? The interaction of tor/law-enforcement is something I am extremely interested in.
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#34This is one strange email...
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a strange philosophy/view-point for HN...
Au contraire. Journalists are highly motivated to plough through the data for the scoop. ("Data scoop" is certainly an interesting development in our 21st century, btw!) I'm happy to let a highly motivated person do the ploughing, and give me the highlights, especially about a subject as marginally interesting as Scientology.
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#36Some of the emails can apparently be read at [1], [2] - via [3] [1] http://pic.pwny.biz/x/ed_at_scientology.co.at/ [2] http://pic.pwny.biz/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.at/ [3] http://blog.esowatch.com/?p=8247 (in German, of course)
That's what I would have assumed, but many of them are actually written in (mostly hilariously bad) English for some reason. They also seem to be using quite a lot of jargon, which seems to consist entirely of English words or phrases.
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#37Its unfortunate that they were not distributed via bittorrent and/or a tor hidden service. The files are large enough that downloading them with the "free download" option is a terribly long wait. I do not understand how this has so many upvotes after being up for such a short time. Have that many people actually downloaded the files already? Does anyone have any guesses about the string at the end of the announcemen…
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it’s not a major issue when just hosting some static content, but still if someone gets access to your server sitting behind Tor, you better make sure you don’t have any activity that can tie you to that server. This is how some people running CP sites via Tor were caught.
In order to get access to your server they need to circumvent the anonymity that tor provides. Hopefully if you go through the trouble to publish via hidden descriptors you know not to include your name/SSN/gps/cell-number in your apache headers;) This is completely tangential, but can you point me to the Tor investigations? The interaction of tor/law-enforcement is something I am extremely interested in.
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#39Am I the only one who doesn't find this all that positive? I already think scientology is bad/evil/dangerous, and I think that illegally getting access to their secrets might make the opposition (us) look worse in the public eye. Everybody has dirty secrets, both sides, and it's a bit low to go after the other side's private emails. It'd be much easier to fight/debate against their public image, which is easy enough,…
However I might change my tone if something really serious is uncovered here. I think whistle blowing is a good thing, and this seems like the next best equivalent. Of course, that is a ridiculous position to take, essentially giving any random hacker the license to read through random personal email and blow the whistle on demand.[0] So I guess that position isn't tenable, either. But I know it'd be hard to be critical of a hypothetical hack that revealed or delivered proof about illegal activities by certain groups, be it Scientology, large-scale financial stuff or neo-nazis.
A more responsible release would probably only include incriminating or otherwise extraordinary emails, preserving (sort of) the privacy of most people. But arguably that's so difficult and personally dangerous in case of large data hacks or leaks that it's equivalent of saying a responsible release isn't viable.
[0] As determined by them, but that problem applies to all kinds of whistle blowing.
Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it’s not a major issue when just hosting some static content, but still if someone gets access to your server sitting behind Tor, you better make sure you don’t have any activity that can tie you to that server. This is how some people running CP sites via Tor were caught.
In order to get access to your server they need to circumvent the anonymity that tor provides. Hopefully if you go through the trouble to publish via hidden descriptors you know not to include your name/SSN/gps/cell-number in your apache headers;) This is completely tangential, but can you point me to the Tor investigations? The interaction of tor/law-enforcement is something I am extremely interested in.
Not necessarily, the CP sites were hacked using PHP vulnerabilities or something similar, not to mention your hosting provider could just get interested in your network activity for whatever reason.
> This is completely tangential, but can you point me to the Tor investigations?
Nothing I have bookmarked, sorry.