Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 162 posts

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#141

Post by steveklabnik »

SwellJoe wrote: post #139
steveklabnik wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The coder in this story is an hero Oh man, I'm not sure if this is funnier if you meant it, or not... > in a just world, this nutjob would end up in prison. Yup. I'm interested to see what happens in the weeks ahead. I really doubt that anything bad (other than getting his SSN posted to Twitter...) will actually happen to him, though.

Subtlety is a art.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1426326

The subthread under my comment is one of the favorite things that's ever happened to me in an HN thread.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#142

Post by nhangen »

cookiecaper wrote: post #137
nhangen wrote: post #84

I've yet to see anyone address the behavior of anonymous, and it appears as though it's been justified by most because this dude was an asshole - but why not point a finger at them both?

Well, there's no story to really address there. Barr was dangerously ignorant and naive. He had a complete misconception of how these things were organized and how they worked while claiming to know all of the identities of "the leaders" by correlating Twitter posts with what someone in IRC was talking about. If you get on the news and say, "Hello Criminal Group. We have a bunch of information on your leaders that wi…

So that makes attacking a company's website OK?

If I did something illegal every time someone pissed me off, I'd be a lifer.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#143

Post by cookiecaper »

nhangen wrote: post #142
cookiecaper wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's no story to really address there. Barr was dangerously ignorant and naive. He had a complete misconception of how these things were organized and how they worked while claiming to know all of the identities of "the leaders" by correlating Twitter posts with what someone in IRC was talking about. If you get on the news and say, "Hello Criminal Group. We have a bunch of information on your leaders that wi…

So that makes attacking a company's website OK? If I did something illegal every time someone pissed me off, I'd be a lifer.

It doesn't make it OK. You said that you were surprised no one was talking about or condemning Anonymous's behavior. No one is doing that because there's nothing interesting to talk about there. We all already know that stealing and publishing private corporate data to embarrass its authors and defacing private networks is not good. We also already know that if you threaten a group capable of retaliation, with a long history of retaliation, they'll probably retaliate.

The silence is not an endorsement, it's just that it's so much more interesting to talk about Barr/HBGary's behavior than it is to waste time reiterating trite condemnations of script kiddies.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#144

Post by orbenn »

chc wrote: post #61
DrStalker wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, a human powered botnet that follows commands at random based on how much fun they are?

If it's based on how fun they are, then it's not random (unless fun is randomly distributed).

this is the kinda thing that makes you think "shit, I've gotta teach myself to use proxies and then sign up!"

I mean, who doesn't want to be part of something that's specifically directed ONLY by what's the most fun?

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#145

Post by chc »

dalore wrote: post #69

Reading the story, time and time again his programmer warned him about anonymous, and said he shouldn't be messing with them. Then what do you know, he gets attacked by anonymous. Do you think maybe his programmer is in anonymous? :)

Not really any good evidence to support that conclusion unless you're using Barr's statistical methodology. That coder's responses to Barr aren't that far off from what I'd say in his position. It's not surprising that a programmer would be familiar with Internet geek subculture, and predicting that Anonymous will turn LOIC on a direct challenger is not much of a leap.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#146

Post by podperson »

stcredzero wrote: post #125
_b8r0 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're calling themselves a "security firm" (at least that's how everyone refers to them) and they engage in cyber-warfare against anonymous. Random acts of stupidity by individual actors that should know better do not qualify as cyber-warfare. > Having your mailserver compromised on that premise, during what was probably the first serious attack, disqualifies you from that game. I sincerely doubt that was the fir…

> They're calling themselves a "security firm" (at least that's how everyone refers to them) and they engage in cyber-warfare against anonymous. Random acts of stupidity by individual actors that should know better do not qualify as cyber-warfare. A firm that can have their entire email database compromised by one individual's "Random acts of stupidity" doesn't have enough safeguards. And what's the value of the info…

How do we know it's their "entire" email database? 4.71GB would hardly cover my person email database.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#147

Post by nickknw »

fleitz wrote: post #45
bdclimber14 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard because corporate leaders have an incredibly difficult time organizing their own companies to achieve comparable feats to what Anonymous can do overnight.

You can actually use military techniques to analyze why this is. Anonymous operates inside the enemy ODA (Observe Decide Act) loop. The ODA loop for a typical corporation is at least 5 people. Eg. from when someone observes something (anon is ddosing us) to when that information reaches someone who can act on it (the CEO) anonymous has already completed it's complete loop which is (post on IRC, have people read it an…

Wow, great post, thank you!

This also gave me a new perspective on pg's "Beating the Averages".[1]

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#148

Post by chc »

maweaver wrote: post #91
leon_ wrote: post #39

> so I can give all those freespeech nutjobs something That says everything about Mr. Barr that needs to be said.

Well you could complete the quote for fairness: "I just called people advocating freespeech, nutjobs - I threw up in my mouth a little."

Barr could have edited it out if he didn't really believe it. A fleeting moment of awareness that you support fascism isn't really all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Re: How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price

#149

Post by sambe »

stcredzero wrote: post #127
_b8r0 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're talking across purposes here. I'm asserting that the fact that they were compromised isn't particularly bad. People get hit all the time. The fact that they were hit by an SQL injection bug is unfortunate and should've been picked up but these things happen all the time. I'd also say that while they're a security firm they should still be held to the same standards as everyone else, there's nothing inhe…

there's nothing inherently special about a security firm being compromised anymore than a plumber's getting a leak - what matters is the damage and how they fix it. A word of advice: If a plumber gets a leak, it's no big deal. If a plumber's office gets massive but avoidable water damage through their short-sighted incompetence, don't hire them.

You don't think there's any truth in "the cobbler's children have no shoes"?
Post reply on HN