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Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

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Re: Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

#31

Post by premchai21 »

jb55 wrote: post #27
conspiringguy wrote: post #16

Every time I hear about LulzSec, I say "Conspiracy Theory Time" before I read the HN comments page. Finally I have some worthy conspiracy which I think no one has posted before. It goes something like this. Axioms: 1. Most of the geeks and internet privacy aware people in America hate the American government. If not hate, they at least despise them for most of their new internet policies. 2. Out of these people there…

Most of these arguments (and most other conspiracy theories) can be shot down as just another instance of the Conjunction fallacy/Occam's Razor. The probability of a single event is always greater or equal to the probability of both events: P(A) >= P(A&B) where event A is 'Rebellious hacker teens' and event A&B is 'Rebellious hacker teens recruited by terrorists'.

While the latter is logically true, one has to be careful. It may be easy to erroneously interpret that as comparing “rebellious hacker teens not recruited by terrorists” and “rebellious hacker teens recruited by terrorists”, which pair has no such guaranteed monotonicity.

Re: Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

#32

Post by Spyplane »

paulnelligan wrote: post #21

I find this extremely worrying. Sure, I'm all for fighting the power, but a campaign like this could do a lot to damage our online freedom, e.g. the freedom to pay for things and conduct business online ... it would also result in governments limiting the internet in a way that they haven't done before, for a very long time ... that would really suck!

Not that this at all the same, or that I support what Lolzsec is doing, but I think there were a lot of African Americans at the start of the Civil Rights movement who didn't want people to speak up for fear of there being harsh consequences.

Re: Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

#33

Post by aninteger »

itcmcgrath wrote: post #2

The short and sweet: Lulzsec is encouraging everyone to deface government websites with #AntiSec as well as in physical graffiti. 'Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments'. Claims to have Anonymous on board. Does anyone else smell a less free Internet approaching closer?

How exactly do you think the internet would be "less free". Would there be fines/jail time for sql injection? Port scanning? Issuing DDOS attacks? I guess you'd have less freedom to do these things but most of these are against ISP TOS any way. Are you worried about an internet police state enforcing the rules?

Make the punishment stiffer and/or secure your servers (not exactly possibly with DDOS) and these "problems" go away.

In the early/mid 90's there were lots of high speed chases in Los Angeles. The penalties got stiffer, the media stopped reporting it, no one really cared, and i guess the freeways/roads became "less free".

Re: Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

#34

Post by mentat »

st3fan wrote: post #26

No matter what you think about these folks, it is a very dangerous game they are playing. It takes some balls to organize this and to act on it. This can only result in more crazy laws unfortunately.

It's interesting that there's an overall theme here that the only action government takes is more laws. This is recognized as an issue right? But people just don't think there's anything to do about it? That scares the hell out of me. If the people here have given up on having substantial control over the legal context of their lives, something is very very wrong.

Re: Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

#35

Post by mentat »

mvalle wrote: post #22
paulnelligan wrote: post #21

I find this extremely worrying. Sure, I'm all for fighting the power, but a campaign like this could do a lot to damage our online freedom, e.g. the freedom to pay for things and conduct business online ... it would also result in governments limiting the internet in a way that they haven't done before, for a very long time ... that would really suck!

If it will damage your freedom, then, by definition, you don't have freedom. The effect this might have, if any, is to show who pretends to have/give freedom and who really has/gives it.

This right on. Reading a lot of the comments here, I think people have already given up that freedom and just hope that no one makes them see what they've done. This discussion has certainly opened my eyes in regards to this. One freedom is always to go to a country which has different laws. Another freedom is to develop computers, OSes and networking protocols that better provide freedom. It seems that many are so used to building on frameworks that have inherent issues that they forget their are choices, basic choices, that still have to be made every day.

Re: Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

#36

Post by mentat »

mh_ wrote: post #11
itcmcgrath wrote: post #2

The short and sweet: Lulzsec is encouraging everyone to deface government websites with #AntiSec as well as in physical graffiti. 'Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments'. Claims to have Anonymous on board. Does anyone else smell a less free Internet approaching closer?

Agree completely, in fact i've just added this link: http://risky.biz/haroon (Lulzsec, Ranum and I Told You So!)

Good article. I had the chance to spend some time with Marcus Ranum back around that era and it was formative to my career focus in security. However, I think there there's a second part of this historical narrative you're laying out. It's that the government will fail to accomplish security of computer systems just like they've failed to accomplish security of physical locations. At that point that government will start looking like a really bad deal.

If this government wants to survive this coming era, it will not do what's feared. If it does do the sort of crackdowns people are fearing, it will not survive. Either it will be broken outright by the hackers and those who still care about freedom or it will fair to accomplish security and be broken by the people that still aren't safe.

The best chance is to actually address the issues by developing better technology in dialogue with the hackers and the security minded. This may make the short term harder but it will set the foundation for a superior nation built on something that can actually be defended.

Re: Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

#38

Post by taa4321 »

mentat wrote: post #34
st3fan wrote: post #26

No matter what you think about these folks, it is a very dangerous game they are playing. It takes some balls to organize this and to act on it. This can only result in more crazy laws unfortunately.

It's interesting that there's an overall theme here that the only action government takes is more laws. This is recognized as an issue right? But people just don't think there's anything to do about it? That scares the hell out of me. If the people here have given up on having substantial control over the legal context of their lives, something is very very wrong.

Because we don't have these magical powers you imply. There is a strategic agreement regarding the nature, structure, and form of the planetary wide governance by vested interests. The actions of captive governments such as USA's affirm this adherence to an undeviating strategic goal regardless of who or what group has been "elected".

We live in a country where the legislative branch under threat of social chaos by financial interest voted with extreme haste to further enable a manifestly and massivelly corrupt financial system. Meanwhile back at the executive branch, there is a merry go round between GoldmanSachs, The Fed, and "US" Treasury.

You are implying that if the American people used their voting rights to install a new regime in the executive and legislative things would change. "Change we can believe in." The depth of cynicism manifested by the elite is "very very wrong" and really really needs to be 'corrected' by the people.

(dear PG: real hackers are not censors)

Re: Lulzsec Declares 'Operation Anti-Security'

#40

Post by conspiringguy »

premchai21 wrote: post #31
jb55 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these arguments (and most other conspiracy theories) can be shot down as just another instance of the Conjunction fallacy/Occam's Razor. The probability of a single event is always greater or equal to the probability of both events: P(A) >= P(A&B) where event A is 'Rebellious hacker teens' and event A&B is 'Rebellious hacker teens recruited by terrorists'.

While the latter is logically true, one has to be careful. It may be easy to erroneously interpret that as comparing “rebellious hacker teens not recruited by terrorists” and “rebellious hacker teens recruited by terrorists”, which pair has no such guaranteed monotonicity.

I didn't understand shit about all the high level math/CS stuff you two just discussed. But what I do understand is this. Whenever there is a possibility of government or terrorist organisations gaining immensely from something more often than not one of them is involved. This can either be a false alarm operation or something done by terrorists. But apart from that there are many small ways they can be involved. Like the government will ignore such activities (not investigate it fully to their power) then let it grow to such large a proportion so that they can justify their new restrictive Internet act.

OTOH, the terrorists may not be involved initially but they may send in some of their cyber force to help organizations like LulzSec so that they can help american people take down their own infrastructure. We should not forget that AnonSec did take down many payment portals to some level.LulzSec took down sony also. What is stopping LulzSec to go full blown DDoS on payment portals? If Al-Quida or other cyber aware terrorist organisation gives them a botnet or two god knows what they might do.

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