Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#61

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:22 AM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #44

"We are protecting you from the hacker-terrorists" Is this not obvious to everyone else as it is to me? People, think about what is happening here and the timing of it all. This is a false flag operation to turn the public opinion against "hackers" so these crazy internet regulations bills can start passing and so that they can get away with spying scandal. If these "hackers" taking down social media sites and NYT ti…

Is this not obvious to everyone else as it is to me?

Another possibility is that your opinion is wrong.

If these "hackers" taking down social media sites and NYT times were actually the Syrian government

The thing is, nobody thinks the SEA is part of the Syrian government, any more than the Irish Republican Army was part of the Irish government. It's just a name the group have adopted to show their affiliation and make themselves feel badass.

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#62

Post by mhurron » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:23 AM UTC

ninjazee124 wrote: post #11

NYTimes seems to be down and Twitter is be loading all wrong because twimg.com is down. Whoa! This is some serious stuff.

http://xkcd.com/932/

Ya, not so much.

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#63

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:25 AM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #50

krelian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think they are so sophisticated to create this false flag operation why are the targets and magnitude of this so lame?

NYTimes and Twitter are lame targets? In the US, at least, you don't get a much higher profile non-government target than the NY Times. I mean, if this were a false flag operation -- and I'm not convinced it is -- then the three-letter guys wouldn't very likely chose to target themselves, or other government, would they? They would portray them as being inept at defending themselves.

Attacking the NYT tells me you just want attention. There are many much higher-value non-government targets who hacking would seriously worry me.

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#64

Post by jnbiche » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:26 AM UTC

krelian wrote: post #52

jnbiche wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYTimes and Twitter are lame targets? In the US, at least, you don't get a much higher profile non-government target than the NY Times. I mean, if this were a false flag operation -- and I'm not convinced it is -- then the three-letter guys wouldn't very likely chose to target themselves, or other government, would they? They would portray them as being inept at defending themselves.

The target was one registrar and the disruption wasn't anything that's going to be talked bout tomorrow morning. Fairly lame for a sophisticated false flag operation.

No, the attack target was almost certainly sites like the NY Times and Twitter. The attack vector was the domain registrar you refer to. It seems very unlikely that the target was Melbourne IT per se. You see how many of us hadn't even heard of them -- hardly a high-impact target.

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#65

Post by Helianthus » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:31 AM UTC

krelian wrote: post #52

jnbiche wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYTimes and Twitter are lame targets? In the US, at least, you don't get a much higher profile non-government target than the NY Times. I mean, if this were a false flag operation -- and I'm not convinced it is -- then the three-letter guys wouldn't very likely chose to target themselves, or other government, would they? They would portray them as being inept at defending themselves.

The target was one registrar and the disruption wasn't anything that's going to be talked bout tomorrow morning. Fairly lame for a sophisticated false flag operation.

Another way of looking at it: target one decently sized registrar and you'll get a handful of important sites. This isn't big news.

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#66

Post by Helianthus » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:33 AM UTC

nfoz wrote: post #28

Don't trust anything you read here, folks...... too many that don't know anything about WHOIS or DNS.....

Now the truly paranoid are caught in the paradox of trusting you!

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#67

Post by chrischen » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:34 AM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #44

"We are protecting you from the hacker-terrorists" Is this not obvious to everyone else as it is to me? People, think about what is happening here and the timing of it all. This is a false flag operation to turn the public opinion against "hackers" so these crazy internet regulations bills can start passing and so that they can get away with spying scandal. If these "hackers" taking down social media sites and NYT ti…

It just means we need our own hackers.

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#68

Post by mpyne » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:42 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #40

mpyne wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fishy enough that the SEA's own Twitter account is gloating about it?

Fortunately it's really hard to make a Twitter account, what with all the passport checks and ID verification that goes on there. Only real, verified SEA members would be able to create such an account. And only when directly logging in from a verified Syrian government IP.

Go check the account [1] for yourself, if it's fake it's a long-planted fake strung along with other tweets dating back to August 15th and earlier and describing other known SEA hacks.

If it's not legit it would have to be because they let their own Twitter account get hacked at the same time Twitter was being hacked... which seems very noncompliant with Occam.

[1] https://twitter.com/Official_SEA16

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#69

Post by mpyne » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 12:43 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #45

cpursley wrote: post #44

"We are protecting you from the hacker-terrorists" Is this not obvious to everyone else as it is to me? People, think about what is happening here and the timing of it all. This is a false flag operation to turn the public opinion against "hackers" so these crazy internet regulations bills can start passing and so that they can get away with spying scandal. If these "hackers" taking down social media sites and NYT ti…

> This is a false flag operation to turn the public opinion against "hackers" so these crazy internet regulations bills can start passing and so that they can get away with spying scandal. You can't know for sure it is a false flag operation, but you can't easily rule it out either.

It sounds like a religion to me, then.

Re: Twitter, NYT Whois and DNS altered, Syrian Electronic Army takes responsibility

#70

Post by jlgreco » Wed, Aug 28, 2013, 1:13 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #69

jacquesm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a false flag operation to turn the public opinion against "hackers" so these crazy internet regulations bills can start passing and so that they can get away with spying scandal. You can't know for sure it is a false flag operation, but you can't easily rule it out either.

It sounds like a religion to me, then.

Except unlike gods, we are quite sure that false flag incidents can happen. Nobody doubts that. The very concept isn't what is questioned, only particular incidents.