Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
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Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#2The use of terrible, horrifying, absurd makes this read less like a serious, considered policy position, and more of a rant. Rants can be cool, but this struck me as less nuanced than I'd have hoped coming from an important organization on a really significant topic.
Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#3The use of terrible, horrifying, absurd makes this read less like a serious, considered policy position, and more of a rant. Rants can be cool, but this struck me as less nuanced than I'd have hoped coming from an important organization on a really significant topic.
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Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#4>The trend of half-baked hacktivism involving everyday internet users is now growing into sites and games that encourage users to become part of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks against some Russian digital assets. For the same reasons mentioned above, randomly sending attacks without thinking through the consequences and potential collateral damage are feel-good actions that amount to shooting in the dark. Also unknown are the consequences for users that were part of this campaign. Are users aware that they could have their IPs logged by a potentially aggressive and vindictive target? It’s an incredibly irresponsible action that gives tools to ordinary users without the due diligence it deserves, putting innocent lives at risk on all sides.
I agree. I can imagine a day where the public passes along links for fire to DDOS hackernews until silicon Valley puts more regulations against fake news, or children on social media, or some other issue. Vigilantism is always a bad idea, people get carried away and before you know it anyone can be a target because of a tenuous link to something considered bad. If the story about the tool overwriting files on Russian computers is true, then that just leads to another huge set of problems that can occur.
Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#5>The trend of half-baked hacktivism involving everyday internet users is now growing into sites and games that encourage users to become part of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks against some Russian digital assets. For the same reasons mentioned above, randomly sending attacks without thinking through the consequences and potential collateral damage are feel-good actions that amount to shooting in the dar…
If you own popular websites you can embed code that causes the visitors to repeatedly background download large files from some web server you don’t like. If someone is hosting in AWS people can deliberately drive up their bill by scanning their site for the highest file size and just mass downloading that one file around the clock. I dont support this behavior but it happens.
Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#6[deleted]
Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#7The use of terrible, horrifying, absurd makes this read less like a serious, considered policy position, and more of a rant. Rants can be cool, but this struck me as less nuanced than I'd have hoped coming from an important organization on a really significant topic.
I disagree, I think they make their point fair well. Note that eff wants this piece to reach non-tech crowd as much as tech ones
Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#8Pervasive monitoring, censorship, state sponsored disinformation and hacking also make a more hostile internet.
I think that we are legitimately at a point where people should just go into things assuming they are hostile and/or unsafe. I love EFF, but I think they operate under the assumption that bad actors are exceptions to the rule, which is pretty naïve in 2022.
Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#9The use of terrible, horrifying, absurd makes this read less like a serious, considered policy position, and more of a rant. Rants can be cool, but this struck me as less nuanced than I'd have hoped coming from an important organization on a really significant topic.
What nuance exists when a maintainer of a package distributes malware targeted at people by their nationality? One can assume that the vast majority of the users of this package are innocent people with no government influence.
Re: Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet
#10Pervasive monitoring, censorship, state sponsored disinformation and hacking also make a more hostile internet. I think that we are legitimately at a point where people should just go into things assuming they are hostile and/or unsafe. I love EFF, but I think they operate under the assumption that bad actors are exceptions to the rule, which is pretty naïve in 2022.
>I think they operate under the assumption that bad actors are exceptions to the rule, which is pretty naïve in 2022
Why is this a naive assumption and why would things be any different in the current year? Are living organisms not inherently self-interested? Why are human beings special and not just another kind of animal vying for territory and resources?