Snowden Docs Show GCHQ Tried To DDoS Anonymous
from the picking-the-wrong-target dept
The latest Snowden revelation is just bizarre. According to a new report at NBC (with help from Glenn Greenwald), UK spies at GCHQ decided to mount a DDoS attack against Anonymous and Lulzsec.The documents, from a PowerPoint presentation prepared for a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV, show that the unit known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, boasted of using the DDOS attack – which it dubbed Rolling Thunder -- and other techniques to scare away 80 percent of the users of Anonymous internet chat rooms.As the report notes, this seems like incredible overkill. While it's true that Anonymous had been somewhat successful in DDoSing some websites, for the most part, those were just basic defacements. They were the equivalent of kids messing around with graffiti -- hardly the sort of thing you send in the intelligence community to disrupt. Similarly, there are some quite reasonable arguments that the kind of attacks that Anonymous was doing were the equivalent of a sit-in, making them a form of expression.
“Targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to targeting citizens for expressing their political beliefs,” said Gabriella Coleman, an anthropology professor at McGill University and author of an upcoming book about Anonymous. “Some have rallied around the name to engage in digital civil disobedience, but nothing remotely resembling terrorism. The majority of those embrace the idea primarily for ordinary political expression.” Coleman estimated that the number of “Anons” engaged in illegal activity was in the dozens, out of a community of thousands.NBC News gets former White House cyber security official Jason Healey to point out how ridiculous this kind of attack is:
Jason Healey, a former top White House cyber security official under George W. Bush, called the British government’s DDOS attack on Anonymous “silly,” and said it was a tactic that should only be used against another nation-state.Further documents show that GCHQ agents more or less infiltrated Anonymous, trying to buddy up with some key members -- and the documents leaked by Snowden show that GCHQ happily explains that the "outcome" of this effort resulted in charges, arrest and conviction against Edward Pearson, who was involved with Anonymous as GZero. Of course, we thought GCHQ was supposed to be focused on non-UK persons. But Pearson is British. The report details a few other UK hackers arrested because of GCHQ spying -- including one who notes that in the documents concerning his arrest, it is never detailed how he was found.
[....] “This is a slippery slope,” said Healey. “It’s not what you should be doing. It justifies [Anonymous]. Giving them this much attention justifies them and is demeaning to our side.”
What's not mentioned in the report is that the intelligence community has a history of totally overreacting to Anonymous. Back in 2012, we wrote about NSA boss Keith Alexander's bizarre attempt to spread FUD by claiming that Anonymous was the equivalent of a terrorist group that might shut down power grids -- a move that seems way outside of the kinds of things participants in Anonymous have any interest in. The actions they've taken, historically, have been to expose hypocrisy and wrongdoing -- not to actually put anyone's lives in danger. But it seems that kind of overreaction to Anonymous went beyond just the NSA and across the pond to GCHQ, which didn't just freak out, but actually spent taxpayer funds to launch offensive denial of service attacks on a bunch of mostly innocent teenagers.
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Wondering if this is legal
From my (far from perfect) understanding of GCHQ's legal basis, they are limited to two functions:
I don't see how DDoSing Anonymous, or cosying up to them fits in (b), and while the former might count as "interfering with electromagnetic emissions" I'm not sure the rest will.
Perhaps this time GCHQ has gone too far?
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Re: Wondering if this is legal
Didn't you know? They're above the law.
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Re: Wondering if this is legal
I don't know much about British law, but Techdirt has published several stories about parallel construction. It sounds like GCHQ might have been doing the same thing. It casts doubt over any court cases involving Lulsec and Anonymous.
I wonder, if The UK have the same problem with most cases ending with the defendant pleading guilty. Here in the US they'll have nice men with badges and guns take family members of the defendant out of work and ask them to call him or her. The threat being that since they also benefited from the alleged crime that they'll be charged as well. Unless, of course, the defendant agrees to immediately plead guilty to the judge that they have waiting down at the courthouse.
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One wonders how many of the rules governing these spy agencies they have to break before someone finally stops them and asks them what the f__k were they thinking.
But but but terrorism no longer cuts it.
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Also, if 133thax0rkidz can hack your infrastructure, then other nations (russia, china, etc) can too, and you have a bigger problems than internet activists.
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Then you have made the mistake of connecting its control systems to the Internet.
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If there's no reason for your generators to run at a sufficient speed to burn out (and there's not), then you prevent it from being physically able to run that fast. You have one or more operators on site - thus controls should not be even capable of being remotely accessed (remote monitoring isn't so bad). If a medical device uses radiation to gather information on a patient, it should not be capable of emitting a harmful amount (a real case, that, from a few years back - the hardware relied on the firmware/software for safety, and the software was poorly installed, poorly maintained and poorly operated... leading to, well, microwaving of tender body parts).
It's basic computer and network security - expose only what needs to be exposed, and make it as physically impossible as possible to access the rest. A bank or business might use a time-locked vault for a very good reason - so that no matter what happens, the vault simply cannot be opened except at the time when it needs to be open to move stuff out. No matter who's compromised, what information they have, what threats are made, the vault is secure for most of the day or week.
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Thing is, the real reason nukes exist is that they are never going to be used.
Except for mini-nukes, those were banned in 1968...officially.
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The United States took over the project in 1904, and took a decade to complete the canal, which was officially opened on August 15, 1914.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal
The Manhattan Project was a research and development project that produced the first atomic bombs during World War II. ... From 1942 to 1946, ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
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See Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare
Since that didn't work out we ended up buying a bunch of old nukes from the Russians to power our reactors.
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The following picture used on wikipedia in the Nuclear Weapons Testing article, coming from US public domain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Types_ of_nuclear_testing.svg
Makes one think...Sometimes I think the NSA are aware of something awful and so thats why they justify spying everything. But probably not, I'm just a pleb who isn't even american so i'm totally fair game. :3
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Yeah, that's the latest threat to our way of life. Hadn't you heard?
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i heard this morning about the 'tube strike' in London. the government is now trying to bring in new laws to stop it happening. it's anything to undermine and remove the rights of the people. Cameron is trying to back peddal the UK to the days when only the rich and famous had the right to anything. he needs to mind he doesn't get hauled up before the EUCHR!
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Or hauled up anything else, for that matter.
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But we're talking about an IRC server being DDoS'd by a security agency.
A place where people go to talk (regardless of how affiliated they are with Anonymous or not.)
So I'm guessing this means that Freedom of Speech no longer means shit the fascists in charge.
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"The latest Snowden revelation is just bizarre." -- And essentially pointless.
Don't bother commenting here, (hypothetical) visitor! The rabid Techdirt fanboys censor all opposition! Here's one NOT lying about it:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140204/07522126085/new-zealand-spy-agency-deleted-evidence-about- its-illegal-spying-kim-dotcom.shtml#c341 (198 of 198)
02:43:42[c-850-6]
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It seems as if it is being advocated that the sites should be free from scrutiny to do as they want because "boys will be boys". Without knowing what caught the eye of the government, would that be putting the cart before the horse?
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Thinlk!
How is exposing hypocrisy and wrongdoing not putting Alexander's way of life in danger?
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Anonymous as Intelligence Target: Positively
Anonymous does both, and is therefore a "terrorist" organization. Of course you send your intelligence agencies to persecute them.
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Re: Anonymous as Intelligence Target: Positively
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Not sure how/if that applies, or would ideally apply to feral government agencies, tough.
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"Here is the first rule you have to learn. Now that you know that we are going to teach you how to effectively break that rule."
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Question
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They are not overreacting
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"hypocrisy and wrondoing"
Yeah.......terrorism!?
Love, Cameron
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fatca-tax-deal-with-u-s-takes-some-heat-off-canadian-banks-1.2 524444
Revenue Canada will have to report to the IRS whenever it feels like looking at some Canadian bank accounts from now on. At first it was directly without RC acting as in-between but they struck this "deal". If Canadian banks didn't accept to divulge info they would be basically raped.
Disgusting.
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