Anonops #10: Stop SOPA

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Op donderdag 26 januari 2012 14:19 schreef YazooW het volgende:

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Ben natuurlijk niet zo'n expert als jou maar heb er wel genoeg tijd aan besteed om te kunnen concluderen dat het hele Tor netwerk vol staat met kinderporno en andere criminele zooi.

Maar nu ga je me waarschijnlijk weer pakken op de manier waarop ik over Tor praat en dat ik waarschijnlijk een digibeet ben...

twitter:

DaveKeating twitterde op donderdag 26-01-2012 om 14:59:17 European Parliament website down, possibly from denial of service attack from #anonymous over EU passage of #ACTA treaty #EUparl reageer retweet

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Piratenpartij: “Blokkade The Pirate Bay eenvoudig te omzeilen”

Vanaf volgende week zullen klanten van Ziggo en XS4ALL geen toegang meer hebben tot The Pirate Bay. Eerder deze maand wees de rechter de eis van piraterijbestrijder BREIN toe. In afwachting van hoger beroep voldoen de twee providers aan het vonnis van de rechter. Maar met een paar technische ingrepen moet het eenvoudig zijn om The Pirate Bay in Nederland toegankelijk te houden, denkt de Piratenpartij. Hosting provider Greenhost ontwikkelde daarvoor een tool, genaamd RePress. “De blokkade van The Pirate Bay is goed te omzeilen”, zegt Dirk Poot van de Piratenpartij. “Dat kan een lang kat- en muisspel opleveren.”

Greenhost ontwikkelde na de uitspraak in de zaak BREIN vs Ziggo/XS4ALL de tool, waarmee je via een andere site de poort naar een geblokkeerd platform open hun zetten. Het project is te vinden op een domein dat niet toevallig ALL4XS.net heet. “We schreven een plug-in voor WordPress”, legt Greenhost uit. “Gratis en OpenSource software die op meer dan 35 miljoen websites wereldwijd gebruikt wordt. Door onze plug-in toe te voegen aan een website met WordPress wordt die site een proxy. Via die site zijn dan eventuele geblokkeerde sites weer toegankelijk. Vervolgens kan men een eigen lijst bijhouden van websites die men toegankelijk wil houden via de eigen website. Nederlanders kunnen hiermee makkelijk websites toegankelijk maken die in bijvoorbeeld in Iran, Syrië of China geblokkeerd zijn. Andersom kunnen buitenlanders ervoor zorgen dat Nederlanders weer op The Pirate Bay kunnen, mocht die geblokkeerd raken.”

Wie dat doet, moet overigens wel voorkomen dat miljoenen Chinezen gebruik maken van zijn website, want dan lopen de kosten al snel op. "Maar de meeste hosting providers waarschuwen in zo'n geval tijdig", aldus Greenhost CEO Sacha van Geffen. "Het is mij niet per se te doen om The Pirate Bay, in andere landen worden veel belangrijker sites geblokkeerd. Het gaat mij om het principe." Van Geffen vindt niet dat hij als commercieel bedrijf dat zijn geld verdient met internet niet in de positie is om voor de grondrechten op te komen. "Wij worden als hosting provider niet direct geraakt door dit vonnis, anders dan de internet providers. Ik denk wel dat hosting providers gebaat zijn bij een open internet."

“2012 lijkt wel het erop-of-eronder-jaar”, zegt Dirk Poot van de Piratenpartij. "Van Libië tot Syrië tot Nederland worden websites geblokkeerd.” De groepering ontwikkelde de tool niet zelf, maar steunt het initiatief van harte. “Het stoort me hoe gemakkelijk de rechter in de zaak BREIN vs Ziggo/XS4ALL bewijs genegeerd heeft. Zo kwam BREIN met een soort Kamer van Koophandel document van het bedrijf Reservella, dat door de mensen achter The Pirate Bay zou zijn opgericht op de eilandengroep Seychellen op precies dezelfde dag dat de site lanceerde. Het lijkt me sterk dat dat document echt is, al is het maar omdat de Seychellen helemaal geen Kamer van Koophandel heeft. Doordat een rechter gemakzuchtig met dat soort dingen om gaat, wordt nu filtertechnologie in Nederland geïntroduceerd. BREIN mag de lijst met te blokkeren domeinnamen en IP-adressen zonder tussenkomst van de recht uitbreiden. Dat is een slechte zaak.”

Poot somt de mogelijkheden op die fans van The Pirate Bay hebben. Met dit proxy-idee moet het mogelijk zijn om eindeloos nieuwe domeinnamen te creëren. Daarnaast zou het bouwen van een zogeheten TOR-brug, waarmee als het ware een digitale tunnel gegraven wordt naar een afgeschermde website. Daarnaast is VPN (virtual private network) een optie, een dienst die nu vaak gebruikt wordt om bijvoorbeelden buitenlandse diensten te bereiken die per land afgeschermd zijn, bijvoorbeeld de Glastonbury verslaggeving van de BBC. De piraten aarzelen dus niet om tot actie over te gaan, waar veel andere politieke partijen nadrukkelijk een scheiding aanbrengen tussen politiek en activisme. “Wellicht verandert dat als we zetels veroveren in de Tweede Kamer”, zegt Dirk Poot. “Tot die tijd zijn we een club zeer bezorgde burgers die alles doet om de grondrechten te beschermen. We kunnen toch niet achterover zitten en af en toe een boos stuk schrijven?”

Mag dat zomaar, zo’n technische truc om een vonnis te omzeilen? Ja, denkt jurist Arnoud Engelfriet, die op zijn blog de mogelijkheden onderzoekt voor slimme internetactivisten. Een zogeheten mirror aanbieden mag niet, denk hij, omdat je dan dezelfde collectie aanbiedt die de rechter onrechtmatig verklaarde. “Over een proxy waarmee je als klant van Ziggo of XS4All alsnog de site kunt bereiken is nog nooit geprocedeerd. Een generieke proxy is natuurlijk niet verboden, maar bij een specifieke proxy die alléén verbinding laat leggen met thepiratebay.org kun je je afvragen of dat nog wel legaal is. Het gaat wel érg ver want de aansprakelijkheid is wel héél afgeleid ondertussen (je faciliteert het verbinding leggen met een site die faciliteert dat mensen auteursrechten schenden). Uitsluiten dat Brein ook daarheen gaat blaffen, kan ik echter niet.”

twitter:

TPB_Stun twitterde op dinsdag 24-01-2012 om 18:38:23 You wouldn't download a car!? Well you could according to new #TPB's category Physibles https://t.co/SLFgUUJt #P2P #FileSharing reageer retweet

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Evolution: New category.

We're always trying to foresee the future a bit here at TPB. One of the things that we really know is that we as a society will always share. Digital communication has made that a lot easier and will continue to do so. And after the internets evolutionized data to go from analog to digital, it's time for the next step.

Today most data is born digitally. It's not about the transition from analog to digital anymore. We don't talk about how to rip anything without losing quality since we make perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things. Music, movies, books, all come from the digital sphere. But we're physical people and we need objects to touch sometimes as well!

We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.

The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We'll be able to print food for hungry people. We'll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal. We'll be able to actually copy that floppy, if we needed one.

We believe that the future of sharing is about physible data. We're thinking of temporarily renaming ourselves to The Product Bay - but we had no graphical artist around to make a logo. In the future, we'll download one.

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http://www.zdnet.co.uk/bl(...)eu-signing-10025297/

A French MEP has quit the process of scrutinising ACTA for the European Parliament, calling the treaty's passage through the EU legislative system a masquerade.

In a statement on Thursday, Kader Arif denounced the signing of ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) by the EU and 22 member states earlier in the day. He said the European Parliament was being undermined and the process was a "charade" in which he would no longer participate.

An EU diplomat signed ACTA, which is aimed at harmonising the intellectual property enforcement regimes of many countries, on behalf of the European Commission, along with member states including the UK.

However, the European Parliament will only vote on ACTA in June, after the EU International Trade Committee (INTA) examines it. Arif was the person in that committee who was assigned as 'rapporteur' with special responsibility for the treaty.

"I want to denounce as the greatest of all the process that led to the signing of this agreement: no association of civil society, lack of transparency from the beginning of negotiations, successive postponements of the signing of the text without any explanation being given, setting aside the claims of the European Parliament [despite those views being] expressed in several resolutions of our Assembly," Arif said, according to an automated translation of his statement.

Arif said he had as rapporteur "faced unprecedented manoeuvres of the right of Parliament to impose an accelerated schedule to pass the agreement as soon as possible before the public is alerted, thereby depriving Parliament of its right of expression and the tools at its disposal to carry the legitimate demands of citizens".

The Commission says ACTA, which had many hardline clauses removed during its behind-closed-doors negotiations, will in its present form not mean any changes to EU law.

However, the MEP said ACTA would have an impact on civil liberties, ISPs' responsibilities and the manufacturing of generic drugs.

"This agreement may [have a] major impact on the lives of our citizens, and yet everything is done [so that] the European Parliament has no say," Arif said. "I will not participate in this charade."

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Tweets still must flow

^{Thursday, January 26, 2012}
One year ago, we posted "The Tweets Must Flow," in which we said,

“The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.”

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

There’s more information in our Help pages, both on our Policy and about Your Account Settings.

One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't. The Tweets must continue to flow.

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Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP Files Class Action Complaint against Stratfor

NEW YORK, January 25, 2012 – The law firm of Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP announced that it has filed a class action lawsuit in the Eastern District Court of New York against Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor) and George Friedman, Stratfor’s CEO. The claim was filed on behalf of a local business and its chief executive officer and seeks to recover damages and losses sustained on behalf of those whose personal and financial information was improperly disclosed to third-parties.

Sterling alleges that Stratfor failed to implement reasonable security measures to protect sensitive information provided to the firm by its customers. As a result, Plaintiffs allege that a identity thieves were able to infiltrate Stratfor’s servers, access confidential information, and disable Stratfor’s website. In addition, Plaintiffs also allege that when Stratfor’s officers were notified of the security breach, the company concealed their knowledge of the incident from its customers causing additional harm when the third-party made subsequent attempts to access customer information.

Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP has successfully advocated a wide variety commercial and consumer litigation claims. The firm does not charge a legal fee unless it recovers money for its clients. To learn more about Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP services contact us at
888-529-4669.

*No representation is made that the quality of the legal services to be performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by other lawyers.

CONTACT:
Hunter J. Shkolnik,
Senior Partner
Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP
Phone: 888-529-4669

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Anonymous- the real monolith is emerging

Last Wednesday as part of operation #opmegaupload, Anonymous widely deployed its most interesting tool to date: a stripped down version of LOIC in a web format [example: here]. While this tool was widely reported to have been abused by unethical ”anons,” I feel that the media has disregarded an interesting side effect of the new tool: it allows Anonymous to shift its “army” from tech-savvy hactivists to the more populous regular user who seeks a cause to rally behind without committing to sign up forms or software downloads.

The media has argued that the majority of individuals who are using the web based LOIC were “tricked” into doing so. Although I must admit that some were coerced into participation, many were quite happy to be involved in a protest that they felt actually had some “real world” impact (since websites did go and still are going down). This real world impact is quite unlike the normally encouraged route of involvement: writing petition after petition to congress and the house, which really did nothing since all congress ever does is patiently ignore the will of the people. To be frank, the media is still drastically understating how furious the average citizen is at what is perceived to be a corrupt and unethical mishmash of judicial bodies and big business lobbies.

Over the past week I spent a considerable amount of time in various #anon chatrooms and was shocked with the sheer stampede of new “anons” who were helpfully guided along by established members of the community to become willing activists. The community overall had a very high energy atmosphere, as though users were joined together to fight in some sort of resistance movement. I couldn’t keep count of the number of PMs I received asking for reliable VPNs and whom the next target should be.

Those users entered the #anon collective, not through technologically savvy means, but through web based irc chat, and volunteered with no real idea of how they should be helping “the cause.” Yet even without knowing what to do, they each had a strong desire to help nonetheless.

Hacktivism has never before become mainstream to the extent that non-techie individuals feel the need to get involved and are finding the tools to do so. #Anonymous is capitalizing on this phenomenon with zeal through various projects, including #opnewblood and a helpful “get started guide.” This is truly news that should scare Washington and big businesses everywhere.

With a public platform that has no membership, requirements, or objectives, besides the manifestation of a crowd sourced ethical and social ideal, Anonymous will very soon become a monolithic public institution with hive-mind motivation to right past and future wrongs. This is the true talking point of 2012, as our governments rally against piracy and legal cohesion across our world. How will the governments be able to combat an unorganized organization with no leader and the strong will of the people as the only pervasive objective?

While hackers have always been a threat to the establishment, it was not until this year that regular web users also fell under the same threat category. With hacktivism becoming almost socially acceptable to those under the age of 35, and with the ease of entering this movement, one can only assume that socially engineered ddos attacks have only just begun. With #anonymous having a significant (and growing) percentage of the population to back them up, as well as having significant resources (both as a economic powerhouse through the fund-raising potential and as a social identity that spans all cultures and religions), we can only assume that tools for this movement will become even more sophisticated, and more importantly, even easier to access for users, who can come together and rally for social change under a nameless banner.



When I look into the future, I can picture a movement that punishes corporations and governments through socially driven class action suits hacks. Unlike the judicial protest, this process will not allow big businesses to retaliate on their own terms, since Anonymous does not and will not cater to diplomatic overtures and symbolic calls for peace. This is the truly fascinating aspect of our time in this evolving world, and it will really be interesting to see how the big players will respond to it.

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As we reported, Twitter announced today that it may block specific content on a country-by-country basis if required. However, it seems very easy to get around these upcoming limitations.

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Chances are that Twitter perfectly knows about this workaround, and its details are particularly well thought. Knowing that content has been blocked is a very good start, but that’s not the best thing about it.

What’s particularly clever is its ease of use, even in countries where technical workarounds may be difficult to access. Users won’t need to hide their IP with a proxy: Twitter lets them change it manually, despite the potential loss in hyperlocal ad dollars for the platform.

Well done, Twitter, chances are tweets will continue to flow for quite a while.

Thanks @tapbot_paul for the tip.

twitter:

ecoyne twitterde op vrijdag 27-01-2012 om 08:02:23 Wow! RT @YourAnonNews: #OpUFC - UFC Backup Files: http://t.co/723MfsFT via: @s3rverexe cc: @danawhite reageer retweet

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http://thenextweb.com/ins(...)y-have-revived-sopa/

Dana White, Chairman of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), reacted to the recent hacking of the organisation’s website by hackers from Anonymous by claiming that the collective’s recent actions may help revive SOPA.

The UFC URL was redirected to a Nazi-related website over the weekend in response to the organisation’s apparent support of SOPA. The move, which White claims did not result in any data being comprimised, is one of a number of hacks — including the takedown of the DoJ website — which White believes could breathe new life into the controversial US Internet bill.

White believes that this perceived change in opinion over the hackers may have “flipped the switch” and could actually help the government pursue its cause. “The [SOPA] bill looked like it was going to be dead,” he said, “they might have brought it back to life and revived it.”

“The way that this whole thing has gone down, them hacking our site, was the best thing they could’ve done to us. Now you look like terrorists,” White commented, directly addressing the Anonymous hackers, “a lot of people who were afraid of you now hate you.”

The UFC boss explained in an interview with MMA Fighting that he understands what motivates anti-SOPA protesters, but he doesn’t agree and believes that a solution must be reached.

“No bill is perfect,” he said. “This thing started off with the right idea — stealing is stealing — but there’s this whole generation that grew up when everything was free on the Internet and they don’t want to see that change.”

He added that, while he understands that viewpoint, “it isn’t right and something needs to be worked out that’s right for everyone.”

White’s final comment towards Anonymous and the anti-SOPA protesters was that “anyone who fights the government loses” and he believes that the next year could see a return or reincarnation of the proposed Internet laws in the US.

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Op vrijdag 27 januari 2012 09:25 schreef DSL het volgende:

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Ik vind dit soort berichten niet zo veel zeggen altijd. Hoewel er een goed punt wordt gemaakt en awareness verspreiden belangrijk is, wordt er in deze filmpjes gepretendeerd alsof Anonymous officiële kanalen/spokespeople heeft.

Anonymous: #OpUFC

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UFC Website hacked and defaced by anonymous after Dana white starts trouble #OpUFC

As reported earlier today, dana white had made a mistake of pissing off anonymous by calling them terrorist, which never goes down well. as a result the UFC scene is now starting to suffer from Dana’s cocky mouth.

Before there was reports that a defacement was happening of the UFC.tv website and to be sure of there word, anonymous has done it and hacked and defaced the website and leaked a bunch of links to backups stored on the same server.

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Anonymous claims Stratfor spied on OWS

Anonymous promised that after hacking the intelligence firm Stratfor, called by some a “shadow CIA,” they’d prove that they were more than just a consulting firm.

Now it looks like the private company worked along with law enforcement in attempting to bring down the Occupy movement.

In some of the latest pieces of correspondence made public, however, information that many had already suspected about the role law enforcement played in infiltrating the Occupy Wall Street movement is brought to light. In an exchange of emails between Stratfor executives that has been published by hackers involved in the matter, employees of the firm go back-and-forth with one another in detail over information that Texas law enforcement supplied the firm after investigating an Austin Occupy meet-up.

In the emails, Strafor employees discuss intel about the Occupy movement that was supplied to them by a “Texas DPS agent,” or an officer within the ranks of the Lone Star State’s Department of Public Safety. The DPS is a state-wide law enforcement agency that investigates suspicious activity and allegations of terrorism within Texas. The question of why state law enforcement shared that email with a private intelligence firm is open to interpretation, but certainly suggests that attempts to understand and perhaps undermine the local OWS chapter was more than just a minor operation.

According to the documentation, which includes correspondence from late 2011, Stratfor employees discuss both Occupy Austin and the Deep Green Resistance, or DGR. While DGR is not directly affiliated with Occupy Wall Street, it is a similar movement — to a degree — that encourages environmental activism that isn’t present in more mainstream campaigns. In a press release, the DGR attacks both Texas authorities and Strafor for their newly revealed roles.

“Deep Green Resistance condemns the surveillance and infiltration of activist groups by law enforcement and private corporations and calls on activists and their allies to expose and protest this violation of all of our constitutional rights,” the group says in a statement published Thursday.

Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, adds that she is outraged over how Stratfor and the DPS were in cahoots over infiltrating Occupy Austin.

“Law enforcement sharing information about local activism with private intelligence firms should be a huge scandal,” writes Meeropol in Thursday’s statement. “Privately funded surveillance and infiltration of activist groups is especially chilling, as time and again we see such corporations operate as if they are above the law and accountable to no one.”

In the emails, Stratfor staffers discuss how one of their own men went undercover to an Occupy Austin General Assembly and attempted to gain insight into how the group operates. Stratfor’s Scott Stewart writes that the movement is considered by some to be “a terrible threat to corporations,” but adds, “in reality, due to the history of anarchists, animal rights, anti-war and anti-globalization protesters, companies are well prepared for such hippy hijinks.” As the Occupy movement continues to thrive more than three months after Stewart shared such words with other Stratfor employees, it is clear that that isn’t the case.

In a separate email sent a month later in November, Korena Zucha of Stratfor writes that a Texas DPS agent has shared information about both movements. In it, Deep Green is linked with Occupy Austin, which DGR shrugs off as speculation. Representatives for DGR believe that the correspondence suggests that surveillance of both groups was ongoing.

In the back-and-forth, Stratfor staffers suggest that sources within Occupy Austin describe some of the DGR members as crazy, to which one adds, “that bothers me, because these Occupy people will tolerate just about anything.”

Stratfor’s Marc Lanthemann, who signs his email as a “Watch Officer” for the firm, suggests that coordination between the DGR and Occupy movement could have dire consequences. Lanthemann writes in one email that he thinks Deep Green is an “eco-terror group is focused on creating a situation where violent confrontation will be the ultimate outcome.”

“It doesn’t require an agent to get simple facts correct. Both of these assertions are just plain false,” responds DGR.