Anonops #14: All about control

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Hackers launch assault on Israeli government websites

Israeli officials count 44 million attacks on government sites since bombardment of Gaza began – but only one succeeds

More than 44 million hacking attempts have been made on Israeli government websites since Wednesday when Israel began its Gaza offensive, according to Israeli officials.

Finance minister Yuval Steinitz said just one hacking attempt was successful on a site he did not want to name, but added that it was up and running after 10 minutes of downtime.

Attempts on defence-related sites were the most numerous, according to his ministry, while 10m attempts were said to have been made on the site of Israel's president, 7m on the foreign ministry and 3m on the site of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

A finance ministry spokesman told Reuters that while the attacks have come from around the world, most have been from Israel and the Palestinian territories.

"The ministry's computer division will continue to block the millions of cyber-attacks," said Steinitz, speaking ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting. "We are enjoying the fruits of our investment in recent years in developing computerised defence systems."

A video message purporting to be from the hacking collective, Anonymous, was posted online on Sunday, warning: "We will strike any and all websites that we deem to be in Israeli cyberspace in retaliation for the mistreating of people in Gaza and other areas."

Cyber-attacks launched following the start of the Israeli offensive knocked some sites offline for a short period of time at the end of last week and resulted in others being defaced with pro-Palestinian messages.

Anonymous said on Saturday that it had taken down or erased the databases of nearly 700 Israeli private and public websites, including that of the Bank of Jerusalem finance house.

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Anonymous claims to have affected U.S. elections through hacking GOP’s ORCA

The radical anarchist group Anonymous today has claimed that they have affected the 2012 presidential elections, thereby helping President Obama win a second term by hacking the Mitt Romney’s “Republican Get Out the Vote System” (ORCA).

On Election Day, the system (ORCA) application and network ran into problems as it was supposed to track through analytic's of what was going in key states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Colorado and helping to get out the vote in those areas.

The workers were unable to get the system to work and repeatedly failed and crashed.

According to ARStechnica, the network connection to the Romney campaign's headquarters also failed and went down and Internet provider Comcast had reported that they thought the traffic was caused by a denial of service attack.

If Comcast is correct in their assertion that the network connection and possible the application itself was the result of a denial of service attack, then Anonymous’ claims to affecting the system is true thereby violating U.S. elections laws.

Anonymous stated that the reason why they did this was an attempt to prevent Karl Rove, a political consultant and policy advisor, from rigging the election.

In the video, Anonymous said in-part, “We are watching you [Karl Rove]. We know you will attempt to rig the election of Mitt Romney to your favor.”

Anonymous went on to accuse Rove of attempting to overthrow the U.S. government and stated that if Mitt Romney were to win, that they would turn over all of the documents and information to the appropriate officials.

On Saturday, Anonymous in a joint effort with the Peoples Liberation Front attacked several hundred websites in Israel.

Interestingly enough, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Colorado were won by President Obama.

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Internet censorship in Russia

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Yet Mr Soldatov notes that two factors keep Russia from having a Chinese-style firewall—at least for now. The first is that the law does not block or criminalise the use of proxy browsers that mask what sites a user visits and keep browsing anonymous. But Russia may be headed in this direction: a September article in Izvestia said the Duma will soon add amendments to the internet law banning such services, including the popular service Tor, which masks online activity. Second, Mr Soldatov says is that Russia has not outlawed the use of secure browsing protocols, https, used by Facebook, Gmail, and other sites with sensitive personal data. But he says that some ISPs have already been approached by Russian security agencies and told to prepare for such a possibility.

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Anonymous declares 'cyberwar' on Israel

(CNN) -- In the digital age, war isn't contained to the ground.

The Israeli government on Sunday said it has been hit with more than 44 million cyberattacks since it began aerial strikes on Gaza last week. Anonymous, the hacker collective, claimed responsibility for taking down some sites and leaking passwords because of what it calls Israel's "barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment" of Palestinians.

"The war is being fought on three fronts," Carmela Avner, Israel's chief information officer, said on Sunday in a press release. "The first is physical, the second is the world of social networks and the third is cyberattacks.

"The attackers are attempting to harm the accessibility of Israel's government websites on an ongoing basis. When events like the current operation occur, this sector heats up and we see increased activity. Therefore, at this time, defending the governmental computer systems is of invaluable importance."

Israel and the military wing of Hamas have been criticized for using ready-to-share images on social media to spread spin about the conflict, which has claimed the lives of about 100 Palestinians and three Israelis since the back-and-forth violence began again Wednesday.

There is some dispute about the effectiveness of the cyberattacks.

Israel says the attacks have largely been unsuccessful.

"We are reaping the fruits on the investment in recent years in the development of computerized defense systems, but we have a lot of work in store for us," Israel's finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, said in a written statement.

Reuters quotes him as saying only one website was down for 10 minutes.

CNN iReport: Instagram users wage peace in Israel

Anonymous, meanwhile, posted a list of more than 650 Israel-based websites it says it has taken down or defaced since last week.

"They've knocked down websites, deleted databases and have leaked e-mail addresses and passwords," Casey Chan wrote Friday for the tech site Gizmodo. "It's a whopping takedown."

A post on an Anonymous Twitter feed Monday morning said another set of hackers had defaced the Israeli versions of several Microsoft websites, including Bing, MSN and Skype. Visitors to Bing's Israeli site on Monday morning saw an anti-Israel rant instead of a search-engine homepage.

"Microsoft is aware of the site defacements and working to get all sites fully functional," a company spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "At present, we have seen no evidence to suggest the compromise of customer information but will take action to help protect customers as necessary."

A page associated with Anonymous also posted a new threat: "November 2012 will be a month to remember for the (Israel Defense Forces) and Internet security forces. Israeli Gov. this is/will turn into a cyberwar."

Some observers took this as a sign of an escalating digital battle.

"Beyond mere 'denial of service' tactics that blocked sites with floods of junk data, the hackers also ramped up their attacks to penetrations of any vulnerable target available to them, resulting in tens of thousands of Israeli citizens' and supporters' private data dumped onto the Web," wrote Andy Greenberg from Forbes.

Others said most of Anonymous' threats have been "hollow" so far.

"Today, Anon lacks the talent and semi-cohesion it once boasted across the net, and its most recent online crusade is an embarrassing reminder," Sam Biddle wrote for Gizmodo on Monday. "This is less a war than the hacker equivalent of egging someone's house and then smoking weed behind a Denny's."

The group is calling its campaign #OpIsrael.

"While the Israeli government almost certainly has backups of the aformentioned databases, these attacks as well as the defacements show Anonymous isn't just doing its usual spree of overloading target sites," writes another tech blog, TheNextWeb.

"OpIsrael appears to have gotten multiple hackers involved who are interested in doing actual damage, or at least something that is slightly more permanent than just a 404," which is the code that appears online when a website won't load.

Greenberg, from Forbes, makes the important point that none of this digital damage compares to the loss of life on the ground in the Middle East.

"Anonymous' attacks, of course, hardly register compared with the physical damage inflicted by both sides in the Gaza conflict," he wrote.

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#OpIsrael, all about offensive of Anonymous against Israel

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The challenged IDF published on-line a portal to fight "misinformation" concerning the IDF and Israel. The site propose a game that involve visitors in every kind of on-line activities aimed at providing a positive image of the state. The Web site provides also documentation on the attacks on Gaza and information about attacks that Israel suffers as shown in the following pictures.

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"IDF Ranks is an interactive game, directly implemented into all of the IDF’s social platforms allowing YOU to be a virtual part of the IDF. Every action you take — reading, commenting, liking, sharing or even just visiting — will earn you points and help you climb the ladder of IDF Ranks. Specific actions will win you beautiful badges, and one day you might even become the Chief of Staff of IDF Ranks."

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This website uses CloudFlare in order to help keep it online when the server is down by serving cached copies of pages when they are unavailable. Unfortunately, a cached copy of the page you requested is not available, but you may be able to reach other cached pages on the site.

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1,000,000 Accounts Leaked By Hannibal in retaliation for #OPIsrael

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Well known hacker Hannibal has released a pastebin document that is making some claims that are sure to hit headlines around the world within hours.

The pastebin file contains a message which is to the public and Anonymous hacktivist who have been involved in the attacks on Israeli governments and public websites over the last week in support to Gaza from air strike attacks.

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**
Be careful, here are the biggest cyber attack in the United States
**

Since last January, after the Arabs hacked Israeli credit cards (0xOmar And His Friends lol) , That’s why the Arabs received my punishment – I’ve posted over 1,000,000 Facebook accounts of Arabs.

After I had attacked them very strong, they stopped attacking Israeils.
I went to sleep for a while, I woke up, What the hell?
Lately, Anonymous Group attacked for no reason Israeli websites and stuff.
Do you want to play with me, Anonymous Group?
Do you have forgotten that Israel stands alongside the world’s best hacker – Hannibal ???
Who the hell you think you are? I’ll fuck you.
I AM HANNIBAL.

I am the best hacker in the world, all Americans who do not know who I am, just Google it

www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=Hannibal+ Hacker

Anonymous Group, Do you want to mess with me?
Be careful of me.
I’ll ruin your life if you continue I will post Personal information of Anonymous group members, I will send you to prison, I’ll Fucl y0u tight.

Today because the games did Anonymous Group, Americans will receive my punishment.

I’m post now about 1,000,000 American Accounts, emails,password,userid, security questions, security answers, and stuff.

Download links -

http://www.crocko.com/64D(...)ishment_Hannibal.rar

http://bayfiles.com/file/t3G9/sggNJm/Punishment_Hannibal.rar

http://d01.megashares.com/dl/BkIGYNc/Punishment_Hannibal.rar

http://freakshare.com/files/2ae2mwy3/Punishment_Hannibal.rar.html

http://www.fileswap.com/d(...)nt_Hannibal.rar.html

http://bitshare.com/files/azfva1wt/Punishment_Hannibal.rar.html

http://fileshare.in.ua/6914961

http://www.filedropper.com/punishmenthannibal_1

https://depositfiles.com/files/ekq5n6y19

It’s nothing compared to what I have. Anonymous Group, Be careful of me.
Hannibal.

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Anonymous cyber hackers 'cost PayPal £3.5m'

A student attacked the PayPal website as part of a concerted effort by the Anonymous "hacktivists" that cost the company £3.5m, a court has heard.

Christopher Weatherhead, 22, was studying at Northampton University when he allegedly took part in the campaign.

The court heard Anonymous targeted companies who opposed internet piracy but later attacked PayPal after it refused to process WikiLeaks payments.

Mr Weatherhead, from Northampton, denies a charge of conspiracy.

He has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to impair the operation of computers between 1 August 2010 and 22 January 2011.

MasterCard, Visa, Ministry of Sound, the British Recorded Music Industry and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry were also hit.

The jury at Southwark Crown Court were told Ashley Rhodes, 27, from Camberwell, south London; Peter Gibson, 24, from Hartlepool; and an 18-year-old male who cannot be named for legal reasons have already pleaded guilty to the charge.

Mr Patel said Gibson had initially suggested attacking musician Lily Allen's website because of her overt anti-piracy stance but changed his mind, saying he did not wish to "attack artists".

Sandip Patel, prosecuting, said the group caused PayPal "enormous economic harm".

He said they initially targeted components who were known to oppose internet piracy but later switched to attacking PayPal after it refused to process payments on behalf of the controversial WikiLeaks website, founded by Julian Assange.

Mr Patel said PayPal was chosen after it refused, in December 2010, to process payments for the Wau Holland Foundation, which was raising money to keep WikiLeaks going.

The prosecutor said Anonymous were "hacktivists" who believed copyright should not apply to the internet.

He said their attacks, codenamed Operation Payback, began as a campaign against the music industry and those who took part in action against the Pirate Bay website which had attempted to distribute music in breach of copyright laws.

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Police Raid 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl, Confiscate Winnie The Pooh Laptop

An anti-piracy company has found itself in the middle of a huge controversy. CIAPC, the company that had The Pirate Bay blocked by ISPs in Finland, tracked an alleged file-sharer and demanded a cash settlement. However, the Internet account holder refused to pay which escalated things to an unprecedented level. In response, this week police raided the home of the 9-year-old suspect and confiscated her Winnie the Pooh laptop.

Very soon in the United States, letters will be sent out to Internet account holders informing them that they should stop sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent.

The message in the US from mainstream rightsholders is designed to be educational, but more aggressive companies carry out the same process but with a sting in the tail – a request for cash-settlement to make potential lawsuits go away.

One such request for cash landed on the doorstep of an Internet account holder in Finland during the spring. Known locally as TTVK, Finnish anti-piracy group CIAPC sent the man a letter informing him that his account had been traced back to an incidence of online file-sharing.

To stop matters progressing further the man was advised to pay a settlement of 600 euros, sign a non-disclosure document, and move on with his life. He chose not to give in to the demands of CIAPC and this week things escalated as promised.

Tuesday morning the doorbell of the family home rang around 8am and the man, who works in the hospitality sector, had quite a shock. Police were at his door with a search warrant authorizing the hunt for evidence connected to illicit file-sharing.

Surprisingly, the man isn’t a previously unknown Kim Dotcom-related “co-conspirator”, nor does he run a warez site or BitTorrent tracker. He is, however, guilty of having a 9-year-old daughter with a taste for pop music.

Having failed in her quest to put enough money in her piggy bank to buy the latest album from local multi-platinum-selling songstress Chisu, in 2011 she turned to the Internet, first via Google and then The Pirate Bay.

The girl’s father said the resulting downloads didn’t work so the following day they went to the store to buy music. Nevertheless, this week’s police visit shows that CIAPC mean business, no matter how young the targets or whether or not they also buy music.

In concluding their search, the police confiscated the girl’s file-sharing weapon of choice – her Winnie The Pooh laptop – and according to her father offered some final words.

“It would have been easier for all concerned if you had paid the compensation,” the police advised

“I got the feeling that there had been people from the MAFIA demanding money at the door,” the girl’s father explained.

“At that point my jaw hit the floor and I wasn’t sure if I was awake or dreaming. So the investigator suggested, between the lines, that I empty my wallet and keep my family in hunger for the next two weeks so that they could get rid of the case? What the f––… is this how it goes? I could evade justice murder by skipping Christmas this year?”

“We have not done anything wrong with my daughter. If adults do not always know how to use a computer and the web, how can you assume that children or the elderly – or a 9-year-old girl – knows what they are doing at any given time online?

“This is the pinnacle of absurdity. I can see artists are in a position, but this requires education and information, not resource-consuming lawsuits,” he added.

Electronic Frontier Finland say that this week’s developments are an indication of just how far copyright enforcements issues have progressed in Finland.

“It is not in anyone’s interest, that in the name of the copyright, little girls are being harassed. This shows poor judgment, and consideration from TTVK and from the police,” vice chairman Ville Oksanen said in a statement.

However, there are signs that support might come from an unexpected corner. In a statement the artist in question – Chisu – said that she doesn’t want to sue anyone and that no artist needs this kind of media attention. Indeed, the criticism of the move on her Facebook page is fierce.

“I hope that the matter will be resolved soon and sorry to my 9-year-old girls,” Chisu wrote, pointing them to this free link to her music on Spotify.

Joonas Mäkinen of Finland’s Pirate Party welcomes Chisu’s comments but bemoans artists’ apparent lack of power to get anything done.

“It is sad to see how even the big artists have no idea what CIAPC / TTVK is doing in their name. And the worst part is that even after learning about this, like Chisu did just now and took part in the discussion on Facebook, they can’t stop it since all copyright protection and monitoring is centralized,” Mäkinen told TorrentFreak.

“I hope all musicians realize that the fan hunt that involves confiscating laptops and signing deals that require you to be silent about the payments are severely hurting the image of copyright and creators. Authors of works should actively rise up to say NO to what CIAPC/TTVK is doing if they wish to keep their fans,” he concludes.

CIAPC confirmed that the case against the 9-year-old is only the latest in a line of attempted settlements. Last fall a total of 28 Internet account holders settled with CIAPC, but of course we haven’t heard of the cases due to the confidentiality agreements recipients are required to sign.

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Your site has been Hacked in response to Scott the world about the massacres that happen in Syria ... On the occasion of the penetration I want to direct a few words to the world
To our heros in the Free Syrian Army.. our hearts and souls are with you those of whom sacrificed their blood and lives for us, may Allah reward you all the good and I find no words enough to address you may Allah protect and be with you
To Bashar 'the duck' who lacks legitimacy and sanity do you see fathers crying their children? soon you will be in their shoes if Allah's will
To Asmaa, crazy president's wife. Do you see women crying their husbands? soon you will be in their shoes if Allah's will
To the islamic and arabic conscience and specially Muslims kings and presidents, our profit (pbuh) says « ما من امرئ يخذل امرءا مسلما في موطن تنتهك فيه حرمته ، وينتقص فيه من عرضه ، إلا خذله الله في موطن يحب فيه نصرته ، وما من امرئ ينصر امرءا مسلما في موطن ينتقص فيه من عرضه وتنتهك فيه من حرمته ، إلا نصره الله في موطن يحب فيه نصرته » so those who let us down expect Allah's humilation if you don't support us
To United States and Europian countries, you claim that you protect the world, help the oppressed and claim democracy. But our revolution exposed your real faces and showed humanity that you are advocates of your own interests and that you don't have a humanitarian principle in what you claim, you only raise those banners to occupy nations, inslave their people and steal their treasures just like you did in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places, and maybe soon in Mali
To the neutrals in Syria: most of the Syrian neutrals are non-Mulims like our christian brothers and druze brothers and others from other communities, my message to them, Aren't we brothers? Aren't we fighting for our joint dignity and to make a better Syria for tomorrow and the most beautiful country in the world? Aren't you suffering oppression just like us? or your saying to your selves that if those win then we'll get our freedom without sweating for it? I ask not to share the revolution gain with any party that didn't come to its aid and stood aside, otherwise join the freedom and dignity's revolution
To the Alawite community: to the grandsons of Saleh Al-Ali, Bashar is abusing you, killing you and us just to save his precious occupied place, did Bashar claimed you kings in Syria? Are you living a better lives than us? The answer is clear, maybe you live worse than millions of Syrians, you are our brothers (except for the thugs and murderers among you) please abandon the regime now and join the revolution before it's too late and believe me if you don't join the revolution you will lose alot because you have crossed all the humanitarian and religious red lines against the Syrian people - Syrian Anonymous

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Prosecution of Anonymous activists highlights war for Internet control

The US and allied governments exploit both law and cyber-attacks as a weapon to punish groups that challenge it

Whatever one thinks of WikiLeaks, it is an indisputable fact that the group has never been charged by any government with any crime, let alone convicted of one. Despite that crucial fact, WikiLeaks has been crippled by a staggering array of extra-judicial punishment imposed either directly by the US and allied governments or with their clear acquiescence.

In December 2010, after WikiLeaks began publishing US diplomatic cables, it was hit with cyber-attacks so massive that the group was "forced to change its web address after the company providing its domain name cut off service". After public demands and private pressure from US Senate Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman, Amazon then cut off all hosting services to WikiLeaks. Sophisticated cyber-attacks shortly thereafter forced the group entirely off all US website services when its California-based internet hosting provider, Everydns, terminated service, "saying it did so to prevent its other 500,000 customers of being affected by the intense cyber-attacks targeted at WikiLeaks".

Meanwhile, Chairman Lieberman's public pressure, by design, also led to the destruction of WikiLeaks' ability to collect funds from supporters. Master Card and Visa both announced they would refuse to process payments to the group, as did America's largest financial institution, Bank of America. Paypal not only did the same but froze all funds already in WikiLeaks' accounts (almost two years later, a court in Iceland ruled that a Visa payment processor violated contract law by cutting of those services). On several occasions in both 2011 and 2012, WikiLeaks was prevented from remaining online by cyber-attacks.

Over the past two years, then, this group - convicted of no crime but engaged in pathbreaking journalism that produced more scoops than all other media outlets combined and received numerous journalism awards - has been effectively prevented from functioning, receiving funds, or even maintaining a presence on US internet servers. While it's unproven what direct role the US government played in these actions, it is unquestionably clear that a top US Senator successfully pressured private corporations to cut off its finances, and more important, neither the US nor its allies have taken any steps to discover and apprehend the perpetrators of the cyber-attacks that repeatedly targeted WikiLeaks, nor did it even investigate those attacks.

The ominous implications of all this have been never been fully appreciated. Recall that all the way back in 2008, the Pentagon prepared a secret report (ultimately leaked to WikiLeaks) that decreed WikiLeaks to be a "threat to the US Army" and an enemy of the US. That report plotted tactics that "would damage and potentially destroy" its ability to function. That is exactly what came to pass.

So this was a case where the US government - through affirmative steps and/or approving acquiescence to criminal, sophisticated cyber-attacks - all but destroyed the ability of an adversarial group, convicted of no crime, to function on the internet. Who would possibly consider that power anything other than extremely disturbing? What possible political value can the internet serve, or journalism generally, if the US government, outside the confines of law, is empowered - as it did here - to cripple the operating abilities of any group which meaningfully challenges its policies and exposes its wrongdoing?

But what makes all of this even more significant is the vastly disparate treatment of those who launched far less sophisticated and damaging attacks at those corporations which complied with US demands and cut off all funding and other services to WikiLeaks. Acting in the name of Anonymous, a handful of activists targeted those companies with simple "denial of service" attacks, ones that impeded the operations of those corporate websites for a few hours.

In stark contrast to the far more significant attacks aimed at WikiLeaks, these attacks, designed to protest the treatment of WikiLeaks, spawned a global manhunt by western nations and, ultimately, the arrest of dozens of mostly young alleged hackers, four of whom are now on trial in London:

"Four activists from the hackers collective Anonymous caused multimillion-pound losses to a number of firms in revenge for the backlash against WikiLeaks, a court has heard.

"Using the name Operation Payback, the four flooded websites belonging to companies including PayPal and Ministry of Sound with messages and requests in order to bring them down. . . .The self-styled 'hactivists' caused losses worth more than £3.5m at PayPal and caused sites belonging to MasterCard and the recording industry to go offline.

"Three of the group have admitted their role in the conspiracy. Christopher Weatherhead, 22, a student at Northampton University, is on trial at Southwark crown court accused of being 'part of a small cabal of leaders' of the cyber-attacks. . . .

"The four used a free internet tool called Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) as a 'destructive cyber weapon', the court heard. 'Once downloaded, the LOIC could be used to attack by sending internet traffic to a target computer,' [the prosecutor] said. 'When the volume of traffic sent to a computer becomes too much for it to handle it would suffer a denial of service. The more LOICs used, therefore, to attack a target computer, the more likely that a denial of service will take place.'"

Last year, the FBI arrested 16 people in the US in connection with similar attacks on Master Card, Visa and Amazon, and charged them with crimes that carry 10-year prison terms.

The issue here is not whether Anonymous activists can be rightfully prosecuted: acts of civil disobedience, by definition, are violations of the law designed to protest or create a cost for injustices. The issue is how selectively these cyber-attack laws are enforced: massive cyber-attacks aimed at a group critical of US policy (WikiLeaks) were either perpetrated by the US government or retroactively sanctioned by it, while relatively trivial, largely symbolic attacks in defense of the group were punished with the harshest possible application of law enforcement resources and threats of criminal punishment.

That the US government largely succeeded in using extra-legal and extra-judicial means to cripple an adverse journalistic outlet is a truly consequential episode: nobody, regardless of one's views on WikiLeaks, should want any government to have that power. But the manifestly overzealous prosecutions of Anonymous activists, in stark contrast to the (at best) indifference to the attacks on WikiLeaks, makes all of that even worse. In line with its unprecedented persecution of whistleblowers generally, this is yet another case of the US government exploiting the force of law to entrench its own power and shield its actions from scrutiny.

Disclosure

Over the past couple months, I've been involved in discussions regarding the formation of a new organization designed to support independent journalists and groups such as WikiLeaks under attack by the US and other governments, one that would provide funding and a network for other means of support to enable them to operate. My role would be limited to unpaid board member. The group is not yet formed and my participation is only in the preliminary discussion stages, but disclosure still seems appropriate given the topic I'm writing about here. If and when this evolves further, as I hope it will, I will certainly write more on it.

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Persbericht: Cybersecuritybeleid moet slimmer en gerichter

Met slimme, gerichte maatregelen kan onze cybersecurity sterk worden verbeterd. Dat zegt Bits of Freedom samen met een brede coalitie van veiligheidsexperts en andere stakeholders. Deze coalitie presenteert vandaag een notitie over Het cybersecuritybeleid van de toekomst aan Tweede Kamerleden.

“De overheid laat zich op het gebied van cybersecurity nu nog te veel leiden door incidenten en mist echte visie op wat goed beleid is.” zegt Simone Halink van Bits of Freedom. De Tweede Kamer heeft op 6 december een algemeen overleg over het onderwerp cybersecurity in de agenda staan. Volgens de Bits of Freedom is dit het ideale moment om de discussie over goed cybersecuritybeleid een nieuwe impuls te geven.

In de notitie staan vier uitgangspunten en acht concrete maatregelen voor modern cybersecuritybeleid. “Het belangrijkste uitgangspunt van dit beleid moet zijn dat cybersecurity begint bij de basis.” zegt Halink. “Persoonlijke veiligheid moet centraal staan. De meeste veiligheidsproblemen komen door simpele kwetsbaarheden, die met simpele maatregelen kunnen worden opgelost.”

De notitie pleit verder voor meer investeringen in kennis en capaciteit op IT-gebied bij overheid en politie. “Het is belangrijk dat de politie haar werk goed kan doen. Maar daarvoor is meer kennis over het internet en digitale opsporing nodig.” aldus Halink. Verder zou de overheid het goede voorbeeld moeten geven door controle over haar eigen infrastructuur uit te kunnen oefenen, minder afhankelijk te zijn van externe partijen en internetters structureel voor te lichten over hoe zij hun eigen veiligheid kunnen verbeteren.

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We demand a fair trial for Jeremy Hammond!

This is what we know for certain surrounding the unfortunate circumstances of Jeremy Hammond’s ongoing prosecution. A time line published only days after Jeremy’s arrest suggests that Operation AntiSec was orchestrated by the FBI through the agency of cooperating witness Hector Monsegur; http://goo.gl/H1kWm. As if this were not unfortunate enough, new evidence suggests that Loretta A. Preska, the federal judge currently presiding over Jeremy’s case, has an undisclosed conflict which could potentially influence her decisions regarding Jeremy’s trial.

Loretta A. Preska is the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and a former nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Preska is married to Thomas J. Kavaler, with whom she attended law school. Information leaked from the very hack Jeremy is being prosecuted for having committed show that Thomas J. Kavaler is affiliated with Stratfor; http://archive.org/details/Stratfor. Sensitive information belonging to Kavaler was leaked along with the sensitive information of more than eight hundred thousand other Stratfor users and millions of internal emails.

We demand that Loretta A. Preska, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, recuse herself from Jeremy’s case immediately. We demand that all previous rulings made by Chief Judge Preska be dismissed. We demand an investigation into the tactics used by law enforcement officials to entrap hacktivists. We demand an investigation into the circumstances which allowed for Chief Judge Preska to preside over Jeremy’s case. We demand a fair trial for Jeremy Hammond! We will not be silent in the presence of such great injustices. If those prosecuting Jeremy deny him a voice, they will hear ours!

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http://pastebay.net/1157809

The twitter account @AnonOpsSweden has been suspended as of the 24th of November by the twitter staff. This is not the first time we've seen this kind of censorship.
We demand an explanation from the twitter staff and that the account is unsuspended immediately!

The AnonOpsSweden twitter account is a highly regarded and followed news account thus there is no valid reason for a twitter suspension
Reporting events that have taken place is not a crime. The account was not used for any criminal purposes.
If reporting the news is a crime, then all of news media would be criminals. This is a matter of free press as well as free speech.

Twitter holds the possibility for free speech, unfortunately sometimes Government and corporate interests comes before the people. Anonymous is and
always has been a strong voice for free speech globally.

The users of the account has received no information from twitter about the reason for suspension and has no possibility to defend against this action at the moment.
The hive as a community cannot and NEVER will never be silenced. If they bring one Anonymous
account down we are still going to be present and we will fight for each other.

We encourage you all to contact the people who can make this right, unsuspend @AnonOpsSweden and explain this unacceptable action.

Send a tweet to @dickc, the CEO of twitter, with the hashtag #UnsuspendAoS. Be creative, relentless and make them hear us.

Cached version of AoS acc
http://webcache.googleuse(...)&hl=sv&ct=clnk&gl=se

If you wish to temporarily change your avatar to @AnonOpsSweden in solidarity:
https://si0.twimg.com/pro(...)1d56a772be26ccf.jpeg

Petition: Please sign and spread
http://twitition.com/uvfki/

Tweetstorm info
http://lissnup.wordpress.(...)eetstorms-revisited/

Additional Info
It is more effective to write your own tweets or steal, (copy & paste) tweets than to RT in tweetstorms.
To avoid twit jail, stick to under 45 tweets per hour.
If you do not wish to use your main twitter account, set up multiple accounds and schedule tweets to send from ALL.
DO NOT attack, DDoS, deface, black fax or anything like it. Keep it to a tweetstorm! (AoS's wishes)

We are AnonOpsSweden,
We are legion,
We do not forgive,
We do not forget.
EXPECT US!

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Panopticlick

Is your browser configuration rare or unique? If so, web sites may be able to track you, even if you limit or disable cookies.

Panopticlick tests your browser to see how unique it is based on the information it will share with sites it visits. Click below and you will be given a uniqueness score, letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web.

Only anonymous data will be collected by this site.

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Anonymous hacks school board in retaliation for spying on students

Hackers say they are responsible for taking down the website of a Texas school district in retaliation for a mandatory surveillance program students are being told to comply with.

The website for San Antonio’s Northside Independent School District was unavailable at times throughout the weekend and into Monday after hacktivists claiming to be involved with the Anonymous movement waged an attack to draw attention to a controversial new program that requires students to be monitored with tiny Radio Frequency Identification (“RFID”) chips.

Through the Twitter account @RemainSilentz, one self-described participant in Anonymous confirmed that NISD.net was taken offline late Friday.

“DOWN AND OUT – Boom, track my ass like you track children you pervs,” the user wrote.

Two schools in NISD — John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School — began asking students earlier this year to carry RFID-equipped identification cards so that educators can monitor their location on school grounds. The school district says tracking students allows for more accurate attendance figures, and therefore better funding. It hasn’t been welcomed with open arms by students, however, and last week a judge had to intervene and issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the principle from Jay High from expelling sophomore Andrea Hernandez for refusing to wear a badge after the school said participation was mandatory.

“We are conditioning kids to live in a surveillance state,” John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, told RT on Friday.

Whitehead has been instrumental in helping Hernandez fight to be free from being monitored, and celebrated the issuing of a restraining order. And as more people become aware of cases like hers, he says he hopes there is a chance at holding onto our right to privacy.

“There are going to be people who are going to want to opt out, and we want to protect those people who don’t want to be part of a system that they feel violates their human dignity and their constitutional rights,” he says.

A hearing is scheduled in the coming days to consider a preliminary injunction that will prohibit NISD from making the tracking program mandatory any further, but meanwhile Anonymous has taken matters into their own hands.

“I sincerely hope you have noticed that I have took down your website for a reason, and that reason is stripping away the privacy of students in your school. What was going through your mind when you had this idea?” an Anon using the alias tr1xxyAnon wrote in a statement circulated over the weekend.

After a judge agreed to file an order blocking the expulsion of Hernandez last week, Whitehead wrote, “The court’s willingness to grant a temporary restraining order is a good first step, but there is still a long way to go—not just in this case, but dealing with the mindset, in general, that everyone needs to be monitored and controlled.”

Although only two schools in Texas ask students to use “SmartID” cards at the moment, the success of the program at John Jay and Anson Jones will determine of other facilities in NSID will soon make the badges mandatory.

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UN Agency's Leaked Playbook: Panic, Chaos over Anti-Internet Treaty

The International Telecommunications Union, the UN agency at the center of a firestorm over new efforts to regulate the Internet, is preparing a social media campaign to target what it expects will be fierce opposition to a revised telephone treaty being decided next month at a secret conference in Dubai.

That’s according to a key ITU internal planning document [link] that appeared Saturday on the website WCITLeaks, which has been posting a steady stream of documents leading up to the conference. Even as ITU officials accelerate increasingly clumsy efforts to deflect the wrath of Internet users over next month’s World Conference on International Telecommunications, more documents leaking out ahead of the meeting continue to expose the agency’s misstatements.

The WCIT conference will consider revisions to a 1988 treaty known as the International Telecommunications Regulations. At the meeting, 193 member nations consider dozens of proposed amendments, including several that would bring the Internet under ITU jurisdiction and substantially change the architecture and governance of the Internet. Other proposals would, if adopted, give countries including Russia, China, and Iran UN sanctioned-authority to monitor and censor incoming and outgoing Internet traffic under the guise of improving “security.”

The newly-leaked document is the agenda for an “ITU Senior Management Retreat” held in Geneva in September. It includes a detailed report on resistance to WCIT and the agency’s plans to counter criticism of its secretive processes. It also includes links and passwords for presentations given by outside public relations and advertising executives from leading global agencies. (The passwords were still active as of Nov. 24th.)

The document, marked “confidential,” suggests senior ITU officials have become both paranoid and panicked over growing outrage over both the form and substance of the upcoming negotiations. Material included with the agenda paints a pathetic picture of the150 year-old UN agency struggling to defend itself from attacks by what the agency believes is a “well-financed and well-organized campaign originating in the USA” whose goal is to “discredit the ITU and WCIT.”

The two-day meeting also featured leading media consultants invited to help the agency formulate a strategy to avoid the kind of global outrage that mortally wounded a secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement treaty earlier this year, and which did in copyright legislation known as SOPA and PIPA in the U.S. in January.

Both ACTA and the US copyright bills were widely expected to pass with little opposition until Internet users organized physical and virtual protests that caught lawmakers by surprise.

According to the internal ITU document, the agency had already launched what it calls a “counter-campaign”–a media blitz the agency plans to expand in light of what the ITU sees as the likely event of significant hostility to the revised treaty after the conference.

Following the WCIT meeting, the ITU says, the counter-campaign will focus on ways to “mitigate the risk” of an “intensive anti-ratification campaign in [the US and Western Europe], based on the so-called lack of openness of the WCIT process, resulting in a significant number of countries refusing to ratify the new ITRs.”


A Crisis of the ITU’s Own Making

The “so-called lack of openness” has little to do with growing outrage over WCIT. The real objections to the conference have more to do with substance than the secrecy of the negotiations. First and foremost, there is strong opposition within the US and EU delegations to expanding the UN’s jurisdiction over IP networks in any form. (The current ITRs do not extend to the Internet.)

Globally, concern is also growing over increasingly direct efforts by some national governments to hijack the conference into mandating changes to the engineering-driven, multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance that relies on non-governmental international organizations such as the Internet Society, ICANN, and the W3C. These changes are seen as preludes to future restrictions on content and users implemented through the reengineering of key resources.

In response to early proposals along these lines, Congress unanimously passed a joint resolution over the summer urging the US delegation, led by Ambassador Terry Kramer, to reject any extension of the ITU’s authority to Internet matters, or to allow ITU member states to use the conference to advance longstanding anti-Internet agendas. Last week, the EU debated a sternly-worded proposal urging its members likewise to resist Internet-related proposals.

Also last week, Google launched its own campaign, urging users to take direct action against the WCIT. “Some governments want to use a closed-door meeting in December to increase censorship and regulate the Internet,” the company said. “Some proposals could permit governments to censor legitimate speech — or even allow them to cut off Internet access.”

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http://par-anoia.net/releases.html

Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

It is time to visit Syria. We present you one gigabyte of internal government emails from the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nicely parsed and rendered for our Email Viewer. Or, if you prefer, you can download the compressed MBOX archive to import into the mail client of your choice for easy local viewing.

Within the stash you will find details about cargo flights from Russia, each containing 30 tons of fresh Syrian Cash, as ProPublica has already reported today. Furthermore you will find lulzy documents such as scanned passports from Syrian ministers (PDF) and details about arms transportation from Ukraine, as shown in our teaser here (email/txt) and here (overflight permission for Iran, PDF). Most of the material is in Arabic and we invite all arabic speakers to look through the mails for interesting documents. Feel free to contact us on IRC if you have information or questions.

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Democratic Whoopsy: Kim Jong-Un and Mohamed Morsey Lead Time’s ‘Person Of The Year’ Poll

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The Internet has a hard time taking things seriously and will happily enact silly vengeance on websites daring enough to leave important tasks up to a vote. Time’s coveted “Person of the Year” poll has been hijacked by thousands of pranksters who have voted up the not-so democratic icons, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and Egypt’s Mohamed Morsey. The up votes could be legitimate exercise in satire, punishing Time for even floating the idea of those two in a poll next to Obama and brave political dissidents. But, if Morsey–or worse, Kim–actually wins the poll, Time will have egg on its face (both Kim and Morsey have nearly twice the number of votes as 3rd place).

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LulzSec hacker faces 30 years to life

Jeremy Hammond is denied bail, placed on terrorist watch list

November 27, 2012 — CSO — Jeremy Hammond is in really big trouble. Or, perhaps, the government is just trying to "scare the (expletive) out of him," in the words of Kevin Mitnick, formerly known as the world's "most-wanted hacker" and now a security consultant.

Either way, a potential sentence of 30 years to life for alleged hacking crimes is probably enough to get the attention of most 27-year-olds. And that is what U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska told Hammond last week that he could face if he is convicted on all counts.

Hammond, much better known in the world of hactivism by various online aliases including "Anarchaos," "sup_g," "burn," "yohoho," "POW," "tylerknowsthis," and "crediblethreat," has been held without bail since his arrest in March on charges connected with last year's hacking of Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based international intelligence broker, by AntiSec, an offshoot of LulzSec, which is in turn an offshoot of the hacktivist collective Anonymous.

The three-count federal indictment, brought in the Southern District of New York, charged him with conspiracy to commit computer hacking, computer hacking and conspiracy to commit access device fraud.

More specifically, the government alleges that starting last December, Hammond and others from AntiSec stole information from about 860,000 Stratfor subscribers, including emails, account information, and data from about 60,000 credit cards. The government alleges that he published some of that information online, and used some of the stolen credit card data to run up at least $700,000 in unauthorized charges.

He is also accused of giving about five million internal emails to WikiLeaks, which were published under the name The Global Intelligence Files.

Apparently unknown to Hammond, however, was that the then-leader of AntiSec, Hector Xavier Monsegur, a New York hacker known by the alias "Sabu," had been arrested the previous June and agreed to cooperate with the FBI. So, at least some of the Stratfor information Hammond uploaded was to a honey pot server maintained by the FBI.

At a hearing last week, Hammond was denied bail, based on Judge Preska's determination that he was both a danger to the community and a flight risk. He had also recently been added to the Terrorist Watch List, said Sue Crabtree, a member of the Jeremy Hammond Solidarity Network and a spectator at his bail hearing. Crabtree said Hammond didn't even have a passport.

The bail denial sparked another round of protest from Hammond's supporters. Anonymous published a message on Pastebin demanding that Preska recuse herself for conflict of interest. The group said her husband, Thomas J. Kavaler, was among Stratfor's clients, and therefore one of the alleged victims of the hack. Kavaler is a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York City.

[See slide show: Anonymous and LulzSec - 10 greatest hits]

"Judge Preska by proxy is a victim of the very crime she intends to judge Jeremy Hammond for," Anonymous wrote in a message posted last Friday. "Judge Preska has failed to disclose the fact that her husband is a client of Stratfor and recuse herself from Jeremy's case, therefore violating multiple Sections of Title 28 of the United States Code."

Beyond that, a writer identified only as "NA" on the website FreeHammond.com, argued that "Hacktivists are not criminals! Jeremy is alleged of a crime that has exposed the corruption and exploitation of the very State prosecuting him," and suggested entrapment by the FBI as well.

"A time line published only days after Jeremy's arrest suggests that Operation AntiSec [the Stratfor hack] was orchestrated by the FBI through the agency of FBI informant Hector Monsegur," NA wrote.

Hammond himself, in a posting last July on YourAnonNews, claimed that "even the warden of MCC New York has in surprising honesty admitted that, 'the only difference between us officers here and you prisoners is we just haven't been caught.' The(y) call us robbers and fraudsters when the big banks get billion dollar bailouts and kick us out of our homes ... And they call us cyber criminals when they themselves develop viruses to spy on and wage war against infrastructure and populations in other countries."

Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser at Sophos, said while he is no legal expert, he thinks the Hammond supporters have a valid point about a possible conflict of interest for Judge Preska, although he thinks the claim that hacktivists are, by definition, not criminals is absurd. But he also said the potential sentence looks to be out of proportion to the crime.

"If you physically broke into Stratfor and stole all of that information, you'd get 90 days maybe," he said. "But when it becomes a computer crime, suddenly it goes way up. I don't understand why electronic crimes are getting so much longer sentences than physical crimes."

Kevin Mitnick, noting that the crimes with which he was charged during his hacking career could have brought 400 years in prison, said he expects Hammond's case will be settled by a plea agreement for much less than the possible maximum.

"But what concerns me is even if they drop some counts, the sentence for most federal crimes can range from 10 to 20 years," he said. "How they come up with 30 years to life is beyond me."

Mitnick said it is possible that the government is trying to scare Hammond to get him to cooperate. Or, it could be designed to send a message to Anonymous members that what they view as sticking it to the man could yield some very serious consequences.

Wisniewski said that while the vast majority of those affiliated with Anonymous are not skilled, the members of Lulzsec generally were. "They were talented, and then they got busted," he said. "So, the average Joe is saying, 'Look what happened. Maybe I shoud get out of this."

Hammond is scheduled to go to trial sometime next year.

Read more about malware/cybercrime in CSOonline's Malware/Cybercrime section.

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Geek Researcher Spends Three Years Living With Hackers

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When you’re starting off as an anthropologist, you aim is to explore a subculture your peers have yet to uncover, spending years living with the locals and learning their ways.

That’s what Gabriella Coleman did. She went to San Francisco and lived with the hackers.

Coleman, an anthropologist who teaches at McGill University, spent three years living in the Bay Area, studying the community that builds the Debian Linux open source operating system and other hackers — i.e., people who pride themselves on finding new ways to reinvent software. More recently, she’s been peeling away the onion that is the Anonymous movement, a group that hacks as a means of protest — and mischief.

When she moved to San Francisco, she volunteered with the Electronic Frontier Foundation — she believed, correctly, that having an eff.org address would make people more willing to talk to her — and started making the scene. She talked free software over Chinese food at the Bay Area Linux User Group’s monthly meetings upstairs at San Francisco’s Four Seas Restaurant. She marched with geeks demanding the release of Adobe eBooks hacker Dmitry Sklyarov. She learned the culture inside-out.

Now, she’s written a book on her experiences: Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. It’s a scholarly work of anthropology that examines the question: What does it mean to be a hacker?

Earlier this month, she dropped by Wired’s offices to talk about the book. Here’s an edited transcript of the conversation: