Anonops #16: Snowden leaked it all, who is next?

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PayPal freezes account of email encryption startup ProtonMail

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ProtonMail was supposed to be an easy email encryption tool that would finally give us an answer to Internet surveillance around the world.

Instead, PayPal has frozen over $275,000 in donations to the project because, a PayPal representative told the company, the American payment service is not sure if ProtonMail is legal.

Of course, it is absolutely legal to encrypt email. The freeze remains in place.

Most incredible of all, the PayPal representative was unsure if ProtonMail has the necessary government approval to encrypt emails, as though anyone who encrypts needs a license to do so.

ProtonMail doesn’t need government approval, by the way, but it has it anyway. The encryption used by ProtonMail has been unquestionably legal since the 1990s. If that’s not enough, the Constitution’s First Amendment protects encryption code and its Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable searches, exactly what encryption protects against.

“At this time, it is not possible for ProtonMail to receive or send funds through PayPal,” ProtonMail co-founder Andy Yen announced this morning. “No attempt was made by PayPal to contact us before freezing our account, and no notice was given.”

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Anonymous vows to unleash its 'wrath' on U.S. lawmakers over cybersecurity bill

A threat by the hacktivist group Anonymous over a new cybersecurity bill scheduled for committee markup next month is being taken seriously by the Washington D.C. capitol police.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 (CISA), authored by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), is being labelled by many constitutional groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as the third installment of a much-despised piece of Internet legislation widely known as CISPA.

CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, was a hugely unpopular bill that has twice been dropped by the U.S. Senate. As a law, it would have permitted the U.S. government to share sensitive information with companies about the online habits of U.S. citizens, specifically, when deemed necessary to protect against rather ambiguously defined “cyber threats.”

Opponents of CISPA, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future, successfully derailed CISPA by painting it as a danger to American civil liberties. The bill, critics said, would have allowed the federal government too broad authority when it came to tracking users’ online activities.

Like its predecessor, CISA also allows the federal government to share information perceived as “cyber threats” with private companies. The recipients would also have considerable latitude when it comes to sharing the information with law enforcement agencies. Companies would enjoy extensive liability protection for information they share with the government as well, which means customers who feel their rights have been violated may have little or no legal recourse.

“It has come to our attention that Congress is planning to pass a bill that will jeopardize privacy and personal security across all forms of media,” Anonymous’ message against CISA supporters began. “We would like to inform you that despite our direct and crippling attacks on former cybersecurity bills like SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA, there is yet a new threat.”

Anonymous: #OpCISA (Operation Defense)

What likely caught the attention of law enforcement wasn’t the theatrics typical of Anonymous videos, but a threat expressed later in the message: “Our legion's wrath will fall on each senator, representative, corporation, and official who voices support for this bill… If you value the sanctity of your loved ones as well as your own, it will be best for you to back down and drop this bill where it belongs.”

Capitol police, charged with the protection of U.S. senators and congressmen, became aware of Anonymous’ response to the bill on Monday, but said their policy is not to comment on any security protocols or investigations that may be taking place in response to threats.

Sens. Feinstein and Chambliss could not be immediately reached for comment.

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Operation Syria Aid: #SaveAtarebHospital

Greetings citizens, we are Anonymous.

We bring you this message as a matter of life or death for over half a million people.
A vital hospital in a war zone will be shut down in less than 3 weeks.
We need to buy the hospital enough time until a large sponsor can pick it up.

As you may be aware the turmoil in the Middle East has significantly increased in the last few years. In Syria, over 100,000 people have been killed in the revolution that has engulfed the nation. The great majority of these deaths are civilian casualties caught in the middle of the fighting. Many have been deliberately slaughtered by rogue rebels, terrorists, or by the Assad regime's air raid campaigns on civilian populations as a form of collective punishment. Despite the many ways to die in Syria the most common is a direct result of the lack of medical attention and hospitals in many areas. What would be commonly a minor injury can very rapidly turn lethal.

To many outside the region the situation appears hopeless and it is hard to find an effective way to help but one hospital has stood out. According to the UK charity 'Hand in Hand for Syria', "the hospital is located just 30 km from Aleppo, one of the hardest-hit areas of Syria." "The hospital became famous when it was featured in the BBC Panorama programme Saving Syria’s Children in September 2013, linked here: (

BBC Panorama 2013 Saving Syrias Children - War Documentary 2014

),after the hospital received casualties from a thermal-bomb attack on a local school where many innocent children, teachers, parents were severely hurt. Had the hospital not been there, dozens of school children would have perished from their wounds and infections from minor injuries as they do in other areas across Syria without hospitals.

We can't promise you that we can save everybody or provide aid to everyone throughout Syria. What we can tell you is that in the Aleppo area, Atareb hospital and all of it's heroic staff are trying their best to help as many people as they can. Day and night this hospital stands as a beacon of hope for over 500,000 people. According to the UK charity 'Hand in Hand for Syria',"When we first opened the hospital in May 2013, it was just a small A&E unit. We’ve grown it very successfully since then, and it now offers 68 beds and a wide range of services – from maternity and neo-natal facilities to many outpatient departments, three excellent operating theatres and a laboratory. It cares not only for those injured in the conflict but also non-conflict-related conditions such as cancer, heart disease, asthma and diabetes. It even has a dialysis unit. It provides FREE healthcare to anyone, regardless or political or faith affiliation."


From 'Hand in Hand for Syria':

Why is it closing?
The hospital’s funding comes from a European donor which supports global emergency response. This funding reaches Hand in Hand for Syria via an INGO partner. Although that funding is still very much in place, after one year our agreement with our INGO partner has come to an end – and the funding has to come through a partner.

Can’t we find another partner?
Despite the tireless efforts of our trustees and medical team, we have not been able to secure a replacement partner for Atareb Hospital. Because of the very particular situation in Syria, there are difficulties and risks for INGOs when it comes to delivering services there — difficulties which we, as a smaller, independent aid agency, face to a far lesser extent, but which we understand and respect. Only the last-minute intervention of a new partner can save Atareb Hospital now, and we welcome all enquiries from any INGO who may wish to become a partner in the project.

What will the impact of closure be?
One of the very few remaining kidney dialysis units left in northern Syria will shut. Essential and emergency maternity and neo-natal health services will no longer be available. Three excellent operating theatres will remain empty, instantly ending the 282 life-saving operations carried out there each month. 32,000 injured people a year will have no access to emergency care. 25,000 outpatient clinic appointments will be lost. The laboratory will close. Specialist departments including orthopaedics, ophthalmology, gynaecology, neurology, and many more will also shut. The hospital’s 98 staff will be left with no income, no longer able to support a further 400 family members between them."

In the last month 'Hand in Hand 4 Syria' has managed to recieve enough emergency funds to keep Atareb Hospital open for another 4 weeks. However it is still under threat of closure at the end of July 2014. The fate of over 500,000 people is in our hands; it is up to you and I to insure this hospital does not shut down. If it shuts down we can promise you many people will die from completely preventable deseases and treatable injuries.

What can you do to help?

Information blitzkrieg: Anonymous will release a copy of the information/ tweet blitzkrieg with instructions on Saturday July 5th at 6PM EST, you will help us spread awareness to millions of people.

Meanwhile you do the following:

Tell everyone you know, lobby hard and get everyone talking!
Take part in the #SaveAtarebHospital selfie campaign. http://www.handinhandfors(...)sthash.ktWqstPN.dpuf
Donate to help buy the hospital precious time, with your donations it can remain open while we find a permanant parthner: https://www.justgiving.com/HIHS-Atareb-Hospital/


We are Anonymous.
We are everywhere.
We are legion.
We are those you have left without a home.
We are those you have murdered.
We are voiceless no more.
The world will change. We'll change it.

Corporate Tyrants of the World,
Expect Us!




Join us. Help keep Atareb hospital open until a new partner for the project can be found.
The closing down of Atareb hospital will be a massive loss to the half a million people it serves.

Operation: Save Atareb Hospital
Hashtag: #OpSyriaAid. #SaveAtarebHospital
Location: Aleppo, Syria: https://www.google.com/ma(...)ia&source=newuser-ws
Anonymous Contact: @OpSyriaAid
Hospital Contact: @hands4Syr

#SaveAtarebHospital #OpSyriaAid

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Alleged Anonymous hacker Matt DeHart put on suicide watch and his refugee hearing postponed

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TORONTO — A fellow prisoner gave Matt DeHart a haircut, his first since his April arrest, in preparation for his refugee hearing scheduled to start Tuesday, during which the former U.S. airman was to officially chronicle his claims — of helping Anonymous hacktivists, his aborted attempt to defect to Russia and his subsequent torture at the hands of U.S. jailers — in his unusual bid for asylum in Canada.

But the buoyancy of his mood snapped.

Instead of appearing before a Toronto refugee tribunal Tuesday he was confined in a suicide watch cell after returning to jail from hospital, where he was treated after another suicide attempt.

“Makes me think something happened to him at the jail,” Mr. DeHart’s father, Paul, told the National Post. “A suicide attempt at this point makes no sense since we were all ready to appear and finally make our refugee appeal.”

He said his son was removed Thursday without notice from an immigration holding wing at Central East Correctional Centre, near Peterborough, Ont., and taken to Toronto East Detention Centre, where he was placed in general population.

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While his story seems incredible, a five-part National Post investigation [link op de site] published in May revealed there is some truth behind some of the claims and many puzzling questions about what took place.

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Norway’s financial sector under massive cyber attack, Anonymous claims ‘responsibility’

Norway’s top financial institutions came under massive cyber attacks on Tuesday. Anonymous Norway appears to be behind this attack.

The attack on Norway’s top financial institutions/banks, such as Danske Bank, Norges Bank, Sparebank and renowned insurance agencies Gjensidige and Storebrand had their services disrupted. Other than banks, a telecom company and three national airlines also came under attack.

In an interview with Dagens Næringsliv business newspaper, Evry’s security team said: “The scale is not the largest we have seen, but it is the first time it has hit so many central players in the finance sector in Norway.” Evry provides IT services to some of the companies affected by the cyber attack.

It appears that hackers used a critical vulnerability in WordPress platform to conduct this attack. However, they weren’t able to hack or takeaway personal information of any user, it added. The investigation shows the source of these attacks was outside Norway, Evry said.

According to one of the biggest Anonymous News Twitter handle, Anonymous Norway claimed responsibility of this attack.

anonymous-ddos-norway-banks [link]

However, in below mentioned tweet you can see Anonymous Norway denying their involvement in this attack.



At the moment it is not clear who was behind these attacks, but one thing is certain that the attack was massive and disrupted many high profile Norwegian websites.

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YourAnonCentral twitterde op zondag 13-07-2014 om 13:49:30 Hackers from around the world are attacking #Israel sites under the #OpSaveGaza banner. #Anonymous #GazaUnderAttack #Gaza via @Op_Israel reageer retweet

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EXCLUSIVE: The Counterinsurgency War on—and Inside—Our Borders

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The Mexican police helicopter that flew into Arizona last month and fired shots near U.S. Border Patrol agents was no fluke—such incursions have become so frequent they amount to an internationalized shooting war along our southern border.

It’s not just Mexican police helicopters; Mexican military aircraft entered U.S. territory 49 times from 2010 through 2012. That’s according to a Customs and Border Protection list acquired through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by WhoWhatWhy.

Along with other documents obtained independently by WikiLeaks, the recent incidents confirm that the U.S. has been taking a full-bore counterinsurgency approach to the border drug war. The possibility that was happening is something we told you about earlier.

Official statements and media reports about the Arizona incident have not come close to explaining the real significance of such cross-border operations. The facts are now clear: the Pentagon’s push to use counterinsurgency tactics against drug traffickers is giving Mexican armed forces the leeway to operate in the airspace above U.S. territory.

***

Specific Mexican military helicopter incursions and near-incursions are detailed in intelligence reports obtained by WikiLeaks and assessed by WhoWhatWhy. The reports were created by the Border Security Operations Center, an Austin nerve center run by the Texas state police that oversees hundreds of intelligence analysts and manages untold surveillance cameras. The reports came to WikiLeaks after hackers broke into the servers of private intelligence firm Stratfor, which got the documents from its sources.

These revelations about the extent of the cross-border war on drugs are the latest fruit of our investigative partnership with WikiLeaks to carefully assess selected documents from its vast trove. (Take a look at our earlier collaborations with the whistleblower group here and here.)

The Rio Grande Firefight

As the Pentagon faces sequestration funding cuts and a fighting force exhausted from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is relying more and more on foreign armed forces, police and private contractors like Stratfor.

The close cooperation between U.S. and Mexican forces against drug traffickers follows from modern counterinsurgency strategy, which dictates that police should function like soldiers when necessary to deny funds to whichever rebels—or drug cartels—are out of favor.

This approach is on display in part of a report published by the Austin center on May 6, 2011. The document is marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive.” This means it was intended for law enforcement eyes only, according to intelligence analyst Kendra Miller. She was a contact point for those seeking access to the reports. [Email-ID 1966867, May 9, 2011]

The document describes a firefight about 30 miles from McAllen, Texas, during which a police chopper from that state provided targeting assistance to the Mexican military as an alleged drug smuggler was killed. It includes this photograph of a Mexican Air Force chopper flying above the Rio Grande:

CaptureThis apparent incursion, or near-incursion, was not included on the Customs and Border Protection list we obtained in response to our Freedom of Information request – indicating that Mexican military operations along the U.S. border are even more numerous than the FOIA document suggests.

It’s not clear if that Mexican chopper flew into U.S. airspace. But there’s no doubt the Americans took part in the gun battle, because the Texas state police helicopter guided the Mexican chopper and ground forces to the suspects, including one who was hiding in the brush.

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Lawyers blocked our Black hat demo on de-anonymising Tor

Shelved Black Hat presentation would have explained why you don't have to be the NSA to break Tor

The Tor network promises online privacy by routing users' internet traffic through a number of servers – or layers – while encrypting data.

The surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden is known to have used Tor to maintain his privacy, while the documents he leaked showed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) struggled to uncover identities of those on the network.

However, a presentation promising to detail flaws in the anonymising network has been cancelled, organisers of a major hacker conference have confirmed.

The talk, called "You don't have to be the NSA to break Tor: de-anonymising users on a budget", was due to be delivered by the Carnegie Mellon researchers Alexander Volynkin and Michael McCord, but a notice on the Black Hat conference website said lawyers from the university had stepped in.

The counsel for Carnegie Mellon said that neither the university nor its Software Engineering Institute (SEI), had given approval for public disclosure of the material set to be detailed by Volynkin and McCord, according to the Black Hat organisers.

Their talk was one of the most anticipated sessions at this year’s conference, which starts on 2 August in Las Vegas. They promised to explain how anyone with $3,000 could de-anonymise users of Tor.

Details on the presentation, which have now been removed from the Black Hat site, suggested that a determined hacker could “de-anonymise hundreds of thousands Tor clients and thousands of hidden services within a couple of months”.

Besides individual users, there are numerous criminal websites making use of Tor, including sites offering hitman services and illegal drugs, even though the most prominent example, Silk Road, was shut down in 2013.

Organisers from the Tor Project said they were working with the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) at Carnegie Mellon, which is sponsored by the US Department of Homeland Security, to release information on the problems identified by the researchers.

“We did not ask Black Hat or CERT to cancel the talk. We did (and still do) have questions for the presenter and for CERT about some aspects of the research, but we had no idea the talk would be pulled before the announcement was made,” said Tor Project president Roger Dingledine.

“We never received slides or any description of what would be presented in the talk itself beyond what was available on the Black Hat webpage. Researchers who have told us about bugs in the past have found us pretty helpful in fixing issues, and generally positive to work with.”

Carnegie Mellon had not responded to a request for comment by the Guardian at the time of publication.

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Russia offers 3.9m roubles for 'research to identify users of Tor'

Analysts say tender for research on service that anonymises browsing sends signal to online community amid crackdown on Russian internet

Russia's interior ministry has offered up to 3.9m roubles (£65,000) for research on identifying the users of the anonymous browsing network Tor, raising questions of online freedom amid a broader crackdown on the Russian internet.

The interior ministry's special technology and communications group published a tender earlier this month on the government procurement website offering the sum for "research work, Tor cipher".

Before changes to the tender were published on Friday, numerous news outlets reported that it originally sought "research work on the possibility to obtain technical information about users (user equipment) of the anonymous network Tor".

According to Andrei Soldatov, an expert on surveillance and security services, the interior ministry might be exploring possible ways to restrict Tor. But the fact that the tender was publicly announced meant that those seeking greater government control of the internet had defined their next target and were sending "yet another signal" to the online community, he argued.

"It's not important if the Russian government is able to block Tor or not," Soldatov said. "The importance is that they're sending signals that they are watching this. People will start to be more cautious."

The interior ministry refused to comment on Friday afternoon.

Originally developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory as an "onion routing project", Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows users to hide the source and destination of their internet browsing and keeps websites from tracking them. It is often used by whistleblowers and residents of countries where the authorities restrict access to the internet, but has also been known to be used for criminal activity. A famous example was the Tor-based online market Silk Road, which was known as an "eBay for drugs" before the FBI shut it down in 2013.

Although many news outlets reported on the recent tender as a reward for "cracking Tor", internet security experts doubted Tor could be successfully decrypted, let alone for a mere 3.9m roubles.

Of all countries, the fifth largest contingent of Tor users come from Russia, where the network's popularity more than doubled in June, going from about 80,000 directly connecting users to more than 210,000. The growth followed a "bloggers law" – signed by the president, Vladimir Putin, in May – requiring any site with more than 3,000 visitors daily to register with the government. Media experts argued that the legislation would stifle opposition voices and restrict government criticism on the internet.

The move was part of a wider campaign to regulate the internet which saw the authorities block three major opposition news sites as well as the blog of anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny in March. Users located in Russia can now only access the news sites through anonymising services such as Tor.

This week, Putin signed a law requiring internet companies to store Russian user data in-country, where intelligence services enjoy sweeping access to electronic information through telecoms companies. Critics worry that websites such as Facebook and Twitter, which the opposition used to organise a string of huge rallies in 2011-2013, would be forced to stop operating in Russia when it comes into effect in 2016.

Unlike the Chinese system of internet censorship, which directly blocks websites such as Google, the Russian one is built on intimidation so that users "themselves become more cautious, and internet companies think up ways to block certain sites," Soldatov said.

But blogger, journalist and web entrepreneur Anton Nosik doubted that the Tor research tender would have any effect, arguing that the interior ministry was not a serious player among the various government agencies surveilling the internet but was now "trying to make a name for itself".

"The only significance [of the tender] is the money being paid and the PR surrounding it, showing that the ministry of interior is seriously working on issues of anonymising technology, so that everybody's talking about it. And everybody is talking about it," Nosik said.

More worrying, Nosik said, was leading communications provider Rostelecom's investment in Deep Packet Inspection technology that would filter web traffic based on its content rather than its source. This would severely reduce users' anonymity on the web, although Tor should be able to somewhat limit DPI capabilities, Nosik said.

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Politie gebruikt mogelijk omstreden spionagesoftware

Digitale activisten hebben een Duits-Brits bedrijf gehackt dat geheime spionagesoftware aan overheden en opsporingsautoriteiten verkoopt. De Nederlandse politie lijkt ook tot de klanten te behoren.

Gisteren verscheen op internet een enorme berg aan technische en klanteninformatie van het bedrijf Gamma International. Dat is de maker van FinFisher, een softwareprogramma waarmee computers kunnen worden geïnfecteerd om op afstand bestanden te kopiëren, beeldschermkopieën te maken en toetsaanslagen te registreren. Spionagesoftware dus, die alleen wordt verkocht aan overheden.

De hack is een grote overwinning voor burgerrechtenactivisten. FinFisher werd onder meer door de overheid van Bahrein gebruikt om de computers van dissidenten te bespioneren gedurende de Arabische Lente. Sindsdien liggen het programma en het bedrijf onder vuur. Er wordt onder meer gepleit voor exportregels voor dergelijke software.

Politie mogelijk ook klant
Ook de Nederlandse politie lijkt gebruik te maken van het programma. In de gehackte klantenbestanden werd een versleutelingscode gevonden die toebehoort aan een lid van de Nationale Eenheid, de landelijke politie in Driebergen. De match werd gevonden door de Nederlandse hacker Jurre van Bergen, die zich met andere digitale experts op de geopenbaarde informatie had gestort.

Vervolgens werd duidelijk dat deze klant, waarschijnlijk de Nederlandse politie dus, gebruik maakt van drie van Gamma's softwareprogramma's. De licentie zou lopen van 2012 tot 2015.

In Nederland is het op afstand hacken en overnemen van verdachte computers door de politie niet toegestaan. Er is een nieuwe wet in de maak (Wet Computercriminaliteit III), die daar verandering in moet brengen.

Wob-verzoek
'Het is raar dat de politie die producten nu al in gebruik heeft', zegt Rejo Zenger van digitale burgerrechtenorganisatie Bits of Freedom. 'Bovendien hebben ze dat altijd verzwegen.' Zenger diende in 2012 een Wob-verzoek in om te vragen naar het gebruik van spyware. Toen kreeg hij als antwoord dat er geen documenten over waren gevonden.

Een woordvoerder van het ministerie van Veiligheid en Justitie benadrukt dat het gebruik van spyware onder voorwaarden al is toegestaan. Dan gaat het om de installatie van deze software ter plekke, niet om het van afstand overnemen (en live volgen) van de activiteiten op de computer.

twitter:

AnonymousGlobo twitterde op vrijdag 08-08-2014 om 21:33:34 FinFinsher leaked: http://q7hglakwm35gxwii.onion/ Take care, information is contagious. #AntiSec reageer retweet

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Here Are the Emergency Dispatch Calls From the Day Michael Brown Died

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True to their word, the activists of Anonymous' #OPFerguson have released two hours of raw audio from police and EMS dispatch calls on August 9, the day 18-year-old unarmed Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

In the interest of public transparency, we're posting the audio here before we've had a chance to go through all of it. Please consider helping us transcribe it or flagging significant events on the audio timeline for fellow readers in the comments below. We'll be updating and adding background along the way.

Note: This is not an exhaustive record of calls from that day. This particular file covers St. Louis County's dispatch; additional city of Ferguson police calls, which may offer more extensive information, have yet to be released.

Here is additional context provided by Anonymous, much of it confirmed by your contributions in the comments below:

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Anonymous account suspended from Twitter after naming wrong police officer in Michael Brown shooting

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Hacktivist collective Anonymous had a Twitter account suspended today after they named the wrong police officer in the Michael Brown cop shooting.

Police told NBC that the person who Anonymous had named online is a dispatcher and was not involved in the Ferguson shooting on Saturday.

In a comment today to MailOnline, a Twitter spokesperson said: 'We do not comment on individual accounts, for privacy an security reasons.'

Twitter rules state: 'You may not publish or post other people's private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.'

Anonymous was now tweeting about Ferguson under a secondary account, @TheAnonMessage2.

On Wednesday, the hackers apparently released St Louis police dispatch tapes which reveal further details surrounding the cop shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.

The computer hackers' collective posted two hours of the 911 calls online.

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The release of the dispatch tapes comes after Anonymous earlier threatened to launch an online attack on police departments over alleged brutality in the killing of the teenager.

Police have cracked down hard on demonstrators in Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis, who took to the streets after the 18-year-old was shot dead.

Despite calls for calm, officers fired tear gas and shot at least one person in a third night of rioting in the area on Tuesday. Police claimed the man shot had pulled a handgun on an officer.

As police tried to put the area on lock-down, messages posted on a newly-established Twitter account called Operation Ferguson, which appeared to be linked to Anonymous, announced: 'We have a deep source, and we have a name we BELIEVE to be the shooter [of Michael Brown]. It does NOT match any of the names being floated.

'We have our best operatives working as hard as they can to verify the leak on the shooter we were passed. PLEASE be patient.

'When we release the name of Mike Brown's killer, it will be in an unequivocal statement released through this Twitter account. No games.'

A little later another message suggested that the operation was proving more difficult than anticipated.

'To my fellow Anons, everyone remain chill,' it read. 'I realize this is an intense Op, and we are all trying our best. Let's fight cops not each other.'

There has been anger from the teenager's parents and their supporters after the Ferguson Police Department decided not to publish the name of the officer who shot their son.

At a rally in Ferguson on Tuesday, his mother, Lesley McSpadden, told the policeman who fired the shots: 'You take your punishment. If you were a man you'd stand up, you'd be a man, you would say you was wrong.'

Police have not disclosed the race of the officer, but witnesses said he was white.

The Ferguson police force has 53 officers, three of whom are black. About two-thirds of Ferguson's population of about 21,000 are black, according to U.S. Census figures.

In a video posted on Sunday night, a self-declared spokesman for Anonymous warned Missouri police 'we are watching you very closely'.

'If you abuse, harass or harm in any way the protesters in Ferguson we will take every web-based asset of your departments and governments offline,' said a disguised voice, speaking over news footage of protests.

'That's not a threat, it is a promise.'

In the video and a press release posted to the Pastebin website, the video says Anonymous will 'attack ever server and computer' belonging to the police departments involved, as well as 'release the personal information on every single member of the Ferguson Police Department, as well as any other jurisdiction that participates in the abuse.'

Anonymous - #OpFerguson

Anonymous releases video message to...

Anonymous Releases Police Recordings From Day of Ferguson Shooting!

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Which Linux distro is best for protecting your privacy?

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Among other things here at Linux Format we are also a bit clairvoyant. We decided that it was the right moment to look at 'anonymous' Linux distributions many weeks before mainstream media started discussing PRISM.

Of course, even if nothing like that existed, there would still be many good reasons to protect at least part of what you want or need to do online: the examples go from whistle-blowing to home banking or super-invasive advertising. In all these cases, proper configuration of (at least!) the tools you use for web surfing, email, instant messaging and file sharing is crucial.

Linux 'anonymous' distros are designed to help in just these kinds of situations. As a minimum, these systems are pre-configured to make it easier to surf the web without telling everybody in clear text where, or who, you really are.

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Hackers Will Leak Syrian Stock Exchange Database Unless Assad Tackles ISIS

A group of hackers took down the website of Syria's only stock exchange this afternoon and are threatening to leak the exchange's database unless president Bashar al-Assad takes military action against the Islamic State.

The group, called Project Viridium, says that over the last several weeks, it has infected several Islamic State operatives' computers and have provided the Assad government with information about their whereabouts.

Earlier today, the group tweeted that it had successfully taken down the Damascus Securities Exchange. At the time of this writing, the exchange's website is still inaccessible, due to what appears to be a fairly common DoS (Denial of Service) attack.

A member of the group confirmed to me on Twitter that the site was taken down with a DoS attack, but said that the group had also gained access to the exchange's servers and databases.

Project Viridium says it's ready to release the exchange's database, which would include financial information and user login credentials, if Assad doesn't take action against the terrorist group.

"We have many members pwned," the hacker told me. "Soon to come, we'll post that."

About a half hour after taking down the stock exchange, Project Viridium published the following statement on DOXBIN, which you can gain access to with the Tor browser (message posted as it was written):

Statement regarding DSE DDoS/Hack:

First, let me introduce my(our)self. We are ProjectViridium (yes like the pokemon). We have fought silently for the last 4-6 years against blackhats and scammers. Only recently did we decide to start targeting Terrorist groups. We have been gathering inteligence on ISIS members for about 2 weeks now. So far we have 15 caged (i.e malware on pc/equiv) and about 40 prospects (not yet pwned, waiting). Our general goal is to make a dint, however big or small in the world of terror.

Why did we target syria exchange?
k, first. anonymous, you didnt ddos it fuck off and go play minecraft. Second, we did this attack in retaliation for Syrian/Assad regime ignoring our reports of ISIS member locations (1 member is exactly 3.4km from a fucking police station). The evidence of ISIS members location in this specific case is gathered without use of ANY malware, hacking or anything of the such. Adding that before someone mentions how assad cant act cause
evidence is from hacking (like he'd give a fuck)

Stay tuned.
-PV

twitter:

The_MattGreen twitterde op zondag 31-08-2014 om 07:23:53 #Anonymous has begun #OpIceISIS, a new cyber operation to combat #ISIS digitally as violence continues to spread through Iraq and Syria. reageer retweet

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Top South America hackers rattle Peru's Cabinet

LIMA, Peru (AP) — The Peruvian hackers have broken into military, police, and other sensitive government networks in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela and Peru, defacing websites and extracting sensitive data to strut their programming prowess and make political points.

Their latest stunt may be their most consequential.

Emails that the LulzSecPeru hackers stole from the Peruvian Council of Ministers' network and dumped online last month fueled accusations that top Cabinet ministers have acted more like industry lobbyists than public servants. They helped precipitate a no-confidence vote last week that the Cabinet barely survived.

The hackers are a compact, homegrown version of the U.S. and U.K-based LulzSec "black hat" hacker collective that grew out of the Anonymous movement, which has variously attacked the Church of Scientology and agitated on behalf of the WikiLeaks online secret-spillers and Occupy Wall Street.

A lot of "hacktivism" out of the United States and western Europe has waned or been driven underground after police pressure and arrests, said Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, who has studied the phenomenon.

"The hackers in Latin America, however, never really stopped," Coleman said.

Of them, LulzSecPeru is widely considered the region's most skillful and accomplished hacktivist team, said Camilo Galdos, a Peruvian digital security expert, their signature exploit hijacking the Twitter accounts of Venezuela's president and ruling socialist party during elections last year.

"Happy Hunting!" the LulzSecPeru hackers — they say they are two young men — wrote last month when they dumped online the estimated 3,500 emails of then-Prime Minister Rene Cornejo, dating from February to July.

Cornejo told reporters: "The concern isn't so much for the information to be found there but for the fact that privacy was violated." His successor, Ana Jara, said some of the purloined emails may have concerned matters of "national defense."

But what reporters found instead was evidence of the inside influence of Peru's fishing and oil industry lobbies, putting the country's energy and finance ministers in the hot seat.

In one missive, a fishing industry executive asks the finance minister if the anchoveta season can be extended. She later gets her wish.

The energy minister, in a testy email exchange, impatiently dismisses objections by the environment minister to his coziness with an Australian oil company with offshore concessions. Oil industry technicians — not regulators — are best qualified to deem whether environmental impact studies are necessary for exploratory seismic testing, he says.

The "CornejoLeaks" spectacle, as the press dubbed it, delighted the hackers.

"We're mixed up in everything," one of the duo, who goes by the nickname Cyber-Rat, boasted in an encrypted online chat with The Associated Press into which he had tunneled, hiding his digital tracks. "There is no limit to the hacking."

Cyber-Rat says he's 17 and will quit before becoming an adult to avoid landing in prison. He handles the social networking, cultivates the Anonymous activists who help publicize LulzSecPeru's hacks and admits to "a tendency toward narcissism." His partner goes by Desh501, says he is between 19 and 23 and a university student.

Desh is the technical whiz, and more reserved.

"I'm very private. I don't have hacker friends in person, only virtually," Desh types.

Both say they are autodidacts. Cyber-Rat says he started programming at age 8; Desh at age 6.

Cyber-Rat says their hacking is not really ideologically driven.

"It's a quest for (the) ecstasy of doing something unprecedented," he said, of shaming administrators who claim their networks are bulletproof.

Their actions don't always mesh with that claim, however.

Desh said he is motivated by objections to "1. the abuse of power. 2. the lack of transparency."

Some of their hacks are clearly political. They defaced the website of the Peru-based Antamina copper mine in 2012 after the multinational consortium's slurry pipeline burst, sickening dozens. Rat's idea, said Desh.

And they defaced the Venezuelan ruling party's website again in February in support of anti-government protesters, entering through one of the backdoors they say they secretly leave in networks they penetrate.

Desh said they also retain access to the Chilean Air Force network, from which they removed and dumped online last month sensitive documents on arms purchases. They called it payback for Chile's spying on Peru's air force in a case uncovered in 2009.

The hackers, who have 30,200 Twitter followers, say they neither enrich themselves nor do damage with their exploits.

But many believe LulzSecPeru did do harm in accessing the network of the company that manages Peru's top-level domain. In October 2012, it dumped online a database of thousands of names, phone numbers, email addresses and passwords of affected sites included banks, security companies, Google — every domain ending with ".pe"

Desh said Rat did so without consulting him. "I almost killed him that day."

A company representative and leading Peruvian Internet activist, Erick Iriarte, said the hack occurred well before the upload and customers were notified in time to change their passwords. Desh confirmed that the break-in occurred six weeks before the upload.

Across Latin America, government-run networks are generally regarded by state workers as insecure and untrustworthy. A surprising number of senior officials use private email services instead.

Peruvian authorities call LulzSecPeru "cyber-pirates" and say they could face up to eight years in prison under Peru's new computer crimes statute.

But they first must be caught, and independent security experts say Peru's cyberpolice are badly outmatched. LulzSecPeru's first claim to fame was penetrating the Peruvian cyberpolice network in early 2012. It claims it still has hidden backdoor access.

The unit's commander, Col. Carlos Salvatierra, called such criticism unfounded. He would not discuss details of the LulzSecPeru investigation but said it includes "permanent coordination" with other affected governments and has been ongoing for months.

LulzSec as a moniker fuses 'lulz' — which derives from LOL (laughing out loud) and evokes in part the mischievous bliss of hackers who expose sloppy security ('sec'). And there is little greater 'lulz' for the pair than mocking Roberto Puyo, technology chief for Peru's Council of Ministers and the president of the Lima chapter of the Information Systems Security Association, the country's top cybersecurity group.

Puyo did not respond to attempts to reach him by phone and email seeking an explanation for how his network was violated.

Desh said getting inside took him a month.

He said he then routed a carbon copy of all traffic for nearly a month to an external server, capturing Cornejo's email password in the process. Desh said Cornejo's Gmail account was linked to the ex-premier's official email account and that he accessed a mirror of it on the network.

Rat said the hackers are staying away from the Council of Ministers' network for now. He says it now has "honey pots" — traps set to try to ensnare them.

The two say they are confident they cover their tracks sufficiently. And they said they don't tempt fate, keeping U.S. government networks off their target list because they don't want the FBI pursuing them.

"I don't worry that much, though I don't rule out the option that they will trap me," said Desh.

"Nobody is invincible."

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GCHQ backlash? Anonymous website hacked following privacy rights protest

Anonymous UK’s website was recently targeted and taken down in the midst of a four-day privacy rights protest organized by the collective. The demonstration was held outside Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

A spokesman for the hacktivist group believes the targeted attack was carried out by GCHQ officials.

The protest, which began outside Britain’s Cheltenham-based spy base last Friday, was reportedly launched to highlight an ongoing assault on Britons’ privacy rights against a backdrop of increasing mass surveillance. But prior to the main day of protest scheduled for Saturday, Anonymous UK’s website was taken down. The incident occurred late Friday evening.

This is not the first time the group has had such an experience. A spokesperson for the hacktivist collective, who runs Anonymous UK's online radio station, insists they have been unjustly targeted by GCHQ on multiple occasions.

“One of our servers was destroyed and our UK radio station has been shut down,” the spokesperson told RT on Friday, adding that the group's site was also taken down following the launch of a campaign to feed homeless people.

Commenting on the cyber attack, the spokesman said that if a member of the public targeted a government site in this manner, they could "get up to five years in prison the UK." Yet “GHHQ has no one to answer to.”

“This is why we protest,” he stressed.

Although GCHQ allegedly attempted to liaise with Anonymous UK in advance of the demonstration, a spokesperson for the collective said the group declined to respond. The collective believes privacy rights advocates have a democratic right to protest peacefully, and shouldn't have to justify their desire to do so to UK authorities.

Probed as to whether Anonymous UK plans to issue a formal complaint about the targeting of its website, a spokesperson said “we can’t complain to anyone” because “GCHQ would just deny it.”

Central to the group’s privacy rights concerns is an alleged UK intelligence operation called Tempora. Covert documents sent to the Guardian by US whistleblower Edward Snowden state that the program facilitates British intelligence officers’ access to private data. Such information relates specifically to email, social networking, and telephone conversations.

Britain’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal is currently seeking to discern whether Tempora exists, and if it violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – which deals with citizens’ right to privacy. A final judgment on the case is yet to emerge, and the group of high profile UK and international civil liberties groups that launched the proceedings is currently awaiting an outcome.

Anonymous UK told RT on Friday that the collective is doubtful the final judgement will favor the public’s right to privacy.

According to the hacktivist collective, approximately 60 protesters attended the demonstration over the weekend in a bid to raise awareness about the intrusive nature of GCHQ mass surveillance. Others estimate the number of attendees may have been more moderate. Anonymous UK stated all activists demonstrated in a peaceful and lawful manner, and there were no arrests. Nevertheless, its site remains inaccessible visitors.

The UK-based collective is a subset of Anonymous, a nebulous international network of activists and hacktvists known for politically charged, subversive maneuvers worldwide. Recent actions carried out by the broader group include efforts to tackle global inequality, operations to counter government attacks on citizens’ privacy rights, efforts to mitigate child pornography, and a “cyber assault” against Israel to counter IDF operations in Gaza.

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Can you really be identified on Tor or is that just what the cops want you to believe?

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Have the UK police successfully broken anonymity on the internet? They certainly seemed to imply as much when the National Crime Agency proudly announced last week that it had made 660 arrests after an operation to identify people viewing indecent images of children online.

The announcement raises questions about just how anonymous it is possible to be online, particularly in the dark net and through systems like Tor, which is used by criminals, but also many others with legitimate reasons for wanting to remain anonymous such as journalists, whistleblowers, and political activists under repressive regimes.

We should also treat the NCA bust with some scepticism, given its very convenient political timing.

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Lulz and Dissent: A New Book on Anonymous

Last March, I read Alice Marwick’s Status Update, a fascinating ethnographic account of Silicon Valley culture and how entwined that culture is in the design of the social media platforms that we use daily. It’s a world that presumes good things come to those who are smart and work hard and, within this meritocracy, everyone’s an entrepreneur with a personal brand to develop.

I’ve just finished reading another ethnography that provides a fascinating counterpoint. Gabriella Coleman, a cultural anthropologist at McGill University, has been studying Anonymous since 2008 and has a terrific book coming out this November from Verso, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy. Members of Anonymous and the tech workers who created Twitter, Facebook, and many other hot tech brands have some things in common. They resist hierarchy and value individuality. They socialize and develop projects using Internet channels. They aren’t intimidated by established institutions and resist government control.

But there’s a fundamental difference. The culture Marwick studied values aggregating wealth and attention. Anonymous abhors personal attention-seeking as a means of accumulating capital. While Marwick showed a culture that assumed individual striving could lead to entrepreneurial success, a form of success created by capturing data about social interactions online, the portrait Coleman develops of Anonymous is an anarchic collective that subsumes individuality to the pursuit of lulz (deviant humor) and the free flow of information. In a sense, it’s the free-wheeling ethos of the old Internet at war with the new, one that is dominated by giant companies that determine the rules about how we will interact online and promote personal branding to conduct monetizable surveillance. Remember the New Yorker cartoon, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog?” Now corporations operating through the internet not only know who you are, they know what brand of dog food you buy.

Coleman’s book starts with the disreputable roots of the Anonymous collective in the boisterous trolling conducted on 4Chan, which embraced anonymity and practiced extreme Rabelaisian permissibility. In a sense it was the “primordial stew” that gave rise to a movement that is characterized by deviance that is carnivalistic in the Bakhtinian sense and yet has a strongly moral bent when it comes to free speech. For an anthropologist, the self-organizing complexity of this constantly morphing group is a fascinating puzzle. Its anti-celebrity ethos, which also values individual rights, upends “the ideological divide between individualism and collectivism” while presenting an alternative approach to the society itself.

Anonymous began to recognize its potential as a political force when some members suggested their collective trolling power should be directed at the Church of Scientology, which was using strongarm tactics to suppress a video they objected to. Mass trolling worked. Coleman was able to observe how that initial protest came together and how it set the stage for other forms of dissent, including attacks against banks that tried to cripple WikiLeaks by cutting off access to donations. Anonymous began to take on other political causes. It (they?) played a significant role in the opening weeks of the Arab Spring and launched other actions, including some that have backfired, such as the recent release of an incorrect name when protestors at Ferguson demanded to know which officer shot Michael Brown. These actions are often what one Anon called a “moral pretzel,” very similar to the ethical issues that come with any disruptive political direct action, but with greater legal consequences. And like any protest movement that gets the attention of the authorities, it is subject to infiltration by informants and agents provocateurs.

Coleman does a fantastic job of chronicling Anonymous’s political turn while explaining her own moral pretzels as a researcher. She illuminates a movement that bucks the cultural trend to self-promote and examines the “fractal chaos” of a leaderless collective that is deliberately hard to pin down but looks a little bit like the Internet when it was young.

Reading studies like this and Marwick’s Status Update make me impatient to figure out how to better prepare our students to engage in the world by understanding the structures of information that are evolving around us. While students need to recognize what scholarship looks like so that they can learn about the ethical practices underlying scholarly discovery, the world of information exhibits its own fractal chaos that makes the oversimplified categories “scholarly” and “popular” misleadingly naive. That said, this book demonstrates how valuable it is to have scholars studying phenomena like the emergence of Anonymous as a radically collective political force

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy won't be released until November, but meanwhile you can read some of Coleman's articles about Anonymous in Wired, the Index on Censorship and elsewhere.

Anonymous - Message To Cameron and Obama

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Anonymous - Message To Cameron and Obama

David Cameron and President Obama need to take action NOW! Rid the world of ISIS.

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The Sabu Effect: An Interview with Jay Leiderman

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Leiderman’s been called Anonymous’ lawyer of choice, and has defended or advised Anons from political refugee Commander X through LulzSec, AntiSec, incarcerated Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown, and more. We asked him why he chose this field rather than something that might buy him a yacht or at least the ability to sleep at night. He replied that it was certainly anything but a calculated careerist move, and less his choice than the inevitable result of recent changes in the way the courts are used by The Powers That be.

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We first caught him on the cell at an airport thanks to a delayed flight from a location he is not allowed to disclose. Because thats just how he rolls. Heck, the man has his own Anonymous trading card. Next, we played Facebook and Twitter and email tag for some time, but finally re-connected via Skype; this time he was able to disclose that he was in his office, something we at the Cryptosphere had already surmised because his receptionist answered the phone. This interview has been stitched together from emails, PMs, DMs, calls via Skype, and calls via actual telephone over the course of some months. Its a long read: get yourself a beverage and comfortable chair. Its worth it.

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Anonymous Rave wordt manifestatie in industriegebied

De Anonymous Rave gaat toch door, maar nu als manifestatie. Dat heeft de organisatie afgesproken met burgemeester Eberhard van der Laan. De manifestatie staat gepland op 27 september, de datum waarop de rave oorspronkelijk was gepland.

De Anonymous Rave werd in juli aangekondigd als illegaal feest in de binnenstad. Het was een protest tegen hoge drank- en entreeprijzen in de Amsterdamse horeca.

Binnen korte tijd hadden 54.000 mensen zich op Facebook aangemeld voor de Anonymous Rave. Er zouden vijf podia in de binnenstad worden opgebouwd, waar verschillende dj's zouden draaien. Entree zou gratis zijn en iedereen kon eigen drank meenemen.

De gemeente voorzag veiligheidsproblemen en kwam met behulp van nachtburgemeester Mirik Milan in contact met de organisatoren, aldus een woordvoerder. De uitkomst is dat het geen rave maar een manifestatie wordt. De locatie is niet in de binnenstad, maar in industriegebied Westpoort. De organisatie zal het evenement morgen op Facebook aankondigen. Hoe het er precies uit gaat zien, is nog niet bekend.

De mensen achter Anonymous Rave zeggen zich in de toekomst te willen richten op betaalbare evenementen. 'We willen het mogelijk maken dat elke doelgroep, rijk of arm, in Amsterdam kan uitgaan.'

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Putin considers plan to unplug Russia from the internet 'in an emergency'

Kremlin to discuss taking control of the .ru domain and measures to disconnect Russians from the web in the event of unrest

The Kremlin is considering radical plans to unplug Russia from the global internet in the event of a serious military confrontation or big anti-government protests at home, Russian officials hinted on Friday.

President Vladimir Putin will convene a meeting of his security council on Monday. It will discuss what steps Moscow might take to disconnect Russian citizens from the web "in an emergency", the Vedomosti newspaper reported. The goal would be to strengthen Russia's sovereignty in cyberspace. The proposals could also bring the domain .ru under state control, it suggested.

Russian TV and most of the country's newspapers are under the Kremlin's thumb. But unlike in China, the Russian internet has so far remained a comparatively open place for discussion, albeit one contested by state-sponsored bloggers and Putin fans.

The move comes at a time when Russia has been bitterly critical of the western media, which Moscow says has adopted a biased attitude towards events in Ukraine. Russian channels have portrayed the conflict in Ukraine as a heroic fight against "fascists" in Kiev. They have disputed western reports that Russian soldiers and heavy weapons are involved. A BBC team that went to investigate reports of Russian servicemen killed in Ukraine was beaten up this week.

According to Vedomosti, Russia plans to introduce the new measures early next year. The Kremlin has been wrestling for some time with how to reduce Russia's dependency on American technology and digital infrastructure, amid fears that its communications are vulnerable to US spying. It has mooted building a "national internet", which would in effect be a domestic intranet. These proposals go further, expanding the government's control over ordinary Russian internet users and their digital habits.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia's spy agencies, described the plans as big news. In an email from Moscow he said he "didn't actually believe" Russian officials would disconnect the internet. But he said the moves were a "real step forward in the development of a besieged fortress mentality".

He wrote: "Before, such ideas were mostly to do with so-called government communications (how to make them independent from western technologies). Now they want to expand this crazy idea to the entire internet of the country."

Soldatov said it would be technically possible for Moscow to shut off the internet because Russia has "surprisingly few" international exchange points. All of them are under the control of national long-distance operations, like Rostelecom, which are close to the authorities, he said.

The most ominous element, he added, was the security council's apparent proposal to take control over .ru, as well as the domains .su (for Soviet Union) and .рф (Russian Federation in Cyrillic). These domains currently belong to a non-government organisation, the coordination centre of the national domain, rather than to government. Many are currently hosted abroad.

"The thing might be approved very quickly, and this means it shows a way to the next step – to force all domains in the .ru zone to be hosted in Russia," Soldatov said. Kazakhstan, an authoritarian state intolerant of online criticism, did something similar two years ago, he said, adding that such a move would affect his own website Agentura.ru, which is hosted in Germany.

Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed the meeting would take place on Monday, adding that much of it was likely to be in closed session. The communications ministry declined to comment on Friday.

While Putin enjoys popular support, with his approval ratings boosted by Russia's takeover of Crimea from Ukraine in March, the danger of mass unrest is not lost on the Kremlin. In 2011-2012 tens of thousands of Russians protested in Moscow after Putin announced he was returning as president and shoving aside his temporary successor Dmitry Medvedev. The protests fizzled out following a series of arrests, harassment of opposition figures, and high-profile trials.

The Russian economy, which is already teetering on the verge of recession, is reeling from ever more stringent Western sanctions over Moscow's alleged support for separatists in eastern-Ukraine. Washington and Brussels have introduced several rounds of sanctions that are the toughest punitive measures since the cold war.

An employee of a large communications provider told Vedomosti Moscow did not want to unplug the world wide web but to protect Russian cyberspace in case of further western sanctions that may affect the internet.