-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
Hi.
Hack Attacks - isolated incident or the selling of internet security and
censorship?
OR - the school shooting equivalent in the war against free speech on the
internet?
Are the "hacker attacks" the internet equivalent of the recent school mass
shootings? A little voice in my head suggests they may be. Already the
companies affected are calling for FBI investigation.
So what's the circumstantial evidence here? Why isn't it just a couple of
'small-time' computer hackers investigating new ways of annoying big
business interests?
Armed with a few articles about the event, it seems to me that the more
sinister, frightening option may be the reality.
"Hackers flood out surfers", Thursday, 10 February 2000
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s98836.htm
This is a basic outline of what heppened, and who it happened to. Fairly
short on the details. But enough to fire up my suspicion.
Firstly, it is interesting who was affected by the hacking and how. To
begin with, Yahoo! was targeted, letting as many people as possible know
that something interesting was happening - a kind of public service
announcement. Then auction and shopping sites were rendered temporarily
unprofitable - this is really hitting where it hurts - the shopaholics will
be outraged. Apparently, they have some political clout.
Then CNN's site was jammed for 2 hours. Why CNN, the influential
spokesmachine for the west's military-industrial complex?
Importantly, brokering site Etrade, was flooded for 90 mins, but the
service was only slowed, and accounts were not compromised. How courteous
of the hackers to not disrupt the lifestyles of the rich TOO much. Why are
they so special to the hackers?
"Buy.Com's chief financial officer Mitch Hill said the attacks were traced
to powerful computers in Boston, New York and Chicago." What does this
mean? Can any hacker utilize powerful computers, or do you have to be
someone special? What is so special about these cities?
"Interestingly the attack against Buy.Com coincides with the company's initial
stock offering." Definitely a message here for the money worshippers.
"Buy.com CEO Reflects on the Hack"
February 10, 2000
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,9684,00.html
This article adds some detail to the story.
Buy.com CEO Greg Hawkins speaks about the attack. It coincided with the
company's initial stock offering. On the day of the attack, he was busily
doing interviews and press conferences.
"The luck is that I got all the data about 5 minutes before a TV interview.
It was the first question, and fortunately we had all the specifics."
A handy opportunity to demonstrate the competency of the company in the
face of what has been touted as a massive assault on the viability of
internet e-commerce.
"Yes, we have been in contact with some of the other companies. We've been
working with them to try to identify how we can prevent this from happening
in the future. I prefer not to give specifics but it is fair to say that I
[personally] had dialogues."
Why not. Is there something about all this we shouldn't know?
" Technology is a beautiful thing, and over the years we have found ways to
solve a lot of challenging problems. To the extent that we can't, I do
believe that the FBI is the appropriate agency to deal with it."
As we have observed so far - NOT. Isn't it normal for companies, when
faced with a crisis, to say "There is no problem, we can handle it,
everything will be OK."? Why not this time.
"Because it has been made pretty clear to the consumer that this, other
than an inconvenience, is not a security issue, and they should not be
worried about shopping with confidence."
An interesting comment on the effect on the consumer. Well, we all know
that what annoys shoppers the most is having to wait. Well, the
"attackers" certainly knows how to get a message across. If I had a TV,
I'd certainly be riled and saying angrily "Get 'em, FBI, those ..." I'll
let you add the rest.
"Latest Attack Hits E-Trade, ZDNet Sites"
February 09, 2000
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,9634,00.html
Here's an article with more info about the government response to the
attacks, and a bit more indication of some motives for the attacks.
"Attorney General Janet Reno held a news conference Wednesday to give an
update that was short on actual news."
Isn't this what happens when the government has something to hide?
"The federal government is developing partnerships with industry to try to
prevent these types of attacks by increasing monitoring to detect malicious
codes before they can do damage," said William Daley, the secretary of
commerce, in a news conference.
"Ironically, a distributed denial of service attack shut down the FBI's Web
site for a week in May 1999, said John Vranesevich, founder of
hacker-tracker site Antionline.com. That attack was tracked back to a
16-year-old from Israel who also broke into the Senate and White House Web
sites in retaliation for home raids of about 40 members of his Global Hell
hacking group, Vranesevich said."
Here it gets real interesting. I have already read that this attack is a
new type for the net, but perhaps the people responsible have been doing
some practising, just to make sure it works?
"In addition, the blunt-force method of the attack is easier than devising
more creative, less repetitive ways of hacking a site, said Bruce Schneier,
founder and CTO of the San Jose, Calif.-based security consulting firm
Counterpane Internet Security.
"On the Net, because someone can write software, some teenager can wake up
one morning and decide to be a hacker," said Schneier. "A professional
either drops a site permanently or does what he has to do without dropping
the site at all. "This attacker is a script kiddie, or it's some kind of a
configuration error that got out of hand."
It's 'blame it on out of control teenagers' time. Where have I heard this
before? Gun-law prohibition propaganda. Is this a coincidence? I dont
think so. Ties in nicely with the FBI site attack blamed on a teenager in
a foreign country that US citizens resent some of their taxes being sent
to. The ultimate enemy, youth stealing taxpayers money. Not a coincidence
that youth is the seat of anti-government thinking. Got to get their minds
under control before they're old enough to have any influence over how the
country is run.
The test of a good theory is its power to predict. So, I'm going to do
some predicting. If indeed this is a dastardly ploy to restrict and censor
free speech in the internet, then legally enforceable regulations will
first be proposed and then implemented. The goal of this will be to
ultimately turn the WWWeb into the WWWarehouse. One big shop with no
complaints department.
To achieve this, the government will try to impose both increased
surveillance (to catch the bad guys before they do damage), and also
hardware and software regulatory infrastructure incorporated directly into
the WWW backbone, which will become a mandatory route for all e-traffic (so
nothing can get by them). There will be attempts to prevent or dismantle
hardware capabilities that allow traffic around this censored backbone.
People that attempt to communicate independently, or try to use the
censored network to do so, will be subject to 're-education', by law.
Well, either I am wrong, or government sure is getting transparent these days.
Gary.
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
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