Posted on 09/19/2008 1:28:47 PM PDT by kristinn
We hear on the internet underground that hackers and/or script-kiddies have declared an internet war against Fox News and columnist Bill O'Reilly and plan a cyber-assault for later today. Reportedly, parts of O'Reilly's site have already been compromised. This is serious business, no doubt.
To get to the bottom of the issue, we spoke to an insider, a frequent poster on a certain well known online support group for young-adult agoraphobics where these things are planned and executed. He prefers to remain anonymous.
(We starred-out the names of internet sites because, apparently, they don't like to be noticed.)
G4: What are the plans for the attack on Bill O’Reilly/ Fox News?
Anonymous Guy: As far as I know, all that was planned was DDoS attacks against Bill's site and/or Fox News's site at around 5 PM today Eastern Standard Time. This information was posted publicly on many threads over the past few days, so it's not like this was a widely kept secret. As of right now it looks like some people may have started doing DDoS attacks already though, so either that time got bumped, or people are just posting others' IPs on 4*** in hopes /*/ will attack other people.
Other than the fact that O’Reilly is an insufferable blowhard, why is he a target?
Simple. When the email got hacked and then passed along to 4***, it then made its way to Gawker who posted the screenshots passed around on /*/ The secret service and/or FBI then asked Gawker to take down the pics, and they refused. Later on, Bill O Reilly talked about it, and this is what he said:
In this segment he calls a site he won't name "despicable, slimy, scummy" and even though it's obvious he's referring to Gawker, ***s tards assumed he was talking about them. The mods of 4**changing the title of that section of the site to "Despicable, slimy, scummy" didn't help. So they decided to get some laughs by getting some revenge on him. But mainly just because he's annoying. Here's the video they've passed around a lot lately of him:
He's acting like he's the one who is bringing the hacker to justice even though he has nothing to do with it. And this video is just like everyone of his other videos -- he invites a guest or expert on the show, and then talks over them the whole time and disagrees with them until the time is up. Insufferable blowhard indeed.
Anything to do with his politics, do you think?
People have suggested that this hacking incident was all staged by Republicans, so that they can further portray Palin as a huge victim, and further bash Democrats. That seems like a ridiculous suggestion to me, but when you then consider Palin's public email was already in question by the law, with laws prohibiting her from using it for business or deleting any emails either, then it does hold some merit -- after this incident her entire email was deleted, thus destroying whatever incriminating evidence might have existed in it. I doubt it's true at all, but it's definitely a clever trick I can see crooked politicians using in the future. Say 4*** hacked something of yours, and then destroy all of the evidence.
This, and the Palin hack, are much higher profile than hacking some goth kid’s livejournal. Is there any sense of fear that The Man is going to show up and haul people off to pound-me-in-the-ass jail?
Absolutely -- there was an article the other day on TheRegister where the owner of the proxy site Ctunnel came out publicly saying that he could find the person who hacked the account. Whoever did so forgot to black out their URL in the screenshot (which seems fishy to me...), so the code used in the URL should be easy to pinpoint in his site's archives. Basically, the hacker's screwed if the FBI take the proxy admin up on his offer, which I'm sure they will.
Do these hackers care about the fact that these kind of exploits could eventually destroy their own playground? IE: Once the feds get involved, they’ll pretty much shut things down if they want to.
Watch the second youtube clip linked above. No -- the law states that 4*** shouldn't be held accountable for this incident at all. But I doubt that's what is stopping /*/. It's common knowledge that you can't fight the Internet. Go ahead and shut down 4***, its users won't care, they'll find another online community to move on to. Go ahead and shut down ThePirateBay, there will be 100s of new torrent sites within a week. I feel bad for moot though, his life has to be hectic.
I know these computer guys doesn’t like people naming the site they came from, but am I going to piss off an internet if I refer to it as an “online support group for young-adult agoraphobics?”
Well I'm hardly an "oldfag", but I think I know enough to know that statement isn't true -- at least it didn't used to be true. 4*** got its fame from not taking s*** from anyone, and by being able to talk about anything. The result used to be a lot of images and discussions that most people couldn't stomach. In recent years though, after the rise of the Scientology protests that became linked to 4***, the site saw a lot of newcomers that changed what 4*** was all about. People arrived at 4*** like misinformed immigrants expecting one thing, and got another. Rather than leaving though, they stuck around since /*/ was so loose and carefree, and in the process became what /*/tards like to call "the cancer that is killing /*/" But are most of the "newfags" young-adult agoraphobics? Yup.
How can an average citizen protect him or herself from the internets hackers that want to hack their emailz? Should I buy a dog?
Don't be an idiot like Sarah Palin was. She was a huge political figure, and yet she used a public email account despite being told not to. By not using a government email she allowed herself to be hacked by someone answering three simple questions: What is her birthday? What is her zip code? Where did she meet her husband? That's insanely easy to figure out in an hour online, and I'm surprised it took /b/ so long to hack her. I'm still surprised people haven't hacked into her daughters' Myspace account yet.
As for the normal person, just make sure all of your different accounts on computers and sites have different passwords. Don't let yourself get hacked in one place and watch as you become the Titanic as each one of your account walls crumble.
This is going to end badly, don’t you think?
I don't know, I'm surprised that Palin's email being hacked didn't get more TV time -- aside from Bob O RLY I haven't even seen it in the news yet. And that's crazy. Aside from what side of the political fence you are on, her getting hacked in such a manner shows how immensely unprepared she is to be in the white house. I truly hope it gets more news time.
As for this news about Bob's site being hacked -- it had better get a lot of TV time. It's not fair to his site's users and clients to not know they've been hacked. It's not good enough to simply tell them their account info has been compromised either. Today I saw screenshots of 100s of peoples' personal info in the hands of people who would love to hack into their accounts on other sites using the same login passwords. Shame on Bill O Reilly and Fox News for having such a weak site security system, they are just as much to blame as the hackers on this one. Their customers should be furious.
No, you commandeer zombie PCs under control of various worms/trojan horses and order them to ping a particular site to death.
Basically the server is bombarded with worthless data requests, crowding out legitimate site requests.
And its not that hard to do.
This isn’t necessarily software, this can also be hardware, or a combination of both.
However there’s almost alway a hardware aspect to a DoS or DDoS attack, as it has to do with the speed and capacity of the connection between what is called the system’s Network Interface (Ethernet, Fiber Optic, etc) and the outside world.
Secondarily, in a Web context, it has to do with how fast the webserver software on a system can serve up Web pages.
This can be a bottleneck because of CPU capacity/speed, memory, system tuning, or a number of other factors.
If it is bombarded, then the out to be able to see the IP addresses that are the source of it.
You have the right idea, but let me clarify further:
The use of the terms DoS and DDoS make an explicit connotation that it’s a deliberate attack on a system, as opposed to a website just getting too popular for its britches.
:-)
Cyberterrorists. Time to send the punks to fed prison (about the only chance they have of getting laid, anyhow).
BOR website came up just fine and dandy
There’s no point - can be thousands of addresses, all owned by people who have no clue whats going on because their systems are compromised. Their only hint is the PC is slower than usual.
I’m on the Ping of Death honor roll. (Ancient history)
This didn’t involve hacking- it involved investigation of a vulnerability where a malformed PING request could make a server crash.
This went across operating system lines.
There are several fairly effective countermeasures vs a standard DDoS attack (yes, I’ve worked on some, no, I’m not going to discuss them). And I mean beyond just IP blocking (which does work OK against VERY basic DDoS attacks, but can also block legit users, esp. if their computers have been zombied unbeknownst to them).
That said, a sophisticated DDoS attack can be a real pain in the @zz to handle. My bet is this will be the former, not the later.
Speaking of sneaky stuff like that, remember the early days of Windows 95 when you could crash anyone with a unique TCP packet? (winnuke)
I see nothing gets by you.
Yep.
For some reason, your post made me think of the prison scene in “My Cousin Vinny” where Vinny first meets his cousin’s friend in the jail cell.
I’ve worked in mission-critical computing for almost 20 years so I have some small familiarity with that of which you speak.
And I thank God daily that I don’t admin Windows systems.
:-)
Don’t remember that particular one, but I do remember having to go out and get Trumpet Winsock because Windows didn’t have a TCP/IP stack built in in those days...
Thank you both for your replies, it gives me a better idea of what’s happening.
I don’t think I’ve seen that film since not long after it was released. Pesci was great (as always).
“pound-me-in-the-ass jail”
LOL... I’m going to use that. I’m still laughing!
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