"The group consists of "a few thousand people" based all over the world Coldblood said."Coldblood is a psydonym for an individual claiming to be a spokesperson for the group. The spokesperson also claimed responsibility for other hacktivist attacks protesting other forms of censorship:
"They staged cyber attacks on Iran following the election protests and have publicly protested against the Scientology movement. "
"A growing trend of politicized hacking or "hacktivism" is emerging. The incidents in Estonia and Georgia were most likely carried out by state-encouraged Russian nationalist youth groups and criminal organizations, as well as at-large volunteers. One German youth claimed on a web forum that, with instruction from a Russian website, he was initiating fully functional denial-of-service attacks against targets in Georgia in a manner of hours. In reaction to a Danish newspaper cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad, loose groups of hackers in Turkey and other Muslim countries cyberattacked that publication's website."
"...by seizing this server they [the police] are not only getting information on Indymedia but also on wholly unrelated groups."However, the seizure of the server did not interrupt Indymedia operations. Indymedia's network is highly distributed and redundant with extensive mirroring of data:
"As with previous cases, Indymedia UK stayed online this time. This was possible due to a system of "mirrors", which was set up to protect the technical infrastructure of the alternative media project. Despite the resource intensive interruptions caused by server seizures, the DIY-media activists continue to provide a platform for "news straight from the streets"."Although it appears the police were not attempting to censor the information, this case shows both the flexibility, power and dynamic nature of online communication. However, this resilience cuts both ways: Activists and other politically motivated sites are difficult to censor or disrupt, but likewise, when commercial or government sites are the target of online protests by hacktivists, their online attacks often have limited or no operational impact on their targets for the same reason.
"Networked inchoate anarchic protest is in itself a significant potential trend over the medium-term. The global economic crash will create new systems and ideas or at least new ways of using old ideas. As the Economist [magazine] notes the traditional mass staged rally aimed at G8 gatherings seems particularly quaint when put against the practice and potential of networked spontaneous protest. The key element these new technologies provide is the ability to amplify the protest message to a wider networked audience – this trend will only increase."
"...extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance. This could theoretically be combined with targeting. Twitter was recently used as a counter-surveillance, command and control, and movement tool by activists at the Republican National Convention (RNC). The activists would Tweet each other and their Twitter pages to add information on what was happening with Law Enforcement near realtime."
"This was a planned action by hackers, which has brought down almost all sites providing access to the Automatic Radiation Environment Control System (ASKRO), including the Leningrad NPP site, the rosatom.ru site, and others. For several hours users were unable to reach the sites and obtain reliable information on the situation at the plant."
"The difference between government-sponsored attacks and grassroots cyber terrorism is growing increasingly fuzzy, even as researchers try to sift through who did what on Estonia's Web. And the difficulty of tracing responsibility for even massive cyber attacks suggests that such maneuvers may become an effective tool not just for indiscriminate vandalism, but also for stealthy cyber censorship."
Online protest and hacktivist attacks are gaining more publicity but does this reflect a sudden increase in activity or just more press coverage? A recent blog posting concluding a sudden increase in activity has gained some media attention:
"While incidents of Hacktivism are not new, they are beginning to become a lot more frequent — perhaps due to the availability of tools to conduct hacktivist mischief, but also perhaps due to the ubiquitous social networking mechanisms which can now be used as to build consensus when times of cultural or political unrest present the opportunity.
In any event, Hacktivism is becoming a disturbing trend, and one which can have serious ripple effects that interfere with Internet operational continuity — sometimes in ways which we may have not even thought of yet."
While the availability of social networks and 'hacktivist' tools do contribute to both increasing number of attacks and their effectiveness, most professionals that closely follow politically motivated computer crimes and hacktivism believe there has been a steady increase in activity for several years, with ups and downs following political events in the real world (such as Olympic protests, Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, etc.). What has become more frequent is press coverage of attacks which creates a cycle of more activity followed by more press (see Hacktivism & Politically Motivated Computer Crime for a detailed analysis of the relationship between hacktivism and media coverage).
The website of French magazine 'Capital', conducting an online poll concerning boycotting the 2008 Chinese Olympics, was flooded with votes, apparently from China.
"On the first day, we had about 300 responses, which was normal for this type of poll, and they were 80 percent in favour of a boycott. The next day there were 20,000 responses, with 80 percent opposing a boycott," he [Jean-Joel Gurviez, publisher of the website for Capital magazine] said.
"Almost all of the responses arrived via Chinese servers, Gurviez said, leading technicians to initially think the influx was driven by Chinese sites directing patriotic fans to vote.
"But a few days later we had hackers operating off servers in China try to change our content, and there were 2.5 million attempts to access protected files. We had to shut down the site temporarily," he said."
"World leaders gathered in Bucharest for this week’s NATO summit are debating what role the trans-Atlantic alliance can play in containing “cyberterrorists,” “hacktivists” and other emerging menaces that experts concede are untraditional, but still potentially lethal."
Reporters without Borders will host a day long cyber protest against online censorship on March 12, 2008:
Wednesday 12 March : launch of Online Free Expression Day plus repeat of last year’s "24-hour online demo""To denounce government censorship of the Internet and to demand more online freedom, Reporters Without Borders is calling on Internet users to come and protest in online versions of the nine countries that are “Internet enemies” during the 24 hours from 11 a.m. on 12 March to 11 a.m. on 13 March (Paris time). Anyone with Internet access will be able to create an avatar, choose a message for their banner and take part in one of the nine cyber-demos (Burma, China, North Korea, Cyba, Egypt, Erithrea, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Viêt-nam).
"Reporters Without Borders will release its latest list of “Internet enemies” together with a new version of its Handbook for Cyber-Dissidents."
"In the first couple of years following the events of September 11, 2001, a hysteria regarding Internet-fueled terrorism reached fever pitch.Sensationalizing words will often grab headlines but diminishes their impact and create ambiguity - a problem that is rampant in the IT security profession. The articles presented here often overuse this and other words such as "cyber war", "infowar" and will often be offset in quotations to identify their inappropriate application. "Cyber war" and similar words should only be used for offensive use of technology to further a political or idealogical agenda, not for simple misuse such as hacking (trespass), web defacements (vandalism) or data theft (see Hacktivism & Politically Motivated Computer Crime for a discussion on political 'use', 'misuse' and 'offensive use' of technology for political purposes).
In the midst of this atmosphere, many Islamic movements and organizations on the web were banned, blocked, censored or monitored. With time, the term “cyber terror” emerged to describe any form of Internet aided attack for political causes, yet many still disagree to this day on the use of the word ‘terror’, opposed to more accurate words like ‘vandalism’ or simply just ‘hacking’."
Nomina si nescis, perit et cognitio rerum
(Who knows not the names, knows not the subject)
- Linnaeus
