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biggest series of cyber attacks to date
“Even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organisations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators,” Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee’s vice-president of threat research, wrote in a 14-page report released today.
Davis was arrested on July 27 in the remote Shetland Islands, Scotland. He is presently out on bail on strict conditions. He is ordered not to access the internet or have any device capable of accessing the web.
Reported top-ranking members of supposedly leaderless Anonymous are using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to ask other hackers to contribute funds to Davis, who is accused of being the real-life person behind ‘Topiary.’ LulzSec has claimed responsibility for cyber attacks on the websites of the Serious Organised Crime Agengency (Soca), Sony and News International’s Sun tabloid.
- How to donate? Anonymous hackers and backers are asking potential donors to contribute bitcoins – digital currency that can be exchanged for hard currency – to help pay Davis’s legal expenses, as part of what it is calling Operation: Free Topiary, reported Channel 4 News. The appeal has reportedly excited a great response on Internet Relay Chatrooms (IRCs) frequented by hackers.
- Hacker: Arrested hackers are political prisoners. A hacker known as ‘Sabu’ is said to spearheading Operation: Free Topiary. “To make it clear: Any member of Anonymous who gets arrested must be treated as a Political Prisoner… Political Asylum should be considered,” tweeted Sabu, who is likely waiting for a knock on the door from the authorities.
- Police tweet warning to hackers. The police have taken to Twitter to warn Anonymous and Lulzsec hacktivists that the net is closing in, reported Christopher Williams of The Daily Telegraph: “’Anyone considering accessing a computer without authority should understand that such acts are unlawful and can carry a term of imprisonment,’ the Met said via its main Twitter account, @metpoliceuk.” The Met response appears “designed to caution would-be hacktivists against the idea that denial of service attacks or network security breaches are a form of legitimate civil disobedience,” interpreted Williams.
Is today’s Marxist tomorrow’s moderate? If so, Britain future political leaders might be today’s hacktivists.
- Democracy in peril? At The Guardian, James Bell insisted that “by criminalising online dissent we put democracy in peril.” Bell argued that online dissenters are being hit too hard by the authorities: “The maximum penalty the Fortnum & Mason (anti-cuts) activists faced for aggravated trespass is three months in prison. Participating in even the simplest of hacking operations is punishable by up to 10 years in prison in the UK, and up to 20 years in the US.” Bell acknowledged that “not everyone finds Anonymous a sympathetic crowd: some don’t agree with its agenda, others its methods, others its attitude,” but he reminded that “protest, often outside the realms of the law, is a tradition of politically active youth throughout the ages.” “Today’s Marxist is tomorrow’s moderate,” concluded Bell, who noted that “more than one member of the last UK government was so active in such movements that the security services kept files on them.”
