Hackers threaten fresh wave of anti-capitalist web rioting
Sticking it to The Man, man, but for lulz too
Posted in Management, 25th May 2012 17:01 GMT
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A new activist group is drumming up recruits for a cyberwar campaign against corporate giants due to launch on Friday, 25 May.
TheWikiBoat intends to hit a high profile list of more than 40 multinationals - including BT, Best Buy, Tesco, McDonald's, Wal-Mart and Apple - with denial of service attacks as well as attempts to raid corporate systems for intelligence.
The precise motivations behind OpNewSon, which was announced around a month ago, remain unclear but the overall flavour is part anti-capitalist and part general devilment, a characteristic found in many Anonymous-style hacktivist protests.
"While attacking the major companies of this planet may seem lulzy, we also wish that this operation make a difference," the group said in a manifesto for OpNewSon. "We are 'sticking it to the man' so to speak."
Would be participants in the campaign, which aims to take out targeted sites for at least two hours, are been encouraged to use the LOIC denial of service tool, a favourite with hacktivists. By default LOIC does nothing to shield the anonymity of its users, a factor that has allowed police to track down and arrest many suspected hacktivists across the world over recent months.
Previous pre-announced activist operations to take down Facebook or launch assaults against the internet's DNS structure have turned out to be damp squibs. Security firms nonetheless argue that corporations targeted as part of Operation NewSon ought to take the threat seriously.
"It remains to be seen if the hacking group live up to their claims, but any organisation which is a target would be unwise to dismiss the threat," said André Stewart, president international at Corero Network Security.
"With prior knowledge of an impending attack, they have the opportunity to pro-actively put in place additional security measures to ensure that they remain secure."
Stewart explained that TheWikiBoat pre-announced its intended as a tactic designed to rally recruits to its cause.
“It’s not uncommon for hacking groups to announce their targets, particularly when they are ahead of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack," he explained. "This enables them to ‘recruit’ like-minded individuals who support the ideology of the hacktivist group to join in on the attack. However, the majority of DDoS attacks are often carried out using an army of automated computers, called botnets, which can be controlled by a single user."
"The hacking group is planning a second stage attack, in which they will attempt to infiltrate the organisation’s network and steal sensitive information. DDoS attacks are often used as a smokescreen to hide further, more dangerous attacks, and due to the long list of potential targets, there is a high probability that they will succeed."
Additional commentary from application security firm Radware can be found here.
#OpNewSon is due to begin begin at 4pm PST. ®
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COMMENTS
Translation
"We are 'sticking it to the man' so to speak."
We are going to annoy 'the man' - slightly, temporarily.
Somehow
Somehow, I'm reminded of the G7 (G8?) protesters in London who, in order to protest against capitalism and globalisation, smashed up shops down the Tottenham Court Road - Including the John Lewis shop.
Way to stick it to the capitalist bastards.
Note for non UKers: The John Lewis Partnership are really rather posh shops and supermarkets, that are frequented predominantly by the middle classes. The Partnership is wholly owned by the workers. Staff at John Lewis get fantastic benefits, bonuses based on the company's profits and even sabbaticals for long service. Staff there tend to be very happy at their work. When I go through the till at a Waitrose (JLP's supermarket) and they say "Have a nice weekend", I don't mentally insert the words "it says here."
John Lewis is not MacDonald's.
Re: How come
Because none of these "hacking" groups are actual hackers. They are simply script kiddies.
The register and other media companies should stop calling them hackers and instead call them skiddies.
DDoS BT?
That is hilarious. Must be like trying to demolish a nuclear bunker by backing a Smart Car into it.
Sticking
yay man, the corporation man, we gonna stick it to them...
Using our high end computers made at the other side of the world by big corporation and shipped by big corporations and ...
Can't they make themself useful and hack the governments agencies who keep monopolies in place, starting with tax offices?
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
The new Office:
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
