Pride Vs. Prejudice: Anonymous Gaily Hacks ISIS Twitter Pages

When acts of terror occur, one wonders at the source of the vitriol towards certain intended targets. Often, it seems that ignorance, hatred, and other motivators of malevolent acts may be based in a person (or a fanatical subculture’s) self-hatred, or repression of certain aspects of their lives. This creates a strong means of turning the terror back upon itself...for instance, in this faaaaaaabulous way.

Oh myyyy.
(Image courtesy techly.com.au.)

IS Hacks U.S. Central Command Twitter Feed, Posts Prankish "Leaks" Like The Trolls They Are

It seems that our once-raging war against terrorism has now, at least publicly, been downgraded to some unpleasant cyberbullying.

As reported by the BBC, the United States Central Command's Twitter account was hacked by the revolutionary Islamic fundamentalist group IS, who referred to their online troll brigade as "the CyberCaliphate" in the attack.  Their "CyberJihad" didn't seem to accomplish much more than ruffling a few feathers, despite the "leak" of "secrets" like a few upper-echelon bureaucrats' mailing addresses.

Nerdy terrorists.  Great, just what we need.
(Image courtesy bbc.com.)

The Centcom Twitter account, which was known to report on strikes against IS (before the account was taken down after the hack-attack), provoked a standard "appropriate measures" response as to what was being done in retaliation.  The hack occurred while President Obama was giving a speech on cybersecurity.

Several maps and diagrams were "released" by the hackers, but these appeared to be vague logistics of maritime armaments along the Chinese coast, as well as maps of various installations in North Korea.  Nothing was more of a "secret" than a little googling couldn't uncover, with much of the (completely non-threatening) information sourced from U.S.-based think tanks.

The full feed.  This could easily be an Islamic twelve-year old.
(Image courtesy Reuters.)

According to Reuters, The Defense Department wasn't flustered, stating the government "views this as little more than a prank, or as vandalism...It's inconvenient, it's an annoyance but in no way is any sensitive or classified information compromised," Pentagon spokesman Army Colonel Steve Warren said.Nevertheless, when posted in conjunction with incendiary (fake) headlines reading "PENTAGON NETWORKS HACKED!", the IS troll brigade probably raised a few heartbeats in Washington.  For a minute.  Then we continued bombing them in real time, without needing to tweet about the success.  The "CyberJihad's" silence in America will speak to that.

Unfortunately in France, the AnonGhost cyberterrorism group, a pro-Islamic organization, have tried to terrorize French websites in wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.  The UK Mirror reports that larger and more notorious computerized collective Anonymous have vowed revenge for the Charlie Hebdo attacks and have been plaguing IS sites throughout the last week.  This e-poking might escalate to even further name-calling and photoshopped images of completely unbelievable terrorist victory.  In the meantime, they can continue to spam the internet with narcissistic content worthy of a facebook-addicted tween.

Just...no.  Not happening, guys.
(Image courtesy mirror.co.uk.)

Your Credit Card Company and Bank are Threats to Your Information Security

Today, online hacktivist group Anonymous has launched Operation USA, which is targeting U.S. government and banking websites.  Ahead of the attack, the US Department of Homeland Security downplayed the planned operation.  According to reports: 

“OpUSA poses a limited threat of temporarily disrupting U.S. websites,” the homeland security bulletin states, saying the attackers will likely use commercial hacking tools in a variety of “nuisance-level” strikes, defacing websites or temporarily knocking them offline.

Once again, the Department of Homeland Security appears to have proven themselves to be both ignorant and inept.  Hackers are already claiming to have leaked detailed credit card information on 10,000 individuals to the website pastebin.  The leak contains names, addresses, home phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, mother's maiden name, the answers to the card holder's so-called "security question" and so on.  Make sure your information is not in the leak, and if it is, take appropriate action.  This hack succinctly demonstrates how woefully inadequate the security protocols are at some of the world's largest banks and credit card companies.  The question we should be asking is not, why would a hacktivist group engage in such malicious behavior.  Your working assumption should be that hackers are ALWAYS attempting to access your personal and financial information.  The real question is why are these corporations that we trust with our personal and financial information so insecure?  

IL Lawmakers Draft Bill to Prohibit Anonymity Online

Illinois Senate Bill 1614, sponsored by Sen. Ira Silverstein, from Legiscan:

Creates the Internet Posting Removal Act. Provides that a web site administrator shall, upon request, remove any posted comments posted by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate. Effective 90 days after becoming law.

Here is the top comment on the site:

We may have an early candidate for Worst Illinois Senate Bill of 2013.

First of all, Illinois does not have jurisdiction over the entirety of the internet. Illinois has jurisdiction over Illinois. Geographic location isn't all that important to the web hosting industry - for the most part, a datacenter in Chicago is just as good as one in, say, Dallas or Seattle. This means that the only thing this bill would actually succeed in doing is driving internet-related business (both individual online businesses, as well as the infrastructure that supports them, ie, webhosting companies and datacenters) out of the state.

Good job representing our interests there, Ira.

More importantly, though, this is plainly unconstitutional. It's absolutely embarrassing that any elected representative of US citizens would suggest that there should be a host of state-defined rules that must be met before one is allowed to exercise their first amendment right to free speech.

Petition: DDoS Should Be Recognized as Valid Form of Protest

From Slashdot:

Anonymous has filed a petition with the U.S. Government asking the Obama administration to make Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks a legal form of protest. Anonymous has argued that because of advancements in internet technology, there is a need for new ways of protest. The hacking collective doesn't consider DDoS as a form of attack and equates it to hitting the 'refresh' button on a webpage. Comparing these attacks to the 'occupy' protests, Anonymous notes that instead of people occupying an area, it is their computers occupying a website for a particular period of time.