Hackers to the rescue

March 28, 2003 9:33 AM

Hackers to the rescue! This is where the real war is being fought folks.... "Hacked by Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia"
posted by protocool (29 comments total)

Don't like the message? Hack 'em!

When I first heard of this I wondered if this might have been the work of cyberterrorists in the US Govt. Now I'm just thinking the cyberterrorism is the work of patriotic Americans.

If the bad guys do it, it's terrorism. If the good guys do it, it is patriotism.
posted by birdherder at 10:05 AM on March 28, 2003

"Our website is working but nobody can see it," Mr Seddiqui said.

Good to see the sterotype about Arabs and technology is still holding firm.
posted by darren at 10:06 AM on March 28, 2003

troll
darren, I mean
posted by signal at 10:11 AM on March 28, 2003

Now I'm just thinking the cyberterrorism is the work of patriotic Americans.

Way to take the actions of a few and generalize them to represent the view of all Americans who care about their country.
posted by jsonic at 10:37 AM on March 28, 2003

"Our website is working but nobody can see it," Mr Seddiqui said.

He's right, though. The hackers went through network solutions, pretended to be the site owners, and had the dns changed.

So his site is working, but no one can see it.
posted by nyxxxx at 10:45 AM on March 28, 2003

Way to take the actions of a few and generalize them to represent the view of all Americans who care about their country.

Way to fail to condemn something as un-American as suppressing the views of others. That failure is a really shitty way to "care" about your country.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 10:47 AM on March 28, 2003

The Arabic news service has also moved its data centre from US hosting service DataPipe to a new location in France

Figures! :D

Just for the record, I'm pretty sure that hacking Al Jazeera is something just a bit less than "terrorism." Shame the perspective-ometer isn't working today (or yesterday, or the day befo-HEY, wait a minute...). And as for the unAmerican-ness of supressing others' views, that's a finely parsed line you got there, Foldy, in light of the fact that your shrill tirades have suppressed more views around here than the CYber Force Militia can ever hope to. Just keep in mind that caring about your country in a shitty way does not belong to one person exclusively, but to all Americans equally. That's shitty freedom!

~wink~
posted by UncleFes at 10:56 AM on March 28, 2003

Way to fail to condemn something as un-American as suppressing the views of others. That failure is a really shitty way to "care" about your country.

What are you talking about? I was objecting to birdherder's implication that the actions of these hackers are somehow representative of the opinions of all American patriots. Just because some people claiming to be patriots attack a website doesn't automatically mean that all other Americans agree with their action.
posted by jsonic at 11:01 AM on March 28, 2003

Our website is working... and everybody can see it...
posted by psychomedia at 11:01 AM on March 28, 2003

And as for the unAmerican-ness of supressing others' views, that's a finely parsed line you got there, Foldy, in light of the fact that your shrill tirades have suppressed more views around here than the CYber Force Militia can ever hope to.

I call total bullsh*t on this one. Not even funny. Go read our Constitution fes.
posted by nofundy at 11:01 AM on March 28, 2003

Will there be a test later?
posted by UncleFes at 11:08 AM on March 28, 2003

Freedom Cyber Force Militia

Is that a real name? Man, it sounds so, I don't know, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, you know? Almost like children... how sweet.
posted by holycola at 11:10 AM on March 28, 2003

I think everyone is missing something here...

After that hack, the Network Solutions issue:

Someone, using letterlead that looked like official Al Jazeera paper sent a fax to get the password to change registries.

Network Solutions promptly provided it.

Now, have we all forgotten the Hoopla issue? Ditherati? The scores of other domain-stealing incidents that have affected "our" little community of people?

And given the amount of attention focused on hackers hitting the site, why the fuck wasn't NS and Verisign more vigilent in seeing if this password requst was valid or not?

That, to me, is a HUGE issue.
posted by rich at 11:29 AM on March 28, 2003

The people responsible for shutting down aljazeera.net may not be sharing the same opinion as many other americans, but I think it was a good idea.
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:29 AM on March 28, 2003

Rich is dead on. This is not a hack, it's a domain hijacking. We don't like those, remember?

...but I think it was a good idea. [keyser]

*sigh* Didn't we used to like freedom of speech? Y'know, bedrock of democracy and all that?
posted by ook at 11:44 AM on March 28, 2003

Freedom of speech is fine with me, Im just pissed they had footage of American prisoners. They broke the Geneva convention by doing that, and when we take prisoners we dont show them off to the world. That's my 49 cents.
posted by Keyser Soze at 11:47 AM on March 28, 2003

Al Jazeera didn't break the convention.. Iraq did by releasing the videotape of the interrogationsm, as well as the dead bodies.
posted by rich at 11:49 AM on March 28, 2003

Someone, using letterlead that looked like official Al Jazeera paper sent a fax to get the password to change registries.

Kind of like the completely fake documents of Iraq's purchase of plutonium from Niger that the U.S. and Great Britain thought were real. Evidently you don't even need Photoshop for this kind of fakery, just a scissors and a Kinko's.

The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War applies to governments, not corporations, in any event. Neither Al-Jazeera nor CNN are signers of it. (Also, cough.)
posted by RJ Reynolds at 11:58 AM on March 28, 2003

So, keyser... freedom of speech is fine with you, as long as it happens to be speech you agree with. Gotcha.

([On preview:] Now if only whitehouse.gov were registered at NetSol...)
posted by ook at 12:16 PM on March 28, 2003

Freedom of speech is fine with me, Im just pissed they had footage of American prisoners. They broke the Geneva convention by doing that, and when we take prisoners we dont show them off to the world. That's my 49 cents.

Is that why today's USA Today had a full color, half page picture of a field of dead Iraqis on it? Or how about all those other media companies showing dead Iraqis?

As usual, somebody who thinks freedom of speech only applies to their speech and everyone else's speech is irrelevent.
posted by benjh at 12:30 PM on March 28, 2003

I would propose that field of dead, unidentifiable bodies is different than close-up shots of people's faces.

However, this isn't about that. This is about domain-highjacking. Why the hell is Network Solutions so fucking bad at controlling (not to mention rectifying the problem!)
posted by rich at 12:36 PM on March 28, 2003

All you people asking yourself why "they" hate us so much:
This is the answer.
posted by spazzm at 1:52 PM on March 28, 2003

I used to like these hacktivist types, too, until they messed with one of my sites. It's a good utopian-type concept, but apparently takes so little skill that any misguided jerk can do it.

Anti-American or not, Middle Eastern news is one of the few sources for raw footage, and should be valued by patriots. Even if it is completely offensive, at least it's information. Whoever did this is just a punk in my book.

That said, Freedom Cyber Force Militia is a kickass name. It's like American Engrish. I am saving notes about this to a textfile right away.
posted by son_of_minya at 6:46 PM on March 28, 2003

I'm with Rich and Ook here. The issue is domain hijacking. And a system so slipshod in security that it continues to happen. The content of the domain shouldn't be a matter for discussion.
posted by dejah420 at 7:15 PM on March 28, 2003

spazzm: "All you people asking yourself why 'they' hate us so much: This is the answer."

Actually I think it has more to do with us invading their country and bombing their cities, but I could just be loopy.
posted by ZachsMind at 7:22 PM on March 28, 2003

Patriot, Freedom Cyber Force Militia??

CIA hackers? Disinformation?
posted by madamjujujive at 8:22 PM on March 28, 2003

Now, this is why I go to metafilter. RJ, excellent link.
posted by Keyser Soze at 1:55 AM on March 29, 2003

Those who want to slag off Al Jazeera for showing those tapes need to do the same with every British news network too. BBC, Sky (Fox's sister channel and I suppose surprisingly I think our most impartial news network) and ITN all showed the tape of dead and captured Americans and continue to occassionally show it to this day.
posted by vbfg at 9:39 AM on March 29, 2003

And as for the unAmerican-ness of supressing others' views, that's a finely parsed line you got there, Foldy, in light of the fact that your shrill tirades have suppressed more views around here than the CYber Force Militia can ever hope to.
Unless suppress has another meaning of which I am unaware, I can't think of a single instance where Foldy has suppressed anyone. Removing information from the web because you disagree with it, is suppression of views - and is quite different than dissenting, ranting or even making fun of someone else's opinion.
posted by talos at 3:25 PM on March 29, 2003