US Sgt enlists Canadian hackers to take down weblog?

February 24, 2006 2:43 PM

US Sgt enlists Canadian hackers to take down weblog? Apparently a US chaplain posted some information about visiting a base that doesn't exist. Some networking people are concerned and since Canada's hockey team was out early in the Olympics, thought some Canadian hackers may be able to help...
posted by Coop (9 comments total)

Without email headers showing .mil owned IP addresses, this is likely bullshit.
posted by mathowie at 2:48 PM on February 24, 2006

I don't doubt this at all. One of my hobbies is running www.sunhelp.org, and I have a "ask SunHELP if you have a problem" email address for question submittals.

I get at least one really boneheaded question a month from someone using a .mil or .gov email address, regarding systems administration on Sun machines.

I've also had to remove mailing list posts because an IRS employee on one of my mailing lists posted details about one of their computers to the public list (I talked to the guys' boss before I did so - they were very nice and polite in their request, which was entirely reasonable).
posted by mrbill at 2:48 PM on February 24, 2006

I remember reading on Hackcanada.coma couple years ago about the "true story" of a man who's thoughts were being controlled by the RCMP. Unfortunately I couldn't find it so the best I have is this
posted by saraswati at 2:58 PM on February 24, 2006

I don't believe it either... with no support, it is meaningless.

There are too many idiots involved in this... the chaplin, the Military network guy, the canadian hacker... the network guy's superior officers...

naw... phony as hell...
posted by HuronBob at 3:01 PM on February 24, 2006

On the other hand... if I was in the military at some point, and wanted to send an email that wouldn't be so easily monitored by the base (or ship), I might be inclined to use gmail - especially if I was running BlackIce or some other variant on my machine to hide my packets from the ship's (or JSOTF's) IT personnel. Or if I wanted to hide my network hogging SMTP, ship wide, videogame network. Not that I've ever done that... I'm just sayin it COULD happen that way.
posted by matty at 3:58 PM on February 24, 2006

Like I said before, I know a lot about the systems, I have been running a small computer repair shop out of my house for going on 7 years.

That bit rings true. It's those who have been making a few hundred dollars a year plugging video cards into their dumber friends' computers that think they "know a lot about the systems."
posted by five fresh fish at 6:23 PM on February 24, 2006

Presumably by now whatever specific detail was a problem has been edited out of the chaplain's diary. There's enough on the page described, which is still a live link, to check out some of the story.

Other web pages exist describing activities at a Seabee base at Manda Bay, Kenya; the particular fatal accident mentioned in the thread is also described elsewhere, the time matches.

However Google finds nothing for "secret Seabee base" so I'm sure there' s nothing to this.
posted by hank at 6:37 PM on February 24, 2006

I, too, " know quite a bit about the networking", but I have a hard time believing this to be anything other than a poorly put together prank.
posted by madajb at 6:49 PM on February 24, 2006

I don't think this is a prank -- it's too boring to be a prank. Pranks give themselves away when the pranksters try to be too clever.

On the other hand, it's too boring to actually care about so in some sense is indistinguishable from a prank.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:14 PM on February 24, 2006