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My weekend with a bunch of hackers

Alex Dickinson

by Alex Dickinson

21 Feb 06:03pm

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Filed under: Clean Feed, Hackers, Politics, Stephen Conroy

25 comments

That pesky cyber-gang of hackers, Anonymous, struck again on the weekend, bringing down Senator Stephen Conroy’s website for almost 30 hours.

Describe this image

I know because I was there. It didn’t take much to predict that nerdy “hacktivists” against the internet filter would attack Government websites to coincide with real-life protests scheduled for Saturday.

Sure enough, a few clicks from Google led to a forum that set a date and time for the assault and, after a bit more digging, a chat room from which to watch the fireworks.

10am on February 20th. It was to be the third massive strike on Government sites since several were hit on February 10 and Kevin Rudd’s and the ACMA site were hit in September last year.

Gradually the group started to meander in to the chat room from all around the world.

Anon_poke: Fire your lazers… PLZ

RambJoe: Hmm, www.minister.dbcde.gov.au isn’t loading right now.

ioyou: currenlty down in canada

lthor: Not up in europe

gr0ssgh0st: it doesn’t looks like it’s up to me and I can’t ping it

Anonski: http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/ DOWN. KEEP FIRING FOR GREAT JUSTICE

RambJoe: It’s not just you!  http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au looks down from here.

OliveNigger: Nothings getting through.

Johndo1: good

web_user|54584: IF YOUR DDOSING WITH A PROXY YOU ARE DDOSING THE PROXY NOT THE FUCKING AUSSIES

mib_o7kx8h: take condom off! no proxies!! knock the bitch up!

unknwn: play nice kids

Anon88: KEEP ATTACKING even if it’s down.

The fact we’re not dealing with a scary army of computer geniuses was pretty clear from the start.

Anyone could join in.  All you’d have to do was download a small piece of DDoS (or distributed denial-of-service) software, paste in an address and click a button. Enough clicks and the site was flooded with requests for information and crashed.

They’re a bunch of kids essentially, and some older geeks thinking they’re taking on the world “coz we iz hardcore outlawzz”. One said he was 12 and from Brisbane. He was peeved cause he didn’t account for daylight saving and missed the start of the cyber strike. At times, they’d get distracted and snap at each other.

mib_ec6lib: isnt myschool suppose to be a target?

mib_sy3ylu: Dont they have 7 m long worms in australia?

Hsnow: LOL

mibbbbbbbbbbb: we call them snakes

mib_sy3ylu: I swear that place is goddamn hell on earth.

mib_sy3ylu: And they try to take their porn away.

mib_sy3ylu: Fucking hell.

irritant: stop talking and GET TO IT !!

pulser: wtf guys

pulser: http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au

pulser: its up

RambJoe: 97ms

pulser: get it back down

pulser: DDoS http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/ (IP withheld) take it back down

Missingno34: they probally changed IP

Missingno34: to avoid us

Johndo1: FIRE LAzORSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon88: I think the aussies filtered me last time…

mibbbbbbbbbbb: zzzap

Hardly the highly organized criminals some reports suggest. They’re nerds. No worries.

The only worrying thing is the Government’s preparedness to prevent one of these attacks should it be on a website that actually provides a serious service.

After the Feb 10 debacle, the Feds gleefully announced they were aware the assault was coming (a google search could have found that), but that they were helpless to stop it. By the weekend they still clearly had made no headway.

Whether you’re for (conservative fascist) or against (pinko nutjob) the Government’s plan, you’d have to have serious doubts as to their competence to execute it properly.

Especially when they proved, twice, they can’t block an attack by pimply hacker wannabes on their websites when they know its coming.

Or when, in 2007, 16-year-old Tom Wood managed to crack their $84 million test filter in just 30 minutes.

Or, for example, when Senator Conroy is the man in charge, considering his track record of jobs-for-the-boys and dates with more than one kind of mogul in the Colorado ski fields.

The Government yesterday told me the same thing they said last week – that the new Cyber Security Operations Centre was on watch.

I was on watch too. I saw the whole thing.

Most commented

25 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • Louis says:

      05:23pm | 21/02/10

      Don’t misuse the term conservative.
      Thanks

      Reply

    • Trevil says:

      06:49pm | 21/02/10

      why is it a misuse, he was describing how people innacuratley label others….

    • Anonnewfag says:

      05:47pm | 21/02/10

      Dear Mr. Dickenson,
      It seems that you are belittling the internet hive-mind.  I do request you show the “pimply wanna-bes” who brought the abuses of Scientology to light, foiled several sexual criminals and are attempting to protect your freedom of speech some respect.  You must have realized that writing and posting this could have drastic effects on your journalistic career here on the internet, also known as the place where the people you just insulted frolic.  For your career’s sake I can only hope that my peers, colleagues and friends will never see this.

      Reply

    • Mace Windu says:

      06:04am | 23/02/10

      Annonnewfag - um aren’t you guys all about freedom of speech? like the freedom of speech Dickinson is exercising by calling you nerds? When u get all offended and threatening and “show us some respect”-y it proves for you it’s not actually about freedom of speech but about being a nuisance and bullying people

    • Anonnewfag says:

      04:43am | 27/02/10

      Mace Windu- There is a difference between expressing one’s opinion and being an idiot.  Disagreeing with Anonymous’ ways would be a logical and thoughtful use of freedom of speech.  Freedom of speech does not make everyone right, it just gives you the right to be heard.  Nowhere did I say that he should shut is misinformed mouth, I stated that he should use more caution when dealing with a group he knows absolutely nothing about.  One of the very foundations of Anonymous is criticism, we require it, however, even we need more thoughtful observation than Mr. Dickenson’s.

    • Eric says:

      05:48pm | 21/02/10

      Pffffft. Incompetents everywhere.

      Reply

    • Alexander White says:

      06:13pm | 21/02/10

      Not only a bunch of nerds, but many seem to have profoundly misogynistic attitudes given the comments copied above.

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      07:04pm | 21/02/10

      If you think that’s the worst that it gets… Anonymous isn’t just misogynistic, it transcends misogyny. It’s post misogyny. It casts a shadow over every offensive thing you’ve ever heard with its giant, raging web phallus that will impregnate your brain with filth and take you to a world where homosexual epithets are used as casual suffixes, death is hilarious, racism is compulsory and women are welcomed onto their web forums with the phrase ‘TITS OR GTFO’. You don’t want to know what they actually call the females, if you think that was misogyny.

      Anonymous is the bleeding edge of the internet. The sordid, swollen underbelly. A place where art isn’t quite crime, crime not quite art, to paraphrase Gibson.

    • Eric says:

      04:30am | 22/02/10

      What a ridiculous assertion.

    • chris says:

      06:49pm | 21/02/10

      Lous. Please look up “humor” and “hyperbole”. Thanks.

      Reply

    • Michael says:

      07:18pm | 21/02/10

      “Whether you’re for (conservative fascist)”

      I don’t think “conservative” means what you think it means. Conservatives (real ones) are against this plan because it is government intervention, and spending taxpayers’ money on a dodgy piece of software that won’t work to the government’s and pro-censorship-groups’ la-la-land standards anyway.

      Reply

    • Jason Bennett says:

      10:03pm | 21/02/10

      Alexander, you’re being over-sensitive, I spotted one questionable comment and it was obviously not aimed at women.

      Reply

    • Matthew says:

      10:30pm | 21/02/10

      No different to blocking traffic in a street, what’s the problem ? 

      Conroy didn’t consult the public for the filter.  Gave away $250 million to already profitable Television Networks, and is spending $45 BILLION without a detailed cost/benefit analysis nor any idea on what this thing will cost the consumer, who, no thanks to labor, have to pay twice (our tax dollars + our retail dollars).

      More power to them.

      Reply

    • Louise says:

      12:53am | 22/02/10

      Continue with the term ‘conservative fascist’.
      Thanks

      Reply

    • Nick says:

      04:14am | 22/02/10

      A Government department won’t have to run the filter. They’re just making a law forcing the ISP’s to do it for them. Incompetence on the part of the bureaucrats in charge of the blacklist will cause headaches though, for the Government and for the innocent local dentist website they unwittingly block.

      Reply

    • Ian Carpenter says:

      05:56am | 22/02/10

      haaaaaaaaaahh… the govt foiled by a bunch of teenagers!!

      Reply

    • vego ipswich says:

      06:24am | 22/02/10

      pm.gov.au is down now as well

      Reply

    • Spam Box says:

      09:29am | 22/02/10

      “Or when, in 2007, 16-year-old Tom Wood managed to crack their $84 million test filter in just 30 minutes.”

      Remind me again who was in Government then?

      Reply

    • Ben says:

      11:25am | 22/02/10

      The previous government’s PC filters wasn’t ‘cracked’. The person knew the administrator password.

      Even if the person did manage to ‘crack’ it, who cares? Nobody was forced to use it. ISP filters are hundreds of times easier to bypass than PC filters, and the current government wants to make it mandatory.

      The ‘not a silver bullet’ argument stands up in terms of circumvention when the proposed solution is optional for everyone, but definintely not for the current government’s proposal.

    • Logic says:

      12:01pm | 22/02/10

      He didn’t CRACK the test filter, he logged in as a different user with more privileges and disabled it. At least the Howard Govt weren’t stupid enough to introduce something like what the bumbling idiots we have in power now are trying to do.

      FAIL on the part of the parents, not the Govt.

    • poot says:

      12:31pm | 22/02/10

      just wait until this generation is the one running the country.

      ill let you think about that for a while

      Reply

    • Robert says:

      12:44pm | 22/02/10

      A stupid filter requires a stupid response, in this case they are censoring the government. Stupid in its illegality for sure.

      But I wish power to them, hope that more people protest in their own ways against this draconian filter. Honestly people are far too relaxed about government nowadays, even as they drift further and further away from people and more into corporate.

      Reply

    • Alex says:

      01:18pm | 22/02/10

      Dear Mr Dickinson, 

      The acts of electronic civil disobedience are not performed by hackers.  Running a DoS action requires no “hacking” or “cracking” of targeted sites and/or servers. Please stop promulgating myths and distortions about the difference between online activists, hacktivists, hackers and crackers.

      Thank you.

      Reply

    • L0rd 0f the Ne4d5 says:

      04:22pm | 22/02/10

      FIRE LAzORSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
      PEEEOW PEEOW

      Reply

    • Andr3w G0ff lolz says:

      06:47pm | 22/02/10

      i think u just won the interwebs.

 
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