Hacker Admits To Scientology DDoS Attack 275
lbwbl writes with news that a New Jersey man will plead guilty to one felony count of 'unauthorized impairment of a protected computer' for his distributed denial of service attacks on Scientology websites as part of 'Anonymous' earlier this year. From Wired:
"He faces a likely sentence of 12 to 18 months in prison based on stipulations in his plea agreement, which also obliges him to pay $37,500 in restitution. ... Friday's case, in US District Court in Los Angeles, marks the first prosecution of an Anonymous member for a series of attacks against the Church of Scientology that began in mid-January. The secretive religious group strayed into Anonymous' sights after trying to suppress the publication of a creepy Tom Cruise video produced for Scientology members."
Anonymous Script Kiddies (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:scientology needs a worldwide campaign launched (Score:5, Interesting)
Will someone help protect me against the free-trade exploit tool (DMCA takedown notice) that I'm told the church would use against me if/when I try to sell my E-meter on Ebay?
The E-meter isn't a fake or an unauthorized copy.
Re:Your Rights Online? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can also be arrested for creating a public nuisance.
Re:scientology needs a worldwide campaign launched (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember a chapter in a text for a health class in junior high school. The topic was "Quacks," and the direction was to "beware of them." I remember being interested in the first view of doctors I'd seen that didn't portray them as completely trustworthy and somehow authoritarian.
One section described a particularly heinous form of quackery that involved "gizmos purported to measure the electrical charge on the surface of the skin." This seemed outrageous to me. Electricity on the skin??? Obviously this was a big-time scam. These gizmos were obviously fakes; I could tell just by reading the damning text and staring at the weird black and white photos.
I thought about this from time to time as I grew up, especially when I learned about the vast array of electrical charges and how ubiquitous electricity is. I still held onto this strange form of pity for those who had fallen for the scams of these quacks and their bogus gizmos. Something about the tone of the textbook made the whole thing seem very dangerous, e.g., there were people spending all of their money on something that couldn't possibly work. And what if they had a serious ailment which was being ignored in favor of the, the ... quackery !!!
Well, a few years ago, when the Scientology documents were exposed to the public, I perused them out of curiosity. Even though I knew about Xenu, I was still surprised to see it all there in print. Then I ran across the man's story of getting to some advanced Thetan level, and he described the self-auditing with the e-meter. Something in his narrative caused the neurons in my own brain to fire just so, and I realized that this was what was being described in the textbook.
I think it would be interesting to research how detectable electrical currents in the human body relate to physical, mental, even emotional processes. I believe it's dangerous to toss around half-baked notions of the same, in exchange for money and time, based on the ramblings of a science fiction author on alcohol and barbiturates.
I mean, the guy should have been on psilocybin, or mescaline. Alcohol and other depressants are cruel drugs.
Re:Anonymous (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually 2 people were arrested for protesting Scientology in Atlanta . . . for having a dust mask and a voice amplifier.
Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I doubt that any campaign needs this kind of an asshat in the first place. It just creates the image of Scientology being the innocent victims, and their opponents being a bunch of criminals. We can do without that kind of making martyrs.
E.g., no offense, but you seem to do that generalization yourself when you paint the whole campaign as needing to try to not get caught. I'm not saying that to pick on you, but just to illustrate the kind of association that gets made. If even you, presumably a smart guy, fall for that kind of guilt by association, imagine how much easier that is for someone who understands computers and scientology even less.
Seriously, read any advocacy FAQ (e.g., start with the Linux one) and you'll see that all progress is actually made by the people who keep a professional and helpful attitude about it. Rabid zealots and asshat script kiddies are the kind you _don't_ want your movement to be associated with, because it ruins your whole credibility. That kind of "friends" are literally worse than your enemies.
And in this case it also ruins the whole moral high ground aspect. This guy infected (or help create a market for infecting) a bunch of innocent people's computers, and stuffed their internet connection to do his DDOS attack. That's actual harm done to innocents. It's an evil act. Once you show that kind of lack of morals or of respect for your fellow human, you just don't have a high ground from which to look down upon scientology.
If you will, it's a bit like reading about Mao denouncing the Soviet Union leaders. You're not inclined to rally on his side, because he's an evil fuck himself. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is still a sociopathic prick.
Re:my take on anonymous vs scientology (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:business practices (Score:1, Interesting)
One neato thing about looking at religious systems from a social science perspective is that before long you realize how much bullshit they share.
Re:Anonymous (Score:3, Interesting)
You must not be familiar with the XenuTV channel on Youtube. People stage protests around Scientology facilities all the time, and because Scientolog has such deep pockets, they've paid off the local cops to not enforce laws when the Scientology thugs start fucking with the protesters.
The entire police force for the city of Clearwater is owned by the church. They've got video of Scientologists destroying video cameras, and the cops just say things like, "Your camera collided with his fist, that's not a crime."
Until we can get Scientology to be responsible, and follow the same rules as everybody else, we have to fight them from outside the system, because they've totally corrupted the inside of it.
Re:Unauthorized impairment of a protected computer (Score:3, Interesting)
Regardless of if it is a "minor script kiddie DDOS" or not, it was disruptive. Let's take out who the actual recipient of the DDOS was and put in another organization, such as Amnesty International, just for the sake of argument. Would it have been ok to DDOS Amnesty for whatever purpose? Remember, if you don't treat everyone the same (allowing for due processes and the court of law) you don't have justice.
Now to take a look at the "script kiddie" aspect of the argument. Spammers are not that sophisticated, most of them do not actually write their own spamming software, they hire out for that and use pre-existing software, just as script kiddies do. So does that make it less of a problem than if they wrote the spamming software themselves? In my opinion, no it doesn't. Spammers, virus writers, and script kiddies all take time and resources away from citizens and corporations, which I see as a detriment to society. Now the best way to correct this, I am not sure, but I do not see a problem with locking up a script kiddie or spammer for 1-2 years, as I would really prefer to see more of them caught and sent to jail. This may not be a huge deterrent to many of them, but it would get more of them thinking about the consequences of their actions. What we do need though are laws that are enforced against these individuals.
I know that some see a difference with spammers and script kiddies because the spammers are doing it for a profit. This is not a reason for kiddies not to be prosecuted though. Arsonists are not burning buildings and cars for a profit, they do it for shits and giggles, just like the script kiddie. Not having profit motivating aspects to a crime does not make it any less wrong.
So I say, let him go to jail, good riddance. Yes it is my tax dollars at work, and yes we dis proportionally jail individuals longer for some crimes than others, but sometimes it is important to let individuals know just how much society disapproves of their actions.
Meh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Aside from the obvious fact that Scientology is a cult, I really wish they'd stop referring to fucking packet kiddies as 'hackers'. Most of them (and I'll bet this kid is no different) don't even fall in line with the definition of cracker or hacker. They're just children with buttons.