Britain's GCHQ Attacked Anonymous Supporters With DDoS 133
An anonymous reader writes "NBC News reports that, during a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV, GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group bragged about using Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against members of Anonymous during an operation called Rolling Thunder in 2011 (there is evidence that says it was a SYN flood, so technically it was a simple DoS attack). Regular citizens would face 10 years in prison and enormous fines for committing a DoS / DDoS attack. The same applies if they encouraged or assisted in one. But if you work in the government, it seems like you're an exception to the rule."
In defense of GCHQ... (Score:5, Funny)
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But they're trying to stop T E R R O R I S T S ! ! !
Re:In defense of GCHQ... (Score:5, Insightful)
But they're trying to stop T E R R O R I S T S ! ! !
Protesters are not terrorists. Sadly our governments don't make that distinction.
Re:In defense of GCHQ... (Score:5, Insightful)
But they're trying to stop T E R R O R I S T S ! ! !
Protesters are not terrorists. Sadly our governments don't make that distinction.
No, that's not sad, it's quite terrifying. [theguardian.com]
What's sad is that the secret agencies been treating activists like terrorists to maintain the corporate status quo since their inception over a century ago. [wikipedia.org] That's what "national security" is.
Try harder, troll (Score:1)
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But they're trying to stop the hacker group Anonymous
FTFY
Re:In defense of GCHQ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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By becoming terrorist themselves? How is that going to work?
once you buy the weapons... (Score:2)
it's only a matter of time before they're used...needed or not.
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"License to Kill", Old Chap.
I say.
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License to Kill, my Old Chap.
I say.
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I'm not going near your "old chap."
Re:GCHQ: "Hey guys.. DDoS attacks are illegal!" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:GCHQ: "Hey guys.. DDoS attacks are illegal!" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's illegal in most places for private citizens to lob military grade ordinance around, but not for Governments.
Re:GCHQ: "Hey guys.. DDoS attacks are illegal!" (Score:5, Insightful)
If government agents lobbed military-grade ordinance at innocent civilians in the UK, we'd call that unlawful killing and lock the bastards up. And by the same token, if GCHQ had DoS'd targets belonging to legitimate wartime enemies, we wouldn't be criticizing them.
As a rough rule of thumb, the government isn't allowed to do things to citizens above and beyond what any civilian could do without a court mandate or a valid piece of legislation. Unless GCHQ have such a thing, they did wrong.
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I didn't say it was right or wrong. It just is.
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Just showing to everybody that they are above the law.
One of the identifying characteristics of a police-state: If the police commits some act of murder, torture, destruction or terrorism, nothing happens. If a citizen does, the hammer is brought down hard.
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In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news, the UK military can drive tanks, fire missiles & carry weapons - but regular citizens cannot.
It's all about oversight, not an attitude of "why can't we legally do this too?".
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In the US citizens can carry weapons, but firing missiles is not allowed.
And as for driving tanks, well if you count SUV's then yes, but the armor plated, tracked vehicles with cannon in the turret aren't allowed.
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Actually, private citizens are permitted to own tanks in the USA. Lots of paperwork, security checks, and some sort of license is required. All "guns" must be inoperable.
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Cool!!
You can promote it as the ultimate SUV!!
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Actually, private citizens are permitted to own tanks in the USA. Lots of paperwork, security checks, and some sort of license is required. All "guns" must be inoperable.
You can have tanks in the UK too.
Ross Noble has a tank – or more accurately an Abbott 433 self-propelled gun – which he brought from a website called Tanks A Lot. 'What's amazing is that you don't have to pay the Congestion Charge,' he told Richard Herring on his Leicester Square Theatre podcast released this week. 'There are no rules about it,' he added. 'The guns are deactivated now, but if they worked, from where I live now, I could hit Gatwick. That's not a threat. That REALLY isn't a threat. But I tell you what, the badger cull in our village is going well. I got the fucking lot...'
http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2013/11/15/19063/ross_noble%3A_tank_commander
I think he talks about it here but I'm at work so I can't really check. http://www.topgear.com/uk/vide... [topgear.com]
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There's no paperwork or 'security check' outside title work, and whatever else goes on down at the DMV which would preclude an individual from owning tanks that might be light enough for operation on the road. They just have to have headlights and signals like any other vehicle. I suppose if it's heavy enough you might need a commercial / heavy vehicle driver's license. If you want to operate it on private property, you certianly wouldn't need any of that.
All "guns" must be inoperable.
That's where you need
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That's because in the US people are citizens, in the UK they are subjects.
Also it is legal to own and drive tanks both in the United States and the UK, and there is a community of hobbyists in England who purchase old Soviet armored equipment and restore it to drive to meets just as though they were participating in an antique car club. The machine guns/cannon have to be disabled though unless you live in the US and have the proper permits.
Tanks have padded tracks so they actually don't damage roads as muc
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> That's because in the US people are citizens, in the UK they are subjects.
This isn't true for most people in the UK for the last 30 years.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
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That's because in the US people are citizens, in the UK they are subjects.
You're a little behind the times, US people are subjects now, too.. Our 238 year old Constitution has been run thru the shredder by the last several administrations and many of us are sick and tired of it...
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That's because in the US people are citizens, in the UK they are subjects.
Not what it says on my passport...
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The military can only use those weapons against other militarys and with direct authorization from the government. GCHQ feels it can use cyberattacks against citizens who had no, at the time, been convicted of or even charged with any sort of crime, with no oversight or authorization.
At most the Anonymous DDOS attacks were a criminal matter for the police, not national security or warfare.
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Fundamentally broken analogy.
What matters is the target and the type of damage/injury done. Without an emergency, the military is certainly not allowed to drive tanks through citizen's houses, fire missiles at civilian airplanes or shoot people with the weapons they carry. And after that emergency, there better be a damn careful investigation.
However, in a police-state that investigation gets more and more meaningless and eventually anybody on the side of the government can declare any emergency they want,
Devil's Advocate... (Score:1)
Police are allowed to do many things in their duty that non-police aren't allowed to do.
Can it not be argued that GCHQ is also allowed to do many things in their duty that non-GCHQ folk aren't allowed to do.
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The police are not permitted to intentionally harrass or harm persons and property unless directly threatened.
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The police are not permitted
False. What we are finding is that a badge and gun are all the permit needed.
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The police are not permitted
False. What we are finding is that a badge and gun are all the permit needed.
Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!
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The police are not permitted to intentionally harrass or harm persons and property unless directly threatened.
That depends if you define "permitted" there as "sanctioned" or as "allowed".
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You're kidding right? Heard of stop and frisk which occurs in most major cities in the USA not just NYC? It's standard behavior.
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The question is: have this been reported? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Annoyingly, laws apply to us, and not them.
Things we aren't allowed to do they can say they're doing for Perfectly Good Reasons.
Essentially they get to give themselves a free pass and do this kind of stuff.
Increasingly, law enforcement everywhere in the so-called 'free world' is deciding that the rule of law is too inconvenient and skirt around it if it suits them.
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An Intelligence Officer is a criminal with a badge that makes it "ok". Seriously, it is their job to go into other countries and break their laws in order to gain information.
Government can do many things you can not (Score:1)
It can levy taxes, print money, jail people involuntarily, declare war, kill people , etc.
GCHQ, Mossad, NSA racing to win biggest asshole (Score:2)
Who will win in the end? Stay tuned!
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Fascism and the police state.
We all lose.
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And this time, there will not be anybody from the outside to remove the government. That means the USSR-Model, where after decades of totalitarianism, one mole with a vision makes it into the government, or the North Korea model, where that does not happen for a long, long, long time.
The Schutzstaffel (Score:4, Insightful)
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Anonymous had already broken the social contract. You seem to be silent on that. Do you also complain about the police breaking the social contract for using force?
Re:The Schutzstaffel (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe you'll find Anonymous is breaking the social contract because governments have already done so.
You've completely missed the part where the GP said:
I find it difficult to disagree with the notion that the governments have already broken the social contract, and Anonymous is a reaction to that.
I don't necessarily agree with everything Anonymous does -- but I sure as hell understand the reason for them existing. When your rulers are unjust, you have little recourse except to break the social contract as well.
That those same unjust governments decide that gives them free reign to continue to be unjust is just more of the same.
Re:The Schutzstaffel (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe you'll find Anonymous is breaking the social contract because governments have already done so.
Perhaps you could explain then how attacking random people and corporations is a useful reaction? Anonymous aren't out to "enforce" the social contract but for "lulz" or to satisfy their pique. They are cyber vandals, little more. Anonymous is no more justified in most of what they do than most any other vigilante group.
I don't necessarily agree with everything Anonymous does -- but I sure as hell understand the reason for them existing. When your rulers are unjust, you have little recourse except to break the social contract as well.
Then you basically negate the social contract entirely since there will always be someone or some group that can claim that they have been treated unfairly, and we now move to the realm of vigilantes. I don't see them fighting for noble causes in the case of genuine oppression so much as petty grievances and fringe causes. They vandalize over the irk of the hour despite their noble claims.
You will notice that they are heavily active in Western democracies which have many rights guarantees, social safety nets, and little or no meaningful political oppression. Perhaps you can tell us, what country would they not vandalize? Where can we find an order so universally just and beyond reproach from every viewpoint, including the insane, juvenile, or foreign, that it cannot be assailed?
They neither support nor enforce the social contract, they undermine it.
Re:The Schutzstaffel (Score:4, Insightful)
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Anonymous had already broken the social contract.
In the game of 'tit for tat', it's a matter of who drew first blood.
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Indeed. The main characteristic of a police state is that the duties of government and its agents go away and the rights of the citizens do the same. There is no mutual benefit left in the end. A police state corrupts "the law" and it becomes completely unsuitable to judge right and wrong. (Not that it is very useful for that in the best of circumstances...)
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You have accepted your role as a cog. An unthinking unit of work and obedience to be monitored and vihttp://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/02/05/1318223/britains-gchq-attacked-anonymous-supporters-with-ddos#ewed with suspicion. But what is most worrying is that you did it without so much as a whimper.
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
The Intelligence Services Act of 1994 offers a lot of new legal protections, then the Intelligence and Security Committee, SIGMod (sigint modernisation) followed in mid 2000 with more legal backing. Open court use of material is still under GCHQ veto, most is "passed" to other groups, MI5, ~ Special Branch.
The use of a "packet flood" back up would have been a new step beyond passive logging and longer term infiltrating efforts.
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If you disagree with that then you have very fundamental philosophical problems with the way our society is structured.
Why, indeed I do. OTOH, if you agree, then I also have a fundamental philosophical problem with your interpretation of the concept of Reason.
Not DDoS? (Score:1)
As long as it's James Bond or Q doing it . . . (Score:2)
. . . I'm totally down with it.
I am free! (Score:1)
I know DDoS attacks against IRC servers aren't uncommon...
But we're talking about an IRC server being DDoS'd by a security agency.
A place where people go to talk (regardless of how affiliated they are with Anonymous or not.)
So I'm guessing this means that Freedom of Speech no longer means shit the fascists in charge.
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So I'm guessing this means that Freedom of Speech no longer means shit the fascists in charge.
Are you implying that it ever did? The American's 1st Amendment didn't even survive a full decade before being rendered toothless 216 years ago.
Syn flood? (Score:2)
This was the first DOS attack I ever heard of. Used against Panix (ISP in NY) back in the day. Now most systems (Linux kerel, etc) are hardened against syn floods.
Primitive.
Windows can be also, easily... apk (Score:3, Informative)
DDoS/DoS CAN be stopped (Microsoft & Amazon are setup PERFECTLY vs. it in fact, read on below on that note)!
---
Microsoft Windows NT-based OS settings vs. DoS:
Protect Against SYN Attacks
FROM -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]
A SYN attack exploits a vulnerability in the TCP/IP connection establishment mechanism. To mount a SYN flood attack, an attacker uses a program to send a flood of TCP SYN requests to fill the pending connection queue on the server. This prevents other users from establishing net
This thread is full of trolls like the above. (Score:1)
Innocent bystanders. (Score:1)
Does this have anything to do with why FreeNode IRC was being DoS attacked a couple days ago?
3 Words! (Score:2)
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ABOVE THE LAW
Time for a new Magna Carta. Next time, restrict both the king and the government action against the people by recognizing the universal truth of freedom.
The problem is in thinking there are no such things as rights, only permissions. No freedom of speech, only permission? This is ignorance of the highest degree. In the absence of all laws there is total freedom: Any action can yield any reaction. Laws restrict the fundamental freedom granted to intelligent forms by the nature of the universe itself thr
2 Words! (Score:2)
POLICE STATE
Why not just file criminal charges? (Score:1)
Sure, they probably won't go anywhere, but it'll still be good to have it on public record that the government refuses to prosecute its own agency's crimes.
lowercase (Score:3)
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No, you aren't.
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You shouldn't be.
Granted those Anon members might have gotten what they deserved -- but government/police/military etc is never, ever (ever) the appropriate agent for 'vengeance'. Because at the end of the day, it's really quite arbitrary who is offended by what, thus a slippery slope is created.
Example.. one day the police use excessive force against a terrorist or pedophile, and that's applauded -- who's to say they won't then go and use such methods on suspects ranging from ... jaywalkers on up?
Robert Peel called.. (Score:3)
*: I did try and warn him about the future [xkcd.com] but he said he had to rush off to do some shopping..
Did anyone notice? (Score:2)
Anonymous factions DoS each other all the time for fun and practice. They are fairly good at working around it.
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"Anonymous unmasked: hacker ringleader turned FBI informant"
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/J... [csmonitor.com]
"Jeremy Hammond: FBI directed my attacks on foreign government sites"
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... [theguardian.com]
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
What's the problem? (Score:2)
The GCHQ are the GOOD guys, remember? As such why should they be hamstrung by the rules and laws that criminals follow?
Why wouldn't we want to give them those advantages do we want them to do their jobs or don't we?
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I can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or naive...
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If you live where shooting an armed criminal during the commission of a crime is illegal then you're already in trouble. If you're not trying to change it, then you're part of the problem.
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Yes, they can do this shit and you can't. Get over it.
Would you also say that to the people of North Korea?
At what point do you draw the line?
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I suspect most North Koreans would gladly trade the problem of a DDOS attack against them by the government for engaging in DDOS in exchange for their current problems of political prisoners being experimented on [theguardian.com] and mass starvation due to the government diverting both local food and foreign food aid to the military.
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Go look at the link I provided. Do you really think that I somehow persuaded the Leftist journalists at Guardian paper to write bad things about North Korea - 10 years ago? If you do then you are a nitwit, at best.
I can only persuade people open to actual evidence, and some people aren't. You apparently are in that category. What does that say about you? Thoughtless and doctrinaire come to mind, I'm sure more things apply as well. None of them are positive attributes. You should really rethink your li
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So your preference for the Anonymous members is that instead of suffering a transient DDOS attack having no long term affect on them that they would instead be prosecuted, their PCs confiscated, they be imprisoned and fined for engaging in illegal DDOS attacks - since that is a very possible outcome of the law? It seems to me they got off quite lightly as it was. Instead you wish them far greater punishment and a long term mark against them that could affect their future employment? Do you really think t
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The two Koreas weren't really equal, South Korea was well ahead in terms of building a viable economy for an advanced nation for the purposes of peace and prosperity. You are right in noting that the USSR was involved since it and China were engaged in providing massive aid to prop up North Korea. The North Koreas are responsible for their famine, not the US. They managed to magnify any hardship caused by the weather by means of incompetent and backwards communist inspired agriculture policy. What's wor