Anonymous blasts Government sites for second day

By Ry Crozier on Feb 11, 2010 2:50 PM
Filed under Security

Titstorm still listed as "in progress".

Hackers continued to bombard the Australian Parliament House website with traffic for a second straight day as part of Operation Titstorm.

A spokesman for the Attorney-General's department confirmed the attack "continued to affect the availability of the Parliament House website.

"Visitors to this site are receiving an error message stating that the service is unavailable," the spokesman said.

The Partyvan wiki, which carried a large amount of information on the attack, was updated to carry the message: "This raid is currently in progress, grab yourselves a LOIC.EXE and get on IRC for raid coordination."

LOIC - which stood for low orbit ion cannon - was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) client made by Praetox.

The main wiki page did not appear to load but was viewable via Google cache at the time of publication.

The Attorney-General spokesman said that agencies identified as potential targets in the attacks - which have been attributed to a loose collection of hackers known as ‘Anonymous' - had been "briefed in advance and were provided with suggested mitigation strategies".

It remained unclear how far in advance the Government had known of the attack.

The attack has been condemned on almost all fronts.

Moderators of the Why We Protest online activism forum, added their voice overnight.

"We don't like the censorship from Australia, but we don't condone the ddos attack from other portions of anonymous," the post read.

Electronic Frontiers Australia "naturally" condemned the attacks.

"Not only are they illegal, but they damage the cause by playing to stereotypes of filter opponents as juveniles motivated by a desire to keep the Internet safe for porn," the EFA said.

"It's true that the censorship plan has been thrust on the Australian public without consultation, research or a coherent policy objective.

"But this campaign just serves for Anonymous members to get a little revenge. It certainly won't persuade anyone; rather, it will hurt the anti-filtering campaign."

Stop Internet Censorship co-founder Nicholas Perkins agreed: "It would be much more helpful for these people to put their efforts behind legitimate action to stop this ineffective and inefficient attempt at censorship by the Australian Government."

But not everyone was critical. A Facebook page that sought support for the attacks had 91 members at the time of publication.

Anonymous blasts Government sites for second day

30 comments in this discussion

"Sorry Anonymous, I should clarify that this YouTube video actually occured when Anonymous found out that World of Warcraft was added to the black list. My apologies and may I ask... what is the ..."

By gonny

Tags

anonymous, operation, titstorm, government, aph, ddos, attack, hacker

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Comments: 30

Fedas Feb 11, 2010 4:16 PM	Having the filename of the application they are using to preform a DDoS isn't really responsible reporting. a quick search and downloads are aplenty.
Ace Feb 11, 2010 4:48 PM	A DDOS is an attack on freedom of information. These crims are denying ordinary peoples access to services we have paid for because they think we shouldn't have access to these services. This makes them orders of magnitude worse than Conroy & his filter - which has not, and may never be implemented. Exactly what 'revenge' are these kids getting? Revenge for the Govt looking into the viability of filtering internet content? Revenge for Conroy making a meal of the whole idea? I can't see one upside to this attack. It will only serve to reinforce the Governments idea that they must protect us from these idiots.
Sams Feb 11, 2010 5:14 PM	@Ace I agree - on the balance I believe they are hindering not helping the anti-filter fight.
Daveh Feb 11, 2010 6:21 PM	Not to agree with this approach, but... Lets think about this from a 'real world' correlation. What they are doing is roughly speaking, standing, en-mass in front of select government buildings, blocking access. A giant wall of people stopping and protesting at anyone who would enter a government building. In the real world this would get notice. The issue here is this is a DIGITAL medium issue, so the protesters have simply taken their protests digital. Lets face the facts. The protests are all organised online, in full view of the government who have not responded. This is simply the outcry of millions who are against the policies of the government and are able to commit their resources to this protest via a digital medium. Another note should be that it costs these people to protest, in bandwidth and data usage. They are spending their paid for bandwidth to block access to a government office. While it is never good when people do these things, this is simply the digital evolution of a real world protest march blocking a government building. Fact is, they are gaining airplay for this. Internationally. They are drawing attention that enough people to flood the governments bandwidth are doing this in OPPOSITION to the censorship. These people are not hiding in secret chat rooms, they have publicly published what they want - the government to step down on its Censorship plans and are simply protesting with bandwidth. I would add that the final and most telling thing is that the Senators and Departments of the government responsible for the Censorship legislation have still not responded, despite large public outcry and these protests now. Given that the government has been silent and continued stepping towards for so long, can you honestly blame people for wanting to step up and protest?
Ace Feb 11, 2010 11:18 PM	You see @Daveh, there are plenty of legitimate ways to protest. There's even an election coming up. Hacking into the computers of hundreds or thousands of innocent, unwitting home users, installing root kits and DDOS bots that they command via IRC is in no way ethical, moral or legal. They are stealing disk space and bandwidth from the very people they claim to be protesting on behalf of. These people are out-and-out criminals. Contrary to what you appear to believe, these people pay NOTHING for bandwidth. It's all stolen. Furthermore, seeing as they clearly have no ethics, you can be sure they are stealing other information from the hard disk drives of their bot victims. Passwords, bank details, online accounts etc etc. The fact they're not brave enough to write letters or legally protest outside a building only goes to show how gutless they are. I'm pretty certain they have no interest in whether the Govt implements a filter or not. They are simply looking for opportunities to say 'oooo, look how clever I am mum..'
hsvandrew Feb 12, 2010 6:00 AM	Although this approach does seem extreme, I think it shows the level of anger in the community over what the government is doing, and importantly the arrogance by Stephen Conroy and his department who refuse to take onboard any feedback or appeals made through legit means like sending them mail/email/faxes etc on this issue. Government is elected by the people to listen to the people and when they don't this is what happens. In other places around the world you might see fire bombs fired into government buildings and parliament house burnt down. So let’s enjoy the peaceful protests while they last because if the government doesn't alter its stand they won't be peaceful forever. This issue is as big as the Eureka Stockade and I hope to see the same level of protest if they try to actually implement it.
Just An Anon Feb 12, 2010 7:37 AM	Ace I'd first of all like to state that what anonymous is doing is not in any way hacking. We are not using a mass of stolen computers to launch our attacks but rather simply getting a mass of people to coordinate their computers with LOICs and contribute their full processing power to the same site at the same time. Secondly we are brave enough to write letters to them; we are writing them full of porn and sending them en-masse as spam to the government along with email, fax, and phone. Third of all we are highly interested in the protection of the freedom of information on the internet and we will go after anything which encroaches upon that domain in any way, shape, or form. The very fact that we are protesting this shows we have ethics so don't go off and try to blame us for crimes that we didn't commit. You are almost as bad as the scientologists. Finally i would like to add that the censorship of any material online is against the Universal Declaration of Human rights of 1948, Article 19 which states:"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. "
Bourkie Feb 12, 2010 9:34 AM	You know its funny, but being screwed over by the filter policy makes me lose my usual tolerant, and easy going approach to passive living... DDoS the !@#$ out of them!
Ace Feb 12, 2010 10:06 AM	As far as I am aware, we have not lost access to any material due to Govt filtering. The only thing we have lost is access to Govt web sites, which are paid for with money the rest of us worked very hard to earn. There is no inkling of even a plan to block peoples 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers' as far as I am aware. The only opinions blocked are those blocked by subsequent laws, and relate to things like racial vilification. As I said, these Anon idiots merely blocked information to which I not only contributed to (financially), but to which I had the right to see under the freedom of information act of 1948. Talk about censorship without consultation. We all know who the real culprits are.
Just An Anon Feb 12, 2010 10:30 AM	"As I said, these Anon idiots merely blocked information to which I not only contributed to (financially), but to which I had the right to see under the freedom of information act of 1948. Talk about censorship without consultation. We all know who the real culprits are." Great so we are now on the same page about the censorship of material online, I'm glad you could see it my way
Just An Anon Feb 12, 2010 10:30 AM	"As I said, these Anon idiots merely blocked information to which I not only contributed to (financially), but to which I had the right to see under the freedom of information act of 1948. Talk about censorship without consultation. We all know who the real culprits are." Great so we are now on the same page about the censorship of material online, I'm glad you could see it my way
Anon Is Legion Feb 12, 2010 11:52 AM	IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZ0RS!
Just a note Feb 12, 2010 2:27 PM	@Ace How can you know what is or is not blocked if the censor makes the decision? Furthermore, shouldn't you be the one to decide what you should or should not be looking at on the internet? Since when was it the government's job to decide what you are exposed to. You may strongly believe that only "bad stuff" is censored. However, this may not always be the case. Certain material that might upset the government's (or even specific individual's) agendas may also be manipulated. The burden to decide what information is or is not important to you is yours and yours alone. You can not pawn it off onto a government you "financially supported" to do that job for you. There is a movie called V for Vendetta. I think you should see it.
Sams Feb 12, 2010 2:41 PM	"You may strongly believe that only 'bad stuff' is censored." Heh, luckily the government is here to tell us what the bad stuff is, otherwise our poor little heads might get confused :-)
Ace Feb 12, 2010 3:58 PM	@JustaNote, the point is, the Govt isn't blocking anything. They're still trying to figure out how they would do such a thing. There's a lot of talk, but to date, no filtering has occurred. Conroy may be making a lot of noise about doing it, and indeed it is up to us, the public, to make it known we do not approve of the plan. But at the moment, that is all it that it is. A plan. If Rudd saw enough noise and thought it might affect re-election chances, he would probably shut down the whole plan. The iiNet win means that ISP's are not responsible for content downloaded by users, so a wheel fell off the Conroy wagon there. You say "You may strongly believe that only "bad stuff" is censored.". As far as I am aware, nothing is censored (except where ISPs try to block hackers). Are you aware of anything being censored? I don't think the government should have anything to do with filtering anything, and I can't imagine what gave you the impression I would support any form of filtering. The police already have a responsibility to prosecute people who publish illegal material, and that seems enough to me. If people want filtering, they can install their own net-nanny software. And @JAA, I can guarantee you the 1948 FOI act says nothing about "material online". When you start high school, you can ask some questions about the history of the internet. It may well have started before you were born, but that does not mean there was any such thing as 'online' in 1948. Even the 1982 FOI act does not make mention of 'online material', although it does cover subsequent acts that include telecommunications and even a Spam act. I just hope that you (@JAA) are not making stuff up as you go along...are you? Maybe you're just not really that well informed?
Daveh Feb 12, 2010 7:15 PM	@ace, @ace, @ace. Let me comment in order. First, a DDOS does NOT need to be performed via a BOTNET. A DDOS is simply a large volume of traffic hitting one site concurrently. In this instance LOIC is a piece of software to spend all ones bandwidth making requests to a web server in order to overload it with traffic. A botnet is a collection of people unwittingly dedicating bandwidth and other PC resources to a collection. LOIC allows the user to DIRECT traffic, thus the need of users to be organized online in an IRC chat. While the software does server only do perform a DDOS it does not steal your passwords/internet details/whatever. This is a USER INITIATED DDOS. The same as 50000 people concurrently smacking their f5 key for refresh on a website, this program happens to have a GUI and some finesse. You mentioned that people need to protest - Here it is. Moreover the government has said the want to censor things, this is simply people voicing their disapproval. You say they are protesting against something that is undefined, the minister in charge has not engaged, the censorship debate has gone on for over a year now. There have been real world protests too, along with a gamut of technical issues that remain unaddressed. Finally, lets do the bottom line. Money. You complain that this is costing the government, yep it is. Just as it would if this was PHYSICAL in front of parliament as i mentioned. This also costs the people in their bandwidth and data. But look at it this way. Given the technical issues, the fact that international enterprises wont support it, the direct cost of implementation , the indirect cost (loss of business from international org's mentioned earlier), the loss of resources (bandwidth) from the existing and upcoming infrastructure(NBN) which will be wasted in filtering (making things like the NBN a wasted investment) and finally the money wasted by the politicians to research and keep pushing at a system that is undesirable and technically infeasible. How much of your TAX dollars are wasted there So, what really costs more? All the wasted time/effort/cash on a policy set to fail? Or a few government websites being down because a senator wont see sense?
Ace Feb 13, 2010 12:22 AM	You seem to have a very simplistic view of this. A DDOS from a few different systems on the internet can be blocked and diverted in a few minutes. It's done all the time. At a minimum, you need a very widely distributed attack, which can really only be achieved using bots on thousands of computers. What makes you think the effectiveness of this particular DDOS was due to a few people using LOIC? It seems incredibly unlikely, and naive to me. Do you think these kids cleverly stopped criminal elements from participating? Do you know what percentage of that traffic originated from overseas (from place like Iran & China)? I understand the misguided intent, which at a minimum, was juvenile. My main concern is that these people helped Conroy put the wheel (that fell off thanks to iiNet) back on his filter wagon. Ironically, I don't care if they spend their time attacking Scientology. It's probably wrong but do I care? Selfishly, no :P I certainly don't like my tax dollars being spent on trying to implement an unwanted (at least by a few of us) internet filter, which the more savvy of us realise is unworkable. There a whole lot of other things I would consider a waste of tax dollars too. The fact is, the 'more savvy' may well be a tiny minority of the voting population. It seems to me that the best way of fighting it (unfortunately) is to have pollies shooting it down on TV. Unfortunately I suspect Abbott loves the idea of filtering internet content, meaning we're stuck with a rather ineffective Democrats party to do the job. If we end up with a govt controlled filter, it's because that is what people have voted for - democracy at work. Doesn't mean I'll like it. Anyway, the whole effort seems to have been incredibly ineffective as a protest, but has successfully provided Conroy and conservative types like him with another piece of ammunition. ps: 50000 users hitting F5 would have little impact on any half decent web site. Do Govt have half decent web sites? Don't know, but hopefully they didn't spend those millions on graphics! Also, people parading placards outside parliament does not block my access to information, but will make TV news, and have a much greater effect.
Just An Anon Feb 13, 2010 3:22 AM	First of all I'm already in college so you don't have to worry about that. Secondly i never said it had to do with "material online". I was commenting that based on your attitude in what you were saying that we were on the same page on the issue of internet censorship. You were the one who brought it up in the debate. thirdly just because they have not put this through does not mean that we should sit around and twiddle our thumbs and wait until such a thing gets passed so that we can rage at it at will. We need to strike preemptively on such a thing before it rears it's ugly head. Finally however you perceive us we are not some small mediocre group. To give you a scope of us on February 10th 2008, the date of the first in real protest against the church of scientology by us, we had over 7000 people show up in close to 100 cities world wide excluding all those people who couldn't/ or didn't want to show up. I'd say that is more then just "a few different systems on the internet".
Daveh Feb 13, 2010 2:33 PM	@ace. I will explain in simple terms, to ensure understanding. All it would take is enough TCP half open attacks (see 'SYN Flood') to flood their load balancers, given that any normally distributed system would focus on content delivery rather than the initial connection, flooding these smaller initial point-of-contact servers is easier (see 'Bottle Neck'). Quick examination of the LOIC software shows that it is indeed USER DRIVEN as i stated before. This would mean that people type in the URL of the location they wish to DDOS. Were this a botnetting piece of software this would not be necessary as it would be controlled remotely. The fact that this attacks a URL rather than the content providing servers means that it would INDEED hit the front end bottleneck. The numbers for this kind of attack are small as the number of wait state TCP requests can grow almost exponentially. As for blocking these requests. That would involve blocking IP addresses. IP addresses target single individuals, but need to be maintained individually and is bypassed via proxying or simply re-requesting an IP from your ISP (see 'Dynamic IP'). Another issue would be if the attacks were being performed with altered IP addresses (see 'Spoofing') this would mean that no reliable blocking could be setup. Potentially the nearest upstream node could begin blocking, but this would also block legitimate users and the DDoS would be re-routed. Please excuse this explanation in the simplest terms for being 'unrealistic' and 'naive'
ApocDev Feb 13, 2010 4:41 PM	Sorry Ace, but I have to call you out on a few things. You've obviously made some fairly ludicrous assertions with no factual basis. 1) Anonymous (Anon) is by no means 'hacking' anything. They are not gaining unauthorized access to any machines, nor are they 'taking' any information from said servers. 2) Please stop Googling 'DDoS' and do some proper research. 90% of DDoS attacks are not done via botnets. Instead, they are usually done via SYN Flood attacks or other alike attacks. Anon (and yes, I can say this with a fair amount of authority) as a whole, is not capable of a botnet large enough to take down a government funded webserver. However; they are more than capable of running LOIC (a simple SYN flood application) en masse to achieve the same effect. Just be happy it's only LOIC being run, and not a worse application [SlowLoris] which has been known to take down servers from a single machine. (Botnets are not exactly 'simple' things. Very few people actually operate medium to large scale botnets.) 3) The FOI pretty clearly states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. " (emphasis added). Now, to me that's pretty simple text. Any media, regardless of frontier. The information stored on the internet is a media, and guess what the internet itself is? Now that I've hopefully 'shown you the light', I can say that I support Anon 100%. I agree that it's probably not the smartest way to go about protesting, however it very well may be the most effective. We live in the internet age. It's been proven time and time again that the usual picket-line style protest doesn't work. The officials can sit in their offices blissfully unaware of what's going on. A DDoS forces them to listen. They can only ignore the protest for so long. The government has no right to decide what the people think is 'bad' in terms of information. (Not arguing that racism, murder, etc, are bad.) Information is free. Lets keep it that way. It's the public's last way of staying public. Censorship will slowly lead us into a dictatorship, which nobody wants.
Johnny Feb 13, 2010 9:53 PM	Whilist i'm VERY against censorship, DDoSing government sites is not the way to go about it. Nor is violence. Anoymous, sure your getting the message out there that filtering is bad but DDoSing a government site is bad. Why not flooding stephen conroy with letters? or speaking to your local MP. or trying to get a seat in parliament?
Ace Feb 14, 2010 12:18 AM	@Johnny has the right idea. You see Anon types & supporters, unless you are on the receiving end of a DDOS, you can have absolutely no idea who or what is attacking your published target. In your magical kingdom, you believe that only your friends have joined this affray. In the real world, things can be vastly different. Or perhaps you just don't actually care what the reason people join your attack - as long as you get your result? I suppose that might put you in good stead for a career in politics. Actually @Apocdev, I haven't done any research at all. But I'd be glad to look up this white paper that talks about '90% of DDoS attacks are not done via botnets'. I assume it's from a reputable source. Also, I can assure you that if your opinion breaks the law, then you can be arrested. It's 'FOI with caveats', and at this time in Australia, I believe the caveats have good community support. Maybe they won't in the future, but for now, they're good. The govt have a responsibility to enforce the laws supporting those caveats. Anyway, it's clear that Anon supporting are lovers of the GW Bush chant of 'your either with us, or your again at us. IE, if you don't support us, you must support govt internet filtering. At the risk of re-re-repeating myself, no, I do not support the govts idea of filtering internet content. I think this can easily be left to parents. I also do not support criminal behaviour like DDOS attacks - yes, it is illegal. You see, under the law, computer intrusion, hack, writing/spreading viruses, spyware and DDOS are all in the same bucket. You can probably look it up on-line somewhere. Anyways, that's might last bit on the subject. Please feel free to carry on, and exercise you freedom of expression to its fullest! I fully support that ;o)
asimmond Feb 14, 2010 10:33 PM	I fully support this action because the labor jokers Conroy and Rudd have failed to listen to reasonable solutions and have continued to push with an expensive and innefective internet filter.
S.Rose Feb 15, 2010 12:35 PM	This action is unethical and hypocritical. It takes away the right of people to choose whether or not they view pornography (including people who may be upset or triggered by images of sexual violence or exploitation), one of the main defences against the censorship of porn. I don't see this as an act of peaceful protest at all. It's aggressive and unethical and as such is highly counter-productive to the cause.
Daveh Feb 15, 2010 3:28 PM	Despite the fear of Godwin-ing i will post this, as it pertains to the argument being put forward. "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Pastor Martin Niemöller
anonymous Feb 15, 2010 5:03 PM	Yes, Daveh. Apart from the rights/wrongs of this particular DDOS, it's a fact that once the apparatus of secret State censorship is established, it will only be a matter of time before the pollies are unable to resist the temptation to use it to silence opposing points of view.
legless Feb 15, 2010 5:51 PM	@Ace while I don't disagree with the majority of what you say, I do have a couple of points. --- @JustaNote, the point is, the Govt isn't blocking anything. They're still trying to figure out how they would do such a thing. There's a lot of talk, but to date, no filtering has occurred. --- Just because it hasn't been implemented yet, it will happen as long as Conroy holds the baton. They need time as you said to work out the details, but it will happen. @Just an Anon --- Secondly we are brave enough to write letters to them; we are writing them full of porn and sending them en-masse as spam to the government along with email, fax, and phone. --- The point you are overlooking here is that you are not bravely standing up for your beliefs and complaining using your own name. Do your emails, faxes and phone calls show your real identity or are these done anonymously too? When I make my complaints known to them, I tell them who I am. I'm also just grouping these to cover them together. Hacking websites, DDoS attacks, and more violent attacks as some people have done overseas (as in bombing data centres and government buildings) is not the way to do anything. It just serves to perpetuate the stereotype that you are some of the people against whom we need protecting. By all means, have your days of protest outside offices and government buildings and blackout your webpages. Personally I think everyone should just add words like "euthanasia" and "abortion" and "bombs" to the meta-tags of the webpages. When every single site in the country is blocked there will be trouble. .... and while I believe that some activities online should be policed, I am not a supporter of filtering of the kind proposed at government or ISP levels. All of this should be done by parents. Besides, the filtering will not stop it anyway, and the potential for scope creep is just too great.
ejobrien Feb 17, 2010 9:43 AM	I understand what they're trying to do with this protest, although I think their methods are a bit extreme. However what was the deal with hacking that tribute page for the murdered child? Why on earth did Anonymous do that?
gonny Feb 17, 2010 10:39 AM	Get a load of this. This is a YouTube video that captures the ring leader of Anonymous when it was announced that Conroy was looking into Mandatory Filtering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc
gonny Feb 17, 2010 12:27 PM	Sorry Anonymous, I should clarify that this YouTube video actually occured when Anonymous found out that World of Warcraft was added to the black list. My apologies and may I ask... what is the deal with the remote? Check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc