Wikileaks cyberwar: Hackers Bring Down Swedish Government Site

Wikileaks cyberwar: Hackers Bring Down Swedish Government Site

www.telegraph.co.u k

The official site, regeringen.se, was offline for several hours overnight and only a message saying the site could not be reached was visible.

Commercial websites including Visa, MasterCard and PayPal have already been targeted by co-ordinated action on one of the busiest shopping days of the year after the firms said that they would no longer process donations to WikiLeaks.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This saga became even more serious this morning as the internet collective known as anonymous targeted and carried out an attack on the Swedish governments website.

I was supporting the attacks at first, in defence of wikileaks, but I think they may have gone too far this time. This could work against our/their favour and could result in a bigger push for internet censorship

www.telegraph.co.u k
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by Griffo


This saga became even more serious this morning as the internet collective known as anonymous targeted and carried out an attack on the Swedish governments website.

I was supporting the attacks at first, in defence of wikileaks, but I think they may have gone too far this time. This could work against our/their favour and could result in a bigger push for internet censorship

www.telegraph.co.u k
(visit the link for the full news article)

It looks like you weren't really thinking about this enough when you were supporting them. No harm meant. If a cause is worthy, they should create all the chaos they can. Things have to be stirred up.

reply to post by Griffo


Whilst I understand your concerns, the possibility of censorship is not as bad as the possibility of it happening without a fight. There ARE things that can be done to raise awareness of this possibility, and furthermore, there are things that can be done to prevent it entirely.
Petitioning your government representative to fight any move to limit access as a result of these attacks would be a start, and of course, trying to gain donations to BUY parts of the infrastructure that runs the web would also be an idea. That way, if government wish to switch it off, a coallition of owners of elements of the structure can campaign from a position of ownership as well as from a postition of user status, to prevent it.
In addition, there ought to be an agreement between users to rise up and challenge any government implementing a shut down, both politicaly and in martial terms.

In short, the governments considering this as a real possibility , must not be allowed to do so without understanding in a very public manner, that the people do not support them. This will be a good lever for democratic uprising against fascist idealologies present in government (who are responsible for the percieved need on the part of activists and hacktivists, to act in the first place, seeing as they are the ones hunting the only person on the planet willing to risk his neck to show the truth to all the peoples of Earth).

reply to post by Griffo


Personally I think the most important thing to come out of this is that the Telegraph is reporting it in detail creating greater awaerness being able to have the discussion is far more important than who's wright or wrong

reply to post by jetflock


Of course the cause is worthy, what I meant was if they're targeting government websites then people will start to take even more notice and the retaliation could be bad for anonymous. They got their twitter account suspended yesterday, the "chan's" could be next.

Unless I missed it I did not see anything in the telegraph article that actaully stated the downtime was due to hackers?

Have they taken credit and If so why take it down in the middle of the night? are we sure this was not routine maintence or a non anon incident?

reply to post by TrueBrit


Someone started a thread yesterday, about attending the student protest and using that to make our voices heard. I don't know if that would work however, because the amount students would drown out the wikileaks supporters by sheer numbers. Would it be possible to organise a protest on here do you think? I'm not too sure how many members here are from the UK and how far away we're spaced. Just as a starting point, obviously we'd need to get more people in on it to have an actual impact

reply to post by thefamiliar


It says this at the top

Anonymous hackers who claim they are defending WikiLeaks brought down the Swedish government's website amid warnings they will attack again.

The middle of the night for us would be early evening for a lot of people in the US where I think a lot of anons reside

reply to post by Griffo


Actualy it wouldnt be too hard. There are MANY businesses which either save millions a year , or flat out wouldnt have a business if it werent for the internet. You have network engineers, administrators, people who teach networking and global computing to thousands of people a year, all paying for that education, before going out and earning money at it.
There are florists , banks, insurance companies, legal proffessionals, all of whom absolutely rely on the internet for thier survival as a business. A massive amount of payment is taken over the internet, and large scale businesses rely on it heavily for administrative purposes, including national and regional level stock taking, and other important tasks .
All one would have to do , is to make the large companies aware of the possibility of a shut down, and they would be up in arms, because trust me, those companies would fold up like origami in hours if a shut down occured of the scale we are worried about. The finanical impact of a shut down, would do more damage to the governments of the world at a time when even they cannot afford a market break down of the staggering scale that would occur if a) the net were to be censored or shut down and b) the companies that suffer the most refuse to trade or provide services to government unless the net is reinstated.
Now, I know we are mostly worried about censorship, but have you any idea how hard it would be for world wide business to manouvre around the lockdowns everytime they wanted to do a customer survey ? Have you any idea how hard it would be to police against hacking by professionals, criminals, and activists? It would cost them dear to do this, so a full shutdown would be easier and more effective at silencing the nets more dangerous element shall we say.

Seriously , petition the companies that stand to loose the most, and lobby power will do the rest.

reply to post by TrueBrit


Yeah that's a good point, I guess it's time to start writing out some letters/emails and getting as many people as I know behind this. Although I doubt they'd be much use, I don't think they even know what wikileaks is.


I've just seen this also

Amazon UK is selling the wikileaks cables as a kindle book

reply to post by Griffo


Yes but that is the words of the journalist, I saw nothing that stated that anyone had confirmed responsibility.

another article here
www.abc.net.au...

Quote
"The attack appears to have been a show of support for the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who has been arrested in England on Swedish sexual assault charges."

I just meant to point out that the msm will proberbly now attribute every single website that goes down to Anon when this will not be the case.

Also did they not pre warn about the other attacks?

And again why hit the site at night? I agree that yes it would have been a different time in the Us where much of it is possibly bieng orchestrated but surely Hackers are creatures of the night? I find it hard to believe they would take down a foriegn goverments website at at time when It would have minimal effect because they had to get up in the morning and then not claim full responsibility for it?

It could also be the Swedish goverment taking down the site for "routine maintence" so it appears that it is Anon and upping the stakes when it comes to prosicution?

reply to post by thefamiliar


Yeah, I suppose site maintenance is also a possibility. There are a load of people on 4chan talking about the Swedish website, but that still doesn't mean that they were the ones who did it. If it was the hackers, and they did do it at night they'll most probably be asleep won't they? Will probably have to wait until later on tonight to find out for definate

reply to post by Griffo


By the way , Im sure if you threw the National Union of Students the information that one of thier primary communication, and learning tools is to be censored or shut down, they would probably join the list of supporters for the theoretical petition in short order. Not only would they join, but the current unrest in London, surrounding the vote on tuition fees , would end up looking like a picnic in devon in comparison to the devastating effect of all the previously mentioned professionals and company operatives, linking with those students to march on parliment in reaction to any sniff of a shut down. It would be marvelous, and it would be revolution. Open war in the streets. I dont think that "Just call me Dave" Cameron is quite that foolish. Hes an incompetant twit with all the moral capacity of a dung eating flying insect, but not dumb.

reply to post by Griffo


IMO Twitter/FB would be is best for that. I think he will be appearing in court next Monday....

reply to post by Griffo



Just a suggstion...given the tendency of our 'protectors' to send their 'agents' in to stir up trouble which they then have to 'protect' us from, I've seen suggestions that all peaceful protesters are being advise to isolate and hand over to the authorities anyone who instigates violence. Hand the police back to the police! Just thinking you might want to consider letting people know this if you do organise something.

reply to post by Griffo


How do i do my bit to help the `cause`

Originally posted by Robfire
reply to post by Griffo

 

How do i do my bit to help the `cause`

screwpaypal.com...
write complain emails to paypal and amazon
spread this on facebook and twitter