Anonymous - closest thing to a real superhero we'll ever see?

Mickeroo

Apologies if there's already a thread on this but couldn't find one.

The hackers known as Anonymous earlier this week hacked and exposed a pedophile ring made up of 1,589 users. Then sent out a warning to all other similar online communities.

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Our Statement

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The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape, and death.

For this, Freedom Hosting has been declared #OpDarknet Enemy Number One.

By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites, among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date containing more than 100GB of child pornography.

We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting's server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography.

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Our Demands

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Our demands are simple. Remove all child pornography content from your servers. Refuse to provide hosting services to any website dealing with child pornography. This statement is not just aimed at Freedom Hosting, but everyone on the internet. It does not matter who you are, if we find you to be hosting, promoting, or supporting child pornography, you will become a target.

It seems like they've taken down a fairly substantial community, it might be dodgy exposing some of the perps when maybe it would have been better to just hand the info over to Interpol or a similar organisation as it could put their lives in danger.

Well good folks of AH what do you think? Are they performing a heroic public service or did they cross the line by releasing all the names? Or is it just a big old publicity stunt?

Saila

well that not going to hurt anybody, except those that deserve it. much better than attacking corporations and hurting the man on the street

Coriolanus

A schizophrenic superhero maybe.

cocalolaman

Mickeroo wrote: »

or did they cross the line by releasing all the names?

Aww the poor f*cks had their identity released.

They should have more done to them than that to be honest...if it is real, that is.

Mickeroo

Nevore wrote: »

A schizophrenic superhero maybe.

Batman was borderline....

Wertz

It begs the question that if this bunch can do it, why the authorities can't... as for handing over details and whatever, in this case the action of disrupting it is as important as cathcing the perpetrators...official routes can take a while and issues of jurisdiction probably stand in the way of a lot of prosecutions...

FatherLen

those are the fuckers that took away my ps3 for 2 months! although this is good. and of course the names should be released they are trying to have sex with kids!!!

Immaculate Pasta

I say good on them :cool:

Captain Chaos

FatherLen wrote: »

those are the fuckers that took away my ps3 for 2 months!

They just exposed Sony's weak security and shoddy data storage and security practices. Gave them a good lesson to get their act together.

jimthemental

First thing they've done which I've agreed with, however will a lot of these folks now not face prosecution because of possibly inadmissible evidence?

cocoshovel

FatherLen wrote: »

those are the fuckers that took away my ps3 for 2 months! although this is good. and of course the names should be released they are trying to have sex with kids!!!

They're probably not the same people. When the term "anonymous" is used it can refer to ANYBODY on the internet that just doesn't have an identity. I could go off right now and do something on the internet and say "anonymous did it".

dlofnep

Mickeroo wrote: »

Well good folks of AH what do you think? Are they performing a heroic public service or did they cross the line by releasing all the names? Or is it just a big old publicity stunt?

What names? All they released was a bunch of anonymous usernames. I had a quick look at the pastebin link, and all of the usernames appear to be just ones made up on the fly. It's doubtful they will be able to link them to anyone.

Any DoS attacks on those websites are surely welcome - but it's really just another case of a publicity stunt.

Mickeroo

jimthemental wrote: »

First thing they've done which I've agreed with, however will a lot of these folks now not face prosecution because of possibly inadmissible evidence?

Yea I was wondering about that...

Turpentine

cocoshovel wrote: »

They're probably not the same people. When the term "anonymous" is used it can refer to ANYBODY on the internet that just doesn't have an identity. I could go off right now and do something on the internet and say "anonymous did it".

I thought "Anonymous" was Ted Danson?

Mickeroo

dlofnep wrote: »

What names? All they released was a bunch of anonymous usernames. I had a quick look at the pastebin link, and all of the usernames appear to be just ones made up on the fly. It's doubtful they will be able to link them to anyone.

Any DoS attacks on those websites are surely welcome - but it's really just another case of a publicity stunt.

The release said they "found documents and identified many of the users", didn't realise they only meant usernames.

PogMoThoin

FatherLen wrote: »

those are the fuckers that took away my ps3 for 2 months! although this is good. and of course the names should be released they are trying to have sex with kids!!!

You should be happy they exposed the fact that Sony were so amateur they stored millions of credit card details in an unencrypted plain text file on an unpatched server, criminal stuff. Then Sony came back and said all was well, they had everything fixed, when they hadn't even fixed the simple sql injection that let the hackers in in the first place. Blame Sony

johnny_ultimate

If only they were the closest thing to superheroes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zxCLbPncGk

Icyseanfitz

tralee could do with a few vigilantes tbh anyone up for fame and glory?

msg11

PogMoThoin wrote: »

You should be happy they exposed the fact that Sony were so amateur they stored millions of credit card details in an unencrypted plain text file on an unpatched server, criminal stuff. Then Sony came back and said all was well, they had everything fixed, when they hadn't even fixed the simple sql injection that let the hackers in in the first place. Blame Sony

I agree for a company that makes consoles, they should be up to scratch on this simple stuff, every site that fairly big uses encryption it's nothing new either.

MrPudding

jimthemental wrote: »

First thing they've done which I've agreed with, however will a lot of these folks now not face prosecution because of possibly inadmissible evidence?

How useful the evidence would be will depend on the jurisdiction. The manner is which it was obtained is not necessarily a bar to its use. If the authorities hacked servers without the correct authority then it would almost certainly be inadmissible. Where the hacking was carried out by another organisation completely independently and not on the orders of the authorities and then handed over, I am not so sure.

MrP

CrazyRabbit

It's counter productive.

It simply drives paedophiles to use more secure methods for viewing/sharing porn, and thus makes it harder for law enforcement agencies to catch them.

Trying to stop child pornography on the web is like trying to stop music/movie/game piracy. It's impossible because when you shut down one method, another better method replaces it. It's like when p2p (napster etc) was targeted and then torrents became popular.

Also, the user details they gathered were obtained illegally and therefore cannot be used in a court of law, and cannot be used as a basis for search warrants etc.

Anonymous, leave it to the authorities.