Anonymous attacks Early Flicker over trademark attempt, t-shirt maker crying ‘uncle!’

 

The idiotic French t-shirt maker Early Flicker, owned by Apollinaire Auffret, has dropped its attempt to trademark the Anonymous hacking collective’s logo and slogan after Anonymous attacked the company’s website. The conclusion to this story was entirely predictable.

Shortly after the news broke, Anonymous posted a video on YouTube in which their characteristically-anatomized voice intoned, “Their arrogance and ignorance of what they have done will not go unpunished…Anonymous will take down any business they have going on the internet.”

As of now the site is still down, with Anonymous pledging to keep attacking the company until its trademark application is completely withdrawn.

In an online statement, Auffret claimed that Early Flicker only sells “2 or 3 items” per day, but that certainly wouldn’t stop his company from profiting off of an Anonymous trademark.

“The vendor must verify that these images are free for use [or] risk legal difficulties. So I regularly checked for any filing of these models until several months ago (February 2012), when I had the idea to place them myself,” Auffret stated. ”These were then guaranteed to be usable in a free and legal [manner] … for all! Since the tabling, no ban has been established for their use, and not one cent has been claimed through copyright.”

o

Anonymous Starts Its Own 

'To Catch a Predator' 

Anonymous, the world’s preeminent becostumed online activist group, is going after pedophiles again. Never mind that the name of the project, Operation PedoChat, sounds almost as creepy as the assholes they’re attacking—Anonymous is aiming to shut down 100 websites and forums known to aid the proliferation of child pornography and predation.

WE Anonymous aim to diminish if not eradicate this plague from the Internet. For the good of our followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment we shall expel from the Internet and systematically destroy any such boards that continue to operate.

YOU are Anonymous as well. YOU can get off your ass and help. Spread the word to fellow Anons, to the press, and encourage them to do the same. Those that can attack are asked to fire their lazors; those that cannot are encouraged to learn. These pedos are very butthurt about being hit too, so there is some LULZ factor in it. SAILSAFE!

Anonymous has promised “defaces, logs & dox and the occasional domain hijack as well.” In fact, the first round is already complete, and has been split into four parts of doxing (the act of tracing someone or gathering information about an individual using sources on the Internet): one, two, three, and four. The publicly posted information includes the details of hundreds of pedophiles (both users and administrators of these websites) as well as e-mails between some of them.

Child porn is is still proliferating online; it’s a thorny topic to litigate—New York, for instance, determined that it’s legal to look at it online, so as long as you don’t download or save any of the files; while the Russian government is pushing for the next SOPA.

It’s also a repulsive scourge, obviously. And that may be part of Anonymous’ calculus—everybody hates pedophiles. They’re like Nazis; the mere mention of their existence guarantees head-shaking disgust and absolute admonishment. Maybe the Guy Fawkes-garbed hackers felt like they needed a totally uncontroversial campaign to rekindle some popular support. Who knows, but one thing’s for sure: Fuck those pedophiles.

o

Anonymous Tweets to Japanese Public After 6.27 Attacks, Japanese Public Responds: 

“Kawaii”

 

International “hactavist” collective Anonymous caught Japan’s attention on June 27 after they launched a series of DDoS attacks against several Japanese government institutions in response to a new copyright law punishing the downloading of pirated content with fines of up to \2,000,000 (US $25,180) and/or a maximum of two years in prison.

Acting under the banner “Operation Japan”, Anonymous issued a formal press release via Twitter two days before the attack warning: “you can now expect us the same way we have come to expect you in violating our basic rights to privacy and to an open internet.”

They continue to post updates of their activities to Twitter and while most of their tweets are made in English, Anonymous also seems to have someone who speaks Japanese working at the keyboard. However, despite Anonymous’ best attempts to translate their lofty rhetoric, most Japanese people can’t help but feel their faulty Japanese makes them just the most adorable little hacker group ever.

While Anonymous had posted two tweets in Japanese before the DDoS attack, it wasn’t until a series of three tweets after the attacks that they began to win the hearts of the Japanese people (arguably for the wrong reasons).

It would take a lesson in Japanese to explain what exactly it is about the tweets that tickled people so much, so instead we’ve decided to run them through Google Translate hoping it will give you an idea of what they might sound like to a native Japanese reader:

“Yesterday was busy. But was a little mistake. (Laughs) and I’m sorry Yappari Japanese bombing is difficult. But everyone is friendly. Said the description of the mistake. Thank you. I will do my best.”

“However, the LDP and the Democratic Party was not a mistake. They are made from a vote in favor of the illegal downloads, has been punished.”

“Do not attack JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) why?” But everyone says. Is a good idea. Party is not a good target maybe. Would you change?”

Okay, so maybe their Japanese isn’t that bad. A number of people even gave them props for the semi-correct usage of the internet slang word gobaku (誤爆), which means “bombing the wrong target” but can also refer to posting a comment to the wrong thread on internet message boards like 2ch.

While awkwardly translated above as “Japanese bombing is difficult”, the word actually refers to how Anonymous accidentally hacked the homepage of the Kasumigaura River Office in Ibaraki Prefecture, mistaking “Kasumigaura” for “Kasumigaseki”, the district of Tokyo where many central government offices are located.

A more accurate translation of the tweet would be: “We made a slight mistake. Sorry to hit the wrong target (lol). Japanese is difficult.”

Luckily, the Japanese are known for having an appreciation for foreigners learning their language and many netizens think the tweets are kawaii (cute) and appreciate the group’s honesty in admitting their mistake.

Anonymous seems to be off to a good start in Japan with their endearing Japanese and straightforward attitude. Japanese is indeed a difficult language and even native speakers mix up “Kasumigaura” and “Kasumigaseki”.

But still, imagine if a group of Japanese hackers had just made the news after taking down the DOJ site in the name of online privacy. Curious or concerned, you check their Twitter looking for more information on the group’s activities only to see the tweet: “Lets fighting American governments to save the free pirate! For great justice!” You might chuckle, you might put them up on Engrish.com, but in whatever case you’d probably be less likely to take them seriously…

 

o

Anonymous operation ‘Monday Mail Mayhem’ protests government corruption

 

An Anonymous group yesterday breached a US Justice Department server and posted 1.7 gigabytes of data on The Pirate Bay file-sharing site.

As the Pirate Bay statement reads, “Today we are releasing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now. Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump. We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened.”

“We do not stand for any government or parties, we stand for freedom of people, freedom of speech and freedom of information,” the statement continues. “We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government. We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free.”

“The price we pay very often is our own freedom,” it continues. “The price that governments pay is the exposure of their corruption and the truth being revealed, for the truth will set us free in the end.”

“So once more we call on you. Hackers, activists, and freedom fighters; join us in our struggle against these corporate hypocrites,” states Anonymous in the closing line.

Whether there is anything incendiary in the emails and database dump is yet to be determined.

o

AnonTune will be much more than a music sharing site

To have no errors
Would be life without meaning
No struggle, no joy

As a haiku, it's lovely. As a Privacy Policy, it's fair warning. Welcome to AnonTune.

With EtherSec and OpEpoch, Anonymous sought to remake religion. With AnonPlus, it aims to rule the social Web. And with AnonTune, it is hoping to take over where Napster, Tomahawk, and YouTube leave off, making the music online easily searchable and playable by anyone, anywhere, whether the music companies like it or not.

Provided, of course, you let them run just a little bit of code on your computer. Oh, and pick a username and register. And let them track you with Google Analytics. Hey, it's Anonymous: what could possibly go wrong?

Well, for starters they've gotten someone annoyed enough to DDOS (distributed denial-of-service attack) them within a few days of their public launch, according to the person answering the site’s official email, who declined to be identified. But, as with most internet drama, the attack was all over quickly enough, and the site seems to have stabilized.

It's easy enough to use, and they've handily provided demos (take your pick: classical, pop, or top 100—which oddly enough looks like Oldies for Lefties).

The admin walked us through the procedure for creating a playlist step by step, and it's nothing a typical Facebook user couldn't handle. You create a login and register, then search for the songs you want by artist or song title. You can create any number of different playlists. There’s also a function to upload your iPod songs, which might just cross some of those copyright lines AnonTune didn’t want to get into.

So far, so easy.

Although he admitted that it’s essential for the social aspect of the site, our source himself disparaged user registration, saying:

“We can't exactly call our website AnonTune without providing the users a part in the Anonymous collective. It is also my personal philosophy that registration sucks. It takes too much time, you give away too much personal information, it's a pain in the butt and I'm sure I'm not the only one on the team who thinks this. Registration is a restriction and it inhibits openness of our network and music. I should also clarify that the crude player/user page won't be the only way Anontune will provide access to music in the future. Indeed, it's important for the social-side that we are building but there is much more potential than just through the user page.”

The software searches the entire Internet (not just the Web: torrents, FTP, peer-to-peer networks and more that Google doesn't reach) to find shared music files that fit the descriptions you've provided. The site itself doesn't host the files, it just finds them and serves them up in a little window.

When Geek.com called the developers out on the security risks, they responded by posting a point-by-point refutation in Pastebin, in classic Anon style. Essentially, Anonymous argues that there would be no point in injuring the users, at least not to the point where they become useless. But as Google, Facebook, and many other for-profit sites could tell you, users will take significant hits to their privacy and security before becoming useless to you (ie leaving).

Even so, downloading software of unknown origin is always a risk; the risk is, however, open sourced. If you have the skills, you can analyze the risk for yourself. If you're so inclined, you can publicize your analysis and gain the thanks of a grateful (and non-code-savvy) public. If you're truly security-conscious, you can use virtual machine software to isolate that part of your computer running AnonTune and quarantine it from the rest of your hard drive. But if you were that techie, you'd probably just read the code in the first place.

The larger, more sinister, risk is that if AnonTune can see into IRCs, FTPs, P2P networks and everything else on the internet in its quest for music, then there is no corner of the digital realm which is safe from its eyes, provided it has enough users sending it on enough missions to enough nooks and crannies of cyberia.

If it’s only looking for a heavy metal Rickroll, fine. But a tool that powerful would be any spy service’s holy grail, and would, if hacked or used nefariously, be almost unnoticeable as it went about mapping everything of interest to its masters, just as long as it continued to serve up Miley Cyrus or Gwar as requested by the unsuspecting users.

In the meantime, Anonymous is hoping because it doesn't host any music, it will avoid the fate of previous music sharing sites. “Technically, users aren't collecting music nor are they downloading it. It is just text, remember that,” said our source, who went on to outline the way in which it is different from current, Web-only search engines.

“The music engine has the potential to access content across the internet in real-time on the client-side and not just the Web (which is a small part of the Internet.) This makes it vastly different to current proposals, especially considering these capabilities have traditionally only been a part of desktop applications.”

The new site is obviously bound to be attacked by the music industry, but our source cautions us not to vilify the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), digital music sharing's greatest foe.

“Let's also not paint the RIAA as the bad guy here. It's true we don't agree with their business model but we're still willing to strike a balance between open music and profit for artists and content providers.”

So, does this mean a tip jar for musicians? What kind of balance are we talking about?

“Use your common sense,” was the reply.

The Pastebin document hinted at t-shirt marketing and advertising, and ultimately concluded, “Anontune is about the music, not the money. Play to the last note and leave no regrets.”

But AnonTune may be looking to do more to provide a sustainable model for musicians. A White Paper the site released provided a detailed, and ambitious, plan for compensation at some point in the future. “...if all songs were easily accessible and centralized on one user-friendly platform ... it would become insanely popular. More popular than perhaps YouTube or even Facebook (if done right), and musical consumption would become centralized. Then it will be possible to monetize this consumption.”

Is the plan, then, to put the other middlemen out of business and create a profit-driven, legal music sharing site? Oh, it's so much more.

Vague but ambitious plans for the future? Oh yes, they can haz. Our source explained:

“The music engine is only a part of the project. This is a hugely ambitious project with several goals and what you mentioned is just one of them. I would hate for people to assume that is the extent of the project. That would be to deny our vision.”

This, from a bunch of guys who are alternately DDOSing the CIA, struggling to keep their own site up, and running from arrest.

Who is really behind AnonTune?

“We're just your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman,” said our source.

The website provides for nine different languages, heavily stacked towards Europe and the Americas: English, French, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian, Dutch, Portugese, and Brazilian Portugese. It’s safe to guess an insignificant number of those Spideys speak Mandarin, Japanese, or Urdu.

Given the challenges, the ambitious goals, and the protean nature of Anonymous, where will AnonTune be in five years?

“It will be a cross between Facebook, Limewire, Google, iTunes music store, Anon messaging, and academic music research all with a new twist.”

That's assuming it makes it through the next six months.

o

Attention all - #OpBahrain : Press Release from #Anonymous with #Formula1 data dump - 04/22/2012

 

Anonymous has been monitoring the human rights situation in Bahrain and the popular democratic uprising for over a year now, only to see the oppression of its people grow worse. When governments murder peaceful protesters on an ongoing basis, their illegitimacy becomes clear to all who can see. The government of Bahrain has been warned. We will not stop our support of the Bahraini people or our war against your tyranny until the people of Bahrain have true freedom and peace. This regime - which maintains its power by force and justifies it by birthright - has responded to the protests with a violent crackdown calculated to intimidate those within the country and a sophisticated public relations strategy calculated to deceive those outside of it. The crackdown has left scores dead and thousands in prison; the PR campaign is intended to ensure that such protesters are not only injured and imprisoned, but also libeled and forgotten. The violence is handled in the usual way; the lies come courtesy of an American PR firm called Qorvis. For too long, we have watched this tyrannical government  tear gas its own people literally to death, with over 30 fatalities reported so far. We have watched as thousands of innocent protesters and activists have been jailed. We have watched as human rights advocate Abdulhadi Alkhawaja commits himself to death via a prison hunger strike that as of 22/4/2012 is 74 days in length, simply in the hope that some men somewhere will notice what is being done to other men here. We have witnessed doctors and nurses imprisoned merely for treating those wounded protesters who find themselves brutalized by security forces. And we have become outraged by the ignorance and outright lies of mainstream media regarding what is truly happening in Bahrain - lies concocted in large part by Qorvis, which is more than happy to defend such crimes and even to libel those of Bahrain’s activists who try bring them to the world’s attention at risk to their own lives.

Now, a grand spectacle has come to Bahrain - the F1 Bahrain Grand Prix has begun and we have decided to add to that spectacle.

As in the past, we have DDOSed websites of the Bahrain government. And as the media has already reported, we have DDOSed or defaced a number of sites associated with F1, which has gone ahead with its event in a country that has been the subject of a brutal government for over a year. On top of it all, we have decided to contribute some additional excitement to the day by hacking F1’s servers and taking the personal information of those attending the race, among other things.

As of 22/4/2012 Abdulhadi Alkhawaja has entered Day 74 of his hunger strike in protest of the human rights abuses of the government of Bahrain, mistreatment and torture of prisoners and to call for the release of all political prisoners. This marks the longest anyone has been recorded on hunger strike and doctors expect him to die at any moment. We call on the government of Bahrain to immediately grant him freedom and to do the humanitarian thing in sparing his life. Abdulhadi Alkhawaja is a human rights worker who has committed no crime and has been unjustly granted life in prison by a military court for his activism. When Alkhawaja was arrested he was beaten unconscious, had his jaw broken and was tortured. Nobody deserves this mistreatment and it is a tragedy that the Al Khalifa regime is still treating his life with such disdain. Should anything bad happen to Alkhawaja or his family Anonymous will respond with fury and rage the likes of which have never been seen.

How dare the government of Bahrain hide behind an international sporting event as an attempt to conceal the oppression it is committing against its own people. How dare King Al Khalifa claim that the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who march in the streets for freedom, democracy and non-sectarianism are “just a few troublemakers.” How dare they waste the people’s money to hire public relations firms to lie on their behalf about the crimes they’re committing. How dare the Formula1 organization allow the royal family to profit millions of dollars off of holding an event there, money which in turn is being used to purchase tear gas and live ammunition which has been used against civilians while Formula1 is being held. How dare Bernie Ecclestone and the Formula1 organization condone such horrific violations of human rights in the name of profit. As a response for your callus disregard for human life we, Anonymous, are taking the liberty of educating you, your fans, and the world about the crisis in Bahrain and giving you a cyber taste of your own medicine.

We will take down your websites, turn them into worthless entities on the World Wide Web and leave nothing but a smoking crater in cyberspace. Your phone lines, your e-mails, your fax machines and anything else we can get our hands on will be considered fair game. Good luck generating ad revenues with your servers down! You do not deserve to profit a single penny off the misery you have contributed to

To the fans of F1: You have every right to watch and enjoy your sport, but you have the responsibility to consider the ramifications of your support of this event. Please do the right thing and join the people of Bahrain in solidarity by boycotting this event. Do not watch it on television, do not visit F1 websites. Show that you do not condone racing on the blood of the innocent. Turn your eyes away from this abominable race for this one weekend to send a clear message that the fans of F1 value the rights of people more than the sick negligence of humanity.

To the drivers and teams in this race: There is nothing to stop you from taking your spot on the track. But you have another option as well. Join former F1 champions in condemning this atrocity and stand up against tyranny. You will be recorded by history as having either done the right thing, or as having participated in a spectacle calculated to distract from the dictatorship. The choice is yours. Please make the right one.

To the media and press: While it’s nice that you’re reporting on our work please remember that the focus should be on the people of Bahrain. They are the ones being tear gassed. They are the ones staring down the barrels of live shotguns. They are the ones whose human rights are being denied. They are the ones who cannot seek medical care for fear of retribution by their government. This is their struggle. Please focus your attention on them and let the world know the truth about their plight.

To the people of the world: Join us. Help in the fight for justice in Bahrain. Join Anonymous in sending faxes, writing letters, and calling on your governments to encourage the government of Bahrain to cease its assault on the human rights of its people.

To the people of Bahrain, rest assured that the people of the world support your struggle. Remain peaceful. Remain vigilant. Remain strong. Your strength, courage and determination are an inspiration to people across the globe. Your fight is difficult but the taste of true self-determination will be worth your struggle.

irc.voxanon.net
#OpBahrain

irc.anonops.pro
#OpBahrain

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.

Expect us.

Anonymous Operation Bahrain data dump of F1 spectators and ticket sales: http://snipurl.com/f1dump

We told you to expect us!

o

Anonymous work on their own music platform called Anontune 

 

Back in March, Anonymous has made a video on the net that "Anontune" announces. The new social media platform to initiate a new era in the music business and significantly contribute to changes. Here, users can create songs from various sources (eg YouTube) shall collect, playlists and then share it. Several social media sites are so united on the new site and therefore easier to use for users. In order not to violate any law, may not even be hosted on Anontune songs.

Currently, only 20 percent of "Anontune" are completed. On the Website However, one can test demos. The new platform is Anonymous but are designed to offer users the possibility to legally listen to music and share it. How does it work "Anontune" exactly, and whether threatened legal action for Anonymous, is not yet clear.

Reached by e-mail, one of the creators of Anontune told Wired the project was started by a group of anons who met online six years ago on what was then an underground hacking site. The group, mostly focused at the time on “cracking,” began discussing music, favorite artists and what they would do to fix current music business models.

“We would say stuff like, ‘People really use YouTube as a music player yet it really sucks for that purpose … it’s too unorganized,’” the anon wrote to Wired. “And then, ‘YouTube does make a good music player but you can’t play all your songs on it since the obscure ones aren’t uploaded,’ then eventually, ‘Hmmm, what if you were to combine music websites like Myspace, Yahoo, YouTube and others?’”

On the ever-sprawling internet, music can pop up anywhere — Tumblr pages, blogs, The Hype Machine (to name but a few). Almost any song is available at any time, whether posted by legitimate sources or uploaded by fans or pirates, and Anontune would tap into that rich reservoir.

It wouldn’t be the first time Anonymous squared off with the record industry: When popular file-sharing site Megaupload was shuttered by the Justice Department in January, Anonymous retaliated by attacking the websites of the Recording Industry Association of America and the DoJ. The DDoS attacks provide an undeniable look at what Anonymous can do in a copyfight, but if the creators of Anontune succeed, they could make something far more disruptive to the music industry.

The Anontune concept remained nothing more than talk until one day in early December, when an anon posted a link to Anontune and said he planned to make their ideas a reality. The others looked at the site. Although it wasn’t very good, the working prototype got enough people interested in the project that they “formed a team that day and stopped hacking,” the anon said.

The platform has been in development for just a few months, according to the video above (titled “Message From Anonymous: Music Has Changed”). Although Anontune is still very rudimentary, the service is meant to improve the way music is played online.

“It has come to our attention that the state of online music has been sabotaged by the fat hands of corporate involvement,” the Anontune video’s voiceover states. “These changes have led to a world in which your enjoyment of music is controlled and billed by the minute.”

How Anontune Works 

(And a Word of Caution)

Anontune works by automating what most people do online manually. After setting up an account, users can build playlists by simply typing in the names of songs they want to hear, or they can choose from the names of songs imported from their iPods. Anontune’s “music engine” — which runs in a user’s browser — then finds the songs on the web. Currently most of the tracks come from YouTube and SoundCloud, but there are plans in the works to add Yahoo Music, Myspace Music, Bandcamp and others. From there, users, of which there are currently fewer than 1,000, just press play.

(A word of caution to curious readers: The system relies on executing a Java applet. Unless you are extremely trusting or using VMWare, you should think very carefully about running code on your machine that was written by members of Anonymous.)

The stated central aims of the service’s creators are to provide a flexible, open platform for users to listen to music without having to pirate it or face legal repercussions — read Anontune’s white paper here (.pdf). True to form, users of the service can largely remain anonymous.

Although the site is still very crude and its origins obscure, the idea of Anonymous — even a few far-flung members of the group — tackling online music is compelling. But Anontune could come into the world with a target on its back, even if it operates using completely legitimate methods, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Corynne McSherry.

“What we’re seeing here is a situation where the government is getting much more involved in enforcement, and we know that the U.S. government doesn’t like Anonymous all that much anyway,” McSherry said in an interview with Wired. Other music services can attempt to cut deals with music labels to avoid legal hot water, but that’s not really an option here.

“I think content owners, if they feel like the site is a really viable site, they’re going to be pretty nervous [about this],” McSherry said. “Because they like to have people that they can make deals with, and there’s no one to make a deal with in this situation.”

It’s hard not to notice that Anontune is popping up just as the U.S. government’s case against Megaupload is getting heated. Even though Anontune’s creators say the service isn’t a rebuttal to the shuttering of the file-sharing service, its timely unveiling could serve as a model for a different way for Anonymous to respond to incidents (as opposed to, say, directing Low Orbit Ion Cannons at the website of the Recording Industry Association of America).

“The project is not so much a response to Megaupload but a response to the tycoons from the RIAA shutting down music services,” the anon wrote to Wired. “You may have heard about what Anonymous has done in Operation Payback. We believe the underlying reasons for the revolt were (mostly) correct, however their approach is unlikely to change anything in the long run.”

When asked about Anontune by Wired, an RIAA spokesman declined to comment.

Anontune’s creators hope that in its complete version — it’s only about 20 percent there so far, our source said — the service can improve the way people engage with music.

“We have a lot of plans regarding this,” the Anontune co-creator told Wired. “The development of software to assist in achieving musical peak experiences, illumination of the functions and roles of music, psychometric testing based on music preference. It’s all there and this is possibly the most interesting part of the whole project.”

Anontune’s technical aspects can be reviewed online, and the site’s operators are taking donations. Even though its creators are still hurriedly trying to get the service up to snuff, the site has massive goals. One only needs to look at the final note on the above clip’s YouTube page to get a taste.

“We need to think bigger,” it reads. “This is Operation Mozart.”

o

Anonymous builds its own Pastebin-

like site

 

Hacker group Anonymous and the People's Liberation Front have created a data-sharing site called AnonPaste, meant to host pastes of code and other messages without any moderation or censorship of the information posted. The new site, which uses a free .tk web address, allows users to set a time for the paste to expire. It claims that data is encrypted and decrypted in the browser using 256 bit AES, so the server doesn't see any of the information included in the paste.The site says it's taking donations in the form of WePay or BitCoins.

The two groups launched AnonPaste as an alternative to the popular code-sharing site Pastebin, which has struggled to deal with its growing reputation as the popular hangout for malicious code or stolen data. Recently Pastebin has seen a huge growth in traffic, but it's also faced increasing DDOS attacks—one in February used over 20,000 unique IP addresses alone.

To deal with the growth in sometimes-illegal traffic, Jeroen Vader, a Dutch internet entrepreneur and the owner of Pastebin, has claimed that the site does occasionally filter out illegal information that gets pasted. He commented last week to the BBC that the site has complied with occasional law enforcement requests to turn over data. According to the press-release issued on AnonPaste this week, Pastebin's claims were largely the impetus for the creation of the new data-hosting site.

AnonPaste is built using open-source software called ZeroBin, created by French developer Sebastien Sauvage. According to Infoweek Sauvage has experience in creating online authentication systems for French banks, suggesting the creator knows a thing or two about encryption of data. Still, on the software's information page, Sauvage reminds potential users that ZeroBin software can not protect against potential Javascript attacks. "Users still have to trust the server regarding the respect of their privacy," he says. "ZeroBin won't protect the users against malicious servers."

Although Anonymous has used the news of AnonPaste to taunt Pastebin, Vader isn't worried about the popularity of his own site. He does see problems with the general idea of the new paste site though. "Having this new anonymous paste service online will most likely mean that less 'sensitive information' is posted on Pastebin.com, which we like," Vader told Ars, "But we think this new totally anonymous Paste site will be used mainly by people who have something to hide, people who are posting things that really shouldn't be posted. We see no benefit for normal legitimate users to use it over the currently existing paste websites. We are afraid that this site will be bombarded with people's personal information, credit-card details, and things such as child pornography."

In the press release, the creators of AnonPaste washed their hands regarding content: "Because the data on our servers is unreadable by us (or anyone), the responsibility for the legality or appropriateness of any paste lies solely with the person posting. So there will be no need for us to police this service, and in fact we don't even have the ability of deleting any particular paste."

Indeed, without the possibility of deleting information, authorities might argue the site poses a threat to personal privacy and institutional operations. Vader told Ars, "Here at Pastebin.com we think freedom of speech is very important, but we do think there should be some form of content moderation, because people do abuse paste websites, and if there is really no delete option, this could cause major harm." He added that yesterday his site released a "My Alerts" feature, which allows people to track names or keywords on Pastebin, so if illegal information shows up they can submit a takedown request to Pastebin in a timely manner.

And InfoWeek notes that ZeroBin has not been stress-tested against the kinds of DDOS and other attacks that might threaten AnonPaste's operation and philosophy of anonymity. As of this afternoon, access to AnonPaste has been on-and-off, suggesting there are still many hurdles for the endeavor to function at all.

o

Anonymous Makes The TIME 100 

2012 List

 

The loose-knit hacker group ended up in the number 36 spot on TIME'S 100 Most Influential People list, released on April 18, even though the group had been voted to first place on TIME's online reader poll.

As of 5 p.m. ET on Friday, April 6, the hacker-activist collective beat out all other nominees with 395,793 votes in favor of its inclusion on the TIME 100 list. Jeremy Lin, who came in ninth on the poll, snagged TIME's top honor on the official list.

So why did the TIME editors chose to place the hacker group at such a low spot on the list considering how high Anonymous placed in public polling and its widely publicized cyberattacks (to name just a few: striking government websites around the world in Tunisia, Algeria Zimbabwe, China, the United States and elsewhere; crashing the CIA's public site; and, more recently, intercepting an FBI conference call and posting it online).

To be fair, Anonymous wasn't the only TIME 100 contender whose place on the final list didn't reflect people's votes. For example, general manager of Reddit Erik Martin, came in second on the public poll with 26,4193 votes but then dropped drastically to number 83 on the final list. And Indian politician Narendra Modi, who came in third in the web poll with 25,6792 votes, didn't even make the final list at all.

It may well be that Anonymous' low ranking on the final list is due to the fact that TIME editors suspect the group of rigging the voting. If that's the case, it wouldn't be the first time someone gamed TIME's poll. As ZDNet pointed out in 2009, 4chan users "took advantage of the lack of authentication or validation of the online process" using "autovoters" to reorder the names that appeared on the poll.

Writing the official intro for Anonymous on the TIME 100 list, Barton Gellman asked bluntly, "Did Anonymous fix the TIME 100 poll?" He went on to include an unnamed person's response to his query, an unnamed person said, "Depends on who you think is smarter, a global collective of highly skilled hackers or the TIME IT department."

Check out TIME's final 100 Most Influential people list here and the results of its poll here.

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Anonymous leads new hacker war on China

 

Anonymous has hacked hundreds of Chinese government websites. Some sites were just defaced, but others have had administrator accounts, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses leaked.

The hacktivist group Anonymous now has a Chinese branch. An Anonymous China Twitter account was created late last month, was endorsed by the YourAnonNews Twitter account, which by the way has over 562,000 followers now, and the individuals behind it went to work. Boy have they been busy. Hundreds of Chinese government, company, and other general websites have been hacked and defaced in the span of a few days. A couple have also had their administrator accounts, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses posted publicly. On the hacked sites, the group even posted tips for how to circumvent the Great Firewall of China.

A long Pastebin post lists all the websites that were targeted. It contains 327 websites in total, but an updated list, also on Pastebin, brings that number to 485. Most of these websites are operational once again, but many have been defaced a second time after they were brought back. Not all of them were hacked and defaced; some were treated with more viciousness than others.

A separate Pastebin explains why Anonymous China is executing these attacks. The message is in both English and Chinese. Here’s the English version:

Hello, we are Anonymous.
All these years the Chinese Government has subjected their people to unfair laws and unhealthy processes.
People, each of you suffers from tyranny of that regime.

Fight for justice, fight for freedom, fight for democracy!

In the defaces and leaks in this day, we demonstrate our revolt to the Chinese system. It has to stop! We aren’t asking you for nothing, just saying to protest, to revolt yourself, to be the free person you always want to be! So, we are writing this message to tell you that you should protest, you should revolt yourself protesting and who has the skills for hacking and programming and design and other “computer things” come to our IRC: http://2.webchat.anonops.com/ channel: #GlobalRevolution .

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.

Here are the relevant Anonymous China tweets from March 30, 2012:

Mass Deface by Anonymous China (pastebin) -> http://pastebin.com/f7nFSFgq
#China and all #World we are just getting started.
Anonymous China is not affiliated with the GlobalBlackout Joke. #lulz
Thank you to all the support around the World, by Anonymous and ‘non-Anonymous’.
All the defaces (in the mass deface) nongovernmental are to spread consconsciousness even to the webmasters of their websites.
Update: mass deface 480+ (.gov included) http://pastebin.com/uqKbmfmm
Message from Anonymous China to the chinese government and the chinese people. http://pastebin.com/hQsQUfHV #GlobalRevolution

The next day, on March 31, it got more serious. Yet another Pastebin post detailed the hack of zssf.gov.cn. This wasn’t just a hack resulting defacement though. No. This time, phone numbers and e-mails were leaked. First off, two accounts and their passwords were posted. Next, 548 phone numbers were posted, likely belonging to Chinese officials. This was followed by 860 e-mail addresses. No passwords associated with these e-mail addresses were revealed, however.

Here are the tweets from that day:

Chinese Government, prepare yourself again. ;)
http://www.zssf.gov.cn/ leaked/hacked by Anonymous China. Mega Leak with phone numbers, emails, etc. Leak ->
http://js.cyberpolice.cn/webpage/search.jsp?%3Fspec%3D0&PARA=%22%27%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert%28document.cookie%29%3C/script%3E%0A&CRY XSS Injection Vuln. x)
匿名周圍的世界正義戰鬥。 \\ #Anonymous around thw world fighting for justice. #ExpectUs and expect Anonymous China, we’re just starting…

At least three of the sites were defaced again more recently, showing exactly how the defacements look like. As you can see in the screenshot at the top of this post, at the time of writing the first and second sites still have the images, text, as well as a song playing in the background (Baba O’Riley by The Who). There’s even a link to tips on how to bypass state censorship, on a separate webpage hosted by each of the hacked websites. It is essentially a copy of a post you can view yourself over at hacktivist.me.

The Anonymous message to the Chinese government and the Chinese people that was posted on these two sites, as well as hundreds of others, is in full below:

Hi all !

Message to Chinese government :

All these years, the Chinese Communist government has subjected its People to unfair laws and unhealthy processes.
Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall.
So expect us because we do not forgive, never. What you are doing today to your Great People, tomorrow will be inflicted to you.

With no mercy.

Nothing will stop us, nor your anger nor your weapons.
You do not scare us, because you cannot afraid an idea.

Message to Chinese People :

Each of you suffers from the tyranny of that regime which knows nothing about you. We are with you.
With you here and now. But also tomorrow and the coming days so promising for your freedom. We will never give up.
Don’t loose hope, the revolution begins in the heart.

The silence of all other countries highlights the lack of democracy and justice in China. It’s unbearable.
We must all fight for your freedom.

At the time of writing, the third site now simply has a message (in Chinese) saying it is under maintenance. I believe the owners have regained control again.

Last but certainly not least, tchjbh.gov.cn was hacked last night and the results were posted yet again on Pastebin. One admin user account and password, four phone numbers, and one e-mail address were leaked.

Here are the tweets between April 1 and now:

Chinese hackers , programmers, etc and hackers all over the world, we invite you to be part of Anonymous China, fighting for justice!
Haoh defaces and leaks coming… Today, … Tomorrow, … And forever!
http://cdcbd.gov.cn/ http://www.qnwqdj.gov.cn/ http://www.bbdj.gov.cn/ redefaced lol, your security still suck.
Leaks coming … Chinese government today, attacked again.
http://www.tchjbh.gov.cn/ hacked by Anonymous China. Leak -> http://pastebin.com/BijTmUmH

These attacks seem to have come out of nowhere. China’s state media recently cracked down on dozens of websites, penalising two popular social networks and detaining six people, but this is nothing new and is constantly happening in the country. How will the Communist government react?

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Pastebin: Running the site where hackers publicise their attacks

 

Over recent years Pastebin.com has become a must-visit site for anyone wanting to keep track of the exploits of Anonymous and other hackers.

Text files containing emails, passwords and other hijacked information are often made public on the service - drawing attention as they climb its "trending pastes" list.

Twitter messages are frequently used to direct followers to the Pastebin, which has the advantage over the microblogging service of allowing "pastes" to run up to 0.5 megabytes in size rather than limiting them to 140 characters.

The platform was founded a decade ago, but its original owner sold it after thousands of people's Hotmail email passwords were exposed on the site in October 2009, leading him to briefly shut it down.

It was bought by Jeroen Vader - a Dutch internet entrepreneur who upgraded its features and has seen its popularity surge.

When he took it over in early 2010 Pastebin had 500,000 unique visitors a month. That number is now 17 million.

But as its profile has grown so have its problems.

Although many of the articles contain legally-shared information, Mr Vader says the authorities in Turkey and Pakistan have taken action to block the site after confidential data was exposed.

He also says that Pastebin itself has become the target of numerous hack and spam attacks.

Mr Vader agreed to be interviewed over email by the BBC - the following is an edit of the conversation:

Your site appears to have become one of the hacking community's favourite locations to publicise the results of its attacks. Why do you think this is - and does it cause you concern?

I am very happy and quite proud that so many people trust Pastebin as a place to publish their text. With the Trends section being checked by many journalists and the high search engine ranking on pastes, it can be quite beneficial for people to have their content on Pastebin. Often minutes after posting something it can be found in search engines such as Google.

How important do you think it is that hackers have an easily accessible facility like Pastebin to release their material rather than using parts of the net less likely to be visited by the general public?

The term hacker has received a lot of negative press over the years, but often that isn't fair at all. I think it is very important that people have access to sites like Pastebin, because it offers them total freedom of speech. Especially if they post their items behind a proxy of some kind, there is no way to trace who posted what. It is great to see that people use Pastebin as a platform to get their thoughts and ideals out to the rest of the world. A lot of items in the Trends section can be very interesting to read actually.

Your guidelines say users should not to post emails, stolen source code or password lists. Yet people associated with Anonymous often do this - and at times you have flagged up their actions on your own Twitter account - for example the YouPorn attack you tweeted about on 23 Feb. Do you accept that the popularity of such posts help drive traffic to the site and ultimately generates you advertising revenue?

We do indeed not allow people to post email lists and other personal information that does not belong to them. That said, we are very much aware that it happens a lot, but trying to automatically filter out such pastes is a pretty impossible task. Instead we heavily rely on our users to report items that do not comply with our FAQ. On average we get over 1,000 abuse reports a day via our on-site abuse report system, and another 200 or so come in via email. These are all monitored.

We would never link to sensitive information via our Twitter feed. The item you are referring to is rather harmless. It contains no user-names, but only some funny and rather shocking password statistics.

It has been reported that Pastebin has been blocked in Pakistan and Turkey by the authorities following the release of hacked local material posted to your site - can you provide an update on this, and comment on what you make of their actions?

Pakistan blocked us a few months ago, and three weeks ago Turkey also blocked us. We found out about this when users started to email and tweet about it. The authorities of these countries never told us about those blocks though. We have been asked to remove certain pieces of content by the authorities of both countries, and in both cases we have complied. Looking at our Google Analytics reports, it shows that even though the site has been blocked in those countries, the visitors drop is only about 50% in both cases. People still find a way to connect.

Some of our readers have expressed concern that some Pastebin posts reveal personal details of people working for the authorities - such as home addresses - or the identities of people paying for pornography which they might have wanted to keep private. Do you have concerns that your site could put lives in danger, or at the very least disrupt people's personal lives?

I am very much aware of the fact that it can be quite shocking when your personal information gets posted online by someone else. I've had it happen to me in the past, but luckily the information was posted on Pastebin so I was able to remove it quickly. It's important to understand that Pastebin.com monitors all removal requests, so when someone does get its personal information posted, we can often remove it within hours, sometimes minutes.

You say you monitor removal requests, but should you be more proactive? Bearing in mind people's home addresses and other personal details are sometimes posted to the site, do you have a responsibility to at least check what is trending at any time?

I am looking to hire some extra people soon to monitor more of the website's content, not just the items that are reported. Hopefully this will increase the speed in which we can remove sensitive information. This will give us more time to look at trending items in detail if they haven't been reported yet. Often articles contain a lot of information, and part of that can be a person's details. This does not mean straight away that it should be removed. Reading all those items, and determining which ones are hurtful, and which ones aren't, requires a lot of time. That's why we rely on the abuse report system at the moment. But there are plans to improve on this.

Last year you told one reporter that you tracked IP addresses - and had passed on the details to the authorities when asked in some cases. Can you provide more detail?

The main reason why we track IP information when people create a paste, is to be able to block them in case they spam a lot. Something which is a huge issue on Pastebin at the moment.

There have been a few cases when authorities request IP information from Pastebin, and we tend to comply with such requests, but only with a valid court order of course. Sharing IP information without such a court order is illegal in many countries. We do see that when a court order is presented, and we share the IP information, that it is often an IP from a proxy or some kind of anonymous browsing service. People who post sensitive information hardly even use their own home IP.

In February Pastebin came under attack by a botnet attack involving more than 22,000 unique IP addresses. Can you provide more detail about the attack and who you think might have been responsible?

February was a terrible month, so many attacks. It was a real nightmare to run the site. In the last three months not a single day has gone by that we didn't get some kind of DDOS attack, but in February there were some really long attacks going on. The longest one went on for more than 48 hours. Until this day not a single attack has been claimed. I do hear from people in the hackers community that many hackers like to test their DDOS skills on Pastebin.

You recently tweeted that you had upgraded your servers and code. Can you give an outline of what is involved in keeping Pastebin live and how you plan to develop it in the future - eg how soon might there be a move to mobile devices?

I am constantly working on the site, seven days a week, and when all the abuse reports have been dealt with, I try to improve the site's software. Everything is custom coded from scratch, which makes it very easy for me to perform update/upgrades as I know all the code. Once in a while new features are implemented, but most of the work goes into keeping everything running smooth, keeping the site free(ish) of spam, and handling removal request. And of course handling DDOS attack when they happen. Hopefully with our new hoster in place, this will require less and less of my time.

Our tools section contains many user generated apps/tools that give people the option to access Pastebin from various devices. More and more apps are added to that page all the time. Currently we are working on a new iOS application for the iPhone and iPad users





 

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Politician-

mail: Anonymous launched Countdown

 

The Anonymous Internet activists and their offshoot AnonAustria Austria have for their first Publications announced in april "sensitive" material a countdown starts.

At the web address http://pwny.biz/countdown should be read in part: "Consequences will never be the same!" Anonymous.

Retention starts

On 1 April the much controversial data retention. Through them, the authorities can access six months later on communications data from fixed-line telephone, mobile phone, e-mail and the Internet.

Examples of data collection

Base is an EU directive, adopted in 2006 for fighting terrorism, and translate that Austria had long delinquent. The policy and its adoption into Austrian law are criticized heavily for a long time.

CHECK COUNTDOWN HERE  

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