Hackers have responded to the persecution of Julian Assange and Wikileaks by attacking the Visa and MasterCard websites. The group responsible calls itself “Anonymous.” It promotes the use of LOIC, short for Low Orbit Ion Cannon, software that lets volunteers engage in distributed denial of service attacks, also known as DDoS.
When in today's broadcast, I heard Alex Jones refer to this ominous-sounding weapon as the "Low Orion Ion Cannon," I felt compelled to shed a little light on this.
Actually, LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) is ostensibly a network stress testing application. It attempts a denial-of-service attack on the target site by flooding the server with TCP packets, UDP packets, or HTTP requests with the intention of disrupting the service of a particular host.
It is almost absurdly easy to use. Here is what the user interface looks like:
It is available at the project's home -- open-source mecca, SourceForge, where (according to the BBC) it has been downloaded over 31,000 times. Most likely the app is in the hands of far more people than that as it is widely distributed via other avenues. It is included, for example, in a somewhat nasty little collection of tools call Dangerous Kitten.
"Anonymous" is a relatively unorganized, non-homogeneous group, but they are not dumb. There are already new strategies emerging in their WikiLeaks support campaign, including calls to discontinue the massive DDoS attacks in favor of more purely information warfare. This was posted on 4chan.org today:
I think Anonymous is well-intentioned, but may be politically naive. They are accepting Assange and WikiLeaks at face-value, which I suspect is being less than astute. It is going to be interesting to watch their efforts, though, even if in the end they amount to not much more than a distraction. If their skills and energy could be harnessed against hardcore NWO targets, who knows what they could do.
1 comment:
It's also all over reddit that this whole thing is being driven by intelligence companies. They're going on 4chan to rally the teenagers to 'the cause'.
My guess is that this is just the opening shot. That these agencies will foment more and more of this kind of so-called "hacktivism" for something to be held up to legislate against with a net censorship bill.
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