"Anonymous" Hackers Take Down Child Porn Websites, Leak Users' Names

http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/anonymous-hackers-child-porn-sites-1260/

by bengoism • 15 years ago

201 93 15 years ago

securitynewsdaily.com

bengoism• 15 years ago

Timeline and details of the Hack: http://pastebin.com/T1LHnzEW

codezero7• 15 years ago

While I support the vigilante destruction of child porn sites, I do want to point out that in doing so, they may have interrupted an ongoing investigation. Outing the names may embarras the users, but it may also make it harder for authorities to prosecute them or to move up the food chain.

ryandickherber6• 15 years ago

This is just free market law enforcement. No reason to wait some self-designated "authorities" to deliver justice.

Edit: I'd appreciate it if people who downvote all my comments explain why they are downvoting. I am writing thoughtful responses to any of your questions. Downvoting just because you disagree isn't cool.

bartonfink• 15 years ago

Which is a terrible idea.

codezero7• 15 years ago

Anonymous isn't putting anyone behind bars, that's the difference. Yes, the "authorities" will take more time, but that's because they have to build a case that will convince a jury and hopefully 1) lock the guys up, or at the very least 2) get them into a sex offender registry.

The list of names released by Anonymous won't be considered authoritative.

culled• 15 years ago

The actual authorities aren't self-designated, they're designated by our democratically elected government. Anonymous are the ones trying to act as "self-designated authorities".

SCdF• 15 years ago

Sounds like the wild west to me. I didn't get a say in whether or not some random bored kids downloaded a bunch of CP and possibly wrecked a long term investigation run by people I actually did get in a say in electing (well, I don't live in the US, so I didn't, but you get the point).

vaksel• 15 years ago

what investigation? I don't know for sure, but I'm fairly sure that in the past 5 years there was not a single major crackdown on CP in the news(reddit banning /r/jailbait doesn't count).

It always seems to be a case of someone just getting reported by neighbors, photo stores. So it doesn't seem like the authorities are all that proactive in stopping it

BasDirks• 15 years ago

You talk crap. There have been major busts, go inform yourself.

anigbrowl5• 15 years ago

You need a better news supplier. http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/August/11-ag-1001.html

asdf1234qwer• 15 years ago

Since they've hacked numerous police departments and government agencies of those pursuing them, how do we know they haven't inserted some of the names of those people into the list?

codezero7• 15 years ago

That would be hilariously ironic, since that's exactly the kind of thing the Church of Scientology does to discredit its detractors.

dextorious3• 15 years ago

Yes, because Anonymous is such a moral entity, that they would never use the bad tactics of their enemies...

crizCraig• 15 years ago

POLL: Does this improve your impression of Anonymous? http://www.wepolls.com/p/4088470/Now-that-Anonymous-has-take...

watty• 15 years ago

No.

0x12• 15 years ago

Could you please stop spamming HN with webpolls? That would certainly increase my impression of you.

Thank you.

S4M2• 15 years ago

What I find really scary in this article is the existence of the "darknet" that contains pedophile website and also apparently an assassination service. This creates many questions: how many people get access to this hidden network? who created it? Had the authorities knowledge of its existence? While this could give topic for science fiction books, I also makes me feel insecure.

lambada2• 15 years ago

The ability to securely and anonymously host websites is a standard feature of the freely available, open source Tor software.

Tor was originally funded by the EFF and the US Navy. So yes, the authorities most definitely know of its existence.

S4M2• 15 years ago

Thanks for the pointer, I'll have a look at Tor software. But I find it scary the existence of a website offering highly illegal services where only a selected few can access.

bri3d• 15 years ago

So Anonymous:

- Downloaded a bunch of child porn.

- Released a useless list of psudonyms extracted from the forum's DB.

- Claim to have used a timing attack against Tor to find the physical location of the machine hosting the CP, without providing any details. Tor is vulnerable to timing attacks but I don't think any are trivial enough for any "Anonymous members" to handle.

- Also, if they had the level of access to Freedom Hosting's server which they claim to, they should have reverse-connected across the non-Tor Internet and located the machine (and presumably the machine's hosting provider and datacenter) that way. Given the amateur-looking setup illustrated in the Anonymous press-releases, I highly doubt the Freedom Hosting machine was firewalled from connecting back across the normal Internet.

- Then Anonymous removed the machine from service so it can't possibly be located by real law enforcement and the real owners can't be found.

It sounds like this is a net loss in any kind of real battle against CP - I'm all for removing obvious distribution points for CP when they're found, but doing so in this manner makes it much harder to track down and prosecute the actual producers and consumers of child porn.

Also, the linked article is poorly researched and written - The Examiner doesn't report anything; it's a pay-per-pageview CMS that anyone can write for, with limited-to-no editorial oversight. The original author should be cited instead.

andrewflnr3• 15 years ago

Would you prefer it if they had taken more steps to locate the machine and find the owners, then turned that over to law enforcement? If they had done so, would you still prefer they had done nothing and let the authorities handle it? Also, would you regard it as a net win if they took down a majority of CP distributors this way (feasibility aside)? I'm really curious about your position.

sophacles• 15 years ago

This isn't a comic book. Whether or not you think Anonymous are mostly good or mostly bad, there is a simple fact about them: they are humans. You are aware that people are not strictly good or evil right? Most hardened criminals still love their kids, and most regular Joe's have asshole moments or have even committed crimes! (think, half the people in the us are guilty of using illegal drugs at some point, half have driven drunk, and so on).

I'm sure if anonymous tracked down the stuff and told the police they would all have been arrested for child porn themselves, as this seems to be well on the side of "going to jail", based on precedent previously set by prosecutors all over the US. Further, (because details are lacking) if the server and/or the viewers are not in the same country, full prosecution becomes quite difficult.

But whatev, they did a bad because they are anonymous. No credit to them for stopping something that proper authorities were apparently ignoring or completely ignorant of -- either way those authorities were being completely ineffective.

lambada2• 15 years ago

For anyone who hasn't used Tor before, I'm going to clarify some of the inaccuracies/FUD in the article.

- A darknet did not 'grow out' of the Tor software. The ability for anyone to host websites on their computer anonymously is a standard feature of the Tor network.

- Tor is not strictly a set of browser plugins. Tor is routing software that routes over TCP/IP. Any program can use it assuming they have set the proxy settings on their computer/program correctly. There is a plugin for Firefox, but the functionality of that is limited to one-click setup of the correct settings, and changing some default Firefox settings to increase anonymity and security.

- The site the article mentioned called 'Hard Candy' is a standard wiki page hosted on the Hidden Wiki. The purpose of the Hidden Wiki is to be a huge directory of all the sites on the Tor network, as search bots are impractical. As distasteful as it is, it would be impossible to enforce those links to be removed.

- As far as I'm aware Freedom Hosting never had a normally accessible domain name, so the article claiming things about WHOIS data is almsot certainly irrelevant.

EDIT: These are my own views, and not those of any other person/organisation. I have experience with the Tor network due to my pet interest in Anonymous networks, and how they function.

smashing• 15 years ago

Mob rule, 21st Century Style.