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The Nation's Pulse
The Keyboard Anarchists
Hacktivists of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your pajamas.
For months we’ve been reading about hacker groups like Lulz Security who reportedly have no agenda other than to create mayhem and laugh-snort at their own clever online exploits.
The media were quick to romanticize LulzSec, christening them “keyboard anarchists” and giggling over their Edwardian stick figure mascot and ironic Love Boat theme. As for their mission or purpose — they supposedly didn’t have one. According to one of their communiqués, they hacked various government and corporate websites just because they could.
Their attacks were waged in the great wasteland of cyberspace, where they posted muddled manifestos — more evidence of a generation that learned to write by texting and tweeting — full of esoterica about memes and nodes which anyone born before 1990 doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to.
They were joined by other hacker collectives with handles like Anonymous, Anti-Sec, Anonops, Indishell and LulzRaft. The “Lulz” that keeps showing up in their noms de guerre reportedly stands for lol or “laugh out loud,” which is ironic, since the hackers are decidedly not funny. Here’s one sample of LulzSec’s legendary wit:
For the past month and a bit, we’ve been causing mayhem and chaos throughout the Internet, attacking several targets including PBS, Sony, Fox, porn websites, FBI, CIA, the U.S. government, Sony some more, online gaming servers… Sony again, and of course our good friend Sony.
But, as Paul Carr pointed out at the Guardian website, many of the above were not “hacked” in any meaningful sense. “[T]heir public websites were brought down by an avalanche of traffic — a so-called ‘distributed denial-of-service’ (DDoS) attack. Given enough internet-enabled typewriters, a monkey could launch a DDoS attack — except that mentally subnormal monkeys have better things to do with their time,” Carr wrote.
Like a five-year-old on the diving board, the hackers are desperate for attention. They’re obsessed with social media and with following their ever-increasing news coverage. The fawning coverage seems to be working. LulzSec’s Twitter feed has almost 260,000 followers.
On occasion, LulzSec claimed to have a nobler purpose than plain old mischief, i.e., to expose holes in security. Again, the media cooed: You see, they really are good, public-spirited hearted rascals!
But in recent weeks LulzSec took on a more political tone (leftist politics, of course.) This from yet another communiqué: “Hackers of the world are uniting and taking direct action against our common oppressors — the government, corporations, police, and militaries of the world.” Their discourse has grown increasingly incoherent and militant, threatening (ironically, no doubt) to kill hacker-traitors, and warning that “Cannonballs will fire at banks, police, and entire governments until we (the internet) are satisfied,” and encouraging “any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path.”
They have also taken on the familiar bearded-hipster causes: fewer government regulations, pro-immigration laws, legalization of drugs, eradication of copyright laws.
And, of course, anyone who writes negatively about them risks having his personal information hacked and posted on the web for all the world to steal.
All in good fun, of course.
BUT NOW THEY may have gone too far. In retaliation for SB 1070 (an Arizona anti-illegal-immigration law), LulzSec posted the personal information of law enforcement officers and their families. “Our guys are out there doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and they put themselves in harm’s way every single day,” Jimmy Chavez, president of the Arizona Highway Patrol Association told the Los Angles Times. “They don’t need any additional pressure on them from a — let’s just call it what it is — a terrorist organization.”
This, and a high-profile attack on the CIA, has gotten the attention of the Obama Administration. Officials want to sentence those convicted of breaking into government computer networks or compromising national security to up to twenty years in federal prison.
The ironic anarchists’ fans in the media don’t like this one bit. Trevor Butterworth in The Daily predicted the legislation will backfire, and that “more stringent crackdowns and restrictive laws… will push some hackers to even more extreme responses.”
Like what? Angrier Tweets? Military-grade spam? Adopting the Three’s Company theme song for their home page? It’s not like these modern-day anarchists are going to assassinate a leading industrialist. That would mean leaving the basement. And the only time you’ll get these slackitivists out of their houses in when the FBI kicks down their parents’ door and drags them off to the hoosegow.
Then we’ll see who’s LOL and whose SOL.
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (22) | Leave a comment
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Melvin| 6.30.11 @ 7:48AM
The old humorous phrase of, "What is more dangerous that a bomb lade terrorist? ....A Nigerian with a lap top."
Now we have very young, very impressionable tweens and teenagers causing more Internet mayhem, than is tolerable.
These are the kids who stay up all night and keep the Energy Drink Red Bull in business, and the aluminum recycling industry profitable.
Many of these kids are the same ones who are much too busy, and watch their mom's mow the yard from the attic or basement window. They live in a 17 inch plus megabyte world, never venturing outside more than need be, and when they do it is in a nocturnal habit.
It is odd to see these pasty faced kids emerge in handcuffs from underneath their self-imposed rock that they chose to live under.
The parents stand there with mouths agape, and that stomped on bullfrog look expression upon their faces.
Mumbling to themselves, "I had no idea, I had no idea, he's a good boy, he's a good boy, I had no idea."
Things are allot different now than when I grew up. If I even thought about locking or shutting my door, my father only gave me one chance to keep it open or a 10 wide was going to come sailing through it, with the following comment of, "What the hell are you doing in there, get outside and do something constructive like mowing the yard."
Ahhh, I do sorely miss my Canary Yellow Huffy Lawn Mower, that would only mow going backwards, because the wheels were bent, (I bent the wheels horsing around).
lydia | 6.30.11 @ 1:48PM
I am a 28 years old doctor, mature and beautiful.and now I am seeking a good man who can give me real love , so i got a username Andromeda2002 on--s'e'ek'c'ou'ga'r.c óm--.it is the first and best club for y'ounger women and old'er men, or older women and y'ounger men,to int'eract with each other. Maybe you wanna ch'eck 'it out or tell your friends!
No one remembers or cares about the neighborhood kid who has been away in jail for the past 20 years, except, maybe, his parents.
Bob Grant| 6.30.11 @ 6:38PM
I think you have a fan in Lydia. You know the 28 years old doctor, mature and beautiful.and now she's seeking...blah, blah, blah.
John S| 6.30.11 @ 9:22AM
I was born before 1990, and I understand words like meme and common technical computer terms.
And this group did more than execute DDOS attacks. Those of us who work in computer security have been trying to get the general public, our co-workers and our managers to listen to us about the need to increase computer security have been equally appalled by both the low technical level of the attacks, and how well they succeeded.
While no security professional could condone such attacks, I can't but help to feel a bit of schadenfreude when I see these attacks succeed. Instead of making light of them, perhaps this author could help us get the word out that it is both possible, and well past time, to improve our computer security.
Melvin| 6.30.11 @ 10:28AM
John your preaching to the choir. Let me tell you what your up against.
My wife was assisting the local Community Collage GED program with reading.
The collage had three day reading course and one evening course. What she told me when she came home was astounding.
The reading classes were slam full, every chair filled. These adults/kids were at level one reading. In other words they couldn't even begin to read. Some only knew how to write their name and that was it.
The above is your answer. John 99.9% of these people couldn't even tell you where the on button was on a computer, let alone comprehend computer security.
The really scary part to this is? The School was turning away adults waiting to take reading level one by the hundreds.
My friend it doesn't bode well does it?
TrueBlue| 6.30.11 @ 11:44AM
That's pretty true when it comes to people who work on computers not having a clue how to really use them, let alone secure them. I have people who downright refuse to learn, they just want it to work so they can do their job.
These are the same people that determine how much of a company/agency budget gets spent on cyber-security sadly, that's why networks are so easy to break into. Unfortunately it'll take more big news hacks like the recent Sony one to make them change their attitude about it and actually get them secured.
Southern_Comment| 6.30.11 @ 11:00PM
I'd done computer security, hated it mainly because of the battles you are constantly having to fight to get people to take computer security seriously. People don't seem to care that their entire identity is usually on their computers. Even at the company I'm at now, I wouldn't go permanent until they locked down employee's social security numbers from all developers, except for the ones who supported the module. If I'd gone permenant my ssn would be exposed. They did shut down the table down to a required few and scramble the table in test. It was something so basic, I couldn't believe it was as it was.
Purple Lips| 6.30.11 @ 10:14AM
I think the correct term for these "hackers" is script kiddies.
Petronius| 6.30.11 @ 10:14AM
Yeah, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. The day will come when one of these smartass reprobates hacks a law enforcement network to facilitate commission of a crime, or maybe hit the banks and credit carriers to do document dumps and paralyze commerce. They know better than to mess with the DoD. But this is a Mt. Everest thing: To do it "because it's there." Street cred was yesterday. Today it's cyber-cred. "
"Getting it over on the man" has been replaced by dominating the ether for this bunch. And it will continue to be Cool.
What should concern us all is the potential for mayhem and loss of life due to hacker activities.
They could attack hospitals or traffic signals. If so, "gotcha" won't be very amusing anymore.
cicero| 6.30.11 @ 12:06PM
Like most "kiddie activity", the trick is to take the fun out of it. Rather than laugh andd idolize these idiots, punishment so severe that it is no longer "cool" might work. In days gone bye, if someone tore down telephone wires, or burned transmission stations, long stints in jail, and the costs involved in repairing the damages, had a cureative effect.
No one remembers or cares about the neighborhood kid who has been away in jail for the past 20 years, except, maybe, his parents.
John Navratil| 6.30.11 @ 1:08PM
cicero,
It's the certainty, not the severity, of punishment which is the real deterrent. The levels of indirection behind these attacks makes it quite difficult to trace them back to the hacker. After all, it isn't the hacker's machine doing the attacking. While the owner's of PCs connected to the web cannot be blamed, much good could be gained by simply not running Windows with "administrator" privilege. The problem is that the average home PC user, as John S. says, just wants his computer to "work" and hasn't a clue about keeping it secured. This user is the unwitting accomplice to a great deal of mischief.
artesian jacket| 6.30.11 @ 12:47PM
20 years in prison is a bit extreme, how about 6 months working on a south Georgia chain gang in 95 degree heat with 70 dew points to sweat that foolishness out of them?
Drunken Sailor| 6.30.11 @ 12:54PM
They can be used to clear Kudzu. There is poetic justice having one parasite, destroy another.
John Navratil| 6.30.11 @ 1:09PM
Drunken Sailor,
Or send them to Mississippi to clear poison ivy.
Southern_Comment| 6.30.11 @ 11:12PM
Love that comment.
Sardonikus| 6.30.11 @ 1:51PM
It is tempting to compare these miscreants with the Huns and their destructive tendencies during the latter period of the Western Roman Empire. Yet for all the mayhem the Huns caused, they at least had a viable and identifiable culture. The LulzSeccers and their ilk have only one definable sociocultural trait: nihilism, which is, in effect, a contempt for ALL sociocultural components. They are merely (and in the most pejorative sense) barbarians with the trappings of technology, seeking to undermine and destroy not in the name of some higher ideal, but for sheer narcisstic gratification. And they are perfectly symptomatic of the new cultural and intellectual Dark Age in which we now find ourselves living.
Sardonikus| 6.30.11 @ 2:15PM
narcisstic--->narcissistic
Bruce| 6.30.11 @ 2:13PM
Why not call these 'hackers' what they truly are, cowards. they take no responsibility, they do things without id's, etc. In the 60's anti-government types were proud to take credit for what they did. they may have tried to keep thier address unknown but they proudly took credit. This new generation are cowards. By the way, with the problems of drug trafficing in Arizona, these addreses of families could be life threatening. There should be a law against these cyber attacks. 20 years is a good round number.
weddingdress | 7.1.11 @ 12:35AM
20 years in prison is a bit extreme, how about 6 months working on a south Georgia chain gang in 95 degree heat with 70 dew points to sweat that foolishness out of them?
Spitfire| 7.1.11 @ 11:01PM
Petronis - good points. Its time for a federal law against hacking that carries real teeth - like fifty years in a federal max security prison. As for myself, if I could catch the author of any of my viral infections, I would beat them to a bloody pulp.
Adult toys | 7.4.11 @ 12:47AM
20 years in prison is a bit extreme, how about 6 months working on a south Georgia chain gang in 95 degree heat with 70 dew points to sweat that foolishness out of them?
Abbie-Normal| 7.13.11 @ 3:35PM
I suggest that the author of this article and those who have commented on it to educate themselves about what "Anonymous" and others are really about before discarding them as obnoxious children. I am a 49-year old professional female. My politics are best described as Libertarian. I am Anonymous, yet I have absolutely no idea how to "hack" into others' computers; I am lucky to sign into my own Ebay account without difficulty. For information about "Anonymous" purpose, a good place to start is youtube - search "Anonymous" or #OpESR" or "Operation Onslaught" or "What is the Plan". Educate yourselves, please.