Assault on Westboro Baptist Church Website Continues

The denial of service (DoS) attack initiated by The Jester (th3j35t3r) on a website operated by the Westboro Baptist Church has now exceeded two full weeks in duration.

The sustained DoS attack, which began on February 21st, represents a record for the hactivist who is best known for repeated DoS attacks on militant Jihadi websites (video), as well as an attack on the WikiLeaks website in late November that forced the organization to shuffle Internet hosting providers.

According to data from NetCraft, Westboro Baptist Church's controversial "www.godhatesfags.com" website has shown no activity for over two weeks:



The Jester has tweeted several messages regarding the attack, the last (as of the writing of this article) was on March 6th and described the attack as being a "no holds barred assault".

Another of the tweets mentions that the strategy behind the sustained attacks differs from those aimed at jihadi sites because "Some people people just need to stay down, they have no value in intel terms".



In an interview in 2010, The Jester elaborated on his anti-jihadi methodology:

"By knocking out the jihadi sites for random short periods, it causes them to be unable to rely on the site for recruitment, or co-ordination, this in turn will have the effect of drawing them out into the open and in person to do the recruiting, where the CT agencies really come into their own doing what they do best, which is intercepting and apprehending suspects".

The Jester uses a DoS tool he calls XerXeS to perform an application level attack on the targeted servers.
Where traditional TCP-based DoS attacks require multiple machines sending a large number of packets, the XerXeS attack can be performed by a single low-spec machine with relatively few packets.

On the development of XerXeS, The Jester remarked that "the aim is to create a single cohesive attack platform that will knock out with precision and no side-effects anything it comes up against, for any specified period."


How long will the WBC operation carry on? For now, the answer looks to be indefinitely.

[InfoSecIsland]

The Cybercrime Blotter: High-Profile Websites Hacked in 2011

In only its first two months, 2011 has already been a banner year for cybercriminals, who've managed to hack into or disrupt the websites of several high-profile organizations.
Here is a roundup of every cyberattack that made headlines in 2011 so far. As cybercriminals find new targets, expect the list to (unfortunately) grow.

Feb. 24: Westboro Baptist Church
On Feb. 24, Anonymous took down several websites associated with the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. A small but vocal Christian group that loves publicity and hates almost everything else, the Westboro Baptist Church pickets military funerals with signs reading "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for Dead American Soldiers."

Feb. 22: Voice of America
On Feb. 22, pro-Iran hackers went after Voice of America the official news service of the United States government. This one was by a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army (ICA). In its hack on www.voanews.com, the ICA denounced what it saw as U.S. involvement in the ongoing revolutions in the Muslim world. The ICA manipulated the VOA homepage to read: “Mrs. Clinton Do you want to hear the voice of oppressed nations from heart of USA? Islamic world doesn’t believe USA trickery. We call on you to stop interfering in Islamic countries.”

Feb. 18: Canada
In mid-February, it was revealed that the Treasury Board, Finance Department and Defence Research and Development — Defence Research and Development Canada is a civilian military agency — were all breached in January by hackers believed to be operating in China. The hackers were seeking confidential information pertaining to financial and weapons information and data about oil and gas resources.

Feb 11: Iran
As antigovernment protests spread throughout the Middle East, so did cyberattacks aimed at crippling oppressive government regimes. On Feb. 11, Anonymous took action against several Iranian government websites, standing in solidarity against what it called in a press release “the chains of oppression, tyranny and torture.” The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were levied against the websites of IRNA, Iranian’s semi-official news agency, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Ayotollah Ali Khomenei, but none were entirely successful.

Feb 6: HBGary Federal
Anonymous was involved in this next hack, and this one added a bit of intrigue and espionage to the mix. On Feb. 5, Aaron Barr, chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based security firm HBGary Federal, announced that he had unmasked the members of Anonymous, and would reveal their identities at a security conference later in the month. Wasting no time, Anonymous the following day took down the website of Barr’s company, hijacked Barr’s personal Twitter account and his boss’s LinkedIn profile, and posted more than 70,000 of Barr’s personal e-mails. In a brazen show of defiance, Anonymous even posted the dossier of secret Anonymous identities Barr was planning to make public. While Anonymous was just flexing its muscles, it turned out those 70,000 e-mails told a scandalous story of espionage and dastardly closed-door dealings. Barr’s leaked e-mails revealed that his company was planning to launch cyberattacks and public smear campaigns of its own against WikiLeaks.

Feb. 5: Nasdaq
Next up to go down: the Nasdaq. As reported in a Feb. 5 Wall Street Journal article, hackers for the past year had been targeting computer networks belonging to the Nasdaq stock exchange. But these online crooks weren’t after money. The hackers’ real target was Directors Desk, a cloud application owned by Nasdaq that stores financial records and reports for hundreds of Fortune 500 companies and more than 10,000 corporate board members.

Jan. 26: Utah, Michigan, Albania, Italy, the U.S. Army, etc.
A few weeks passed before another high-profile organization was targeted, but when the next hit came, it was a big one. In late January, a hacker hijacked more than a dozen top military, government and education websites. Among the hacker’s haul were the websites of the states of Utah and Michigan, the Italian government, the Albanian military, Singhania University in India and the U.S. Army’s Communications-Electronic Command (CECOM). The hacked websites were being sold for $55-$499 each on an underground market.

Jan 26: Egypt
On Jan. 26, Anonymous struck again, this time against Egypt’s official government websites. The attacks on the websites of the cabinet, Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology were carried out after then-President Hosni Mubarak blocked citizens’ access to Twitter. Following Egypt’s five-day Internet blackout, Anonymous launched a second wave of digital protests, taking down sites in Egypt as well as in Yemen.

Jan 2: Tunisia
The first notable digital disruption of the year occurred just two days in, when the hacktivist group Anonymous launched massive DDoS attacks against at least eight Tunisian government websites. The DDoS takedowns were in response to the Tunisian government’s decision to block its citizens from accessing WikiLeaks. Protests in Tunisia kicked off a surge of antigovernment opposition that spread quickly throughout the Middle East.

What’s next?
Unfortunately for prominent organizations — and even worse for controversial ones — the year is still young, and if the first two months are any indication, there are most certainly plenty of cyberattacks still to come.

[securitynewsdaily]

Anon hacks Westboro Baptists during live interview

Denizens of Anonymous defaced a website run by the Westboro Baptist Church on Thursday during a live radio interview.

An ongoing spat between the controversial church of GodHatesFags fame and the loosely knit hacking collective began last weekend with a message threatening hacks against websites that, depending on who you believe, was posted either by the Church itself or a faction of Anonymous. Another faction of Anonymous distanced itself from the plan, categorising Westboro Baptist Church as trolls looking for attention.

Whatever the origins of the row, WBC's site has been subject to ongoing attacks over recent days, and the topic served as suitable fodder for an item on the David Pakman show. A member of Anonymous faced off against Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Anon said the supposed threat against WBC came from "nowhere" and didn't match its writing style. He said attacks against WBC sites were the work of Jester. Phelps-Roper, who kept interrupting the Anon member, said everyone for Anonymous was going to hell. After eight minutes into the interview the Anon member posted its own statement on downloads.westborobaptistchurch.com.

The statement, headed "This domain has been seized by Anonymous under section #14 of the rules of the Internet", derides the Church for attempting to "goad" Anonymous into attacking it for describing them as "crybaby hackers". The statement went on to say Anonymous had bigger fish to fry, such as campaigns involving Libya and managing the fallout from its hack against HBGary.

"Take this defacement as a simple warning: go away," the statement (screenshot here) concludes. "The world (including Anonymous) disagrees with your hateful messages, but you have the right to voice them. This does not mean you can jump onto Anonymous for attention."

Watching the duo square up was akin to watching two wrestlers trash talk each other prior to a carefully orchestrated fight, as can be seen from a video clip from the Pakman show below.

Phelps-Roper, probably like the wider Westboro Baptist Church, seems to revel in being "persecuted" while both she and the rep of Anon more or less admitted that they were enjoying the media attention brought about by the ongoing spat. ®

[The Register]

Jester claims credit for knocking Westboro Baptist Church offline

Patriot hacker The Jester has claimed credit for denial of service attacks against the controversial Westboro Baptist Church.

The self-proclaimed activist revealed in a twitter update that he had torn into the Church's website in protests against its pickets on the funerals of American servicemen with anti-gay signs. "www.godhatesfags.com – TANGO DOWN. Temporarily. For celebrating the death of US troops – honeypot fail btw" the update read.

The Jester shot to fame with denial of service attacks against WikiLeaks around the time the site released US diplomatic cables late last year.

It's still unclear whether Westboro Baptist Church itself or sections of Anonymous were the first to post threats against the church last weekend. The threats were later disavowed by members of Anonymous as a massive troll and a honeypot operation designed to capture IP addresses for subsequent lawsuits. The assaults on the church's GodHatesFags site have remained ongoing during the week and the site remained unreachable (at least from Europe) on Thursday afternoon.

The Jester is known to have helped develop an application layer attack tool for assaulting jihadist sites, called XerXeS, a utility he has taken to applying to a range of targets, including WikiLeaks, and also, it is suspected, the controversial church, led by fire-and-brimstone minister Fred Phelps. The tool attacks sites at the application level and is therefore more sophisticated than the packet-flooding LOIC that's become the main artillery piece in assaults by Anons against those who have earned the loosely knit group's collective displeasure over recent months. ®

[The Register]

Anonymous denies Westboro attack

Internet activist group Anonymous has said calls for it to attack the website of controversial anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church were a hoax.

The denial follows a publication on an Anonymous-affiliated website attacking the church.

In a new statement, Anonymous urged members not to participate in any denial-of-service attacks against the church's website.

Anonymous said it had "more pressing matters to deal with at the moment".

The new statement, which claimed to be authored by more than 20 members of Anonymous, said it didn't "remember sending" the original release.


Pimple-faced nerds
Anonymous has risen to fame in recent months for its "hacktivism", which has seen it launch denial-of-service attacks against firms it saw as pursuing policies that are in opposition to its freedom of the web ideals.

The group recently crashed a number of Egyptian government websites, in support of the country's pro-democracy protests.

It also attacked several online companies that it believed had helped clamp down on Wikileaks' activity, including Paypal and Amazon.

Anonymous's informal structure increases the chances that rogue elements can initiate action without widespread support, said Graham Cluley, of security firm Sophos.

Mr Cluley warned that its followers could potentially be led into mounting a major hack under false pretences.

"There are dangers in future that someone may pose as Anonymous and say that they want an attack".

In its latest statement, Anonymous warned its members not to participate in DDoS attacks against Westboro Baptist Church in case it was a trap.

Westboro Baptist Church has been widely condemned for its aggressive anti-homosexual campaigning.

A number of US states have passed legislation, banning members from protesting close to military funerals.

The church's leader, pastor Fred Phelps, was banned from entering the UK by the Home Office in 2009.

The church had issued a response to the original release, branding Anonymous "a puddle of pimple-faced nerds".

[BBC News]

Empty suit: the chaotic way Anonymous makes decisions

On February 16, the freewheeling hacker collective decided to take on the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, best known for its "God Hates Fags" protests. The Anonymous hivemind, the "Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People," has had enough of this sort of free speech and has decided to fight the church's "assembly of graceless sociopaths and maniacal chauvinists & religious zealots" who issue "venomous statements of hatred."
The manifesto contains the trademark Anonymous prose style, one that might be summed up with the words "florid bombasticism." (Case in point: "Your demonstrations and your unrelenting cascade of disparaging slurs, unfounded judgments, and prejudicial innuendos, which apparently apply to every individual numbered amongst the race of Man…")
And it closes with the typical Anonymous threats, which drinks deep from the wells of prophetic denunciation literature—combined with a splash of The Matrix. "We will target your public Websites, and the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover. It is in your best interest to comply now, while the option to do so is still being offered, because we will not relent until you cease the conduction & promotion of all your bigoted operations & doctrines. The warning has been given. What happens from here shall be determined by you."
But did Anonymous really write this? An "organization" without traditional leaders or members faces a problem: knowing who speaks officially for the group. The message had been posted to AnonNews, a site with an "open posting concept" in which "no censorship takes place!"
Within days, other Anons were backing away from the idea of going after Westboro, even as the church tried to taunt them into action.

The art of trolling

Westboro targets Anonymous

On February 20, Westboro responded in an "Open Letter from Westboro Baptist Servants of God to Anonymous Coward Crybaby 'Hackers'." The letter is so over-the-top that it makes Anonymous pronouncements look like philosophical discourses by contrast.
Westboro asks Anonymous to "BRING IT!" and insists that "the only reason the Internet exists is for Westboro Baptist Church to tell this nation & this world that your destruction draws nigh." The letter blasts the "puddle of pimple-faced nerds organized under the cowardly banner of 'Anonymous'" calls the hackers "girls" (an apparent insult), and insists that "Anonymous is warring with God."
Megan Phelps-Roper, grandaughter of Westboro pastor and patriarch Fred Phelps, kept up the trolling on Twitter. "Oh, didn't you hear? Anon.'s gone back to their cowardly corners to lick their wounds. =)," went one message. In Westboro's book, publicity of any kind is a good thing, since it means "that more people will hear this msg: obey or perish! Awesome, right? #ThatsHowGodRolls."
God actually figures in many of Westboro's hash tags. The church's WBCpreacher account also took aim at Anonymous, saying, "Pretty sure at this point they couldn't collectively order a PB&J sandwich w/o an argument #GodSendsThemDelusion."
Clearly, someone at Westboro has taken introductory classes in Internet trolling, though it all seems a bit obvious; the secret gnosis of Advanced Internet Trolling has apparently eluded them.

Troll-tweeting

Anonymous, no strangers to the art of the troll, largely ignored the bait. In a letter posted to AnonNews on the same day, 20 Anons took jabs at the media for writing up the story based on that initial Anonymous statement. "Just because it was posted on AnonNews doesn't mean every single Anon is in agreement, in fact in this case it doesn't even mean a single Anon is in agreement," they said.
As for Westboro, the letter calls the church's troll a "honeypot" designed to harvest the IP addresses of those tempted to attack the church's websites, presumably with the goal of then suing them in order to drum up even more publicity. The church should be ignored.
Still, Anonymous couldn't let the insults pass entirely without answer. "In closing, let us assure you: We are not BAWWWING sissies, nor are we afraid of your false god; we're just really busy. Stay tuned, and we'll come back to play another day."

But when no one's in control, such pronouncements only matter insofar as they convince others in the group. Indeed, on February 20, some Anon posted the names, phone numbers, and addresses of the entire Phelps clan under the title "West Derpish Derp Church." People were asked to "stop wasting time DDoSing these faggots. They're trolling us, so troll them back."

Productive chaos?

The whole event has caused some soul-searching among Anonymous members, who have taken to posting messages about the group's purpose and methods. Some believed that Westboro deserved the attention of Anonymous—so long as that attention took the proper form.
"It's time to dig up the darkest secrets of the Westboro Baptist Church and its members," wrote one Anon. "It's time for the fight to go to the insane people who manage the church. Let's figure out what they're hiding and publicize the hell out of it. If we attack them because we hate their message, it will only publicize their radical views even more. Fred Phelps, be afraid. We are coming for you. We apologize that we jumped the gun earlier and without a proper motive. The next time we contact you, we will have something to talk about."

Part of the, err, slightly more official Anonymous press release

A common complaint was about being sidetracked. Another concluded, "Anonymous, you've decided to go f**k  about with trolls rather than helping protestors gain their freedoms. Why, Anonymous?"
A Christian Anon begged his compatriots to ignore Westboro in favor of more important projects. A UK Anon suggested that the group was "being trolled into the sh*t by the religous right."
Other notes went even further, casting doubt on past operations like the recent hack into security firm HBGary. "We have invaded the privacy of corporations, and no matter what other Anons say, the standard behind Anonymous did not agree with the HBGary hit," said one document. "In fact, many of us are waiting for those who were involved in that Operation to be taken in by the law and will not associate with that sort of outlet. Those who are happy with that Operation are nothing more than trolls and we apologize for this as well."
Reading the blizzard of Anonymous notes on the topic of Westboro, one can see the hivemind in action. It's chaotic, often at odds with itself, and open to simple infiltration (several pieces suggested that Westboro may have written the initial "Anonymous" press release just to ignite a war). Leadership is exerted through numbers more than through hierarchy.
Clear downsides exist for this model. Hotheads will always go off and troll people for "the lulz," even as those more concerned with freedom of speech, WikiLeaks, and African protest movements cringe in horror at the damage such attacks can do to the Anonymous reputation. But the great strength of this wildly distributed approach is the way it allows new ideas to bubble up, find like-minded supporters, and express themselves in action. That gives the movement vitality, adaptability, and the occasional black eye. But it's the way Anonymous wants to operate, and by doing so the group has managed to capture the world's attention.
How long such a chaotic organization can last in its current form is anyone's guess, but the chaos means that Anonymous always has internal resources for renewing itself. For instance, some in the group use a tagline:

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

But should the day come when that message seems too vindictive, other members of Anonymous have already created a softer alternative:

We may be Anonymous, but we are still human.
We may never forgive, but we are still capable of compassion.
We may never forget, but we are still a bad memory for some.
Expect us.  Just not all of us.

Reposted from Ars

Westboro Baptist Church taunts Anonymous

Infamous Westboro Baptist Church, famous for it's 'God Hates Fags' and other outrages (including picketing funerals of US military personnel) has received an open letter from Anonymous, a letter which is nothing less than a cease and desist order against the church, which if not honoured will lead to the legions of Anonymous planning an attack on the WBC website.

However, according to one member of Anonymous the letter is actually the work of the WBC themselves in order to garner sympathy whilst simultaneously running a honeypot designed to capture the IP addresses of any Anonymous attackers for use in future lawsuits.

The letter from Anonymous, if indeed it is from Anonymous, concludes:

" Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS: We will target your public Websites, and the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover. It is in your best interest to comply now, while the option to do so is still being offered, because we will not relent until you cease the conduction & promotion of all your bigoted operations & doctrines.

The warning has been given. What happens from here shall be determined by you.

WE ARE ANONYMOUS.
WE ARE LEGION.
WE DO NOT FORGIVE.
WE DO NOT FORGET.
EXPECT US."

WBC respond with a defiant "bring it on!" retaliatory taunt, so the ball is squarely in Anonymous' court - going to be interesting to see this one play out...

The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/21/wbc_versus_anon/
Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/humanist-in-national/westboro-baptist-church-responds-to-anonymous-bring-it