Anon hackers join Egyptian protests

[Joanne98]

Source: The Register

Hackers affiliated with Anonymous have begun bombarding Egyptian government websites with junk traffic as part of a protest against net censorship that has accompanied recent civil unrest in the Arab country.

The DDoS attacks follow recent similarly motivated attacks against state websites in Tunisia and Zimbabwe. The latest attacks are targeting the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, leaving the site a little slow to load but still accessible as a result.

Protesters have taken to the streets in a series of protests against the Egyptian government. Police have resorted to using tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the demos, resulting in the deaths of four people. Further protests are planned, the BBC reports.

The Egyptian government has also blocked access to websites including Twitter. In an update, published on Wednesday night, Twitter said the block remains in place even though some users have found a way around the restrictions.



Read more: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/27/anonymous_egyptian_protest/

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Volunteers are invited to download the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) tool in order to take part in the attacks. If past experience is anything to go by, a number of participants are likely to be using networks of compromised machines to increase the potency of the junk traffic bombardment assaults.

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[JackInGreen]

2. Please Fem-Anon..

When we're here, can we disclose the dubious legality of a LOIC Bursts directed at the current EOF (establishment of ...that f-word we're so damn fond of), I'd hate to have any of our cousins suffer the curse of ignorance...

[JackInGreen]

3. oh..

And still rec'd ;) Never forgive....

[Jester Messiah]

4. "Hackers."

Tee-hee. :silly:

[chrisa]

5. Awesome, but plz don't download a tool from someone else like that.

They're basically using a botnet to attack. If you download a program like that, you're opening your computer up for hacking or other bad stuff.

[boppers]

6. LOIC doesn't work that way.

You are basically a botnet volunteer, but only for very specific tasks, and only when you decide to run it.

I will say this, however: Do not run this from your home machine, on your home network. Grab a laptop on find an open WiFi connection. Bonus if the open connection belongs to somebody who deserves some investigation.

[chrisa]

7. I wouldn't recommend downloading it at all.

But if you're going to download the program (let's face it, people will do it anyway), do it on a computer that isn't yours (like a library or campus). Even that's a horrible idea, though, because then you're hosing them, and possibly clogging their network with viruses and crap.

Point is, I wouldn't trust the program or download it. I said the same thing with the wikileaks people (but that was worse, because it could have gotten people arrested). Just support the cause in other ways rather than compromising your PC and possibly doing something illegal. Not smart.

[toddaa]

9. There is nothing illegal in this

https://loic.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/loic/trunk/HTTPFlooder.cs

[toddaa]

8. It's open source, you don't open yourself to anything

https://loic.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/loic/trunk/

The developer wrote it as a stress test tool. It's rudimentary by itself. The only hazard in using it is that your IP is not hidden.

[calimary]

10. Okay, I'm not very sophisticated in things like this, but -

I can't help wondering if hackers and computer nerds all over the world aren't watching and studying this, and trying to think of preemptive things to do to break blocks and censorship moves like this, if ever they're implemented in other countries (maybe ours?).

Seems to me one of the shrewdest battle tactics is to disrupt the enemy's lines of communication. Communication is critical. Communication is in many ways EVERYTHING.

[mdmc]

11. ..