| Ricardo Dominguez on Wed, 18 Aug 2004 23:11:25 +0200 (CEST) |
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| <nettime> Hackers Take Aim at GOP + CrimeInc LOGISTICS ENCLOSED |
[Here is my fasinating introductory comment on hacktivist culture for the nettime community: notice how my deep and lucid remark upgrades the nettime readers general understanding of the issue - r] Hackers Take Aim at GOP By Noah Shachtman 02:00 AM Aug. 17, 2004 PT http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64602,00.html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html Online protests targeting GOP websites could turn out to be more than symbolic during this month's Republican National Convention, possibly blocking a critical communications tool for the party. In the past, activists have been able to shut down the website of, say, the World Economic Forum for a few hours. But the impact of such a takedown was nebulous at best: It's hard to argue the organization really suffered from a few-hour lag in posting its press releases online. In this year's presidential race, however, campaign websites have moved beyond the margins. During John Kerry's acceptance speech in Boston last month, for example, his website was visited by 50,000 people an hour, according to comScore Networks, the online traffic-measuring firm. That's a droplet compared to the millions who'll watch the convention on TV. But taking down a campaign website would nevertheless remove a critical tool for reaching the public -- and likely generate a slew of stories in the mainstream media about the crash. So it's no surprise that hardened electronic activists are planning to jam up the servers of GeorgeWBush.com, GOP.com and related websites, once the Republican National Convention gets underway Aug. 29. "We want to bombard (the Republican sites) with so much traffic that nobody can get in," said CrimethInc, a member of the so-called Black Hat Hackers Bloc. It's one of several groups planning to distribute software tools to reload Republican sites over and over again. These FloodNet programs are similar to hackers' distributed denial-of-service attacks, which overwhelm a server with thousands and thousands of simultaneous requests for information. But some activists are condemning the planned attacks, saying they violate the principles of free speech that protesters rely on for their demonstrations. "If you feel that you must shut up someone through intimidation or false accusations or any other method -- you are not relying on the superiority of the truth," The Pull, co-founder of the online political action group Hacktivismo, wrote in an e-mail. "People can not condemn censorship and then embrace it." The point of the electronic demonstrations isn't to take down a site, according to Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater, or EDT, which is releasing a FloodNet program of its own. Unlike hackers' denial-of-service attacks, which often hijack computers against their users' will, EDT's JavaScript-based software depends on how many people use the program. "It's a way to let people around the world gather and let their presence be felt," Dominguez said. Not that he would mind if a Republican server just happened to crash along the way. In 2002, at the EDT's direction, 43,000 people flooded the site of the World Economic Forum during its meeting in New York. The organization's website went offline for several hours following the demonstration. The Black Hat Hackers Bloc is hoping to cause a whole lot more trouble when the Republicans start to gather in New York. The groups will be targeting not only GOP computers, but "e-mail, faxes and phones, too," CrimethInc said, as well as unspecified "financial disruption." Officials from the Republican Party and from Computer Horizons, the Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, firm responsible for network services at the GOP convention, did not respond to requests to comment for this article. It's unclear exactly how effective these online actions will be. In an interview, CrimethInc boasted that his associates defaced the website for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, with a pro-pot-legalization screed, and promised similar strikes against Republican sites. In the past, veteran online activists have called these tactics the "kind of stupidity that gives hacking a bad name." The attacks during the Republican convention may be just the beginning, however. At the Hackers on Planet Earth gathering in New York City, one speaker promised attendees, "You will learn how to infiltrate organizations like the RNC, how to look for and find security holes, and how mischief and mayhem is achieved." <<<MORE>>> DISTRIBUTE WIDELY - DISTRIBUTE WIDELY - DISTRIBUTE WIDELY ECD - ALL HACKERS OUT TO DISRUPT THE RNC - BATTLE LOGISTICS ENCLOSED Contact: CrimethInc Black Hat Hacker's Bloc Campaign Website: http://phil.ist-backup.de/rncelectronic/ Email: rainbowskies@graffiti.net Hackers are organizing for a massive electronic civil disobedience campaign against the Republican party to coincide with the massive protests in New York City for the Republican National Convention. This document contains logistical information on how people can participate in this campaign. We won't stand idly by while the Republican Party exploits the democratic city of New York to further their agenda of endless war, attacks on our freedoms and and breaks for corporations. We demand an end to the so-called "war on terrorism", which is nothing more than a pretext for empire and the erosion of our civil rights. As long as Amerikkka continues to further their war on the poor for the benefit of the rich, we will use all weapons at our disposal to disrupt the RNC - on the streets, and on the net. All are encouraged to help out this campaign in any way they can. Deface websites, flood email servers, cause financial disruption, change electronic billboards. Turn the system over and put the people on top. Hacktivists of the world, unite! What will be happening? August 22nd - Day of online direct action a week before the convention begins. All are encouraged to attack as many right-wing, corporate, government or military sites as possible. Web defacements, email attacks, financial disruption, anything and everything. These attacks will be used to stir discussion of the RNC, encourage people to participate in the protests in NYC itself, and to build for the mainstream electronic sit-in on the 29th. August 29 - September 2nd - Mainstream electronic sit-in while the RNC is in session. The actions will commence on noon of each day. The protests will utilize a wide diversity of tactics including email, web, fax and phone disruption. The logistical details of this campaign are included in this document below. Who are we flooding? The email addresses, fax numbers, and phone numbers listed below are various contacts of the Republican National Committee and the official George W. Bush re-election staff. Isn't this cyber terrorism? It is important to make a distinction between electronic civil disobedience and terrorism. Civil disobedience is a fundamental part of the democratic process which our country was founded upon. Like Henry David Thoreau and our revolutionary forefathers who shot up the pigs at Lexington and Concord, electronic civil disobedience is the logical continuation of these theories applied towards the internet as a medium for disruption. ECD is a legitimate protest act. Terrorism tries to instill fear into people through violence and destruction. Terrorism is not an act of liberation or unity but of division fear and conquer. A bitter act of desperation that solves no problems, makes no statement, and disempowers many. Electronic civil disobedience causes no harm to people or property. Instead of disempowering, ECD tries to bring people together to realize and exercise their power over oppressive governments and corporations using hacking as a means of fighting for social justice. Who are we? There is no 'us'. This is a decentralized campaign - there are no leaders or orders or hierarchy. Most of us don't know the other people working on this project. None of us know what sorts of attacks are being planned. This is an autonomous call out, anyone who agrees with what we've said and wants to participate in this campaign is welcome to resist the RNC in any way they can. This call out is issued by the CrimethInc Black Hat Hacker's Bloc. We are not participating in any of the actions or any illegal activities ourselves. We recognize the political significance of the RNC and realize that one way or another there is going to be some sort of cyber attack. We are simply serving as a press tool to communicate with the media about different electronic methods people are employing to protest the RNC. Contact Us: CrimethInc Black Hat Hacker's Bloc Campaign Website: http://phil.ist-backup.de/rncelectronic/ Email: rainbowskies@graffiti.net DISCLAIMER: This is an autonomous call out for electronic direct action against the RNC. This document contains a number of resources that can help people who choose to participate in such actions. If you decide to help out, you do so on your own terms and accept responsibility for what might happen. However, there is safety in numbers and there are a number of people who plan on a number of actions and there is a very low risk. So hack on! If you participate... Let us know what you're up to! We are communicating with the media on this project and we want to post on our website what sorts of attacks are being made. Feel free to rip bits of text from our website, this document, or any other press release we have made and use it in your messages. Make sure to link to our page! Fellow citizens, PARTICIPATE! ----------------------------- You do not need to be an experienced hacker to help this campaign: we've made it easy for people to help out through a variety of different ways. The mainstream electronic sit-in is composed of several methods of disruption: flooding RNC websites, email addresses, fax and phone numbers. Listed below are the targets and explanations / tools you can use to help this campaign. WEB SITE FLOODING ----------------- We are asking people to use all tools at their disposal to bombard the given servers with so much traffic that it will become unable to serve any more web requests. People can participate in the actions by using the given floodnet scripts on the campaign website or by launching your own distributed denial of service attacks. The Republican National Convention: http://www.2004nycgop.org/ The Republican National Committee: http://www.rnc.org/ George W. Bush official re-election site: http://www.georgewbush.com/ You can help flood these servers by going to our website and running the FloodNet tools on our website. There is a web-based tool and several perl scripts that you can use to flood the targets. You can also download and run several denial of service applications on your home machine and point them to the above servers. A list of good denial of service tools for the Mac is available at http://freaky.staticusers.net/dos.shtml (Freaky's Mac Archive) and http:// undergroundmac.com/hacking.html#dos (Underground Mac) A list of good denial of service tools for Windows is available at http://www.elitehackers.com/f/old.htm#denial (Elitehackers.com) ... but denial of service attacks isn't hacking! DoS attacks are seen as somewhat lame in the hacking community because it does not require any actual skills to perform such attacks - any script kiddie can simply download a few tools and launch attacks against major servers. It can hardly be considered hacking. But it is a method of electronic disruption that can bring the enemy's servers to it's knees. No reason to overlook tools at our disposal. E-MAIL BOMBING -------------- E-mail bomb attacks are done by sending tens of thousands of emails to the enemy's contact addresses. This can make it painful to send and receive emails while simultaneously consuming server resources, possibly slowing or shutting it down. There are numerous tools that one can use to perform such attacks. There are a number of Windows email bombers available for download at http://www.elitehackers.com/f/old.htm#mail (Elitehackers.com) A number of good email bombers for the mac are available at http://undergroundmac.com/hacking.html#e-mail (Underground Mac) Targets: webmaster@gop.com Info@gop.com RNCommunications@gop.com MemberRelations@gop.com Administration@gop.com Counsel@gop.com Chairman@gop.com Political@gop.com Finance@gop.com NOS@gop.com BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com Blog@GeorgeWBush.com FAX BOMBING ----------- Fax bombing is a method of electronic disruption that clogs the enemy's fax communications and wastes their paper and toner resources. Tape together a few sheets of black construction paper and start faxing to the following targets. When the first page goes through, roll it back and tape it to the other end of your sheet to form an infinite loop of black construction paper. Then sit back and watch the mayhem begin. Use any and all fax machines at your availability - the more the merrier! Targets: 703.647.2993 202.863.8820 202-863-8774 202-863-8609 202-863-8773 202-863-8654 202-863-8808 202-863-8851 202-863-8851 PHONE BOMBING ------------- Phone bombing is another method of disrupting their communication systems by preventing them from making / receiving calls. You can either call these numbers and tell them what you think about the Bush agenda, or you can beige box into someone else's line and set up auto-dialing scripts to flood their lines. Targets: 703.647.2700 202.863.8500 202-863-8700 202-863-8545 202-863-8560 202-863-8614 202-863-8638 202-863-8743 202-863-8720 202-863-8600 202-863-8670 202-863-8888 That's all for today, kids. Stay out of trouble, and don't get caught! # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net