A good example of hactivism would be the use of Twitter for DDOS attacks against Iran in the summer of 2009. Twitter was used for passing the instructions for the attacks and for spreading the message. There were political demonstrations on the streets in Teheran during that time and the government was arresting people. Twitter´s mainly English-speaking users were organizing the attacks at the same time.
One of the responsers asks on the website though - what is the end goal because the targets of the attacks were the government sites : http://www.leader.ir/
http://president.ir/
http://www.irib.ir/
http://www.iribnews.ir/
One participant asks on the blog site - what is the end goal as he thought that these DDOS attacks prevented the Iranian people also to get access to the correct information and pass information about the events in Iran to the outer world.
One participant praized Twitter for spreading the message - the Twitter messages are short and straight to the point.
This case is similar to Estonia in 2007. In Estonia there were also political mass protests on the streets and the Estonian government sites and other important websites were DDOS attacked furing the mass demonstrations from the opposing country Russia. Although Russian government denied any involvement in the cyber attacks and said that the attacks were carried out by the grassroots movement, it is still widely believed that this Estonian case was one of the first cases of cyber war in the world.
In case of Iran it is believed that no other geovernment was involved in any way in attacking Iranian websites furing the political mass demonstrations. Because it is politically correct to think so.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Is Google bombing hactivism ?
Hactivism is defined on Wikipedia web site as following: Hacktivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism) is "the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends. These tools include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft, web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, virtual sabotage, and software development."
As there are many clear cases of hactivism I would like to propose a somewhat unique case of political campaign , just to try to figure out whether or not this case falls into hacktivism category.
On Sunday 7, 2003 BBC News reported that Google search for the term "miserable failure" gives the president of the United States George W. Bush as the first search result. That was the year when the Iraq war started, lets remember.
Web users entering the words "miserable failure" into the popular search engine were directed to the biography of the president on the White House website. The trick was possible because Google searches more than just the contents of web pages - it also counts how often a site is linked to, and with what words. Thereby the online community or activists can affect the results of Google searches - called "Google bombing" - by linking their sites to a chosen one.
This trick they pulled got worldwide coverage and could be seen some kind of a political protest.
The term hactivism presumes that some illegal activity is carried out or some legally ambigious activity goes on. While this could not be the case - no laws where broken by anyone and no machines were directly hacked, it can be argued that the Google robots were manipulated in a certain way, so that the search engines algorithm needed to be changed eventually.
This W. Bush Google bombing case became the most famous case and remained so until Google changed its engine algorithm so that the Google bombing cases, such as this one organized by George Johnston on the Old Fashion Patriot blog, are harder to organize these days.
As there are many clear cases of hactivism I would like to propose a somewhat unique case of political campaign , just to try to figure out whether or not this case falls into hacktivism category.
On Sunday 7, 2003 BBC News reported that Google search for the term "miserable failure" gives the president of the United States George W. Bush as the first search result. That was the year when the Iraq war started, lets remember.
Web users entering the words "miserable failure" into the popular search engine were directed to the biography of the president on the White House website. The trick was possible because Google searches more than just the contents of web pages - it also counts how often a site is linked to, and with what words. Thereby the online community or activists can affect the results of Google searches - called "Google bombing" - by linking their sites to a chosen one.
This trick they pulled got worldwide coverage and could be seen some kind of a political protest.
The term hactivism presumes that some illegal activity is carried out or some legally ambigious activity goes on. While this could not be the case - no laws where broken by anyone and no machines were directly hacked, it can be argued that the Google robots were manipulated in a certain way, so that the search engines algorithm needed to be changed eventually.
This W. Bush Google bombing case became the most famous case and remained so until Google changed its engine algorithm so that the Google bombing cases, such as this one organized by George Johnston on the Old Fashion Patriot blog, are harder to organize these days.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Hackers Ethics in todays world - mistrust authority
There most intriguing point in the hackers ethics would be - "Mistrust authority - promote decentralization." As internet usage is becoming more widely used every day and thereby more and more free information is available , the hackers culture spreads all over the world. It can be argued that the greater availability of the free information in the also creates the plurality of opinions and views. It also moves the centre of political discussion away from the old parliament builgings to the social networks and web forums. This is also understood by the servicemen of authority - such as the CIA in the United States. Recently it was announced that they would start monitoring social networks with their special software - to check what is being discussed, organized etc.
It also means that there is a lot more work to do for the government institutions due to the unpredictability of the public discourse. And this can be quite painful for the old establishment. It reminds me the speech of US senator from the well- known American bankng and oil dynasty Jay Rockefeller. He recently made a speech where he illustrated the terrible dangers of the internet - security threats among others, and asked whether or not it was a good idea to invent the internet after all. See here . It could be therefore a sign that the internet, free information and hackers culture is already shaking the foundations of the old establishment and new rules for the competition are being set.
So hackers work should be concentrated now on preserving the already achieved improvements and not letting the authorities taking their power back. The issues like internet privacy, net neutrality and the Big Brother should be the concern of every hacker these days as there are signs that not everyone likes the hackers culture.
It also means that there is a lot more work to do for the government institutions due to the unpredictability of the public discourse. And this can be quite painful for the old establishment. It reminds me the speech of US senator from the well- known American bankng and oil dynasty Jay Rockefeller. He recently made a speech where he illustrated the terrible dangers of the internet - security threats among others, and asked whether or not it was a good idea to invent the internet after all. See here . It could be therefore a sign that the internet, free information and hackers culture is already shaking the foundations of the old establishment and new rules for the competition are being set.
So hackers work should be concentrated now on preserving the already achieved improvements and not letting the authorities taking their power back. The issues like internet privacy, net neutrality and the Big Brother should be the concern of every hacker these days as there are signs that not everyone likes the hackers culture.
Jargon File and the "back door"
The term that I found most intriguing on the Jargon File dictionary was the simple term "back door". The term itself is defined as following:
"Back door - a hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn. trap door; may also be called a wormhole. See also iron box, cracker, worm, logic bomb."
The term is intriguing in several ways. At first I did not think that the term was invented by hackers and I thought the term was invented by the mainstream IT industry as it is so commonly used. On the other hand - after thinking about it - who else could have coined the term better than the hackers themselves. The term is also intruiging in the sense that is directly related to the main topic of the course - ethics and law as in fact the whole IT ethics and law is in big part related to back doors. Is it ethical to create back doors , what to do if you have discovered the back door in someones system ? I would be interested to study this field more thoroughly - the ethics and law of "back doors".
"Back door - a hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn. trap door; may also be called a wormhole. See also iron box, cracker, worm, logic bomb."
The term is intriguing in several ways. At first I did not think that the term was invented by hackers and I thought the term was invented by the mainstream IT industry as it is so commonly used. On the other hand - after thinking about it - who else could have coined the term better than the hackers themselves. The term is also intruiging in the sense that is directly related to the main topic of the course - ethics and law as in fact the whole IT ethics and law is in big part related to back doors. Is it ethical to create back doors , what to do if you have discovered the back door in someones system ? I would be interested to study this field more thoroughly - the ethics and law of "back doors".
Monday, October 26, 2009
CyberPatrol software and how it filters
I tried the web filter software CyberPatrol which is supposed to be a market leader in the field in the U.S.
During the installation I chose "Home" user category ( Other being "School" , "Business" etc. ) and also chose the "Child" level filtering which is supposed to be the most intense filtering ( "Late teens" and other such categories are also available ). You can also restrict the users Web access by time of day and set the daily and weekly browse limits. All web activity will be recorded.
After installing it needed to reset the browser and start again. As I conducted the test late in the evening the program initially blocked all websites, by saying the following:
"
Access Restricted
User Profile:
Reason: Access to websites is denied at this time of day.
Category: None
Instant Override: Click here - Password Required
To change any of the filter settings please speak to your CyberPatrol Headquarters’ Administrator."
Then I customized my filter settings and took the Time Monitoring off from the Headquarters, using the user password.
After that I tried to read the website seks.ee and the following message came up:
Access Restricted
User Profile:
Reason: The website is inappropriate.
Category: Hacking & Spyware
Instant Override: Click here - Password Required
To change any of the filter settings please speak to your CyberPatrol Headquarters’ Administrator.
After that the rate.ee portal was tried. I entered the word "seks" into the user searc field and many users with photoes came out. The soft did not block the website although the
page had the word "seks" repeated more than ten times as well as the photos were displayed. As this is not a sex related site in essense but a dating site, it could be normal that the site was
not completely shut off. Then I went to the www.date.ee which also opened nicely while this is also a dating site.
Also tried Google. The regular web search with the word "seks" opened up nicely
http://www.google.ee/search?q=seks&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:et:official&client=firefox-a and the results were displayed but if I tried to search the Google images with the word "seks" - the Google site was blocked as well. Also - the regular search with the word "sex" in English language was blocked righ away. Go figure.
Estonias biggest portal delfi.ee is also considered not appropriate for children to see, the Cyberpatrol said that Delfi portal has some "bad links" on their site.
During the installation I chose "Home" user category ( Other being "School" , "Business" etc. ) and also chose the "Child" level filtering which is supposed to be the most intense filtering ( "Late teens" and other such categories are also available ). You can also restrict the users Web access by time of day and set the daily and weekly browse limits. All web activity will be recorded.
After installing it needed to reset the browser and start again. As I conducted the test late in the evening the program initially blocked all websites, by saying the following:
"
Access Restricted
User Profile:
Reason: Access to websites is denied at this time of day.
Category: None
Instant Override: Click here - Password Required
To change any of the filter settings please speak to your CyberPatrol Headquarters’ Administrator."
Then I customized my filter settings and took the Time Monitoring off from the Headquarters, using the user password.
After that I tried to read the website seks.ee and the following message came up:
Access Restricted
User Profile:
Reason: The website is inappropriate.
Category: Hacking & Spyware
Instant Override: Click here - Password Required
To change any of the filter settings please speak to your CyberPatrol Headquarters’ Administrator.
After that the rate.ee portal was tried. I entered the word "seks" into the user searc field and many users with photoes came out. The soft did not block the website although the
page had the word "seks" repeated more than ten times as well as the photos were displayed. As this is not a sex related site in essense but a dating site, it could be normal that the site was
not completely shut off. Then I went to the www.date.ee which also opened nicely while this is also a dating site.
Also tried Google. The regular web search with the word "seks" opened up nicely
http://www.google.ee/search?q=seks&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:et:official&client=firefox-a and the results were displayed but if I tried to search the Google images with the word "seks" - the Google site was blocked as well. Also - the regular search with the word "sex" in English language was blocked righ away. Go figure.
Estonias biggest portal delfi.ee is also considered not appropriate for children to see, the Cyberpatrol said that Delfi portal has some "bad links" on their site.
Digital Divide in Estonia
About the digital divide in Estonia.
The most cited research on the internet is the 2002 research paper conducted by EMOR and Praxis research organizations. The groups that use internet less are the older people, people with the lower education and people who live in Southern part of Estonia or North-Eastern part of Estonia, also ethnically Estonians are more active internet users than Russians in general.
Two years later a similar research was conducted by Factum. The western part of Estonia improved significantly in two years since then , while the regions that are populated with Russians did not improve significantly in time. The biggest growth in internet usage in two years came from the biggest cities which can be a result of the more severe competition between ISP-s.
In the biggest cities about 2/3 of the population used internet while in Southern Estonia and North-Eastern regions only slightly over 50% were internet users. This is probably not a big problem in terms of digital divide as there are “enough” connections in the rural areas and the higher net penetration is normal in the biggest cities.
These days there are also online services like Kõu – (www.kou.ee) that enable wireless internet connection basically in every location in Estonia. So the divide is more visible in terms of users age in Estonia and less regionally and there is not much that can be done about it. The initial Praxis research found that the non-users could start using the internet if they would have some financial benefit from it but the potential of financial benefit is also difficult to see among for the elderly.
The most cited research on the internet is the 2002 research paper conducted by EMOR and Praxis research organizations. The groups that use internet less are the older people, people with the lower education and people who live in Southern part of Estonia or North-Eastern part of Estonia, also ethnically Estonians are more active internet users than Russians in general.
Two years later a similar research was conducted by Factum. The western part of Estonia improved significantly in two years since then , while the regions that are populated with Russians did not improve significantly in time. The biggest growth in internet usage in two years came from the biggest cities which can be a result of the more severe competition between ISP-s.
In the biggest cities about 2/3 of the population used internet while in Southern Estonia and North-Eastern regions only slightly over 50% were internet users. This is probably not a big problem in terms of digital divide as there are “enough” connections in the rural areas and the higher net penetration is normal in the biggest cities.
These days there are also online services like Kõu – (www.kou.ee) that enable wireless internet connection basically in every location in Estonia. So the divide is more visible in terms of users age in Estonia and less regionally and there is not much that can be done about it. The initial Praxis research found that the non-users could start using the internet if they would have some financial benefit from it but the potential of financial benefit is also difficult to see among for the elderly.
Ubiquitous internet usage and Estonia , the 4 scenarios
The initial 4 scenarios that were proposed for Estonia for the year 2010 were the following:
1) "Militaristic information oasis" - "little angry country" (like the one in Middle East) with good technological progress but little openness and overall freedom. "Military Estonia".
2) "South Finland" - soft-spoken, well integrated into Europe (and decisively distanced from Russia), but with low innovation capacity. "Subcontractor Estonia" - perhaps the closest to current reality.
3) "The Ferryman" - well-developed, but fully transit-based economy. Innovation and ICT are only to serve the main goal and thus of inferior importance. "Merchant Estonia", which is quite alike to the 'Singapore' scenario of Himanen seen in a previous lecture.
4) "Grand Slam" - the best realisation of both geographical location (transit) and innovative and educational potential. "Innovation/ICT Estonia".
It can be said that “The Ferryman” scenario was cut off by the Russian government , the oil transit has mostly stopped and Russian government does not encourage the transit through Estonia in any way. It changed dramatically for the worse in 2007 when the notorious bronze soldier statue was removed from the center of Tallinn, angering many of the Russian population and the Russian government as well. Or was it vice versa – the anger of the local Russians created the need to remove the statue from the city center. Who knows.
As Ferryman did not work out at all – the Grand Slam is out of the question also. Grand Slam scenario seems to be possible with social cohesion and with the states active participation but as the prevailing political policy has been the ultra-liberal market economy the free-market forces have not turned out to be grand slam for the economy as a whole.
The current situation in Estonia is closest to the “South Finland” scenario – the country has distanced from Russia quite effectively , while the rest of the Europe and NATO are moving closer and closer to Russia and try to cooperate with Russian in any way possible ;) Germans even thought about selling their industrial giant Opel to Russians. The innovation capacity is really low compared to the Scandinavian countries , in terms of registered patents per person for example. This leaves out only simple sub-contracting work ( mostly to Scandinavia ) as the main trend in the society.
1) "Militaristic information oasis" - "little angry country" (like the one in Middle East) with good technological progress but little openness and overall freedom. "Military Estonia".
2) "South Finland" - soft-spoken, well integrated into Europe (and decisively distanced from Russia), but with low innovation capacity. "Subcontractor Estonia" - perhaps the closest to current reality.
3) "The Ferryman" - well-developed, but fully transit-based economy. Innovation and ICT are only to serve the main goal and thus of inferior importance. "Merchant Estonia", which is quite alike to the 'Singapore' scenario of Himanen seen in a previous lecture.
4) "Grand Slam" - the best realisation of both geographical location (transit) and innovative and educational potential. "Innovation/ICT Estonia".
It can be said that “The Ferryman” scenario was cut off by the Russian government , the oil transit has mostly stopped and Russian government does not encourage the transit through Estonia in any way. It changed dramatically for the worse in 2007 when the notorious bronze soldier statue was removed from the center of Tallinn, angering many of the Russian population and the Russian government as well. Or was it vice versa – the anger of the local Russians created the need to remove the statue from the city center. Who knows.
As Ferryman did not work out at all – the Grand Slam is out of the question also. Grand Slam scenario seems to be possible with social cohesion and with the states active participation but as the prevailing political policy has been the ultra-liberal market economy the free-market forces have not turned out to be grand slam for the economy as a whole.
The current situation in Estonia is closest to the “South Finland” scenario – the country has distanced from Russia quite effectively , while the rest of the Europe and NATO are moving closer and closer to Russia and try to cooperate with Russian in any way possible ;) Germans even thought about selling their industrial giant Opel to Russians. The innovation capacity is really low compared to the Scandinavian countries , in terms of registered patents per person for example. This leaves out only simple sub-contracting work ( mostly to Scandinavia ) as the main trend in the society.
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