A daily digest of IT news, curated from blogs, forums and news sites around the web each morning. We highlight the key commentary and demystify the real story.
Updated with FBI and LulzSec origins info: the Anonymous splinter group [1] LulzSec has done it again. This time, the laughing hackers at Lulz Security have taken down the CIA website. Yes, they've really gone and done it now; talk about poking the hornets' nest. But in IT Blogwatch, bloggers wonder if there's a false-flag operation behind the curtain.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment (and even lulz). Not to mention: 8 Real & Fictional Addresses of Superheroes in New York City...
Jaikumar Vijayan reports:
As of late this afternoon ... www.cia.gov appeared to be resolving somewhat slowly or not at all. ... It is not immediately clear if ... any information was compromised.
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[It] adds to what has already been a very busy week. ... [LulzSec] also claimed credit for breaking into ... the U.S. Senate and ... Bethesda Software. ... [It] claimed credit for breaking ... Eve Online, Minecraft and League of Legends.
Arik Hesseldahl adds:
The group said that service at the CIAs Web site ... was disrupted. Tango down ... for the Lulz.
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Chances are no one is laughing ... in Langley, Virginia. ... Attacking government Web sites is a federal crime. ... Im assuming that LulzSec ... knows it, and is wantonly demonstrating that it doesnt care.
But Dave Neal theorizes, conspiratorially:
[We] strongly suspect that Lulzsec is actually a US government sponsored false flag nuisance hacking operation ... [to enable] granting ever more draconian surveillance and control powers over the internet to the emerging US police state.
LulzSec waxes almost poetic:
Our CIA attack was ... a very simple packet flood.
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Lulz Security, where the entertainment is always at your expense. ... Wrecking your infrastructures since 2011. ... Come for the DDoS, stay for the h4x.
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The headstand of reality balances upon our lizard rebellion and spins openly over the vast plains of blackened human ignorance. ... The CIA anti-lizards will probably rise from the packet sea while we rest our shining-yet-saturated power field arrays.
Meanwhile, Davey Winder says it's "no laughing matter":
LulzSec appears to have taken up the baton of high profile hacking from the Anonymous group. ... Yet all these hacks have one thing in common: they all seem to be aimed at getting media exposure.
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They are exposing serious security shortcomings in ... operations that really should know better. ... However, the light-hearted approach ... has led to some security analysts to ask if LulzSec are just in it for laughs? ... The general public, however, would appear to get the funny side.
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Not that the FBI is laughing, LulzSec members are currently wanted by the Feds.
[1] Yes, I realize some people object to this description of LulzSec as an offshoot of Anonymous. But AFAICS, these guys wanted to be more aggressive than the AnonOps consensus allowed, and they argued (correctly) that LOIC use wasn't anonymous. At the risk of over-simplification, that's the reason for the schism.
Postscript: InfoWorld's Robert X. Cringely agrees with me:
This is not exactly rocket science; ... LulzSec is a splinter group of Anonymous. Last March ... Backtrace Security broke off from Anonymous, complaining that the Anons had gotten too serious and political. ... Backtrace said it wanted to get back to making fun of stupid people on the Internet ... not trying to overthrow governments."
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Why? Despite its claims of being an anarchistic non-organization, [AnonOps is] fairly hierarchical and top-down; an ad hoc committee of experienced hackers makes most of the decisions. ... And it's pretty clear that whoever is [writing] those highly articulate manifestos ... has probably had a driver's license for a few decades.
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LulzSec, on the other hand? ... Most of them [are probably] still living in mom and dad's basement, talking about how awesome it is. ... LulzSec may in fact be Backtrace under a different name.
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And I'm guessing we're about to see a flotilla of other Anon spinoffs. ... Many of them will get caught, of course. ... But for every would-be "hacktivist" that gets caught, three more will leap in to fill his or her place ... so you better get used to it.
