Lessons from Anonymous on cyberwar: A cyberwar is brewing, and Anonymous reprisal attacks on HBGary Federal shows how deep the war goes.
Haroon Meer
Al Jazeera
"Cyberwar" is a heavily loaded term, which conjures up Hollywood inspired images of hackers causing oil refineries to explode.
Some security celebrities came out very strongly against the thought of it, claiming that cyberwar was less science, and more science fiction.
Last year on May 21, the United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) reported reaching initial operational capability, and news stories abound of US soldiers undergoing basic cyber training, which all point to the idea that traditional super powers are starting to explore this arena.
Recent activities with one government contractor and Anonymous, however, show clearly that cyber operations have been going on for a long while, and that the private sector has been only too ready to fill the cyber mercenary role for piles of cash.
Anonymous vs. HBGary
Early in 2011, Aaron Barr submitted a talk to a security conference in which he planned to "focus on outing the major players of the anonymous group".
Barr, the CEO of Washington-based HBGary Federal, had spent time "infiltrating the group" using multiple identities on social networks and Anonymous IRC channels.
He was confident enough of his analysis to publish parts of it through the Financial Times. Barr (and indeed the rest of the company) planned to milk the exposure, lining up a string of meetings to profit from the research, from an interview with 60 Minutes to multiple potential deals with federal agencies.
The CEO of HBGary prepared a post explaining how they had flexed their "muscle today by revealing the identities of all the top management within the group Anonymous."
Anonymous were quick to respond.
Even while Barr was proclaiming victory and threatening to "take the gloves off", Anonymous were burrowing deeper into his network.
By the end of the attack, Barr's iPad was reputedly erased, his LinkedIn and Twitter accounts were hijacked, the HBGary Federal website was defaced, proprietary HBGary source code was stolen and with over 71,000 private emails now published to the internet, HBGary was laid bare.
In this, was our first lesson: The asymmetry of cyber warfare.
HBGary, a well-funded, pedigreed security company with strong offensive cyber capabilities was given a beating by a non-funded, loosely organised hacker collective.
The incident holds a string of lessons for those wishing to secure their networks from attack, but what's far more interesting is the leaked emails that give us insight into the murky world of "cyber contractors" and what’s being called "the military digital complex".
HBGary: cyberwar arms dealer
HBGary was formed by security research veteran Greg Hoglund, who has made a name for himself over the years doing research on rootkit technology.
A rootkit is a piece of software installed to ensure that an attacker is able to maintain control of a compromised computer. Rootkits are designed to avoid detection once installed.
Hoglund’s emails claim that his current products were built with "about 2 million in Uncle Sam's money", but this alone is no shocker. Governments fund technology research all the time, and HBGary were also building a commercial product.
What is shocking though, are some of the other details that came out in the wash.
The emails make it clear that HBGary sold rootkits and keyloggers (tools to record and exfiltrate keystrokes surreptitiously) to government contractors for prices between $60,000 and $200,000 each.
These pieces of "malware" would be tailored specifically to the clients needs, which undoubtedly reflected the state of the ultimate targets e.g.: "..test the tool against McAfee and Norton".
Some rootkits were fairly routine, while others clearly betrayed specific needs: "Runs on MS Windows XP sp2 and Office 2003, finds MS Office files using the XRK technique to exfiltrate files".
Even next generation rootkits were explored - to remain active despite the removal of a hard drive or to persist on a machine through the video card.
Make no mistake, these were offensive cyber tools, made to order.
To Read the Rest of this Article
Showing posts with label Hackers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hackers. Show all posts
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Gabriella Coleman: The Anthropology of Hackers
The Anthropology of Hackers
by Gabriella Coleman
The Atlantic
A "hacker" is a technologist with a love for computing and a "hack" is a clever technical solution arrived through a non-obvious means. It doesn't mean to compromise the Pentagon, change your grades, or take down the global financial system, although it can, but that is a very narrow reality of the term. Hackers tend to value a set of liberal principles: freedom, privacy, and access; they tend to adore computers; some gain unauthorized access to technologies, though the degree of illegality greatly varies (and much, even most of hacking, by the definition I set above, is actually legal). But once one confronts hacking empirically, some similarities melt into a sea of differences; some of these distinctions are subtle, while others are profound enough to warrant thinking about hacking in terms of genres or genealogies of hacking -- and we compare and contrast various of these genealogies in the class, such as free and open source software hacking and the hacker underground.
Since 2007, I have taught an undergraduate class on computer hackers at New York University where I am Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication. The class opens a window into the esoteric facets of hacking: its complicated ethical codes and the multifaceted experiences of pleasures and frustrations in making, breaking, and especially dwelling in technology. Hacking, however, is as much a gateway into familiar cultural and political territory. For instance, hacker commitments to freedom, meritocracy, privacy and free speech are not theirs alone, nor are they hitched solely to the contemporary moment. Indeed, hacker ethical principles hearken back to sensibilities and conundrums that precipitated out of the Enlightenment's political ferment; hackers have refashioned many political concerns -- such as a commitments to free speech -- through technological and legal artifacts, thus providing a particularly compelling angle by which to view the continued salience of liberal principles in the context of the digital present.
To Read the Description/Outline of the Course
by Gabriella Coleman
The Atlantic
A "hacker" is a technologist with a love for computing and a "hack" is a clever technical solution arrived through a non-obvious means. It doesn't mean to compromise the Pentagon, change your grades, or take down the global financial system, although it can, but that is a very narrow reality of the term. Hackers tend to value a set of liberal principles: freedom, privacy, and access; they tend to adore computers; some gain unauthorized access to technologies, though the degree of illegality greatly varies (and much, even most of hacking, by the definition I set above, is actually legal). But once one confronts hacking empirically, some similarities melt into a sea of differences; some of these distinctions are subtle, while others are profound enough to warrant thinking about hacking in terms of genres or genealogies of hacking -- and we compare and contrast various of these genealogies in the class, such as free and open source software hacking and the hacker underground.
Since 2007, I have taught an undergraduate class on computer hackers at New York University where I am Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication. The class opens a window into the esoteric facets of hacking: its complicated ethical codes and the multifaceted experiences of pleasures and frustrations in making, breaking, and especially dwelling in technology. Hacking, however, is as much a gateway into familiar cultural and political territory. For instance, hacker commitments to freedom, meritocracy, privacy and free speech are not theirs alone, nor are they hitched solely to the contemporary moment. Indeed, hacker ethical principles hearken back to sensibilities and conundrums that precipitated out of the Enlightenment's political ferment; hackers have refashioned many political concerns -- such as a commitments to free speech -- through technological and legal artifacts, thus providing a particularly compelling angle by which to view the continued salience of liberal principles in the context of the digital present.
To Read the Description/Outline of the Course
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Empire: Information wars -- How will governments deal with the information revolution?
Information wars: How will governments deal with the information revolution?
Empire (Al Jazeera)
Information is power and in the age of the information revolution, cyber and satellite communication is transforming our lives, reinventing the relationship between people and power.
New media, from WikiLeaks to Facebook, Twitter to YouTube, is persistently challenging the traditional flow of information, and cyber disobedience is exposing powerful governments.
Websites are now being treated like hostile territories; whistleblowers and leakers as terrorists, and hackers as insurgents.
Governments are scrambling to salvage their influence and take advantage of the new cyber and satellite media. From China to the Sudan, Egypt to Iran, despots and armies are tracking web activity and setting up Facebook accounts to spy on their citizens.
So is this the century of free information and expression as the cyber utopians predicted, or new methods of electronic oppression as the cyber sceptics warned?
Joining Marwan Bishara to discuss these issues are: Carl Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist; Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!; Professor Emily Bell, the director of digital journalism at Columbia University; Evgeny Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom; Professor Clay Shirky, the author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.
Our interviewees are: Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower; Charlie Beckett, the director of Polis at London School of Economics; Jeremy Goldkorn, the founder of Danwei.org, and Pink Ke, the co-founder of antiwave.net
Empire (Al Jazeera)
Information is power and in the age of the information revolution, cyber and satellite communication is transforming our lives, reinventing the relationship between people and power.
New media, from WikiLeaks to Facebook, Twitter to YouTube, is persistently challenging the traditional flow of information, and cyber disobedience is exposing powerful governments.
Websites are now being treated like hostile territories; whistleblowers and leakers as terrorists, and hackers as insurgents.
Governments are scrambling to salvage their influence and take advantage of the new cyber and satellite media. From China to the Sudan, Egypt to Iran, despots and armies are tracking web activity and setting up Facebook accounts to spy on their citizens.
So is this the century of free information and expression as the cyber utopians predicted, or new methods of electronic oppression as the cyber sceptics warned?
Joining Marwan Bishara to discuss these issues are: Carl Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist; Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!; Professor Emily Bell, the director of digital journalism at Columbia University; Evgeny Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom; Professor Clay Shirky, the author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.
Our interviewees are: Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower; Charlie Beckett, the director of Polis at London School of Economics; Jeremy Goldkorn, the founder of Danwei.org, and Pink Ke, the co-founder of antiwave.net
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wikileaks: The Key Players
[Really no description necessary other than just watch and learn and think and discuss]
ABC (Notice that this is their Australian Channel--not USA)
"Meet Eight of the Central Players in the Wikileaks Saga as They Reveal the Story Behind the Story That Took the World by Storm."
To Hear the Statements
ABC (Notice that this is their Australian Channel--not USA)
"Meet Eight of the Central Players in the Wikileaks Saga as They Reveal the Story Behind the Story That Took the World by Storm."
To Hear the Statements
Friday, February 18, 2011
Anonymous and the global correction: A loosely organised group of hackers has been targeting oppressive regimes and ... this is just the beginning
Anonymous and the global correction: A loosely organised group of hackers has been targeting oppressive regimes and has said this is just the beginning.
by Anonymous
Al Jazeera
The tendency to relate past events to what is possible in the present becomes more difficult as the scope of the geopolitical environment changes. It is a useful thing, then, to ask every once in a while if the environment has recently undergone any particular severe changes, thereby expanding our options for the future.
Terminology, let alone our means of exchanging information, has changed to such a degree that many essential discussions in today's "communications age" would be entirely incomprehensible to many two decades ago.
As the social, political and technological environment has developed, some have already begun to explore new options, seizing new chances for digital activism - and more will soon join in. It is time for the rest of the world to understand why.
Service denied
When a release by WikiLeaks revealed the depravity of just how corrupt and horrid the Tunisian government really was, it prompted Tunisians to step up active dissent and take to the streets en masse for the first time.
In response, a loose network of participants within the international Anonymous protest organisation attacked non-essential government websites - those not providing direct services to Tunisians - at the prompting of our contacts.
Several such sites were replaced with a message of support to the Tunisian people, while others were pushed offline via distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, involving thousands of computer users who request large amounts of data from a website simultaneously, overwhelming it.
Other assistance programmes followed, even after the deposed Ben Ali fled the nation that reviled him, with Anonymous and other parties working with Tunisians - both in-country and abroad - to provide the nation's people with the tools and information resources they needed to begin building up new, reasonable political institutions capable of ensuring a freer civic life.
Our "Guide to Protecting the Tunisian Revolution" series - a collaboration between hundreds of veterans of traditional revolutionary movements as well as practitioners of "new activism" - were disseminated both online and in print; aside from tips on safety during confrontation and the like, these also explain how to establish secure yet accessible networks and communications for Tunisians, as well as instructions on establishing neighbourhood syndicates capable of uniting in common cause.
Already, such organisations are being established across Tunisia, just as they will be established elsewhere as the movement proceeds.
The seeds of cyber revolution
Anonymous is a means by which people across the globe can assist in the hard work being performed by the Tunisian people - who have long taken issue with their government, but first began protesting in earnest after a fruit vendor set himself ablaze in response to police cruelty.
The Anonymous movement itself grew out of message boards frequented mostly by young people with an interest in internet culture in general - and Japanese media in particular; in 2005, participants began "attacking" internet venues as a sort of sport, and in the process honed their skills in a way that proved useful in "information warfare".
In 2007, some users proposed that the Church of Scientology be exposed for its unethical and sometimes violent conduct, sparking a coordinated global protest movement that differed from anything else seen, and which still continues today.
The Australian government was later attacked for introducing new internet censorship laws, and in the meantime, those within Anonymous who see the subculture as a potential force for justice have launched other efforts while also building new strategies and recruiting individuals from across the globe - some of whom hold significant positions in media, industry, and the sciences.
For great justice
In the meantime, there are obstacles to overcome. Those within the Tunisian government who seek to deny liberty to "their" people are easy enough to deal with; the greatest threat to revolution comes not from any state but rather from those who decry such revolutions without understanding them.
In this case, the idea that a loose network of people with shared values and varying skill sets can provide substantial help to a population abroad is seen as quixotic - or even unseemly - by many of those who have failed to understand the past ten years, as well as those whose first instinct is to attack a popular revolt rather than to assist it.
Elsewhere, a number of US pundits decided to criticise the revolution as possibly destabilising the region; many of whom once demanded the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan - and greeted every Arab revolt as the work of President Bush - but now see nothing for themselves in the cause of Arab liberty.
Some have even portrayed the movement as the work of radical Islamists - yet most cannot find Tunisia on a map.
Suffice to say that the results of our efforts are already on display and will become more evident as Tunisians use our tools and resources to achieve their greatest triumph. Those who wish to assist and are competent to do so can find us easily enough; the Tunisians had little trouble in doing so.
Although we have made great progress in convincing individuals from across the world to join our efforts in Tunisia, other campaigns, such as those taking place in Algeria and Egypt - both of which have seen government websites taken down and/or replaced by Anonymous, more must be done before the movement takes the next step towards a worldwide network capable of perpetual engagement against those who are comfortable with tyranny.
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Anonymous
Al Jazeera
The tendency to relate past events to what is possible in the present becomes more difficult as the scope of the geopolitical environment changes. It is a useful thing, then, to ask every once in a while if the environment has recently undergone any particular severe changes, thereby expanding our options for the future.
Terminology, let alone our means of exchanging information, has changed to such a degree that many essential discussions in today's "communications age" would be entirely incomprehensible to many two decades ago.
As the social, political and technological environment has developed, some have already begun to explore new options, seizing new chances for digital activism - and more will soon join in. It is time for the rest of the world to understand why.
Service denied
When a release by WikiLeaks revealed the depravity of just how corrupt and horrid the Tunisian government really was, it prompted Tunisians to step up active dissent and take to the streets en masse for the first time.
In response, a loose network of participants within the international Anonymous protest organisation attacked non-essential government websites - those not providing direct services to Tunisians - at the prompting of our contacts.
Several such sites were replaced with a message of support to the Tunisian people, while others were pushed offline via distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, involving thousands of computer users who request large amounts of data from a website simultaneously, overwhelming it.
Other assistance programmes followed, even after the deposed Ben Ali fled the nation that reviled him, with Anonymous and other parties working with Tunisians - both in-country and abroad - to provide the nation's people with the tools and information resources they needed to begin building up new, reasonable political institutions capable of ensuring a freer civic life.
Our "Guide to Protecting the Tunisian Revolution" series - a collaboration between hundreds of veterans of traditional revolutionary movements as well as practitioners of "new activism" - were disseminated both online and in print; aside from tips on safety during confrontation and the like, these also explain how to establish secure yet accessible networks and communications for Tunisians, as well as instructions on establishing neighbourhood syndicates capable of uniting in common cause.
Already, such organisations are being established across Tunisia, just as they will be established elsewhere as the movement proceeds.
The seeds of cyber revolution
Anonymous is a means by which people across the globe can assist in the hard work being performed by the Tunisian people - who have long taken issue with their government, but first began protesting in earnest after a fruit vendor set himself ablaze in response to police cruelty.
The Anonymous movement itself grew out of message boards frequented mostly by young people with an interest in internet culture in general - and Japanese media in particular; in 2005, participants began "attacking" internet venues as a sort of sport, and in the process honed their skills in a way that proved useful in "information warfare".
In 2007, some users proposed that the Church of Scientology be exposed for its unethical and sometimes violent conduct, sparking a coordinated global protest movement that differed from anything else seen, and which still continues today.
The Australian government was later attacked for introducing new internet censorship laws, and in the meantime, those within Anonymous who see the subculture as a potential force for justice have launched other efforts while also building new strategies and recruiting individuals from across the globe - some of whom hold significant positions in media, industry, and the sciences.
For great justice
In the meantime, there are obstacles to overcome. Those within the Tunisian government who seek to deny liberty to "their" people are easy enough to deal with; the greatest threat to revolution comes not from any state but rather from those who decry such revolutions without understanding them.
In this case, the idea that a loose network of people with shared values and varying skill sets can provide substantial help to a population abroad is seen as quixotic - or even unseemly - by many of those who have failed to understand the past ten years, as well as those whose first instinct is to attack a popular revolt rather than to assist it.
Elsewhere, a number of US pundits decided to criticise the revolution as possibly destabilising the region; many of whom once demanded the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan - and greeted every Arab revolt as the work of President Bush - but now see nothing for themselves in the cause of Arab liberty.
Some have even portrayed the movement as the work of radical Islamists - yet most cannot find Tunisia on a map.
Suffice to say that the results of our efforts are already on display and will become more evident as Tunisians use our tools and resources to achieve their greatest triumph. Those who wish to assist and are competent to do so can find us easily enough; the Tunisians had little trouble in doing so.
Although we have made great progress in convincing individuals from across the world to join our efforts in Tunisia, other campaigns, such as those taking place in Algeria and Egypt - both of which have seen government websites taken down and/or replaced by Anonymous, more must be done before the movement takes the next step towards a worldwide network capable of perpetual engagement against those who are comfortable with tyranny.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Monday, January 17, 2011
Best of the Left: #440 Governments vs Journalism (Wikileaks); #442 They are legion, etc (Anonymous)
(Good summaries and retrospective look)
#440 Governments vs Journalism (Wikileaks)
Act 1: The campaign to ruin Julian Assange – The Progressive
Song 1: And So It Goes – The Essential Billy Joel
Act 2: Assange released from jail – The Bugle
Song 2: Jailhouse Rock – The Essential Elvis Presley (Remastered)
Act 3: Full Exclusive Assange interview – MSNBC
Song 3: Hurt – American IV: Man Comes Around
Act 4: Thomas Friedman’s approval of wikileaks – Counterspin
Song 4: Morning Sun – Shayna Zaid & the Catch
Act 5: US reaps what it sows – Majority Report
Song 5: What You Get – Bastards of the Beat
Act 6: Open letter signatory on wikileaks – On the Media
Song 6: What we’ve got – Anthony da Costa and Emilyn Brodsky
Act 7: Media should stand up for Assange – Young Turks
Song 7: Time to Ride – Sammy Davis, Jr.: Greatest Hits (Live)
Act 8: Nothing bad about wikileaks – David Feldman Podcast
Song 8: One Day – Light (Bonus Track Version)
Act 9: Losing liberties over wikileaks – The Progressive
Song 9: Flamencos En El Aire – Gipsy Kings
Act 10: Inhumane treatment of PFC. Manning – Young Turks
Song 9: Drift Away – Brothers In Blues & Sisters In Soul – 18 Classic Tracks (Re-Recorded Version)
Act 10: Michael Moore on wikileaks – Rachel Maddow
To Listen to the Episode
#442 They are legion, etc (Anonymous)
Act 1: News on Anonymous Operation: Payback – Countdown
Song 1: I Want You – Savage Garden
Act 2: Anonymous back up wikileaks – On the Media
Song 2: Little Lion Man – Sigh No More
Act 3: WW 3.0 Omar Wason on cyber war – Colbert Report
Song 3: Gone – On and On
Act 4: Are the Anonymous attacks civil disobedience? – On the Media
Song 4: Natural Blues – Play & Play: B Sides
Act 5: Intro to interview with Anonymous – Citizen Radio
Song 5: Legion – Empires
Act 6: Operation: Payback message – Anonymous
Song 6: Eclipse – Welcome to Earth
Act 7: Interview with Anonymous spokesman – Citizen Radio
To Listen to the Episode
#440 Governments vs Journalism (Wikileaks)
Act 1: The campaign to ruin Julian Assange – The Progressive
Song 1: And So It Goes – The Essential Billy Joel
Act 2: Assange released from jail – The Bugle
Song 2: Jailhouse Rock – The Essential Elvis Presley (Remastered)
Act 3: Full Exclusive Assange interview – MSNBC
Song 3: Hurt – American IV: Man Comes Around
Act 4: Thomas Friedman’s approval of wikileaks – Counterspin
Song 4: Morning Sun – Shayna Zaid & the Catch
Act 5: US reaps what it sows – Majority Report
Song 5: What You Get – Bastards of the Beat
Act 6: Open letter signatory on wikileaks – On the Media
Song 6: What we’ve got – Anthony da Costa and Emilyn Brodsky
Act 7: Media should stand up for Assange – Young Turks
Song 7: Time to Ride – Sammy Davis, Jr.: Greatest Hits (Live)
Act 8: Nothing bad about wikileaks – David Feldman Podcast
Song 8: One Day – Light (Bonus Track Version)
Act 9: Losing liberties over wikileaks – The Progressive
Song 9: Flamencos En El Aire – Gipsy Kings
Act 10: Inhumane treatment of PFC. Manning – Young Turks
Song 9: Drift Away – Brothers In Blues & Sisters In Soul – 18 Classic Tracks (Re-Recorded Version)
Act 10: Michael Moore on wikileaks – Rachel Maddow
To Listen to the Episode
#442 They are legion, etc (Anonymous)
Act 1: News on Anonymous Operation: Payback – Countdown
Song 1: I Want You – Savage Garden
Act 2: Anonymous back up wikileaks – On the Media
Song 2: Little Lion Man – Sigh No More
Act 3: WW 3.0 Omar Wason on cyber war – Colbert Report
Song 3: Gone – On and On
Act 4: Are the Anonymous attacks civil disobedience? – On the Media
Song 4: Natural Blues – Play & Play: B Sides
Act 5: Intro to interview with Anonymous – Citizen Radio
Song 5: Legion – Empires
Act 6: Operation: Payback message – Anonymous
Song 6: Eclipse – Welcome to Earth
Act 7: Interview with Anonymous spokesman – Citizen Radio
To Listen to the Episode
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Adi Kuntsman: Online Memories, Digital Conflicts and the Cybertouch of War
Online Memories, Digital Conflicts and the Cybertouch of War
by Adi Kuntsman
Digital Icons
Wars, conflicts and commemoration occupy the minds of today’s users of new media across the globe; and those in Russia, Eurasia and Central Europe are no exception. Digital reporting of military actions and virtual museums of past wars and genocides; hacker attacks against websites and databases and computer war games; online antiwar organising and digital performances of postwar trauma; flashmobs of political protest or racist incitement and digitalised personal memories and family histories – these are only some of the examples of the ways in which war, conflict and commemoration are narrated, experienced and performed in contemporary digital media. Thus, the aim of the special issue entitled ’War, Conflict and Commemoration in the Age of Digital Reproduction’ is to explore these and other phenomena, by looking at various forms and segments of digital media: Internet sites, blogs and forums, online news and discussions, social networks, commemoration sites and virtual museums, digital games, video performance and computer crimes.
The issue brings together ten authors, working in a variety of formats – articles, essays, reports, ethnographic film and digital performance – and reflecting on the following questions:
What is the role of new media in understanding, representing, negotiating and remembering (or forgetting) war and genocide?
What is the status of testimony, evidence and reportage in the age of digital reproduction?
What practices of memory do new information and communication technologies entail?
What structures of feeling operate in online reports and debates around military operations and human suffering?
How can digital mediations of conflict bring people and communities together, while tearing others apart?
And lastly, how can the embodied, physical violence intensify in digital interactions, and how can it be diffused, resisted and remembered?
This special issue was born out of a sense of political and intellectual necessity, posed by recent developments in digital media and its use. Digital media is fundamentally changing the terrain of politics, due to its reach and speed, and its function in the lives of civilian populations and states alike. For example, together with ‘citizen journalism’, enabled by blogs, the Internet has given a platform to political extremism, racism and neo-Nazism. (While Web 2.0 technologies allow non-hierarchical participation,
they also, at times, turn the Internet into a digital war zone (Karatzogianni 2006, 2009).
In today’s ‘global matrix of war’ (Kaplan 2009), digital technologies are used by both state and non-state actors, often blurring the line between military and entertainment and between control and resistance. Attacks on the ground and in the air now go hand in hand with information warfare, propaganda and racist attacks in blogs and YouTube vlogs; conflicts between states or stateless groups reverberate in cyberattacks by hackers from each side; and testimonies of atrocities are captured on mobile phones and circulated on Facebook, irrevocably changing our modes of witnessing, feeling and remembering violent and traumatic events (Ibrahim 2009; Kaplan 2009; Reading 2009).
Politically, then, the topic of war and conflict and of their relations with digital media is clearly an urgent one. In that respect, Central and Eastern Europe is not unique. The region, however, has its own, very particular, record of past wars and conflicts that scar social and mnemonic fabrics of today’s life: World War II, German occupation and the Holocaust, decades under communism, twenty years of post-communist transformation, and waves of conflicts and bloodshed they brought.
More recently, the region has witnessed a rise in the right wing nationalism and extremist racism, struggles for sovereignty and independence, ‘wars on terror’ and localised armed conflicts. Addressing all these together, through the lens of shared political conditions, while remaining attentive to each country’s unique culture and
circumstances, is what encouraged me to assemble this collection.
The special issue is also motivated by an intellectual need to shed light on the role of digital media in these processes across the region. With the growing integration of digital media into most aspects of our lives, we witness an explosion of scholarly interest in the subject, cutting across many disciplines. Similarly, the topic of war, conflict and memory is widely explored. The two, however, only recently began to intersect, for example in the special issue of Journal of Computer Mediated Communication (2006), ‘War Coverage in Cyberspace’ (2006) or in edited collections such as Digital War Reporting (Matheson and Stuart 2009) or Save As… Digital Memories (Garde-Hansen et.al. 2009).1 But even when the two fields are explored in conjunction, they mostly concentrate on one narrow aspect – such as war coverage and reportage, or memories – rather than a complex examination of how digital media and computer technologies affect the warfare itself, its social perception and the ways of remembrance and commemoration. Such complex approach is precisely what unites the papers in this special issue, when they examine how war and conflicts of past and present are negotiated, performed and remembered on the Internet and in other digital media tools.
To Read the Rest of the Introduction to the Special Issue and to Access the Issue's Essays
by Adi Kuntsman
Digital Icons
Wars, conflicts and commemoration occupy the minds of today’s users of new media across the globe; and those in Russia, Eurasia and Central Europe are no exception. Digital reporting of military actions and virtual museums of past wars and genocides; hacker attacks against websites and databases and computer war games; online antiwar organising and digital performances of postwar trauma; flashmobs of political protest or racist incitement and digitalised personal memories and family histories – these are only some of the examples of the ways in which war, conflict and commemoration are narrated, experienced and performed in contemporary digital media. Thus, the aim of the special issue entitled ’War, Conflict and Commemoration in the Age of Digital Reproduction’ is to explore these and other phenomena, by looking at various forms and segments of digital media: Internet sites, blogs and forums, online news and discussions, social networks, commemoration sites and virtual museums, digital games, video performance and computer crimes.
The issue brings together ten authors, working in a variety of formats – articles, essays, reports, ethnographic film and digital performance – and reflecting on the following questions:
What is the role of new media in understanding, representing, negotiating and remembering (or forgetting) war and genocide?
What is the status of testimony, evidence and reportage in the age of digital reproduction?
What practices of memory do new information and communication technologies entail?
What structures of feeling operate in online reports and debates around military operations and human suffering?
How can digital mediations of conflict bring people and communities together, while tearing others apart?
And lastly, how can the embodied, physical violence intensify in digital interactions, and how can it be diffused, resisted and remembered?
This special issue was born out of a sense of political and intellectual necessity, posed by recent developments in digital media and its use. Digital media is fundamentally changing the terrain of politics, due to its reach and speed, and its function in the lives of civilian populations and states alike. For example, together with ‘citizen journalism’, enabled by blogs, the Internet has given a platform to political extremism, racism and neo-Nazism. (While Web 2.0 technologies allow non-hierarchical participation,
they also, at times, turn the Internet into a digital war zone (Karatzogianni 2006, 2009).
In today’s ‘global matrix of war’ (Kaplan 2009), digital technologies are used by both state and non-state actors, often blurring the line between military and entertainment and between control and resistance. Attacks on the ground and in the air now go hand in hand with information warfare, propaganda and racist attacks in blogs and YouTube vlogs; conflicts between states or stateless groups reverberate in cyberattacks by hackers from each side; and testimonies of atrocities are captured on mobile phones and circulated on Facebook, irrevocably changing our modes of witnessing, feeling and remembering violent and traumatic events (Ibrahim 2009; Kaplan 2009; Reading 2009).
Politically, then, the topic of war and conflict and of their relations with digital media is clearly an urgent one. In that respect, Central and Eastern Europe is not unique. The region, however, has its own, very particular, record of past wars and conflicts that scar social and mnemonic fabrics of today’s life: World War II, German occupation and the Holocaust, decades under communism, twenty years of post-communist transformation, and waves of conflicts and bloodshed they brought.
More recently, the region has witnessed a rise in the right wing nationalism and extremist racism, struggles for sovereignty and independence, ‘wars on terror’ and localised armed conflicts. Addressing all these together, through the lens of shared political conditions, while remaining attentive to each country’s unique culture and
circumstances, is what encouraged me to assemble this collection.
The special issue is also motivated by an intellectual need to shed light on the role of digital media in these processes across the region. With the growing integration of digital media into most aspects of our lives, we witness an explosion of scholarly interest in the subject, cutting across many disciplines. Similarly, the topic of war, conflict and memory is widely explored. The two, however, only recently began to intersect, for example in the special issue of Journal of Computer Mediated Communication (2006), ‘War Coverage in Cyberspace’ (2006) or in edited collections such as Digital War Reporting (Matheson and Stuart 2009) or Save As… Digital Memories (Garde-Hansen et.al. 2009).1 But even when the two fields are explored in conjunction, they mostly concentrate on one narrow aspect – such as war coverage and reportage, or memories – rather than a complex examination of how digital media and computer technologies affect the warfare itself, its social perception and the ways of remembrance and commemoration. Such complex approach is precisely what unites the papers in this special issue, when they examine how war and conflicts of past and present are negotiated, performed and remembered on the Internet and in other digital media tools.
To Read the Rest of the Introduction to the Special Issue and to Access the Issue's Essays
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Peter Ludlow: WikiLeaks and Hacktivist Culture
WikiLeaks and Hacktivist Culture
by Peter Ludlow
The Nation
In recent months there has been considerable discussion about the WikiLeaks phenomenon, and understandably so, given the volume and sensitivity of the documents the website has released. What this discussion has revealed, however, is that the media and government agencies believe there is a single protagonist to be concerned with—something of a James Bond villain, if you will—when in fact the protagonist is something altogether different: an informal network of revolutionary individuals bound by a shared ethic and culture.
According to conventional wisdom, the alleged protagonist is, of course, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the discussion of him has ranged from Raffi Khatchadourian's June portrait in The New Yorker, which makes Assange sound like a master spy in a John le Carré novel, to Tunku Varadarajan's epic ad hominem bloviation in The Daily Beast: "With his bloodless, sallow face, his lank hair drained of all color, his languorous, very un-Australian limbs, and his aura of blinding pallor that appears to admit no nuance, Assange looks every inch the amoral, uber-nerd villain."
Some have called for putting Assange "out of business" (even if we must violate international law to do it), while others, ranging from Daniel Ellsberg to Assange himself, think he is (in Ellsberg's words) "in some danger." I don't doubt that Assange is in danger, but even if he is put out of business by arrest, assassination or character impeachment with charges of sexual misconduct, it would not stanch the flow of secret documents into the public domain. To think otherwise is an error that reflects a colossal misunderstanding of the nature of WikiLeaks and the subculture from which it emerged.
WikiLeaks is not the one-off creation of a solitary genius; it is the product of decades of collaborative work by people engaged in applying computer hacking to political causes, in particular, to the principle that information-hoarding is evil—and, as Stewart Brand said in 1984, "Information wants to be free." Today there is a broad spectrum of people engaged in this cause, so that were Assange to be eliminated today, WikiLeaks would doubtless continue, and even if WikiLeaks were somehow to be eliminated, new sites would emerge to replace it.
Let's begin by considering whether it is possible to take WikiLeaks offline, as called for in the Washington Post by former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, who added that "taking [Assange] off the streets is not enough; we must also recover the documents he unlawfully possesses and disable the system he has built to illegally disseminate classified information."
Consider the demand that we "recover the documents." Even the documents that have not been made public by WikiLeaks are widely distributed all over the Internet. WikiLeaks has released an encrypted 1.4 gigabyte file called "insurance.aes256." If something happens to Assange, the password to the encrypted file will be released (presumably via a single Twitter tweet). What's in the file? We don't know, but at 1.4 gigabytes, it is nineteen times the size of the Afghan war log that was recently distributed to major newspapers. Legendary hacker Kevin Poulsen speculates that the file "is doubtless in the hands of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of netizens already."
It's also a bit difficult to "disable the system," since WikiLeaks did not need to create a new network; the group simply relied on existing electronic communications networks (e.g., the Internet) and the fact that there are tens of thousands of like-minded people all over the world. Where did all those like-minded people come from? Are they all under the spell of Assange? To the contrary, they were active long before Assange sat down to hack his first computer.
It has long been an ethical principle of hackers that ideas and information are not to be hoarded but are to be shared.In 1984, when Assange turned 13, Steven Levy described this attitude in his book Hackers. After interviewing a number of hackers, he distilled a "hacker ethic," which included, among others, the following two maxims: (1) all information should be free; (2) mistrust authority and promote decentralization.
These sentiments were poetically expressed by a hacker named The Mentor, in an essay titled "The Conscience of a Hacker." It was written shortly after his arrest, and appeared in the important hacker publication Phrack in 1986.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Peter Ludlow
The Nation
In recent months there has been considerable discussion about the WikiLeaks phenomenon, and understandably so, given the volume and sensitivity of the documents the website has released. What this discussion has revealed, however, is that the media and government agencies believe there is a single protagonist to be concerned with—something of a James Bond villain, if you will—when in fact the protagonist is something altogether different: an informal network of revolutionary individuals bound by a shared ethic and culture.
According to conventional wisdom, the alleged protagonist is, of course, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the discussion of him has ranged from Raffi Khatchadourian's June portrait in The New Yorker, which makes Assange sound like a master spy in a John le Carré novel, to Tunku Varadarajan's epic ad hominem bloviation in The Daily Beast: "With his bloodless, sallow face, his lank hair drained of all color, his languorous, very un-Australian limbs, and his aura of blinding pallor that appears to admit no nuance, Assange looks every inch the amoral, uber-nerd villain."
Some have called for putting Assange "out of business" (even if we must violate international law to do it), while others, ranging from Daniel Ellsberg to Assange himself, think he is (in Ellsberg's words) "in some danger." I don't doubt that Assange is in danger, but even if he is put out of business by arrest, assassination or character impeachment with charges of sexual misconduct, it would not stanch the flow of secret documents into the public domain. To think otherwise is an error that reflects a colossal misunderstanding of the nature of WikiLeaks and the subculture from which it emerged.
WikiLeaks is not the one-off creation of a solitary genius; it is the product of decades of collaborative work by people engaged in applying computer hacking to political causes, in particular, to the principle that information-hoarding is evil—and, as Stewart Brand said in 1984, "Information wants to be free." Today there is a broad spectrum of people engaged in this cause, so that were Assange to be eliminated today, WikiLeaks would doubtless continue, and even if WikiLeaks were somehow to be eliminated, new sites would emerge to replace it.
Let's begin by considering whether it is possible to take WikiLeaks offline, as called for in the Washington Post by former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, who added that "taking [Assange] off the streets is not enough; we must also recover the documents he unlawfully possesses and disable the system he has built to illegally disseminate classified information."
Consider the demand that we "recover the documents." Even the documents that have not been made public by WikiLeaks are widely distributed all over the Internet. WikiLeaks has released an encrypted 1.4 gigabyte file called "insurance.aes256." If something happens to Assange, the password to the encrypted file will be released (presumably via a single Twitter tweet). What's in the file? We don't know, but at 1.4 gigabytes, it is nineteen times the size of the Afghan war log that was recently distributed to major newspapers. Legendary hacker Kevin Poulsen speculates that the file "is doubtless in the hands of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of netizens already."
It's also a bit difficult to "disable the system," since WikiLeaks did not need to create a new network; the group simply relied on existing electronic communications networks (e.g., the Internet) and the fact that there are tens of thousands of like-minded people all over the world. Where did all those like-minded people come from? Are they all under the spell of Assange? To the contrary, they were active long before Assange sat down to hack his first computer.
It has long been an ethical principle of hackers that ideas and information are not to be hoarded but are to be shared.In 1984, when Assange turned 13, Steven Levy described this attitude in his book Hackers. After interviewing a number of hackers, he distilled a "hacker ethic," which included, among others, the following two maxims: (1) all information should be free; (2) mistrust authority and promote decentralization.
These sentiments were poetically expressed by a hacker named The Mentor, in an essay titled "The Conscience of a Hacker." It was written shortly after his arrest, and appeared in the important hacker publication Phrack in 1986.
We explore…and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge…and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias…and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
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