'Anonymous' Busts Child Porn Ring

[Nostradammit]

Source: PCMag.com

Hacker group Anonymous briefly crashed a large collection of child pornography Web sites, and published the names of its patrons.

Last week, the cyber vigilantes, better known for targeting large corporations and oppressive government regimes, used a brute force attack to infiltrate a server called Freedom Hosting, which housed about 40 child porn sites. The biggest site was Lolita City, which contained more than 100GB of content.

According to a timeline of events posted on Pastebin, Anonymous said before taking down the sites, it issued a warning to Freedom Hosting to remove the illegal content. When it failed to do so, Anonymous attacked. The sites were down for about five minutes before an admin restored them, upon which Anonymous again launched a successful attack. Later, the group posted on Pastebin the names of 1,589 individuals who visited Lolita City.

"If the FBI, Interpol, or other law enforcement agency should happen to come across this list, please use it to investigate and bring justice to the people listed here," Anonymous wrote in a statement.

Read more: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2395175,00.asp#fbid=HnBPRPyYBeB

[get the red out]

1. If they don't investigate

I would wonder whose important names are on that list?

[RC]

2. Or who is financing it in the first place.

[Nostradammit]

4. 'zactly.

Interesting, too, that the AP and Washington Post et al have nothing to say about this.

Methinks they doth protest too little.

[Tunkamerica]

8. the first name on the list is "get the red out"

should we just assume the "names" are all names of pedophiles?

[get the red out]

26. Hmmm

How did you read "investigate" as "assume guilt"?

[gateley]

3. I hope they PROVIDE that list to the Feds, not just hope they

"happen to come across it".

Does Freedom Hosting's ability to recover in 5 minutes indicate they have some pretty tech-savvy people on board? I'm just thinking some of the Big Boys that Anon has disrupted took much longer to get back on track.

[formercia]

9. I would bet it's connected with Organized Crime

They have the money to hire the best IT people and there's a lot of money in Porn.

[gateley]

18. Boy, I that never would have occurred to me, but makes sense. Hmmmm. nt

[formercia]

19. The Mob is very into IT.

They have very secure communications.

[cstanleytech]

25. Now, now, the GOP/Tea Party cant be at faul......oh wait

you meant the "other" kind of organized crime.

[Luciferous]

5. Awesome.

[Arrowhead2k1]

6. There are no names.

Just random user names. Not even IPs!

Big whoop.

[Tunkamerica]

7. Login names on a TOR site. Hardly late breaking news either since I read this yesterday

and it happened last week.

Anyone who used their real name while logging in to an illegal siteis an idiot. Anyone who wants the FBI to trust anonymous with law enforcement is an idiot.

[Nostradammit]

10. Would the FBI be able to arrest the people who created the site?

Could they not follow the trails to find the people who created login names?

Anyone who thinks the FBI shouldn't follow up on this simply because they don't like
the people who informed the FBI has a very twisted moral code.

[Arrowhead2k1]

11. How? They are just random names. No IPs.

Even if you find the same user names, there's no way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt it's the same user in a court of law. The list is worthless, and probably doesn't include anything new the authorities don't already know just by monitoring the site.

[Nostradammit]

12. Have the owners of the site been jailed already?

Do they not have records of the e-mail addresses used to sign up for the site?

Can these e-mail addresses not be traced back to the owners?

[Arrowhead2k1]

16. The site is on a secure network, not normal internet, not easily tracable.

Anonymous claims they've tracked down the site to being somewhere in America through "timing attacks". I very much doubt email addresses are required.

[Poll_Blind]

15. You don't need resonable doubt for a warrant, just for a conviction.nt

PB

[Arrowhead2k1]

17. Again, there is nothing here that the authorities probably don't already know.

Just by observing the site, one could harvest usernames. My guess is that anonymous just wants positive publicity, when infact they have done diddly squat to deserve it.

[Tunkamerica]

13. I like anonymous. The site creators are on Freedom hosting which

hosts sites anonymously. Good luck finding out who and where they are.

And thanks for implying that I sympathize with child pornographers because I don't think a list of login names is enough for convictions, legal or in the court of the internet.

What if one of the visitors just happened to use your preferred screen name?

[Nostradammit]

14. Somebody at "Freedom hosting" intentionally restored the site

In your mind, is this not a crime and should the owners of "Freedom hosting" be held
responsible for the content they allow on their servers?

[Tunkamerica]

21. from another article:

The trail goes cold in looking for whoever is behind Freedom Hosting. The domain is currently offline; WHOIS domain-name lookups show that the registration for freedom-hosting.com expired on Aug. 7, and the registrar is holding the URL pending renewal.

http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/anonymous-hackers-child-porn-sites-1260/


Posting a list of names on the internet as pedophiles is dangerous because if anyone was going to engage in seriously risky behavior like this they would use the name of someone who they wanted to take the blame. And how can you trust any list of names that a group of anonymous sympathizers offers up? Anonymous, being what it is, can never be "trusted" because it can be anyone. It could be an enemies list. Enemies of who? Anybody who wants to post a list of 1600 names and call themselves anonymous.

Also, not knowing who runs the site or hosting company means it could be anyone including the FBI themselves in some sort of honeypot scenario.

There are so many issues that people seem to ignore when they hear child porn. That's when you have to turn off the emotion and think rationally. Neither of us know all the details. And there's a good chance we never will. Impugning my morality based on my reaction to a story that's swept over the internet in the last few days is premature at best. Thoughtful people can disagree without ad hominem attacks.

[Nostradammit]

22. I think the government is far more capable of tracing the traffic on these sites than you realize.

Whether they will pursue those responsible depends entirely on who has been found to frequent them, I'm sure.

And on the subject of ad hominem attacks, how would you describe this comment? -

"Anyone who wants the FBI to trust anonymous with law enforcement is an idiot."

Which implies that I want the FBI to turn their work over to anonymous which would, indeed, make me an idiot.

No such course of action was ever recommended.

Re: "Also, not knowing who runs the site or hosting company means it could be anyone including the FBI themselves in some sort of honeypot scenario."

Are you accusing the FBI of entrapment?

[Xithras]

20. Would have been nicer if they had turned the info over without publicizing it.

Now every single member of those groups knows that they might have been compromised. Time to run DBAN and reinstall Windows.

"Sorry detective, but I have no idea why my IP was on that list. I did have a virus on my computer recently, so maybe someone was hijacking my connection. Or maybe someone was trying to set me up. Could your source have mistyped the IP address when it was turned over? Please feel free to check out my computer, I have nothing to hide!"

Scott. Free.

[Omaha Steve]

23. I have no problem with this

K&R!

[bitchkitty]

24. While it's only a list of screen names,

the publicity from this will cause the company that owns the sites, whoever they might be, to lose customers and hence lose money. So it's not a deadly blow, but good on Anonymous for causing them at least some harm.