2600 reageert op DoS attacks

Hackers magazine 2600 heeft zijn afkeuring van de recente Denial of Service aanvallen tegen o.a. Yahoo!, Amazon en CNN kenbaar gemaakt. Men stoort zich vooral aan de wijze waarop de term 'hacker' misbruikt wordt door de media:

We feel sorry for the major Internet commerce sites that have been inconvenienced by the Denial of Service attacks. Really, we do. But we cannot permit them or anyone else to lay the blame on hackers.

So far, the corporate media has done a very bad job covering this story, blaming hackers and in the next sentence admitting they have no idea who's behind it. Since the ability to run a program (which is all this is) does not require any hacking skills, claiming that hackers are behind it indicates some sort of knowledge of the motives and people involved.

This could be the work of someone who lost their life savings to electronic commerce. Or maybe it's the work of communists. It could even be corporate America itself! After all, who would be better served by a further denigration of the hacker image with more restrictions on individual liberties?

Let's look at the headlines:

"Government sees cyber-attacks as disruption of commerce."

"Justice Department wants more funds to fight cyber crime."

Didn't take them long, did it? And later in the same story: "But the FBI may never know who is responsible for the cyber-attacks, due to the difficulty in tracing the electronic trails, a senior law enforcement source told CNN."

How convenient. An unseen villain. No need for any actual FACTS to be revealed, but plenty of blame to be cast on hackers everywhere. We find it to be a bit too contrived.

Whoever is responsible is either completely clueless or knows EXACTLY what they're doing. It's the latter that should concern hackers everywhere.

Thanks Phantor voor de tip.