World Whines as AT&T Muzzles 4chan

The Register has a rant about ATT blocking 4chan. Doesn't really say much, though.

World whines as AT&T muzzles 4chan, Google • The Register: "The most newsworthy message board on 4chan is /b/, which new journalists discover about every four months when they want to scare the shit out of people who own computers. Some /b/ users, who go by the name Anonymous, know a thing or two about internet security, and they entertain themselves by breaking into people’s private e-mail accounts, MySpace accounts, and other such painfully inconsequential things. Because of this, /b/ makes a decent slow-news-day scare piece: an army of anonymous hackers are out there, and they’re reading your e-mail. Oh shit. This just got real."

...

'The revolution will not be televised, but you can damn well believe it will be Twittered, and then promptly forgotten as it scrolls off the screen."

AT&T Blocks Part of 4chan

Slashdot Technology Story | AT&T Blocks Part of 4chan: "'Several news sources (Mashable, The Inquistr, etc.) are reporting that AT&T is blocking img.4chan.org in the southern united states. That server is used for the infamous /b/ board (the home of anonymous). TechCrunch calls the decision to block 4chan 'stupid,' noting that they may have 'opened perhaps the most vindictive, messy can of worms.' The Inquisitr suggests that 'The global internet censorship debate landed in the home of the free.' moot (who runs 4chan) asks users to call AT&T, while some others suggest more drastic action (like cutting AT&T fiber).'"

4chan Attacks Twitter

Another "raid" by 4chan, this time on Twitter.

The article has, among others, two interesting quotes:

"Before that, they were responsible for hacking Time Magazine's voting system for the World's Most Influential Person, making the site's creator, moot, the winner by a wide margin."

Confirming my assumption that Obama's "What Do Americans Want" survey's result may very well have been riddle by the like of Anonymous and 4chan.

In a comment:

"They probably couldn't do it though. They have become weaker since the scientology days."

Interesting concept...


4chan may be behind attack on Twitter | The Web Services Report - CNET News

Dusty Stardom

Dusty the cat story is hugely popular, as seen by the comments on the article below, and is doing more to boost Anonymous' cause than anything Shallonymous ever did. There now also is a dedicated domain: http://neverforgetdusty.com/

4chan /b/ Tracks Down Cat Abuser:

"it's good to see anon do something helpful for once"

"At least in this instance they are using their wits and numbers to deal out some vigilante justice on a real piece of @$#%. From what I know of 4chan and its inhabitants I have very mixed emotions - but if they're going to use their abilities for good then my opinion may very well improve."

"and I never thought I'd say this...but... Go, Cyber-terrorist. Go."

"It's actually quite interesting to read about how they tracked the kids down and how they got the attention of the police. The Internet can be a very powerful force for good or ill. In this case good, but I fear it will be (and perhaps has been) used for ill."

"Just been trawling through all the links. This Kenny kid has brought and incredible shitstorm down on his own cowardly head. Richly deserved it is, too. The poor cat looks nothing short of desperate in those pics."

WELL DONE ANON! Saving Dusty the Cat

For once I am 100% with Anonymous - and note that this is not Shallonymous of Scientology fame (these are too busy fighting imaginary enemies to do any such good in the world) - these are the original 4chan anons. This guy was torturing cats and published his deeds on Youtube. Anons tracked him down and within 24 hours got him charged.

WELL DONE ANON!

Kenny Glenn The Animal Abuser - Encyclopedia Dramatica:

"Quicker than you can say Chris Forcand, Anonymous was able to track down the perpetrators, alert the local authorities and get the fucktards in custody after the local police verified that Anon's crack detective team were indeed, right on the money. Dusty the cat was liberated and turned over to a local vet for a check-up and some catnip and maybe even some pussy."

Anonymous Hacks No Cussing Club

I reported last Jan. 17 how Anonymous was stalking a 15-years old boy and his family for his anti-cussing campaign. Now it appears Anonymous has also hacked the No Cussing Club.

Wikinews, initially in favor of Anonymous' campaign against Scientology, now has a lengthy article exposing this episode.

Internet group Anonymous hacks No Cussing Club's website, owner's e-mail account - Wikinews, the free news source

"Wikinews has learned that the internet group known only as "Anonymous" has hacked the website of the No Cussing Club (NCC), nocussing.com, for at least two days in a row. On day one, the group hacked into the website, replacing the content with links to images of alleged e-mail conversations. The e-mails appear to be from the founder's e-mail account, accusing organization members of forgery and using the site for their own personal financial gains. The website was also replaced with Anonymous's logo and a message. [...]

"It has come to our attention that the creators of the no cussing club, McKay and Brent Hatch have done so at great personal gain. Their material promotes the organization as the brainchild of their 14-year-old son, when actually the material is written by his parents, who also manage his profitable career while using his speaking events to plug their own material," said Anonymous on the hacked website. On Encyclopedia Dramatica, a satire Wiki, they claim further responsibility for the hack and exposition saying they managed to break into McKay and Brent Hatch's email accounts. [...]

In 2008, McKay even succeeded in making cussing illegal in his hometown of South Pasadena, California and has appeared on various talk shows such as that of Doctor Phil. [...]

The e-mails allege that Brent along with his publishing company, the name which "nocussing.com" is also registered under, were trying to set up assemblies in the No Cussing Club's name at schools across the United States for US$1,500.00 per show [...]

On January 19, 2009, ABC News.com reported that McKay claimed Anonymous was sending him and his family hate e-mail and death threats, nearly 50,000 per day, "almost all of them filled with obscenities" and spam. [...]

"the FBI is [working] on it [the case]" including "our attorney and we will press charges" against those who are responsible for the crimes. [...]

In September 2008, the group hacked into BillOreilly.com, the official website of Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly, exposing personal information of the site's users in a document posted on the internet. [...]

On October 20, 2008, Dmitriy Guzner, aged 18 from New Jersey, admitted to the charges related to carrying out the DDoS attack on Scientology's website. He was subsequently charged with computer hacking crimes and faces a maximum sentence of ten years imprisonment. [...]


Related Posts:

• Jan. 23: Anonymous Hacks No Cussing Club
• Jan. 17: Anonymous Attacks a 15-Years Old Boy and His Family

Anonymous Attacks a 15-Years Old Boy and His Family

You may remember the incident reported by wired.com one year ago in which Anonymous posted the home address, phone number and cell numbers of a Stockton 59-years-old man who barely knew anything about computers, claiming he was a member of the hacker group who targeted them in retaliation of Anonymous hacking of Scientology sites. The poor man then started to receive daily obscene and threatening phone calls. After receiving a death treat, he and his wife got really scared because their address was posted as well.

Now this is happening again, this time towards a 15-years old boy who dares make a decency campaign, which Anonymous has decided is "threatening free speech". Here is the article in full, which of course you can also read through the link.

'No cussing' teen faces net hate campaign:

'No cussing' teen faces net hate campaign
07:00 AEST Sun Jan 18 2009
2 hours ago
By Shaun Davies, ninemsn

A boy's crusade to stop swearing has drawn the unwanted attention from notorious internet group Anonymous.

McKay Hatch's No Cussing Club, which encourages teens to "chill on the profanity", claims to have over 20,000 members worldwide.

Hatch, a 15-year-old from South Pasadena in California, garnered wide media coverage for his anti-swearing campaign, including a appearance on Dr Phil.

But at the beginning of the year, Hatch's email inbox began clogging up with hate mail from an unknown source.

Pizza and porn deliveries became commonplace for his family, who eventually called in the FBI after numerous receiving death threats and obscene phone calls.

Anonymous appears to be behind the attacks, with threads on sites such as 4chan.org and 711chan.org identifying their members as the culprits.

And the pain may not yet be over for the Hatch family — Anonymous appears to be planning future raids and has threatened to "wipe this cancer [the No Cussing Club] from the face of the internet".

In one 4chan thread, a number of users boasted about sending bogus pizza deliveries and even prostitutes to the Hatch's house, although it was impossible to verify if these claims were genuine.

The same thread also contained a credit card number purported to be stolen from Hatch's father, phone numbers, the family's home address and Hatch's instant messenger address.

In an interview with US network ABC, Hatch's father said the boy had been reduced to tears by the flood of messages from "bullies".

Hatch himself defended his anti-swearing campaign, which his enemies were deriding as an attack on freedom of speech. "A lot of people were saying I was taking away their freedom of speech … All I was trying to do was raise awareness," the teen said.

It appears that the earnestness of Hatch's campaign, including his faux-gangster rap video “No Cussing Club Song”, may have drawn Anonymous's ire.

A line has since been posted on the No Cussing Club website, claiming that Hatch is the "most bullied boy on the internet".

Anonymous is perhaps best known for its extended campaign against Scientology and has been embroiled in a number of other controversies.

It was a 4chan user who hacked Sarah Palin's email and posted it to the site's "random" section, otherwise known as /b/, during the US election.

Anonymous is difficult to define — less an organised group than a loose affiliation of certain websites.

When enough of these users decide to take action against something or someone, they will do so in the name of Anonymous.

The group has no leaders, no set agenda and has a tendency to focus on soft targets for its own amusement.


Related Posts:

• Jan. 23: Anonymous Hacks No Cussing Club
• Jan. 17: Anonymous Attacks a 15-Years Old Boy and His Family

4Chan Makes News Again with ✈ ▌ ▌Meme

✈ ▌ ▌



After their July attack on Google, falsely promoting "Scientology is a Cult" and a Swastika on top of Google Trend, 4chan is in the news again, this time pushing up the trend the ✈ ▌ ▌symbols, graphic representation of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

A quick scan of 4chan shows all threads promoting the 9/11 symbol raid have since been deleted, but it is nevertheless universally recognized as another typical 4chan prank.

The punks over at 4chan are also blamed on the same day for the hacking of the MacRumours site's immensely popular live-blog of Apple's MacWorld, bombarding its feed with various vulgarities and the proclamation that Apple head "STEVE JOBS HAS DIED."

The National Post (URL below) covers these incidents:

Internet trolls strike again with push to make ✈ ▌▌ top Google search - Posted

Pekka-Eric Auvinen

The time I can spend following Scientology news is still limited. I do try to keep up with the main news, though, but there is rarely anything I find worth commenting on.

Today, however, I bumped into a piece of news that I found pretty scary.

I just learned that Pekka-Eric Auvinen, responsible for the Jokela school shooting that occurred on 7 November 2007, posted his intent to do it on 4chan, and that he was encouraged in his act by his fellow anons who even cheered him as it happened in direct…

Incredible? Just see for yourself, right on the archived 4chan page.

[Update May 12, 2009: it appears that the initial post is not from Auvinen himself but from "some b/tard (who) saw the news report on TV and pretended to be Pekka-Eric Auvinen". See the comments further down. The time of posting and the time when the shooting started shows this to be right. Furthermore, there were already four casualties six minutes after the initial post was made, which also confirms the assertion that it could not have been posted by Auvinen himself. I leave the post intact otherwise because the questions raised are still food for thought, however, it obviously gives a very different perspective to the circumstances in which that event occurred.]

I am not going to jump on the CoS’ PR line saying Anonymous was behind the shooting. There is not enough evidence showing that anonymous can be held responsible for his act, and nuts come in all shades in various groups.

However, it is quite a shocking revelation, and it does raise several questions.

There may be a humorous factor behind the fact that anonymous derides everything and engages in crazy verbal and net behavior, as they do on their Encyclopedia Dramatica, but at which point can this become an excuse to actually engage in actual crazy physical behavior? What prevents nuts to physically act in the name of anonymous, and what prevents other nuts to cheer him online as it happens, as seems to have been the case in this tragedy? At which point can anons cross the line between referring to black people as “niggers”, as they do in the name of questioning everything that has become accepted, and actually engaging in racist and/or criminal acts?

What would have happened if instead of writing

“hey /b/ i'm going to kill people at jokela high school today in the name of anonymous”

Auvinen would have written

“hey thetans i'm going to kill people at jokela high school today in the name of Scientology”?

In which way popular concepts among anonymous (being anonymous, deriding everything, indulging in various pranks) helped to trigger that crazy act? Which philosophy is the most likely to trigger it? That of Scientology or that of Anonymous?

By all means, as I said, that news came as a quite shocking discovery for me, and really got me thinking further on that issue. As if this tragedy was not devastating on its own, the fact that is has been announced in the chan, encouraged, followed, and cheered by his peers online as it happened in real life adds an absolutely creepy dimension to it. This all certainly makes the above questions legitimate.

PS - The New York Times published an outstanding article about Anonymous last August. It is a first-hand researched article where the author actually lived with the major hackers and channers for days to get into the whole scene.

New York Times - First Hand Report in Anonymous' Entrails

The New York Times has published an outstanding article, "The Trolls Among Us", that goes much further than the recent articles about 4chan published by the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian. It is a first-hand researched article where the author actually lived with the major hackers and channers for days to get into the whole scene.

Unlike the Maxim article, you won't find it much promoted by Anonymous because in fact it is quite damaging for them.

Some quotes:

"/b/ is the designated “random” board of 4chan.org, a group of message boards that draws more than 200 million page views a month"

"A post consists of an image and a few lines of text"

"Almost everyone posts as “anonymous""

"In effect, this makes /b/ a panopticon in reverse — nobody can see anybody, and everybody can claim to speak from the center""

"The anonymous denizens of 4chan’s other boards — devoted to travel, fitness and several genres of pornography — refer to the /b/-dwellers as “/b/tards."

"Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent"

"/b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand."

"“You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz."

"Among /b/’s more interesting spawn is Anonymous, a group of masked pranksters who organized protests at Church of Scientology branches around the world"

"Technology, apparently, does more than harness the wisdom of the crowd. It can intensify its hatred as well."

"After all, I was examining a subculture that is built on deception and delights in playing with the media"

"Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it?"

"When does it evolve into a better collective understanding?"

"Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?"

"One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as “god of the Internet” for the influence he exercised over the emerging network"

"In 1981, he formulated what’s known as Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.”

"Originally intended to foster “interoperability,” the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another,"

"To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could “speak” as clearly as possible yet “listen” to the widest possible range of other speakers"

"The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance"

"the spirit of good conversation"

"Trolls embody the opposite principle"

"They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others"

"It’s tempting to blame technology, which increases the range of our communications while dehumanizing the recipients."

4Chan featured in The Guardian

After getting featured in two of America's heavyweight publications, Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, UK, runs an article about 4chan. It is no quite as extensive, though, and just repeats many of the elements that already figure in the two US magazines. It only adds the latest 4Chan prank - the messing up of Google Trend - and gives some further detail on how the Swastika incident was brought about:

"It appears that a post on 4chan instructed people to Google '...#21328;'. When thousands did, they discovered that it was a piece of code which, when processed by a web browser, translates into a swastika".

Note that apart from this prank, the Guardian is just as silent as the the US magazine regarding 4Chan as the origin of Anonymous protesting Scientology.

Google Trends Follow Up

LA Times featured an article last July 14 on how Anonymous tricked Google Trends with false information.

In a follow up article, it explains that these results are achieved by
searching for the malevolent terms en masse, skyrocketing them up the ranks.

It also notes about the comments to the article that

"many of those responses were immature or snide remarks, seemingly coming from 4chan members, which prompted Zoey Hampton to write: "The comments make it very clear that the members of 4chan need to get a life, as well as learn to spell and write cogently."

which is the impression I get in general when reading comments left by Anonymous members.

Some of the selected comments went along the same line:

"Indeed! As we enjoy a more free communication, so too with schoolyard bullys, semi-literates and disruptive elements."

"In days gone past it took great effort to rouse a demonstration. Today it takes only a few phrases on a disruptive website, a few minutes of discussion, and a few dozen computers running dedicated software"

"People dedicated to disrupting normal communication have found their comfort zone on the internet"

"Scientology may indeed be a cult, but these anonymous mask-wearing website-hacking "kids" (and I use that term loosely - many of these 4chan troublemakers are middle aged and living at home) are far more dangerous. Committing vandalism and hate crimes are NOT just "kids' play""

Still, LA Time is interested in continuing the discussion and posit the interesting interrogation:

"What's your take on the issue? Tell us whether you think 4chan's Google bombing is overstepping the boundaries of Web decency, or if it's just something that comes with the territory of an open dialog?"

Related blog entry: R-CryWolfComments-

Anonymous Tricks Google into False Results

The LA Times reports:

"Last week it was a swastika topping Google's Hot Trends. Now it's the phrase "scientology is a cult". ... In the case of the swastika, we couldn't prove that users of the popular image board 4chan were behind it (their discussion threads can pass out of existence within minutes), but this time there can be no doubt. ... As of this writing, several active 4chan threads were devoted to the mass Googling of the "scientology" phrase as well as the upside-down truck insult, all as 4chan users congratulated themselves for having propelled the two phrases to the top of the list."

4Chan Gets Feature in Major Media

The Wall Street Journal and time.com both have surprising articles about 4chan, the image forum at the origin of Anonymous' "fight" against Scientology. 4chan is describe as the source of several fast spreading memes which makes businessmen jealous. They would not advertise in it, however, because of the channel rowdy reputation.

Note however that neither source say even a single word about about Scientology or Anonymous' protests.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

"You may not realize it, but 4chan has probably touched your life. Possibly inappropriately. 4chan is unusual in several ways. It's extremely large and active; it gets 8.5 million page views a day and 3.3 million visitors a month. Since moot started it in 2003, those visitors have put up 145 million posts. By some metrics, 4chan is the fourth largest bulletin board on the Net.:

"Over the last few years, 4chan.org has become one of the most talked-about sites when it comes to launching new memes. "

"A book based on the site is coming this fall for Gotham Books."

"A large part of the site's success is its emphasis on anonymity. Users are not required to provide a working email address or any other personal information, a standard practice for other online communities like Facebook or MySpace. "