Virtual Militias

[Cannoneer No. 4]

http://th3j35t3r.wordpress.com/2011/...medium=twitter

Before he came to Anonymous' attention he mostly applied Restrictive Measures to jihadi propaganda sites.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

Civilian Irregular Information Operator / cybervigilante known as th3j35t3r attacks Libyan dictator's website.

www.algathafi.org - TANGO DOWN. Temporarily. For using military force on protesters. Kudos 3 AWOL pilots. #chatta #libya
12 minutes ago via XerXeS Attack Platform V3.17

An Irregular's Denial of Service attack on the personal website of the acknowledged leader of a sovereign Westphalian nation-state combines Computer Network Attack with Psychological Operations and Irregular Warfare.

Would Military Information Support Operations conducted by non-military entities be properly referred to as Paramilitary Information Support Operations?

[anonamatic]

It's back up, I suppose he did a DDoS attack but wasn't able to sustain it. I'm not sure what a good term for this would be aside from hacktivist (and I have some bias towards the term too), perhaps para-militia? The `patriotic hacker' notion doesn't translate too well into English, & doesn't work quite as clearly outside of politically primitive mono-culture states.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

He did a DOS attack and didn't try to sustain it. Intended to be temporary Restrictive Measure against KaDaffy's propaganda site.

Now that the shooting has started it will be interesting to see what Regular counterpropagandists of many nations do.

[Rex Brynen]

Given the ridiculously counter-productive propaganda on that website--at the moment, one leading articles warns "Let everyone understand that the North Pole does not belong to anyone; it is the property of all the peoples of the earth and all the continents."--it is probably left alone for everyone to see.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

https://www.infosecisland.com/blogvi...-Campaign.html

Civilian Irregular Psychological Operator at work.

[AdamG]

Place your bets : who done it?

WASHINGTON — Computer hackers shut down al-Qaida's ability to communicate its messages to the world through the Internet, interrupting the group's flow of videos and communiqués, according to a terrorism expert.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43584213...news-security/

[GeorgePBurdell]

coordinated across multiple agencies with the hackers out of NSA doing the heavy lifting

[Rex Brynen]

There's a big debate in the IC as to whether these sorts of attacks are useful (in that they briefly suppress some AQ public relations) or counterproductive (in that if you can access the server, as this attack apparently could, you can use that access to collect very useful intel).

To date, the general opinion has been that such cyberattacks to more harm than good, unless harnessed to a specific purpose.

[anonamatic]

I totally support this type of effort. I think it's a really good idea to be active about dealing with terrorists & other evil types online. I'm not saying don't do observation, but they aren't the sort of endangered species we want to preserve either, so the whole 'leave no footprints' approach is of limited value. Besides crushing their efforts to wreck more havoc in the real world, poking the maggots is a good way of making them move & learning more about them.