Anonymous vs Scientology!

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-01-26 02:03am

Hmm... Spanish Inquisition vs Scientology, that sound like an interesting match-up?

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-01-26 02:26am

Hawkwings wrote:Hmm... Spanish Inquisition vs Scientology, that sound like an interesting match-up?

Not really. Scientology has an army of lawyers, the Inquisition has the actual Army by virtue of being supported by the government.

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2008-01-26 02:29am

Xeriar wrote:
Tanasinn wrote:The important question to ask is this: how long will Anonymous stay interested?

Generally speaking, anyone whose shit REALLY gets wrecked by Anon (Hal Turner, that kindergarten teacher, the Subeta guy) encouraged them along the way with arrogance and hissy fits. If the Scientologists ignore Anon altogether, it's fairly likely they'll get bored and stop.
Somehow I don't think this is just 'anon'. This seems more like a 'straw broke the camel's back' situation. A lot of geeks know about Scientology and what it does to people.

There are a lot of legal, feasible, and potentially very effective ideas being posted. Recruiting churches, distributing flyers, building support organizations... Stuff that should have been going on for a long time already.

Could it be that a lot of groups decided to join with Anonymous in order to help bring down Scientology, while deflecting the CoS's attention away from themselves ?

Cycloneman · Post by **Cycloneman** » 2008-01-26 04:35am

Darth Wong wrote:
Jadeite wrote:Hopefully /b/ will prevail in this.
Would you say the same thing if their target was one of the mainstream Christian denominations?

If they were as fucked up as scientology is? Hell yeah.

It might be a little grayer if scientology was not as completely fucked up as it is, but scientology is fucked up out the wazoo. People have died when scientology was vividly and clearly the cause, and other people may have been murdered by scientologists

RIPP_n_WIPE · Post by **RIPP_n_WIPE** » 2008-01-26 04:59am

What

the

fuck?!?!

How do you not try THE ENTIRE CHURCH for treason and execute its members? That should be a government SOP for any fuckwad who infiltrates your private facilities.

What the fuck is counter intel good for if you don't whack people now and then?!?!

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2008-01-26 11:50am

To stay on-topic, I do have to confess a slight bias towards /b/. They're idiots, but they're not evil, per se.

And I don't steer clear of /b/ because of the insanity; it's the stupidity I don't like. Animaniacs was insane. Freakazoid was insane. The Joker (if written well) is bugfuck, juggling-your-eyeballs insane, and I love all three. /b/ is, unfortunately, full of people with little wit and less sense.

Spin Echo · Post by **Spin Echo** » 2008-01-26 02:09pm

bilateralrope wrote:Could it be that a lot of groups decided to join with Anonymous in order to help bring down Scientology, while deflecting the CoS's attention away from themselves ?

I knew a couple of Cult of the Dead Cow members back in college who held no love for Scientology. One of them lived in a frat right next to the Scientology building in Boston. Everytime there was a party, they'd go piss on the Scientology door. It got to the point where the door was so warped it had to be replaced.

So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if some CDC members decided to jump in for fun.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2008-01-26 02:31pm

bilateralrope wrote:Could it be that a lot of groups decided to join with Anonymous in order to help bring down Scientology, while deflecting the CoS's attention away from themselves ?

I don't think you actually join Anonymous, I'm pretty sure how it works is you just pull up a chair and start hacking, maybe get involved with other small communities of hackers in sort of a loose-knit cell based system. I could be wrong but I doubt there'd be any central organisational structure. (Or if there is, it probably didn't exist before that Fox News broadcast with the exploding van.)

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2008-01-26 02:37pm

Spyder wrote: I don't think you actually join Anonymous, I'm pretty sure how it works is you just pull up a chair and start hacking, maybe get involved with other small communities of hackers in sort of a loose-knit cell based system. I could be wrong but I doubt there'd be any central organisational structure. (Or if there is, it probably didn't exist before that Fox News broadcast with the exploding van.)

All that's really required to be a member of Anonymous is to post in /b/. Calling it a community of hackers is really over-inflating their importance.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2008-01-26 04:37pm

Spin Echo wrote:Everytime there was a party, they'd go piss on the Scientology door. It got to the point where the door was so warped it had to be replaced.

That's a lot of piss.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2008-01-26 04:42pm

Superman wrote:
Spin Echo wrote:Everytime there was a party, they'd go piss on the Scientology door. It got to the point where the door was so warped it had to be replaced.
That's a lot of piss.

Its a college fraternity, they have plenty.

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2008-01-26 04:46pm

Well, the DDOS attack only worked for a few days. The COS has contracted Prolexic, a company that specializes in defending against DDOS attacks.

And Wired is reporting that one of the IP's used didn't belong to the COS, but rather a school in the Netherlands.

Anonymous Hackers Shoot For Scientologists, Hit Dutch School Kids
By Ryan Singel January 25, 2008 | 5:39:35 PM

Dutch schoolchildren may be the first collateral damage of an online war being waged against the Church of Scientology by a motley crew of internet troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous.

Coordination broke down Friday among the loose affiliate of online troublemakers known as Anonymous as they tried to continue their ongoing attacks against Scientology.

The group has spent the last few days trying to keep down the scientology.org website via a distributed denial of service attack, posting sensitive Scientology documents around the web, and up-voting anti-Scientology stories on Digg. The attack, dubbed Project Chanology, has a wiki that attempts to tell Anonymous 'members' what to do, though the advice is ever-changing and often contradictory.

But the Church of Scientology hired Prolexic, a company that specializes in protecting websites from DDOS attacks. Prolexic's protection works by publicly substituting a Prolexic server for the attacked server, filtering out the bad traffic and passing the good traffic to the site's real server.

One of the moderators on 711chan.org thought he had learned from a friend what the real server's address was on Friday.

The user, who was using the handle Splongcat, uploaded DDOS software configured with the supposedly secret address and urged others in an internet chat room to download and run the software. The software was intended to flood the specified IP address with rogue traffic in order to bring the server down.

But within minutes, users began complaining the software was crashing and others analyzed the traffic and found that the IP address didn't belong to the Church of Scientology, reporting that that the software was actually targeting a school in the Netherlands.

Immediately the IRC chat room hosted on 711chan.org (currently down) was filled with calls to stop using the program, and the 900 people in the chat room returned to their disorderly conversation about whether they should be flooding Digg with anti-Scientology links or making harassing phone calls to local Scientology branches.

The Etty Hillesum Lyceum's site seemed to quickly recover, and Splongcat apologized to fellow script-kiddies for simply taking his friend at his word and not checking the IP address before unleashing the software.

Anonymous launched the attack on Scientology on January 16 to protest its use of copyright law to take down material critical of the church's bizarre practices and to attempt to force media outlets to run stories about the Church of Scientology. Their stated goal is to destroy the Church of Scientology.

The Church of Scientology has not replied to THREAT LEVEL's request for comment.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/0 ... hacke.html

Oni Koneko Damien · Post by **Oni Koneko Damien** » 2008-01-26 06:05pm

Drewcifer wrote:Well, the DDOS attack only worked for a few days. The COS has contracted Prolexic, a company that specializes in defending against DDOS attacks.

DDoS attacks are a dime a dozen. Thankfully the main thrust of the 'war' is so far from simple online script-kiddie actions that said action could almost be considered nothing more than a diversion.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-01-26 06:08pm

Oni Koneko Damien wrote:
Drewcifer wrote:Well, the DDOS attack only worked for a few days. The COS has contracted Prolexic, a company that specializes in defending against DDOS attacks.
DDoS attacks are a dime a dozen. Thankfully the main thrust of the 'war' is so far from simple online script-kiddie actions that said action could almost be considered nothing more than a diversion.

Indeed. Part of the plan isn't just destroying their ability to use the Internet for their own means, but to use the likes of Christianity against them too in a kind of "the enemy of my enemy..." strategy.

It's memetic warfare, only this time it's not "FUCK YEAH, SEAKING!" vs. "Longcat is looooong" but religious brainwashing vs. the freethinking community.

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2008-01-27 01:18am

I hope you guys are right. It would be cool if Anonymous achieves something of greatness, even potentially historical, rather than end up being another diversion from boredom that gets a bunch of kids in trouble with the law.

That's the thing that gives me any hope about this at all: that Anonymous can be all of us in some way, even while being none of us.

Phantasee · Post by **Phantasee** » 2008-01-27 01:48am

Drewcifer wrote:That's the thing that gives me any hope about this at all: that Anonymous can be all of us in some way, even while being none of us.

Is that a wordy way of saying you can take credit for it after it's done, without having to take credit for it during the actual hard part?

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-01-27 02:43am

Who cares about who takes credit, as long as the deed is done?

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2008-01-27 02:45am

Phantasee wrote:Is that a wordy way of saying you can take credit for it after it's done, without having to take credit for it during the actual hard part?

I'm sure there will be plenty of script-kiddies and wanna-be's waving their dicks around soon, boasting of accomplishments that they don't have the slightest idea of how to execute and/or actions that they don't have the balls to take, but no. I was more speaking to the genius idea of the collective anon, and the potential of involving people from many different walks of life -- even ones that would normally be at odds -- like AV was speaking of a few posts above.

Cycloneman · Post by **Cycloneman** » 2008-01-27 04:43am

Drewcifer wrote:Well, the DDOS attack only worked for a few days. The COS has contracted Prolexic, a company that specializes in defending against DDOS attacks.

It's been that way for a while. The partyvan page on Project Chanology has had that information for a while now, but Scientology websites are still slow/down.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2008-01-29 11:55am

Well, its still going strong, and apparently we are now in the era of 'hacktivism'.

The Encyclopedia Dramatica has some pretty funny youtube links, and it looks like February 10th is going to be an interesting day.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-01-29 12:47pm

This is going to be awesome..

That NOS Guy · Post by **That NOS Guy** » 2008-01-29 01:19pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:This is going to be awesome..

Eh, they said the same thing about protesting Hal Turner's house, and look how that turned out.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2008-01-29 02:00pm

That NOS Guy wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote:This is going to be awesome..
Eh, they said the same thing about protesting Hal Turner's house, and look how that turned out.

...who?

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2008-01-29 02:04pm

I get the impression that this time the protests are real. I'm gonna go and see what I can film at the Manchester one, anyway. If anyone's going and sees me, come and say hello.

That NOS Guy · Post by **That NOS Guy** » 2008-01-29 02:08pm

Molyneux wrote: ...who?

Neo-Nazi clown Anonymous caused merry hell with. Good times.

Zuul wrote: I get the impression that this time the protests are real. I'm gonna go and see what I can film at the Manchester one, anyway. If anyone's going and sees me, come and say hello.

Don't forget your Guy Fawkes mask!