Anonymous Wages War with Child Porn Syndicate
Anonymous Wages War with Child Porn Syndicate
Posted 10/24/2011 at 6:08am
| by Paul Lilly
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The hactivist group known as Anonymous is taking credit for busting up an online child pornography ring consisting of several underground websites. As part of Operation Darknet, Anonymous targeted "the owners and operators at Freedom Hosting [who] are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape, and death," a statement on the organization's website reads.
Anonymous claims that by taking down Freedom Hosting, it effectively eliminated more than 40 child porn websites, including Lolita City, one of the biggest with over 100GB of content. The hackers also posted account details of nearly 1,600 members of Lolita City.
"Our demands are simple. Remove all child pornography content from your servers. Refuse to provide hosting services to any website dealing with child pornography. This statement is not just aimed at Freedom Hosting, but everyone on the internet. It does not matter who you are, if we find you to be hosting, promoting, or supporting child pornography, you will become a target," Anonymous warned.
Up to this point, most of what Anonymous has done could be classified as either political in nature or haphazard, or both. The organization has come under fire for often times posting account details of innocent people on banking sites and other entities Anonymous has a beef with. But should we applaud Anonymous' actions in this case? Or as security firm Sophos ponders, did Anonymous hackers do the right thing?
"I don't think so. Their intentions may have been good, but take-downs of illegal websites and sharing networks should be done by the authorities, not Internet vigilantes," Sophos' Graham Cluley stated in a blog post.
Clulely argues that by taking the law into their own hands, the hacking group's actions could potentially compromise an existing investigation and prevent authorities from collecting the necessary evidence for prosecution.
"The anonymous hackers may feel they have done the right thing, but they may actually have inadvertently put more children at risk through their actions," Cluley said.
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Havok
October 24, 2011 at 6:37pm
Did Anonymous just become The Dark Knight 2.0? Finally, they do something justified. A little on the gray side of things, but action against the seedy underbelly of the internet is always good...right?
tornato7
October 24, 2011 at 5:31pm
The authorities had their chance, and how long can it take to do an investigation? Isn't going to a site and seeing child pornography enough evidence to take them down?
Slugbait
October 25, 2011 at 9:37am
Incorrect. This happened just three months ago: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-08-03/justice/us.child.porn.ring_1_sexual-abuse-bulletin-board-images-and-videos?_s=PM:CRIME
Anybody who thinks the authorities don't know what they are doing, or isn't doing anything, thinks wrong.
Jelson
October 24, 2011 at 2:29pm
More power to them in this case, forget thee FBI, there to busy's chasing terrorist.
Morete
October 24, 2011 at 9:09am
1). The government doesn't like the competition.
2). Regarding Anonymous; Even a clock that's broken....
Wonko33
October 24, 2011 at 7:43am
I think they did the right thing. As for messing up investigations, big deal. FBI has been doing busts for years and there's still tons of that stuff out there, if you have the means to get it off the net get it off the net.
Just like if you can get a pusher off the corner where you live, don't wait for the cops who are just sitting there to catch the big fish, the've been doing it for years and there's still a pusher at the corner of your street.
zNelson24
October 24, 2011 at 7:39am
While I agree with Cluley, in that law enforcement should be the one taking down these sites, our government as of late has failed to do so. Like just recently, instead of targeting and destroying sites that host this sick content, Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) thought it would be a better idea just a seize domains (which anyone with a computer science background knows that this dosen't work). Anon actually got rid of a website and exposed a lot of the regulars there.
rawrnomnom
October 24, 2011 at 6:54am
*CLAP* *Clap*...
Bout time you did something useful you tools...
Device Unknown
October 24, 2011 at 10:02am
Aas opposed to what? hacking sony instead? sheesh some people just like to bitch about anything.
damicatz
October 24, 2011 at 6:44am
It's very likely the FBI already knows about the child porn websites in question. See, sometimes you let stuff like that remain up for a while so that you can observe the activity there and trace things back to their creators. By engaging in "vigilante justice", anonymous could very well have just sabotaged years of work.
In addition, none of the evidence that anonymous has leaked is admissible in court unless there was a previous search warrant for that specific information. The information they released was released with the primia facie intent of getting the members of that site in trouble with the law. Because of that, anonymous would be considered an agent of government and, as such, the evidence is inadmissible due to not having a search warrant.
Danthrax66
October 24, 2011 at 9:40am
I highly doubt that the FBI were doing anything to these sites. The FBI is far more concerned with people downloading music than with CP because there aren't activist groups paying them nearly as much as the RIAA and MPAA.
win7fanboi
October 24, 2011 at 6:41am
Love the Darknet project name referring to the one in Daemon (http://www.amazon.com/Daemon-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0525951113) I think.
DDRDiesel
October 24, 2011 at 6:40am
I see where Sophos' point is concerned, and I tend to agree. However; an investigation into a child porn ring should not take months, or even years, at a time. I understand you want to catch the persons responsible, but there's no way it needs to take forever. With cases as sensitive as this, think of the children in danger, and the lives that could be destroyed or lost with each passing day. Look at how long it took j35t3r to get the full name and address of the members of lulzsec. Just one man, against an entire hacking group. Now compare that to the (what could be) dozens of officials working on these cases, taking forever to get what they could consider evidence. I think what Anonymous did was brilliant, and a huge step forward in the right direction for society
Slugbait
October 24, 2011 at 6:17pm
The Jester wasn't very involved with doxing lulzsec, tho' he does share drama with Sabu. Dox was done primarily by A-Team, Web Ninjas, even (gasp!) TeaMp0isoN, with help from Indiana Jones. It certainly wasn't just one man against an entire hacking group.
However, several lulzsec members arrested so far has a different name and usually different geographical location than as doxed. As examples, Joepie was doxed as Sven Slootweg in Norway, but Ryan Cleary was arrested by Scotland Yard; Topiary was doxed as Daniel Sandberg in Swden, but Jake Davis was arrested in the Shetland Islands.
To drive home the point of the second paragraph with an extra-large hammer: in the posted leak of account details for Lolita City, one of the account handles is th3j35t3r. A short time after the leak, the_plumb3r profusely apologized to Jester...because it was actually an Anon member who created that account in order to infiltrate the site, and other Anons did not know about it. An extraordinarily unwise move should Jester have taken offense, but the bigger points being that some people may be falsely accused or suspected by the actions of Anonymous, or Web Ninjas, or A-Team, etc.
In addition, the coordinated work of authorities across the globe to document the pedos and then sting them in a single-day raid has been blown to hell. Did you all forget what happened just three months ago? http://articles.cnn.com/2011-08-03/justice/us.child.porn.ring_1_sexual-abuse-bulletin-board-images-and-videos?_s=PM:CRIME That investigation took over a year, and it was worth it. And it wasn't the first world-wide bust.
Anonymous is not brilliant at all.
ocnier
October 24, 2011 at 6:38am
Now if only they will continue to use their powers for good from now on.
Danthrax66
October 24, 2011 at 9:42am
Well honestly most of their attacks have resulted in at least some good. Even the attacks on banks that were publicized were good in some way. If anonymous could hack into a bank and get customer info then who else could? It is making corporations think seriously about their security and it will end up being an overall positive in the long run.
Ntldr
October 24, 2011 at 6:31am
I don't normally think so called "Vigilante Justice" is right. That being said in this case even if there was an investigation going on, or Police/FBI were doing something about it, Anon took this site out faster and got the stuff offline faster than the Authorities were.
In this one case atleast in my mind they were justified and did the right thing and now if the Authorities want they can look at the 1600+ accounts that were posted and prosecute them.
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