The document also claimed that more than $500,000 had
been charged to credit cards and given to "charities
and revolutionary organizations."
Usernames and e-mail addresses were also released;
people were exhorted to "use and abuse these password
lists and credit card information to wreak unholy
havoc upon the systems and personal e-mail accounts
of these rich and powerful oppressors."
First, a lot of those credit cards belonged to ordinary people, not the "rich and powerful oppressors".
Second, when the credit card owners see the charges, they will dispute them. The credit card companies then will take the money back from the "charities and revolutionary organizations", and hit them with a $15-$30 chargeback fee per card.
To say that this guy was an idiot is an understatement.
He's better known to me and my online pals as "tylerknowsthis", a reference to Tyler Durden and his philosophy of destroying the capitalist system to "free the people." Say what you will about his ideals, his methods and actions are beyond retarded.
Here he is at Defcon in 2004 talking about how they need more "footsoldiers" to "fuck shit up in the streets" - to the point that Priest has to come on stage and denounce violent acts or acts that hurt people. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1269112265902193941 In general he defends the use of violence as the last act of a person who is desperate to defend freedoms for people who didn't ask to be helped. His website HackThisSite is a sort of propaganda and training tool used to entice young black hats to join his cause.
You can find a list of his previous run-ins with the law on his wikiepdia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond (My favorite is where he attacked a 70-year-old holocaust denier that was having dinner at a restaurant.... what productive direct action!)
He claims he steals his power, water and internet access and at times squats abandoned buildings and eats "freegan" so he isn't helping the capitalist system flourish. At the same time he kept a part-time computer programming job to make spare cash. So he can keep fighting the good fight against capitalism.
I think he may have still been on probation during the events of the Stratfor hack, so he may be royally fucked by the prosecution unless he too snitches - something he has repeatedly said is the worst thing any good hacktivist can do.
He's one of the longest-running jokes my online friends and I have. His rants against "the system" and hypocritical actions which seem to have little purpose serve to foster flame wars and is frequently banned when people get tired of his shit. He then comes back and threatens to "curbstomp" or "shiv" anyone who disliked or banned him. Basically, nobody but the LulzSec freaks like this guy.
Yet again the same people who try to get away with petty online crime get caught due to negligence, bragging and misplaced trust in other criminals. If only they'd learn that trusting a criminal is probably not a good idea they might not be arrested right now.
edit: In case anyone wants to verify this account (in a WikiLeaks-style full transparency way), here is a brief dump of a public chatroom on a public irc server of his comments. I don't have the entire log, just his comments. http://pastebin.mozilla.org/?dl=1506078http://tinypaste.com/a104418f (it's around 1.8MB)
I had no idea he was behind HTS, but I guess it makes sense. I came across it way back in the day on 711chan, and I suspect there's some overlap between those folks and the ones doing legwork for Anon.
Whether or not he's talented is irrelevant. He's an idiot for the same reason the thread OP stated he's an idiot: their actions cause more damage to their supposedly good-natured charities than the victims they stole money from. Not to mention the braggadocio, carelessness, lack of regard for his fellow "footsoldiers", and the haphazard way he conducts his attacks (be they physical or virtual) as to not even be effective at achieving any real results.
You want to smash the state? You want to end the tyrrany of capitalism? You want "freedom" ? Running around the streets in bandannas disabling vehicles and "fucking shit up" ain't gonna get you there buddy. Neither is stealing money from the majority of the people who used a service as a better-filtered newswire in the name of some hokey idea that the "security state" needs to be brought down.
He's a bully and a closed-minded bigot and he's too radical to ever be able to introduce any real change other than making the police remove more of our rights in order to combat people like him. He's a terrorist. And an idiot.
Would be very interesting to do a multi-faceted psychological analysis/profile on people like this. I am curious what makes them tick.
I myself have some very intense sides of my personality, but I've always channeled it into productive pursuits. When I was younger I daydreamt of being a nefarious black hat hacker, but I soon realized that startups, lifestyle design, social dynamics and personal development are far more rewarding ways of hacking reality :)
Contrast this with the China hackers that went underground 15 years ago, no chats..no irc..no bbs boards..nothing..
These anonymous guys are complete effing idiots..meaning any training FBI is doing in catching these folks is actually doing the FBI more harm than good in that its not preparing them for the hard serious hacker threats such as China hackers..
Good hackers won't be caught, there is no training. If they do XYZ and don't leave any traces they can't be caught. It took a considerable amount of time and effort to catch these people and they left hundreds of logs.
They're creating the assumption that Chinese Gov't or independent parties are hacking systems for gain. The statements of "they leave no trace" or the like attribute to the fact that there isn't any evidence through google or otherwise.
As far as I'm concerned there is evidence of some high profile hacking teams somewhere in the world doing some nasty stuff (such as the fraudulent certificates and hacks on companies that was tied back to Stuxnet). We don't know for sure who does it but a lot of people assume the chinese based off of (what I think) is IP traces.
Its all speculation. We know that someone is hacking, just not who. Its obvious that they're good because there hasn't been enough evidence to pin it on anyone. As anyone on this site should know: IP isn't a very good identifier and even less so for professionals.
"Hi, i'm a professional Sysadmin, intermediate Hacker and hobby Coder."
Cute bio. Didn't know being a professional computer janitor was something to be proud of. Also, amazing hack you pulled on your hacker blog where you blog about your hack poem. You're a modern day Edgar Bloggen Poe.
Here let me give a try,
Blogging is not poking.
Blogging is not tweeting.
Blogging is not programming.
Blogging is not learning.
Blogging is not making.
Blogging is not sharing.
Blogging is not networking.
At any rate, calling yourself a hacker (Without chops to back it up if your using it in the heroes of the computer revolution sense.) to anyone who knows better is either some serious bragging, or braindead stupid depending on which definition you're using.
In fact, the last thing anyone who does stuff like Lulzsec should admit to being is a "Hacker" (Even if they mean it benignly.) because you can bet the farm that the first people the Feds look at are self described "Hackers". I just can't believe the kind of information these people leak about themselves. Doesn't "I trust you today, but not necessarily tomorrow..." mean anything to black hats?
EDIT: Saying anything about the state of the real world should be considered an incredibly bold release of entropy or invasion of privacy if the only thing that keeps you safe at night is your mask.
EDIT2: Sorry, thought the above quote was from Jeremy Hammond's blog. At any rate most of my points still stand from the hypothetical perspective of "If I were a blackhat..."
This is my first time registering and posting on HN.
All of that comes from someone posting on a Web 20 social blog news aggregator of a forum, that's surely powered by some webscale MongoDB Ruby on Rails web app, where everyone is hellbent on taking back the word hack as they attempt to score some "serious" Venture Capital to create the next hot microvlogging service, or perhaps the next hot Android and iOS compatible remote Arduino LED blinking mobile app. I seriously don't understand the motivation.
I wasn't addressing you at all. In fact, I thought you were talking about someone else entirely.
Regardless, as an outsider peering inside, it does seem a bit strange. One of the things effecting my perception is the simple question I ask myself looking at posts like the one you describe. "Does this have any chance of making money?"
Because if it doesn't, I always wonder what the motivation was for making a service for which there are 50 implementations already. I've probably written under 500 lines of code in my life, because I can't justify it to myself to build an application nobody needs, even for practice.
At any rate, the "hack" itself is it's own sort of art. With an almost intangible feeling of delight when executed successfully. I can't really quantify it myself to be honest. And I've only experienced it once.
TL;DR: The short answer is, people here find that stuff fun.
Second, when the credit card owners see the charges, they will dispute them. The credit card companies then will take the money back from the "charities and revolutionary organizations", and hit them with a $15-$30 chargeback fee per card.