Why the Latest, Hottest Hacker Group May Never Have Existed.

I’ll admit it.  Like many of my colleagues, I’m a sucker for a great story.  Sure, I run it through the standard fact-checking traps, and try to question and independently confirm each detail.  And always, I remind myself that if it smells too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

Still, sometimes I get taken in.  And other times…I’m not quite sure.

The LulzSec mascot, toasting the symbol of Anonymous

Latest case in point: LulzSec.

Now, if you’re in any way tuned in to the latest Internet happenings or follow cyber-security issues, you’ve been hearing a lot about LulzSec of late.  If not, here’s a short primer: when they popped up on the hacker scene just a few months back, it was hard to know what to make of them.  First, there was its mascot.  Unlike Anonymous’ iconic empty black suit, or taunting Guy Fawkes mask, LulzSec’s logo was a somewhat snooty-looking creature, complete with top hat, monocle and a glass of wine.  Then there was its name – “Lulz Security” or LulzSec for short – suggesting more mischief than activism.  As we discussed in an earlier post:

“LulzSec” appears to be a collective venture whose main goal is making trouble – or in their own words, “causing lulz.”  In the lingo of the Twitter Age, ‘lulz’ is a variant of ‘lol’, which means “laugh(ing) out loud.”  However, while a lol might be applied to a joke or funny picture in appreciation of something mildly amusing, a lulz has come to mean laughs at the expense of others.   A cute kitten picture prompts a lol; someone who has their accounts hacked and private information exposed is a lulz.”

But few were laughing once LulzSec got up and rolling.  They’re widely credited with engineering a major hack of Sony’s Playstation Network, exposing the private information of potentially millions of players.  Sony was so embarrassed by the attack that the chief corporate officers offered a rare public apology, bowing deeply before the press.  And the attacks didn’t stop there: among LulzSec’s other targets: the U.S. Senate, the Arizona Police Department, Fox.com, the FBI, the Public Broadcasting Service, the state of Brazil, and the CIA. Read the rest of this entry »

Dorian Jones | Istanbul

The Turkish government wants to take more control of the Internet – and if recent events are a guide, it’s ready to battle to do just that.

The government recently arrested 32 people accused of attacking state websites.  Concerns are growing over Internet freedom in Turkey as the government proposes rules for a compulsory filtering of the Internet.

The Internet hackers’ group “Anonymous” declared Turkish state websites a target because of government proposals to introduce a filtering of the Internet.

Despite the group’s efforts, Turkish authorities appeared ready for last week’s attack, saying it only had a limited effect.  And, within days, police had arrested 32 people, nine of which were minors. Read the rest of this entry »

And Better Blogging Through Stripping

Periodically we like to share a few of the stories and posts from across the web that caught our eye.  There are no editorial threads implied connecting these items together, other than being interesting.

#1: The Fight Over Airwaves.  Several facts of war are as old as battle itself.  They are ugly, bloody affairs.  Far too much that is precious is lost.  And each new war creates its own new technology.

Military history through the centuries demonstrates the winning side doesn’t have to be the richest or biggest  – but they do have to be the most adaptable to new innovations.   In Iraq and Afghanistan, that innovation has been the IED.

A controlled IED explosion in Iraq (photo: U.S. Marine Corps)

Read the rest of this entry »

Old Questions About Truthfulness in the Internet Era

Her name was Amina Abdallah Arraf al-Omani, Amina for short, and for several days she was headline news.   As author of the blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” Araf wrote about the conflicts of living as a U.S.-born lesbian in Syria.  But now she was part of a different conflict – one possibly fatal.

Arraf’s frank discussions of sexuality and politics in Syria made her a popular read – and a target.  After all, she was living in a nation where homosexuality is illegal and criticisms of the government are not welcome.

And then last Monday, a scare.  In a post titled simply “Amina,” Raina Ismail – Arraf’s cousin – wrote:

“Amina was seized by three men in their early 20’s.  According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed…One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad.  The witness did not get the tag number.  She promptly went and found Amina’s father. The men are assumed to be members of one of the security services or the Baath Party militia.  Amina’s present location is unknown and it is unclear if she is in a jail or being held elsewhere in Damascus.”

Another short update followed, detailing Raina’s frantic efforts to make contact with her cousin, to no avail.  Human rights activists, bloggers and journalists picked up the search for Arraf; very soon a Facebook group formed advocating for her release.  Her online girlfriend in Montreal, Sandra Bagaria, was desparate for news.  But to all the world it just seemed as though Amina Arraf disappeared.

The truth was worse: Amina Arraf never existed.  She was made up.  She was a lie. Read the rest of this entry »

Mobile Devices Are Saving Lives and Money

Rosanne Skirble | Washington, D.C.

Photo: WHO Girish Babu Bommankanti

World Health officials have released the most comprehensive global survey to date of how mobile phones and other wireless communication technologies are improving health care delivery around the world.

The World Health Organization survey notes that there are more than five billion mobile phone subscribers in the world today. That means more than eight out of 10 people around the world make use of the mobile devices.

That’s more people than have access to paved roads, electricity or the Internet, says Misha Kay, head of the World Health Organization’s Global Observatory for eHealth, which produced the report. Mobile technology, Kay says, is about more than just wireless phone calls. Read the rest of this entry »

Tweeting Isn’t Just For The Young – Or Rich

Researchers at the Pew Internet and American Life Project have released their latest study of Twitter use in America.  Their focus: who’s joining and who’s tweeting.  The results may not be what you expect – and they’re already being challenged by Twitter’s CEO.  More on that in a moment.

What’s not disputed is that in the past several years the micro-blogging site has gone from a puzzlement to a curiosity to a news source before becoming, at least this week, a source of embarrassment for Congressman Anthony Weiner.  And it’s big: Twitter estimates it has at 175 million registered users, and that number increases every day.

However, this likely does not mean that 175 million separate individuals are using the service.  It’s very easy to register an account with Twitter, and as Nicholas Carson writing in Business Insider recently noted, many of those accounts – some 90 million – have zero followers.  Additionally a growing number of people have multiple accounts for varying levels of public exposure and messaging  – for example, one for work, one for friends, and another for private matters.

But as we constantly re-learn, there’s very little that’s truly private on Twitter.  Yes, individuals can send private messages user to user.  However, by its very design, Twitter is meant to be almost completely transparent.  Unlike many other social networks, you don’t have to be registered to view others’ accounts and ‘tweets’.   That means once a message is ‘tweeted’ or posted, it’s visible to the entire Internet…and very difficult to erase.  Just ask comedian Gilbert Gottfried. Read the rest of this entry »

Has the Internet Made Finding Faith Easier, or More Difficult?

Today I put a short prayer in the Western Wall.

I also spent some time in a mosque studying the Muslim hadith with a group of students.

Later, I plan on meditating at a buddhist temple.

And all of this without ever leaving my desk.    Welcome to the age of virtual religion.

From basic technologies such as email list-servs and online bulletin boards, to social-minded applications like Facebook and QQ, to complex virtual reality experiences like Second Life, people are taking their faith into the digital world.   In ways large and small, users in search of spiritual answers are turning to the Internet – and what they’re finding is nearly as complex as the web itself.

If you have a question about what a certain sura may say, you can find its complete text – in Arabic and English – online.  If you want to offer a prayer to a Hindu deity, or spin a virtual Buddhist prayer wheel, there’s an app for that.  And if you’re just unsure about what you believe…well, there are millions of other people online just like you, believers and nonbelievers, all ready to chat.

Anthropologists teach that religion and ritual are intrinsic to the human experience, likely predating even language.  Thus it should surprise no one that as computers have become more powerful and digital experiences more lifelike, faith and spirituality are exerting an increasingly powerful online pull on those who believe – and those who are questioning.  But all this digital faith also has growing numbers of theologians, scholars and others wondering: can belief be virtual?  Can religion genuinely exist online? Read the rest of this entry »

And The Lesson That Never Gets Learned

As news stories go, the tale of Congressman Anthony Weiner and his recent online activities seems rather limited.  It’s not a story about war, or disease, or a major environmental disaster.  But given what it hints at  – online sex – there’s little surprise it’s front page news in the U.S.

In a tearful press conference Monday, the six-term New York Democrat admitted to sending provocative photos and exchanging intimate messages with at least six women via online services such as Twitter.

“I’ve made terrible mistakes,” Weiner said, recounting that for several years – before and since marrying his wife Huma Abedin – he had used various social networks like Facebook to meet and start up online relationships with women.   Expressing “deep regret” over his actions, Rep. Weiner confirmed a story that he initially denied; namely that he had sent a picture of himself wearing little else than underwear to a college-aged woman in Washington State via Twitter.

When the photograph first emerged last week, the congressman denied it was his picture, saying his Twitter account had been “hacked” by someone clearly trying to make fun of his pun-worthy last name.  But his less-than-clear denials only fueled suspicions, for example when he told one news cable network that he couldn’t say “with certitude” whether or not the picture was of him.

Now that the world knows the truth, it’s natural to ask, ‘Why would he do it?’  But the ‘it’ here doesn’t refer to sex; politicians all over the world have been caught in similar scandals.  Rather, the question now is ‘Why would he do this on the Internet?’  How could someone as smart as a U.S. congressman get so publicly snarled on Twitter? Read the rest of this entry »

Why Nations Block The Web, And What May Follow

UPDATE: 1500 hours UTC Friday: Earlier we posted about the near flat-lining of Internet traffic within Syria, wondering whether Damascus was adopting a tactic tried earlier this year by Egypt.  As detailed earlier this year, Egyptian authorities squeezed the Border Gateway Protocols – the road maps of the Internet into Egypt, if you will – essentially erasing Egypt from the web.  (One Egyptian ISP, Noor, was not affected, mostly like as the government’s last life-life to the Internet.)  It was a neat disappearing trick that, for several days, made nearly every Egyptian web address invisible to the rest of the world.

One of the key early indicators was the complete elimination of any data traffic coming out of Egypt. While data traffic has slowed to a near trickle in Syria, there still is some small amount of traffic, suggesting the BGPs are still in place.  More forensic data analysis will be forth-coming, but it’s possible at this point that Syria isn’t copying Egypt, but rather Libya.

Recall that in early March, as detailed by the Internet analysis firm Renesis, Internet traffic into and out of Libya came to a near halt.  This was likely in response to a “Day of Rage” protest that organizers had been planning there, similar to what was planned in Syria for Friday.  But as James Cowie makes clear, a near-halt isn’t a complete halt, and had Syria erased it’s BGP pathways, like Egypt, all web traffic would have been impossible.  Although it’s still early, there are signs now that the Syrian Internet, while crippled, is still alive. Read the rest of this entry »