You might have read the guest post by Jason Adriaan over the Anon’s “childish” cybercrimes against major websites which they believe are against the freedom of information. I just thought I would give my opinion as well. Here is the statement from Anonomous:

“While we don’t have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same: we want transparency (in our case in copyright) and we counter censorship. The attempts to silence WikiLeaks are long strides closer to a world where we can not say what we think and not  express how we feel. We can not let this happen, that is why we will find out who is attacking WikiLeaks and with that find out who tries to  control our world. What we are going to do when we found them? Except for the usual DDoSing, word will be spread that whoever tries to silence or discourage WikiLeaks, favors world domination rather than freedom and democracy.”

I reckon they are pretty upfront about their reasons. Clearly these Denial of Service attacks are about making a statement – and not about giving “wedgies” to sites. We should not forget that Wikileaks itself was attacked using DDoS methods before finally being taken down by Amazon and EveryDNS. The initial wikileaks hacker (called “th3j35t3r”) explained his attacks on Wikileaks by stating that they are “attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, ‘other assets’ & foreign relations”.

The main targets of the attacks: Mastercard, Visa and Paypal are essentially the backbone of  electronic payments, and anything that can take them down is clearly not a force to be taken lightly. Same goes for PostFinance, who shut down Julian Assange’s defense fund, which have also been taken down. Yes, they are sites that will probably be up and running soon enough as if nothing happened, but remember these are sites that drum up a lot of business from their public facing sites which account to millions, but most off all, their reputation is their biggest asset.

So while Mastercard and VISA transactions might be ongoing, public perception is key. The typical person who sees this might ask “Can I trust my money with some company that can be attacked by some hackers?” (excuse the ignorance in that statement, but this is the way uninformed people might interpret this). Never mind the legality of DDoS, this is a modern form of strike or boycotting. Even though the common man cannot take down Mastercard / VISA transactions, at least we can make them (and their customers) take note, and potentially hamper their business.

Also, I just thought I would also just tell you how DDoS are orchestrated, and why the apparently low number of “600 people” is irrelevant. These attackers sign up to Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) which are installed on their machines. All of these machines form a hivemind which coordinates TCP, UDP packets and HTTP requests. The Hive Mind is controlled by an IRC channel operator, forming a voluntary botnet. So while 600 people might not sound a lot, LOIC was designed to stress test (and potentially kill) networks and services from a single client using hundreds of pings every minute. Now if LOIC is used in group, and is orchestrated properly, it is indeed a very powerful form of attack. Oh and by the way, that number has now increased to more than a 1000, growing continually…

At present, Anon is attacking the following sites:

Mastercard, VISA, Postfinance, Paypal blog and Paypal main site, http://aklagare.se (Swedish prosecutors), EveryDNS, Senator Lieberman’s site (the first government site targeted by Operation Avenge Assange), Sarah Palin’s site (she said Assange should be hunted like a terrorist), PandaLabs (ran a DDoS report page),

These attacks are orchestrated through the anonops.net website, which is also being targeted by anti-wikileaks supporters.

While I am not choosing sides in this whole Wikileaks story, I really think these DDoS attacks are not simply fooling around. If the internet is becoming the modern playfield for actvism, we have something very dangerous on our hands. Dont underestimate these “teenage guys”. This is not kiddie stuff – they are holding a lot of power.

Guest post by Jason Adriaan.

Last night an Internet group that goes by “Anonymous” reaped revenge against services that cut ties with Wikileaks and aggressors against Wikileaks. They took down thepaypalblog.com for 8 hours, aklagare.se (Swedish Prodecutors) for 5 hours, postfinance.ch (Swedish Bank) for 12 hours, lieberman.senate.gov and everyDNS.com. This might sound really impressive, but to be honest… it’s not.

Related:

Operation: Avenge Assange is about more than “Childish Cybercrimes”.

Great WikiLeaks resources online.

They did these attacks through the power of DDoS (Distibuted Denail of Service), which is the online equivalent of hundreds of thousands of screaming teenage girls stampeding to see Justin Bieber at your local grocery store. In layman terms how this works is a few hundred geeky (mostly teenage) guys get together and repeatedly refresh the site they are targeting, forcing the computer (server) the site is hosted on to run out of system resources. Now this sounds complicated but the truth is there is an app called the Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) which does all this for you. The app hands over the power of your computer to one or two guys that coordinate the attacks or you can use the app yourself.

These DDoS attacks are illegal in most countries and have been going on for almost two weeks now between anonymous Pro- and Anti-Wikileak groups and has reached the point of just being plain childish. DDoS is as juvenile as a wedgie, it renders you temporarily discomforted but soon its over and it’s as if nothing happened.

The “Anonymous” group vowed to take down Twitter, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal in this way soon, but this will not happen. The truth is “Anonymous” is a small group of about 600 folks and attacking sites built to handle traffic that stretches into the billion page impressions is impossible no matter what type of magic software you use. This is why DDoS’ers all choose easy small websites which are not able to handle big traffic spikes as targets. This way they create alot of hype and feel all fuzzy inside for doing something teh_awesome, when in fact they are really just swimming in the kiddies pool of cyber crimes.

[Update] Ed note – Mastercard.com is now completely down due to the attacks.

(Update: Minnaar Pieters wrote his follow up article to this. He does not concur.)

(Update 2: 5 Great WikiLeaks resources online.)

Back in July we reported on the Paypal X / FNB competition to develop local adaptation of innovative paypal applications, and here are the results! Two up-and-coming star developers have created Billbox, a brand new application using PayPal’s payment platform that offers proof of their formidable skills. Now the pair of Neil Koekemoer and Werner Janse van Rensburg have been rewarded for their excellence, and declared winners of the PayPal X / FNB Developer Challenge – the award for the most innovative platform using PayPal.

Billbox is an extremely useful application for anyone who has ever lived in a situation where they’ve needed to split expenses with others – it monitors receipts and payments for those who share bills. Not only does it keep track of shared expenses, it also requests payment from group members.

Koekemoer explains how Billbox will be used: “Our App is designed for people who share expenses such as students, housemates or holiday and business travel groups. Individuals can also use the application to track their own spending habits,” he says.

His co-creator Janse van Rensburg adds, “Having shared bills with housemates for several years, we knew there was a need for a product like Billbox ― and we were our own best customers.”

The competition and award is part of FNB’s on-going commitment to driving innovation in the financial services sector. The PayPal X Developer Challenge highlights the demand for payment enabled platforms and rewards innovative uses of PayPal’s payments tools.

Interestingly, the pair, who are about to be flown by FNB to attend the PayPal X Innovate 2010 Conference in San Francisco as a result of their victory, only found out about the competition at the last minute. They heard FNB CEO Michael Jordaan and PayPal’s Regional Director of Israel and South Africa Oded Zehavi make an announcement about it at the Silicone Cape event in Cape Town.

“Three hundred and fifty seven hours later Billbox was born, just in time for the closing date of the PayPal X / FNB Developer Challenge,” said Koekemoer.

Paypal has been available for a few months in South Africa, and the uptake has been a bit slow so far in my experience. I would have thought that e-commerce websites in SA would have jumped at the chance to use Paypal. I do like the idea behind Paypal – never having to expose my credit card details online, and I always use it when I am given the choice.

Clearly FNB is trying to foster some development in this regard, and the prizes are quite big:

First National Bank (FNB) and PayPal today announced a new competition to award developers who create innovative applications using PayPal’s payment platform.

The local winner of the FNB and PayPal X Award will receive a trip to the United States to attend PayPal’s second annual Innovate Conference, which is taking place 26 and 27 October. The prize will include airfare, accommodation, meals, conference costs, visa expenses and insurance to an approximate value of $10,000. In addition, developers will also be automatically entered into PayPal’s X Developer Challenge and could receive an award totalling up to $100,000 in prizes.

This year’s PayPal X Innovate 2010 conference will be held at Moscone West in San Francisco. The conference will feature presentations from industry experts, new product announcements and sessions that will give developers the tools and support they need to create the future of payments.

“The first FNB and PayPal X Award seeks to reward South Africa’s entrepreneurial spirit and jump start local innovation and new business ventures,” said Chris Savides, General Manager, FNB Complementary Online Services.

PayPal opened its application programming interfaces (APIs) last year, giving developers around the world the ability to monetize their ideas and build new payment applications on new devices and development platforms.

“PayPal has always stood for innovation in payments,” said Oded Zehavi, regional director of PayPal Israel and South Africa. “We are excited to partner with FNB to encourage developers to build their dream apps and make payments safer and easier for people in South Africa.”

How to enter

To submit for the FNB and PayPal X Award, log on to x.com and click to register for the PayPal X Developer Challenge. Select the box for the FNB and PayPal X Award.

It’s been a big week for the South African internet economy. First MWEB started a broadband price war with their uncapped ADSL offering and now Pay Pal and FNB have announced that they’ve entered into an agreement to bring Pay Pal to South Africa. This enables South Africans to sell to PayPal’s global customer base of more than 81 million active accounts in 190 markets around the world and move the proceeds to their FNB accounts. (South Africa is the 190th country to get paypal accounts!)

This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to setup online stores and instantly start selling online. Bad news for online merchant providers like MyGate, VCS and even MWEB’s Safeshop.

Michael Jordaan, FNB’s Chief Executive Officer had this to say -

“We are especially pleased to make this announcement on the eve of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, as South Africans will be able to join the global eCommerce marketplace. Our agreement with PayPal also enables international businesses and individuals to transact with South African service providers via a secure and convenient payment gateway”

Pay Pal concluded -

“FNB and PayPal have a similar focus on innovation, so it makes sense that we would work with FNB to make online payments even easier for merchants and consumers in South Africa,” said Oded Zehavi, head of PayPal’s business in Israel and South Africa.

FNB Customers can simply open a PayPal account and link it to a qualified FNB account and receive PayPal payments in 21 different currencies. FNB will convert the currency to South African Rand, when the money is transferred into their accounts.

Twitter is buzzing with the news.

Nokia dominates the world cell phone market share and with such a huge customer base it’s no surprise why they’d like to delve deep into this an use it for further profits with a real time monetary service.

It looks like the Finish folks will be presenting the Nokia Money module — an elementary banking and money transfer service, at the Nokia World conference which is to be held next week. The service that will be rolled out next year in a selective number of markets will be an effective electronic money transfer tool, a money management system where the customer will only be required to know the phone number of the receipt of money. Smells like mobile Paypal?

The credentials of the service quality cannot be doubted for it will involve Nokia’s money and mobile money transfer specialist Obopay’s brain.

Rumors about the Apple Pay Pal Killer have also surfaced from time to time, but Nokia seems to have one-upped the competition with a mobile version of the money transfer system … something which could have a more far reaching effect.

Source