[Curtman]

These sure are interesting times..

Anonymous Hackers Take Down Child Porn Websites, Leak Users' Names

Quote:

Members of the Anonymous hacktivist movement are claiming responsibility for taking down more than 40 secret child-pornography websites and leaking the names of more than 1,500 members of one of the illegal sites.

The Anonymous campaign began Oct. 14, when members of the hacktivist group found a cache of child-pornography websites while browsing a secret website called the Hidden Wiki, a guidebook to hundreds of underground websites invisible to search engines and regular Internet users. The hackers singled out Lolita City, a file-sharing site used by pedophiles, and leaked the names of the site's 1,589 active members to Pastebin on Tuesday (Oct. 18), the Examiner reported.

Member of Anonymous deciding to hack a website whose stance they don't agree with is by no means shocking news. In the past year, Anonymous-affiliated hackers have gone after the New York Stock Exchange, the Westboro Baptist Church, the Recording Industry Association of America and government sites in Malaysia, Egypt, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.

However, in targeting child pornography sites, and in explaining its methods of attack, these Anonymous-affiliated hackers have revealed a deeply disturbing side of the Internet unknown to most people.

The so-called "darknet," from which this "Operation Darknet" hacking campaign takes its name, is any part of the Internet that is hidden from view — not just hard to reach, but deliberately concealed. In this instance, a darknet appears to have grown out of the free TOR routing service, which offers anonymous, encrypted Web browsing to any user.

The TOR-based darknet has reportedly grown into a private, encrypted constellation of websites offering a variety of shady and illegal services, from fake IDs and steroids to email hacking and tip on how to call in police raids as pranks. There's even a hidden site called "The Last Box" that bills itself as an "Assassination Market."

Only computers that have installed TOR browser plug-ins can access the TOR-based darknet, including its guidebook the Hidden Wiki, the security site Infosec Island reported.

In another Pastebin posting, the hackers explained that their campaign against the child pornography sites took root when they found a site listed on the Hidden Wiki called "Hard Candy," which "was dedicated to links to child pornography." The group delved deeper and discovered that nearly all of the pornography sites listed on the Hidden Wiki "shared a digital fingerprint with the shared hosting server at Freedom Hosting."

The Anonymous-affiliated hackers then issued a warning to Freedom Hosting asking it to remove the child pornography links from its server. Freedom Hosting did not comply, so the group, at approximately 11:30 p.m. (CST) on Oct. 14 shutdown Freedom Hosting's server. Freedom Hosting restored service the following day, but it was attacked and taken down again that night.

In its statement, the Anonymous members explained their goals and how they aim to achieve them through repeated pressure and consistent online attacks.

"The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting 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," the message said. "For this, Freedom Hosting has been declared #OpDarknet Enemy Number One. By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites, among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date containing more than 100 GB of child pornography. We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting's server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography."

The statement added a demand to Freedom Hosting and other Web servers hosting child pornography.

"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."

The trail goes cold in looking for whoever is behind Freedom Hosting. The domain is currently offline; WHOIS domain-name lookups show that the registration for freedom-hosting.com expired on Aug. 7, and the registrar is holding the URL pending renewal

[SprCForr]

I look forward to reading about the arrests of pedo's in the near future.

[andyt]

So far, the things that Anonymous has done I've agreed with. But vigilantism is scary, I hope they can keep it on the up and up.

[jeff744]

andyt wrote:

So far, the things that Anonymous has done I've agreed with. But vigilantism is scary, I hope they can keep it on the up and up.

Anon is a double edged sword sometimes, while they do really good things time to time they also do bad (some have been known to harass people for little to no reason, and they go all out in the harassment). Right now they seem to be doing a lot more good though.

[CDN_PATRIOT]

andyt wrote:

So far, the things that Anonymous has done I've agreed with. But vigilantism is scary, I hope they can keep it on the up and up.

As long as they don't !@#% with the PS Network again. That was a pain in the rear.

-J.

[Tricks]

Oh fuck me. Why did the news have to report about the deep web? Gonna get script kiddies freaking out about it now. God dammit.

[Benn]

Reminds me of when a bike gang moved into a local community and got some local kids to start cleaning up graffiti in the area. Made for good headlines and positive PR. That was all it was however, just smoke and mirrors PR. They were still selling drugs to your kids and weapons etc. In fact as it turns out the kids they had working for them to clean up the area were the kids they used to run their illegal crap in the area.

While I applaud anyone ratting out a bunch of hounds and getting them off the street I can't help but wonder if this groups motives were any better than the Bike gangs.

[Freakinoldguy]

Nice to see someones fed up enough to take action since our courts won't and our police forces aren't provided enough support to.

[Tricks]

Freakinoldguy wrote:

Nice to see someones fed up enough to take action since our courts won't and our police forces aren't provided enough support to.

This. Anonymous, whether you agree with their practices or not, often believe what they are doing is for the greater good of man.

[Curtman]

Tricks wrote:

Freakinoldguy wrote:

Nice to see someones fed up enough to take action since our courts won't and our police forces aren't provided enough support to.

This. Anonymous, whether you agree with their practices or not, often believe what they are doing is for the greater good of man.

True...

[BartSimpson]

Freakinoldguy wrote:

Nice to see someones fed up enough to take action since our courts won't and our police forces aren't provided enough support to.

The problem with police agencies is all too often they lack the technical skills to even comprehend what crimes are going on in their midst. Then the next problem after that is that when a technically competent person gets hired by a police agency the old school troglodytes go into playground mode and mock the person or ignore them outright.

Then you add in the old school police bias that any girl of any age involved in prostitution or pornography is a prostitute and not a victim and you've got the double-whammy. NBC Dateline did a series of stories a few years back about underage girls abducted into prostitution and how the police agencies were beyond worthless in helping the families. In many cases the police actively frustrated the families efforts to rescue their daughters.

On a similar vein, there's a serial kidnap-rapist in the Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois region whose highly successful MO has been to kidnap college students from their apartments or dormitories and then he deliberately leaves behind several hundred dollars in cash and typically up to an ounce of meth. The cops show up when the girl is reported missing, they see the drugs, and the investigation stops dead in its tracks because once the cops see the drugs and the cash they no longer give a damn.

Their damnable bias becomes an easily played tool for the predator. By the way, no one knows if this guy has worked in Canada because your cops won't share that kind of info with our cops.

[Benn]

I've seen out federal, provincial and municipal agencies sharing info back and forth on many different crimes all the time. I've even been part of sharing it between the two sides many times.

[andyt]

Benn wrote:

Reminds me of when a bike gang moved into a local community and got some local kids to start cleaning up graffiti in the area. Made for good headlines and positive PR. That was all it was however, just smoke and mirrors PR. They were still selling drugs to your kids and weapons etc. In fact as it turns out the kids they had working for them to clean up the area were the kids they used to run their illegal crap in the area.

While I applaud anyone ratting out a bunch of hounds and getting them off the street I can't help but wonder if this groups motives were any better than the Bike gangs.

Yep, anonymous wants to save the world - nothing more dangerous than that.

[Benn]

andyt wrote:

Benn wrote:

Reminds me of when a bike gang moved into a local community and got some local kids to start cleaning up graffiti in the area. Made for good headlines and positive PR. That was all it was however, just smoke and mirrors PR. They were still selling drugs to your kids and weapons etc. In fact as it turns out the kids they had working for them to clean up the area were the kids they used to run their illegal crap in the area.

While I applaud anyone ratting out a bunch of hounds and getting them off the street I can't help but wonder if this groups motives were any better than the Bike gangs.

Yep, anonymous wants to save the world - nothing more dangerous than that.

You're probably right....

[Canadian_Mind]

Regardless of Anon's motives, the internet is the wild wild west. If you have a group of online cowboys who are willing to gunsling for the sake of good, and sometimes bad, be the good sheriff and make moves to encourage them to help you.