
Anonymous hacks MIT website on anniversary of Aaron Swartz suicide - l15
http://www.techienews.co.uk/974669/anonymous-hacks-mit-website-anniversary-aaron-swartz-suicide/
======
ewoodrich
I'm glad MIT's self-funded electrical generation project finally got what was
coming to them!

[https://web.archive.org/web/20131101000747/http://cogen.mit....](https://web.archive.org/web/20131101000747/http://cogen.mit.edu/)

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strict9
So when you're mad at someone or a group of people, you break their stuff?

Why are we cheering for this? I'm strongly in favor of EFF, Doctorow, and
others to shed light on what they did, but this the electronic equivalent of
covering a building with paint of a group you don't like.

The people left to fix it/clean it up had nothing to do with it, and it does
nothing to help those trying to break the system via legitimate means.

Come on HN, stop cheering for these events.

~~~
dwild
Is it really the same?

If they have backup (it's MIT.. I don't doubt they do have backup) it's
probably clean in less than 15 minutes.

Now they also need to fix the security issue. It's more like I know your door
is broken but I use that problem to talk about another problem. Will that make
you work more? Maybe yeah because you will have to fix that door NOW but in
the same time, the same is true if I told only you, you would still need to
fix it now because it can be a HUGE danger for you.

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jwarkentin
Seems like we should be focusing more attention on the Department of Justice.
They were the ones really pressing the ridiculous charges. MIT definitely
shares some blame, but the DoJ is where we really need to see some reform.

~~~
5F36B5F62640
It has been a year. Can we stop tiptoeing around family and pseudo friends?
Good comment from reddit discussion on a recent swartz story that was trying
to blame MIT:

[begin quote]

An adult (Aaron) who was NOT affiliated with the University, broke the law
using MIT's network. MIT suffered damages because of his actions (temporary
loss of access to JSTOR), and moved to stop his activity. Because his activity
was criminal, he was arrested.

Now his father blames MIT and the prosecuting attorney apparently almost
entirely for the death of his son. How about when he, as a father, understood
the fragility of his son's condition and didn't do more to encourage him to
perform his activism without breaking as many laws? You know, so as not to put
himself in a position where he might be faced with jail time? How about the
father getting him serious psych help so that he could understand that 3
months in jail wouldn't be the end of the world, even for someone with Crohn's
disease, and if anything, serving time would add to his status as a hacker
activist?

NOPE, never a mention of that, only slinging hate and blame at MIT for not
assuming the position of legal defender of someone who was never a student. I
genuinely wish that MIT had done more for Aaron, but blaming the University
for Aaron's suicide is ludicrous. Absolutely ridiculous.

One final thought. The dad says "Bob reasons that MIT chose not to cross
Heymann so as not to alienate the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force—or
endanger its federal grants". WELL! How dare MIT not endanger it's lifeblood
of federal grants by intervening on an unaffiliated adult's behalf!

[end quote]

MIT's behavior was fine in foresight. In hindsight they may have had better
options. The DOJ charges were not ridiculous. Again, in hindsight, had they
known they were dealing with an unusually fragile person with a defective
personal support network, they should have toned things down a little.

~~~
jwarkentin
The ridiculous part is trying to slap him with 35 years in prison (worse than
murder in many cases) when the victim, JSTOR, chose not to even press charges.

~~~
tzs
No one tried to slap him with 35 years in prison. If the prosecution was able
to win on all counts, and convince the court that Swartz had caused a very
high amount of monetary damages, he was looking at around 7 years.

See Orin Kerr's detailed look at the charges and the possible sentences at
[1].

If he opted for a plea bargain, he was looking at 3 months.

[1] [http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-
agains...](http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-
aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/)

~~~
tptacek
(Broken record) Swartz's own lawyer believed that had he opted to go to trial
and _lost_ , he still mightn't have received a custodial sentence.

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quink
MIT has quite the number of subdomains.

I myself found that a server I managed had been exploited via Roundcube a few
years ago and saw that the domain [http://esi.mit.edu/](http://esi.mit.edu/),
running on Drupal or something then, had been hacked by the same people
(tracked back the source via the Apache HTTP logs, came from a Drupal instance
that had been hacked) - links to bad websites could be found hidden in the
source code to presumably improve their Google ranking. I notified ESI and
they took it down.

I can't imagine that with the number of subdomains MIT has that this could
have been all that difficult or noteworthy.

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marbleint
I love that taking control of a website maybe 100 people would visit in a day
for a few hours is still a big deal. You want to hack something, crack a real
system.

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wanda
Yawn.

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hkmurakami
cogen.mit.edu _again_?

This is the same domain that Anonymous hacked last year.

~~~
girvo
They probably left a backdoor in there, or perhaps put up still-insecure
software when restoring from the last hack. That'd be my guess, anyway.

~~~
sp332
Or it's an inside job.

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dewiz
techienews.co.uk reports the wrong date for the protest, Feb 14, while the
real date is Feb 11.

[https://thedaywefightback.org](https://thedaywefightback.org)

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nwh
An archive for when MIT repairs their defacement —
[http://archive.is/t74rs](http://archive.is/t74rs)

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xacaxulu
The hack seems a bit vanilla. Good message nonetheless but DOJs main page
would have been a good addition.

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ivanbrussik
almost seems as though they (or maybe some of them) are somewhat ok with the
message.

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codecondo
Well done. I adore the logo placement and URL. Good job.

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machbio
just a validation, was Aaron Swartz - Co-Founder of Reddit as mentioned in the
article.. I cant seem to find any link to the same on the article..

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easy_rider
SQLi really?

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pearjuice
Yes, the world will shudder from this hack on an unrelated subdomain of a
prestigious private university! The day we fight back has finally come!

 _Please_

