

The hackers hacked: main Anonymous IRC servers seized - thornjm
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/the-hackers-hacked-main-anonymous-irc-servers-seized.ars

======
joshes
The tl;dr of it all is that, according to at least one Anon, this "Ryan"
fellow was a former moderator of the IRC and was the legal owner of the
AnonOps.ru and AnonOps.net domains. Apparently, two others, "Nerdo" and "Owen"
(whom you may remember from the HBGary fiasco), revoked his IRC credentials.
Ryan somewhat predictably responded by DDOS'ing (with help from 808chan) and
essentially taking his domains and going home. Some Anons responded by getting
"Ryan"'s docs and now it's all just a bunch of circle jerking.

~~~
citricsquid
It's as if you just described the entire "Anonymous" thing in one simple
sentence fragment:

> it's all just a bunch of circle jerking.

------
GoodIntentions
Reading that article brought to mind a sarcastic question I heard addressed
from a skin to a young punk decades back:

"So who is in charge of this whole anarchy thing anyway?"

~~~
gcb
You can only hear that from someone that still mix up anarchy with chaos.

a good example to end this discussion quickly is to point that international
law is anarchy, and is pointing to a pretty stable direction. And I do not see
anyone claiming for a global earth goverment. just see how little UN has to
say in anything.

~~~
udoprog
Well little is a relative term. UNs had a big impact on politics in my
country. I also found the quote a pretty amusing and quite valid tidbit, given
that Anarchy simply means a gov. without ruler.

~~~
orblivion
But, membership in the UN is as of yet voluntary, yes? Membership of states in
the US, for instance, is not.

~~~
udoprog
It was just a comment. I did not disagree with international politics being an
anarchic system contrary to chaos. Just the UN bit. I do in fact see it as a
very clever observation.

~~~
gcb
The UN is just a face to the power. Do you think the global nations agreed on
Israel for example? No, the powerful nations decided, UN just delivered the
news.

Of course UN has some power. but it's mostly a messenger.

------
jrockway
Lesson learned today: if you're going to commit crimes, you'd better trust
your co-conspirators.

Follow-up lesson: turns out that random people on IRC are not automatically
trustworthy.

Follow-up follow-up lesson: use Tor.

~~~
iwwr
Tor is far from safe, especially if your opponent has the ability to
intersperse a majority of treacherous nodes into the network.

~~~
jrockway
I don't know if that's something to be worried about or not, but it just seems
like common sense to try and cover your tracks if you are doing something that
The Authorities don't approve of.

Sure, Tor might be broken (though there is no evidence of anyone getting in
trouble for doing something through Tor), but it might also not be broken. We
don't know. We do know for sure that when your IP address is 1.2.3.4 in the
logs, they are going to call your 1.2.0.0/16's ISP and be on your doorstep in
hours.

To be honest, I guess it's good for society that criminals are so stupid. The
downside for me is that I don't get to read anything interesting when the
media covers these stories -- all I get is "we got a bunch of IPs and people
using their real names to harrass Sony executives' kids".

------
sc68cal
I guess someone decided to ride the split?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat_takeover>

~~~
yurisagalov
IRC operators and Channel operators are very different.

IRC servers have IRC operators. They are volunteers who make sure that the
server remains connected to the network (They can split/reconnect leaf nodes
and hubs to/from other servers based on pre-defined rules in the IRC daemon's
configuration. This allows you to rebalance the network, and reconnect servers
if a central hub goes down/becomes unresponsive). They are also in charge of
"policing" the network, they have the ability to kill (ban) users who
misbehave, re-assign control in channels which are "taken over", and so on.

I've never been on Anon's IRC network, but most IRC networks these days use a
"network services" scheme to automate the policing of channels (e.g.
ChanServ/NickServ on DALnet/Freenode/Other networks, X/W on Undernet. They are
essentially sophisticated robots that have IRC-operator priviliges. They can
make someone a channel moderator, automatically ban users by ip/hostname/etc,
as well as numerous other functions... I believe EFnet is one of the few
"major" networks that doesn't have a services scheme). In any case, a channel
takeover, or what this wiki entry referrs to as internet relay chat takeover,
can only happen temporarily. Most servers will reset the channel to pre-split
conditions upon reconnection. Moreover, any IRCop can reset the channel's
operators/moderators/numerous other settings.

The problem in this case was that an IRCop misbehaved, not a channel operator
:)

(I grew up on IRC...can you tell? ;)

edit: I'm aware I'm not using proper terminology for most of these things;
this is on purpose.

~~~
shii
Definitely. Good ol EFnet has always been great about having lax rules.

------
getsat

      SmilingDevil -> owen: :P we need a hidden irc server for the admins.
    

Why not run their network inside I2P or something similar?

~~~
marshray
Probably some are, but the only ones we tend to hear about are those which are
not. The more visible ones are also likely to have the most and loudest
followers.

------
BasDirks
Am I the only one thinking this is all just smoke and mirrors?

~~~
pjscott
I was going to go with "sound and fury, signifying nothing," but smoke and
mirrors works, too.

Anonymous is chaotically aligned. Should it come as any surprise that their
innards are equally tumultuous?

------
hm2k
reading this is like "when news isn't news"

