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Web attacks expand in Iran's cyber battle
We turned our collective power and outrage into a serious weapon that we could use at our will, without ever having to feel the consequences. We practiced distributed, citizen-based warfare, writes Matthew Burton, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who joined in the online assaults, thanks to a push-button tool that would, upon your click, immediately start bombarding 10 Web sites with requests.But the tactic of launching these distributed denial of service, or DDOS, attacks remains hugely controversial. The author of one-web based tool, Page Rebooter, used by opposition supporters to send massive amounts of traffic to Iranian government sites, temporarily shut the service down, citing his discomfort with using the tool to attack other websites. Then, a few hours later, he turned on the service again, after his employers agreed to cover the costs of the additional traffic. WhereIsMyVote.info is opening up 16 Page Reboot windows simultaneously, to flood an array of government pages at once. Meanwhile, San Francisco technologist Austin Heap has put together a set of instructions on how to set up proxies intermediary internet protocol (IP) address that allow activists to get through the government firewall. And the Networked Culture blog has assembled for pro-democracy sympathizers a cyberwar guide for beginners. Stop publicizing these proxies over Twitter, the site recommends. Instead, send direct messages to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran. Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-06-17 |
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