4Chan Site Attacked
December 29th, 2010 Cyber Warfare is becoming more and more an item that affects regular people in the real world. 4Chan was hit with a cyber attack. I just went to the 4Chan site and it is available, at least the threads are readable, I did not attempt to participate in any of them.
4 Chan is the site where the Anonymous activists post. They are the ones who struck back at Paypal, Mastercard & Visa for cutting off Wikileaks.
From BBC
29 December 2010 Last updated at 09:35 ET
Web attack takes Anonymous activists offline
The notorious message board 4Chan has been taken offline by an overwhelming web attack.
Thanks to the attack, the discussion boards of the site have been hard to reach or offline for almost 24 hours.
The attack might be retaliation for similar attacks that some 4Chan members, as part of the Anonymous group, mounted in support of Wikileaks.
It is not yet clear who is carrying out the attacks and no-one has come forward to claim responsibility.
News about the large-scale web attack, known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, came to light via a message posted on Twitter by Moot, the founder of 4Chan.
He wrote: "Site is down due to DDoS. We now join the ranks of Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, et al - an exclusive club!"
A DDoS attack involves bombarding a server behind a website with data in an attempt to knock it offline.
Many members of 4Chan work together in the guise of a group called Anonymous to carry out attacks on websites they deem to be enemies of freedom of speech.
Most recently, Anonymous members took action in support of whistle-blowing site Wikileaks. Anonymous used a DDoS tool to hit the corporate websites of Mastercard, Visa and Paypal because the firms had cut off payment connections to Wikileaks.
Paul Mutton, a security analyst at site watching firm Netcraft, said the attack on 4Chan was ongoing.
"For most of the past 24 hours, the site has either been very slow to respond or has been completely unreachable," he said.
Statistics gathered by Netcraft show 4Chan was hit hard early on Wednesday but that it recovered towards the afternoon.
A blog showing the status of the various elements of 4Chan suggests the image boards, the most heavily used part of the site, have been down for hours.
Early reports suggested that a hacktivist known as the Jester was behind the attack. Before now, some members of Anonymous said they would target the Jester with DDoS attacks after he declared an ambition to knock Wikileaks offline.
However, in a Twitter message, the Jester denied any involvement in the attack.
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From Digital Trends
Anonymous' hangout 4Chan slammed by DDOS attack
By: Geoff Duncan •December 29, 2010
It's not just Mastercard and Visa suffering cyberattacks: favorite "Anonymous" hangout 4Chan has been pummeled - and no one is yet claiming responsibility.
The infamous 4Chan message board site—one of the best-known online hangouts for parts of "Anonymous" and the reputed source of rickrolling and that fake Steve Jobs heart attack rumor years ago—was largely taken offline by a distributed denial-of-service attack. So far, no one has credibly stepped forward to claim responsibility for the attack, leading to speculation about whether Anonymous and 4Chan has earned itself a real enemy…or whether Anonymous is merely biting its own tail for a laugh.
A distributed denial of service attack essentially uses an array of computers around the Internet—often "zombie" machines controlled by malware but sometimes voluntarily participating—to send more requests to a Web server than it can handle. As a result, legitimate requests for information from the site are delayed or simply fail, effectively making the site inaccessible. Anonymous' Operation: Payback used similar methods to take down Web sites for Mastercard and Visa (among others) in retaliation for the companies' decision to deny services to WIkiLeaks.
"Site is down due to DDoS," 4Chan founder "Moot" wrote in a status update. "We now join the ranks of Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, et al.—an exclusive club!"
So far, no one has stepped forward to claim responsibility for taking 4Chan offline.
If the 4Chan attack was motivated by the controversy surrounding WikiLeaks, it may indicate an escalation of "hacktivism:" public, politically-motivated attacks on the Internet. Operation: Payback likened its actions against Mastercard and Visa as the digital equivalent of a sit-in designed to draw public attention to the actions of a company or organization, and security firms (like McAfee) believe hacktivism will be an increasingly common form of political demonstration in 2011 and beyond.
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