As far as cyber-pranks go, this one is just wrong..
March 29th, 2008
|
| Share |
It seems like the punchline of a joke, but it actually happened. Someone decided to play a little trick on a support forum and embed a script that would lock the browser on a page and show a rapidly flashing animation on the full screen. The thing that’s completely wrong about this is that it was the Epilepsy Foundation support forum.
And as you might know, some patients have had seizures triggered by such strobing effects. In this case, there were indeed a few incidents. Some epileptics did end up clicking on the animation and for some it triggered a bad headache. Nobody was seriously injured, but a few did suffer mild seizures. One stated it was the worst attack of the condition she had experienced in a year. While nobody was injured and only a handful were attacked, this could also cause harm by driving some away from the support forum.
The group “Anonymous” is suspected of involvement in the incident. Previously this group had targeted the Church of Scientology and for that they had my general support, but if they were behind this they’ve lost it big time. Come on guys! This is just an ass thing to do!
Also, I will not use the word “hacker” for this because as far as I can tell this was just a post on the forum with some embedded javascript code.
U |)0 |\|07 637 70 133 (@|_|_3|) @ }~{0><012 JU57 133(@U53 U P0573|) @ J@\/@5121P7 2|\||) U |)0|\|7 637 2 133 (@LL3|) 1 1F U (@|\| 1232|) 7}~{15. U }~{@\/3 2 637 12007 012 50|\/|7}~{1|\|6 2 133 1337. K?
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
March 30th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Assault with intent to do bodily harm is an indictable offense and a felony proper almost everywhere in the word. These people should be run down and made to face the music for this attack.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Aren’t we all members of the group Anonymous?
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 12:06 am
They were also the greatest and most prolific composers of music in the Middle Ages as well.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 12:23 am
DV82XL said:
Yep. If it were something like posting a rude picture or if it were on another forum I doubt law enforcement would care to waste their time. It’s pretty clear what was intended was to give someone a seizure and that crosses the line big time.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Wow. There are a lot of funny things you could do like that that would be either harmless or just annoying if you posted some other kind of thing or posted it somewhere else but this is just awful. Good thing nobody got hurt but the intent is obvious.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 7:43 am
I wouldn’t be so quick to accuse Anonymous. Scientology has a proven track record of faking bomb threats to incriminate opponents.
I’m staying skeptical.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Yeah lets not forget that there’s just some circumstantial evidence that it might have been anonymous. It’s not proven so we can’t condemn them but whoever it was it was inexcusable.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
The worst thing this caused was a day-long severe migraine. If however you ever get migraines and someone triggered the worst one you had had in a year or more you would want blood and have little mercy on the person responsible.
Seriously though, just based on the pain it caused it’s about as bad as a mild physical assault in severity. I’d not even bother with any hacking charges. Those don’t get much for this kind of thing and at worst it’s a trip to Club Fed. If the state that this person is in is in the US then they should forget the fact that it was online and treat it like multiple counts of assault.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Having lurked among them for a while, the deal with this “Anonymous” group is pretty complicated. They’re not any particular organization, but rather just Internet posters scattered across a few message boards and IRC channels. They’re not very cohesive – organized things like CoS is only the doing of a few big pushers and a legion of drones which follow them, while others may be cruising Myspace or Livejournal looking for trouble, still others pranking websites such as the one mentioned, etc… There is no central command. It’s hard to consider them an “organization” any more than a cluster of insects (Even those tend to have some sort of structure!)
Even if someone attempted legal action, there wouldn’t be much they can do except at most close some of the forums. Then I’m sure (as it has happened before) they will very quickly move onto another.
I suppose it’s more of a nomadic Internet warrior tribe more than anything.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Well that’s fine if it’s not an organization and is just a loose group following. I don’t see why that matters. If they can track this back to any person then they should be prosecuted whether or not they did it completely on their own or whether it was a bunch of people or whatever. Anyone who actually was involved in it should be prosecuted, but I don’t think they will because it’s very hard to trace these things back. The way someone will get caught is if they go and brag to friends about it which is often the way these things crack.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I’m a former Scientologist, and can tell you with absolute certainty that skepticism is indeed the correct choice here. It is not unlike Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs (their covert ops wing) to do these type of things to frame Anon. They’ve done it before: http://www.xenu.net.
Quote Comment
March 30th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
barky said:
Well if I understand correctly it was simply a few posts with some Javascript in them so it would be very easy to hide. At best they might keep the IP address, but that’s easy to deal with by using a public proxy. I doubt that we will know for sure who did this unless someone squeels.
My gut feeling is that it was not “Anonymous” or anyone involved with that. I doubt there would be any evidence unless it was something like a calling card or there was some word or code that pointed to Anonymous without actually admitting it straight out.
I can see how a hacker-type might leave that. Something like their initials: claims credit but totally unprovable to be connected to one person. Only there is one problem with this and that is that this event is so meanspirited I don’t think anyone would claim credit for it because people would backlash. It might be circular logic but I bet it was planted. But I still don’t think they’ll ever prove anything.
Quote Comment
March 31st, 2008 at 12:42 am
I don’t know if it was Scientology and I won’t speculate too much, but I would not put it past them!
Quote Comment
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Anyone can be anonymous on-line. Scientology is against its members taking medication to stop them from getting seizures, for example, Tory “Magoo” Christman – http://www.entheta.net/archive/personal_story/tory/affidavit.html
Jocelyn Dorfmann died from an epileptic seizure in Scientology care in France – http://www.whyaretheydead.net/others/Jocelyne_Dorfmann_34.html
Heribert Pfaff died from an epileptic seizure in a Scientology hotel in Clearwater – http://www.whyaretheydead.net/room758.html
James Stewart committed suicide after CoS put in him in a Condition of Doubt for having epileptic seizures in public – http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/kult-epelep.htm
Quote Comment
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Yes, but there is actually a loosely-organized group known as “Anonymous.” Yes, it is confusing because the word normally is used generically. Also there is a band (or was) who’s name was “The Band.”
This lead to similar confusion.
Quote Comment