Anonymous Leaks Huge Cache of Emails From Iraq War Crimes Case
Anonymous is on a rampage today. Just hours after leaking a confidential phone call between the FBI and Scotland yard, members have released a huge archive of emails and documents related to the 2005 Haditha Massacre, which left 24 Iraqi civilians dead.
Just a few minutes ago, Anonymous announced they had stolen 2.6 gigabytes of email belonging to the law firm Puckett Faraj. Neal Puckett represents Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who was accused of leading the group of Marines who killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha in November, 2005—what later became known as the Haditha Massacre. Last month, Wuterich struck a plea deal where he'll be demoted from Staff Sergeant to Private, but will serve no prison time.
Anonymous promises the emails contain "detailed records, transcripts, testimony, trial evidence, and legal defense donation records" about the Haditha case, and other cases Puckett Faraj handles.
To announce the hack, Anonymous defaced the website of Pucket Farai with this message:
"As part of our ongoing efforts to expose the corruption of the court systems and the brutality of US imperialism, we want to bring attention to USMC SSgt Frank Wuterich who along with his squad murdered dozens of unarmed civilians during the Iraqi Occupation. Can you believe this scumbag had his charges reduced to involuntary manslaughter and got away with only a pay cut?"
The emails should be posted to the Pirate Bay soon. Judging by our quick glance of an advanced archive posted to a website on the TOR anonymizing network, they definitely stole emails from Pucket Faraj. In one thread, Neal Puckett accepts congratulations from a friend on January 25th for securing plea deal. "Thanks, Ginny!" he writes "We were all over the TV and Internet. Google me!"
Puckett could not be immediately reached for comment; when we called a few minutes ago he was in a meeting and the receptionist had no idea the firm had been hacked.
[Image of Puckett and Wuterich, via AP]
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:32:32 EST
Anonymous Leaks Confidential FBI Conference Call with Scotland Yard
This is pretty crazy: Anonymous, as part of their regular "Fuck FBI Friday" release, leaked a 16 minute phone call between the FBI and their counterparts in the UK. England's Sky News has confirmed with the FBI the call's legitimacy.
The call was apparently recorded on January 17, and arranged by FBI special agent Timothy Lauster to discuss the prosecution of hackers associated with the group LulzSec. The contents of the call are embarrassing: participants discuss the upcoming arrests of Lulzsec members who go by the names Kayla and TFlow. And they reveal that British authorities secretly tried to delay British court proceedings against previously arrested LulzSec members, British teenagers Jake Davis and Ryan Cleary, to give the FBI more time to move in on the ones that haven't been arrested yet.
But the biggest worry for the feds is the fact that Anonymous apparently has access to their email, with which they planned the hack. Along with the call they posted the email between agents arranging the call. An Anonymous twitter account boasted. "The #FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now."
If anyone has anything interesting to share, drop me a line: adrian@gawker.com
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:26:03 EST
The Most Awesome Homoerotic Mark Zuckerberg Fanfic
Eduardo Saverin isn't just a Facebook co-founder made famous by The Social Network and set to get very rich off the Facebook IPO. He is also, judging from the burgeoning genre of Mark Zuckerberg fanfic, the college hottie online romance authors most want to see hook up with Facebook's young CEO.
"Mark, Eduardo's here." Karen trills. "Why don't you take him out on the balcony, while I finish up dinner?" ... Eduardo wraps his arms around her...
"Eduardo... has no thoughts regarding Mark... until Eduardo walks in on Mark changing clothes." He's friends with Zuck's sister Randi, see? But then one thing leads to another at the Zuckerberg house and "it it him or is Mark blushing?"
"Mark realizes... Eduardo is extremely suited to being a vampire." And oh, is he ever.
Eduardo's fingers against his scalp, knotted in his hair and forcing his head to stay in place... Eduardo's fingers are cool... but feel as if they're growing warmer as the endless, weightless minutes pass like thick, sweet honey.
Comic-book mutant Magneto "storms Facebook HQ and holds Mark hostage." It turns out "everyone needs a friend, especially billionaires and mutants."
He was my only friend," Magneto says, shedding a manly tear. "He was there for me."
"I know how that feels," Mark says mournfully. "I built Facebook for my best friend.
OK, not exactly homoerotic, but what it lacks in sex it makes up for in adjectives.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:24:53 EST
Hot New Social Network Pinterest Torn Apart by Marginally Crude Picture
Have you all heard of Pinterest? It's the hottest new social network for sharing your favorite cookie recipes and pictures of expensive furniture. But a barely risque post by a Pinterest power user has torn the burgeoning community apart.
Pinterest is a visual social bookmarking site that describes itself as a "virtual pinboard" where users "organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web". You create themed boards, on which you "pin" pictures of things you like related to the theme. You might have a board called "Kitchen," where you pin all the different kitchen gadgets you want to buy. Other people can browse your boards and marvel in your excellent taste, and you can silently judge theirs.
Pinterest is blowing up. In December, it became one of the top 10 social networks. Large swaths of women in their 20s and 30s are addicted to Pinterest, and it's been hailed as a savior by online retailers.
With any new social network or online community, I like to find where the controversy is. While not representative, these edge-cases can tell you more about the make-up of and values of a site than any traffic stats. Luckily, the proprietor of the blog WTF, Pinterest saw my tweeted request for guidance to the dark heart of Pinterest, and steered me toward what may be the first notable Pinterest scandal.
In addition to collecting wildlife photos and planning weddings, a popular use for Pinterest is sharing funny images, and that's where the trouble began. A few weeks ago, Pinterest power user Anilu Magloire—she has over 300,000 followers—pinned this picture of a kid jumping a plastic car with the words "FUCK YEAH" superimposed on it. It's beyond mild by the Internet's standard, but it sparked an epic flame war on Pinterest—alternating between outraged parents, and Pinterest users outraged by their outrage.
Susan: Could you keep the language clean? Thanks.
Missy: I agree Susan!
Alaythea: Are ya'll serious?! It's a joke, it's funny! Lighten up!
Marion: not appropriate at all
Jennifer: llighten up? i can tell you don't have kids and certainly not teenage girls who love to get on pinterest and see interesting things. it isn't just about you if you post things for others to see. i will not follow you any more which is a shame because i loved your stuff.
Shellia: THIS IS SO NOT APPROPRIATE, I JUST INVITED MY DAUGHTER-IN-LAWS AND A FRIEND PLEASE STOP THIS OR YOU ARE GOING TO MISS A LOT OF VIEWERS!!!!!!
Sarah: Wow, some of u people should take a chill pill, it's a funny picture and it's just words. It's not like she's being a bigot or putting someone down. Geesh
Shellia: NOT A FUNNY JOKE MY 7 YEAR OLD GRANDDAUGHTER COULD BE LOOKING AT THIS!!!
Kelcy: Are you guys serious? There is a single curse word, on a site I don't think children have access to. The joke itself is encouraging fun! It's not like she made this image first of all, second of all unfollow her if you don't like it! No need to cry about it.
Caitie: I hate to break it to you but all of your teenager who are on Pinterest have heard this word before. She's right, you guys do need to lighten up. They won't be kids forever! Being a helicopter parent will only make it worse.
Debra: I know lots of young people on here - keep it clean
This continues for another 360 or so comments, and for all I can tell the battle still rages: pleas for moderators to delete it, lots of delighted onlookers stoking the flames—"wow...the first real dose of pinterest drama! nice job!"—long philosophical digressions on parenting, etc. etc. The thread is weirdly compelling, probably because the stakes are so incredibly low even by internet standards.
So what does this say about Pinterest? Pinterest's crazy success rests in large part on how its clean, consumer-friendly image has attracted a large base of users who might not be traditional early adopters of technology. (Pinterest's first rule is "be nice.") But how will Pinterest cope with the inborn crudeness of the web, as more people flock from the porn-strewn wastelands of Tumblr and Twitter, with their edgy memes and swear words? It's the opposite problem faced by most social media companies, which start with hardcore tech geeks and have to figure out how to attract a more mainstream user base. Stay tuned.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:07:14 EST
I Can't Stop Looking At This Weird Scottish Internet Nightmare Video
Scottish post-electo crew Errors threw together this very normal and comforting video about, like, how we're all being subsumed into a hypermedia e-dystopia that is once absurd and soul crushing, or something. It's weird that I'm not "getting" the subtext because this is such a straightforward and obvious-feeling video. As Creators Projects writes, this is "a parallel universe that seems to resemble Giorgio de Chirico paintings... [with] a bit of the Pet Shop Boys about it, a pixel or two of Net Art and a WTF aesthetic that will have a Marmite effect on you." Um, exactly? Also, it feels like something I should have downloaded at 9600 baud.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:51:21 EST
Steve Jobs Playwright Lacerates Stephen Fry Over Brutal Apple Factories
Stephen Fry, the British actor and vocal Apple admirer, defended the company on Twitter against accounts of brutal working conditions in its contract factories. This did not sit well, at all, with Mike Daisey, creator of a critically-acclaimed one-man show about those very factories, and, now, of a blog post in which he says Fry "is being a total idiot" and calls him a "fanboy," "apologist" and "pathetic."
The research he did in China for the play, mirrored and extended recently by This American Life and the Times, did not endear him to Fry's recent post to his 3.8 million Twitter followers that
Less than 25% of Foxconn make Apple products, the rest is Dell, HP &c. But the real point is this
The gist is that, according to stats culled from news articles and issued by Apple's factory operator Foxxconn, not that many people are getting maimed, killed or driven to suicide in the Chinese facilites. Also, everyone else is doing it, and as for awful working conditions and child labor, "that's what being poor means, having to work extremely hard to make very little."
Daisey was not amused, issuing a call "to stop Stephen Fry, who is otherwise wonderful, from being an idiot:"
Yes, Foxconn makes things for many different companies. Yes, conditions are terrible across the entire Special Economic Zone. But it is bizarre tech fannishness in the extreme to somehow think that because others are implicated in a crime that this somehow absolves Apple. It's like a child being caught with their hand in a cookie jar pointing at other children and saying, "They did it too!"
...What's disgusting here is the underbelly. The clear implication is that because these are "poor people living in a poor country" they don't deserve safe working conditions, or working hours that don't result in people dying on the production line, or factories that don't have explosions that could be prevented. Because they are Chinese they deserve less working protection that we would afford Americans. It's a nasty streak of thinly-veiled racism that underlies a lot of the neoliberal arguments
He goes on. Do read the whole thing. Hopefully Fry will, too: While there's some name calling and obvious anger here, it's rare and refreshing to see two people with real show business stature go head to head over global labor issues. Only once they stop fighting over lovers, parts and publicity can actors truly lead a war to recapture the means of productions. I believe it was Marx who said that.
Mark Zuckerberg Takes Credit for Populist Revolutions Now That Facebook's Gone Public
Has Facebook's $5 billion IPO gone to Mark Zuckerberg's head? In new propaganda, the Facebook CEO claims Facebook will spur a populist transformation in governments around the world—an idea he called "arrogant" less than a year ago.
As part of Facebook's IPO Cas$htravaganza, Zuckerberg wrote a lofty a letter to investors about how Facebook is not all about the millions and millions of dollars they're making. The part that caught our eye was where he says Facebook hopes to "change how people relate to their governments and social institutions."
In language that could have come from an Occupy Wall Street Press release, Zuckerberg writes:
By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.
Through this process, we believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people, including the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them.
Zuckerberg's prediction of Facebook-powered populist utopias contrasts markedly with how he distanced Facebook from last year's Arab Spring, when much was made of the social network's role in organizing actual populist uprisings.
"Facebook was neither necessary nor sufficient for any of those things to happen," he said at a forum at the e-G8 summit in Pari last May. "It would be extremely arrogant for any specific technology company to claim credit. People are now having the opportunity to communicate, that's not a Facebook thing. That's an Internet thing."
When Facebook was being credited as an engine of social change, Zuckerberg claimed it was just another tech company. But now that Facebook has self-actualized as a tech company, Zuckerberg claims it's an engine of social change. This is part of an overblown PR push to, as the New York Timesputs it, paint Facebook as "a company with goals far loftier than the moneymakers on Wall Street."
But maybe Facebook will now actually do something for the activists and disenfranchised people who use the platform for social change, instead of chasing them off Facebook, again and again in favor of profit-friendly policies. Now that Mark Zuckerberg is going to start claiming credit for transforming governments around the world, he'll have to back it up with action. To do otherwise would be the height of arrogance.
[Image via Getty]
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:54:54 EST
Facebook Reveals How Staggeringly Rich And Popular It's Become
Facebook just released its first-ever official financial numbers as part of its filing to go public, and they're very impressive. One billion dollars in annual profit impressive. Also: Much of humankind is hopelessly addicted to Facebook.
Facebook tallied $1 billion in profit last year on $3.7 billion in revenue, revenue that has been roughly doubling for each of the past two years. The company ended 2011 with $3.9 billion in cash. Those totals are in line with the exclusive financial data we reported through September (the cash total has grown about as much as profits). Meanwhile, as Inside Facebook points out, the company is diversifying its revenue stream, with payments growing to 17 percent of revenue from 10 percent a year prior. Most of that comes from online purchases by people playing Zynga games like FarmVille. And most of the rest of Facebook's money comes from advertising. Of course once we're all talking on Facebook phones and paying blackmail to, like, Facebook drones the company's income will be even more diversified.
Today Is Simpsons Star Julian Assange's Last Chance to Dodge Sex Crimes Allegations
Kremlin-backed talk show host Julian Assange is back in court in England today, in what will be the final, hopefully failed, attempt to appeal his extradition to Sweden to face rape and molestation allegations. Assange's legal troubles—and the fact that Wikileaks' submission system still isn't fixed after more than a year—haven't kept him from guest-starring in an upcoming episode of The Simpsons. This really validates our decision to stop watching the The Simpsons after Maude Flanders died.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:39:52 EST
The Insufferable Facebook IPO 'News' Frenzy Begins Tomorrow
Facebook will file to go public tomorrow, in case you missed the rolling thunder bombardment of news articles this week, or in the months preceding. There won't be the faintest reason for the average person to care about this IPO until shares actually start selling months from now, but in the meantime you should steel yourself for endless breathless hype pandemonium. Oh, it's going to be awful.
Facebook aims to raise $5 billion with the offering and has selected Morgan Stanley as its lead underwriter, according to the New York Times, meaning the company dissed Goldman Sachs, who were vying to head the deal. Tomorrow Facebook is exepcted to file an S-1 with the SEC declaring its intent to issue shares; it must still go back and forth with the federal agency to get approval, then get sign off from existing shareholders, then pick a stock exchange (the company has registered the ticker "FB" with both the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange), then do a "road show" to pitch institutional investors (like fund managers), settle on a final price, and commence trading. (There are decent overviews of the process here and here.) It will take at least another three months to get to a price on Facebook shares, according to International Financing Review.
Facebook is supposed to keep its mouth shut the whole time in what is known as a "quiet period," enforced by the SEC. This silence, naturally, only drives the press more wild. If the IPOs for Groupon and Zynga are any indication, you can expect frenzied speculation and reporting on ultimately inconsequential things like
When, exactly, is this S-1 filed? (With Facebook, speculation over this climaxed today.)
Will they price above or below expectations? (As though finance industry expectations of the price were meaningful like the actual price.)
Are they oversubscribed enough to "cherry pick" their initial institutional buyers? (It's called going public for a reason; they'll have to give up control over the buyers sooner or later.)
When is the first day of trading?
How much will shares pop above the IPO price? (The company only gets to keep the IPO price, pop or not.)
Since Facebook is the biggest IPO in years, all of these questions and more will be debated endlessly and treated with staggeringly undeserved gravity in the press. Financial journalists love to break this sort of small-ball news because they can - their regular sources tend to be well informed on these questions, and revealing these sorts of dates and numbers tends not to piss anyone off, so the information isn't too hard to come by from all kinds of sources. Yes, there are all kinds of interesting potential macroeconomic ramifications of the Facebook IPO. You can start thinking about those once Facebook shares are actually trading, and there is thus actual information to deal with. In the meantime, good luck avoiding the noise. (It will be enough to drive you to Facebook!)
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:52:41 EST
Breading Has Jumped The Shark
Since this morning, the whole internet has gone crazy for breading, the meme where you put your cat's (or dog's) face into a piece of cut-out bread, take a picture then post it on the internet. Unfortunately, a recent spate of media coverage makes it painfully clear that breading is over.
Breading was picked up by the Melbourne Herald Sun just a few minutes ago.
According to the Herald Sun
The trend is gaining popularity, thanks to a Facebook page with more than 10,000 likes, a post on blogging platform Tumblr and a stamp of approval from Gawker.
So if you have some time on your hands, grab your cat, hollow out some bread, say cheese and voila - you're officially hip.
Come on, Herald Sun, that is sothree hours ago. Leave it to the media to pump up a stale meme for cheap pageviews.
Tomorrow Justin Bieber will probably tweet a picture of his cat breaded, and after that it's all over. Three days, tops, before breading features in a Fancy Feast commercial and is a gag in a Family Guy episode. Nothing of the true breading remains but fond memories, and the dozens of pictures in my inbox of people's pets with bread around their heads.
[Image of Boo Radley, by Matt Dennis]
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:15:03 EST
The Stereotypes Inside Google's Supercomputer: A Partial List
For the past week or so, everyone's been discussing that Google disclosure page showing what the search engine has inferred about your age, gender and interests. Some interesting patterns have emerged. For an advanced distribtued search supercomputer, Google reaches some remarkably old-fashioned conclusions.
Google's formulas are still being discovered; this topic has and will be written about endlessly. But more data means more information on how Google and its advertisers pigeonhole us, a topic that, thus far, seems to be endlessly fascinating. Here are some of the emergent stereotypes:
Tech is for men: As many a lady tech reporter has discovered, ogling e-gizmos virtually makes you a man. Wired.com's Christina Bonnington, a gadget writer, looks at the occasional kitten video, but still shows up on Google as a 35-44 year old man thanks to her heavy tech browsing. The New York Times' Jenna Wortham is a 25-year-old man, as far as Google's advertisers are concerned - and did we mention she's one of their tech writers? Forty one year old Mia Harper got pegged as an 18-24-year-old male after showing an online interest in computers.
Mary Sue writer Susana Polo was deemed a 25-34-year-old-male after searching for electronics, prompting her Dan Abrams-backed website to publish a post about Google's "seemingly sexist algorithms." A similar post went up at GigaOm after the same thing happened to three of the site's female writers.
The kitchen is for women: As some men have figured out, an avowed interest in food and cooking can get you labeled as a female. "Oh man, google thinks I'm a 40yo woman because I read food blogs," wrote one tweeter. Rachel McCraw was tagged as a 65+ man on her computer, but correctly identified as a woman on her mobile phone — which she disproportionately uses "for recipes and other cooking/food information in the kitchen." She does not appreciate the resulting weight loss ads, which she said "have less to do with even the interests they've decided I have than with gender stereotypes... [and] which I really do not want to look at."
Newspapers are for old people:"I guess I'm spending too much time at the Sacramento Bee" website, a 30-year-old friend wrote at us. "Google thinks I'm 55-64." Indeed, dead trees do seem to have something to do with it. A newspaper editor and media obsessive, who would fit accurately into the "female 25-34" category, told us how she was deemed a 65+ male after Google noticed her interest in things like "Magazines... Business News... Journalism & News Industry." Just being physically present at a newspaper seems to have an effect: a 27-year-old Detroit Free Press columnist wrote about how Google pegged him at 45-54 years old at home, but 64 years old on his work computer.
Greed is good.... and guy-ish: As flacks April Conyers and Jo Cross have discovered, an interest in finance can convince Google you're a man. Journalists aren't immune from Google ad prejudice either. "Google thinks I'm a guy," tweeted the Forbes Money Builder account. "All those 'male' finance sites. Sexist."
Notice any other interest-gender assumptions Google is making? Check out your profile and let us know. But try not to get too outraged: The only thing more infuriating than Google getting all your personal details wrong would be Google getting all your personal details right. (They're working on it, naturally.)
[Image of Lloyd Bridges statue at Google headquarters via Getty Images.]
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:01:24 EST
I Can't Stop Looking At This Weird Chinese Girl Dancing In An Apple Store
This whole video of teens dancing at a Hong Kong Apple store is entertaining. But go to around 1:06 and check out the moves of the girl in white. Her face is like the face someone would make while carving an ice block into a statue of a machine gun, with a chainsaw.
Over the past few months, something of a feud has developed between me and Reddit, one of the largest, most-insane hive minds on the internet. Alright, Reddit, let's talk it out.
Here is an Ask me Anything thread where I'll be answering questions from Reddit users and anyone else who can figure out how to navigate Reddit's interface, which I think is purposely unintuitive to scare away non-geeks. Maybe we can come to an understanding, end this hurtful time.
Some background: This whole thing started, as things usually do on the internet, with a dumb tweet. Last spring, a Reddit user going by the name Lucidending tricked the community into believing he had 36 hours to live, and that he was going to spend a few of those hours answering questions in a Reddit thread. He was obviously a fraud, but his bullshit cliche answers were fawned over nonetheless; songs were made in his honor. After it emerged Lucidening was a hoax, I joked on Twitter that I had been behind it. The Reddit hive mind took my tweet seriously, raged against me, then raged some more when I explained it was a joke.
I've said before that the Reddit hive mind scrambles from one dumb outrage to the next, but in my case they've been able to hold a grudge remarkably well. Reddit hates Gawker so much these days they'll regularly post a screenshot of a Gawker item instead of linking to it, so we don't get any pageviews from the content they're ripping off. (I'm sure Gawker's coverage of Reddit's child porn problem, racism and sexism, and mob mentality didn't help.) A couple weeks ago, I made a one-line joke about how Reddit isn't a Shining Temple of All Things Good, and it rocketed to the front page, along with dozens of comments about what a shithead I am. Hate mail filled my inbox; some enterprising dudes even bugged me on AIM.
But maybe some dialogue can help this situation. (In fact, I'm supposed to have a beer with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian one of these days.) After all, Gawker and Reddit aren't so different: Cats are a large source of traffic for both of us.
So, let's chat. About Gawker, Reddit, the Internet, cats—whatever! I have been deputized by Gawker management so that everything I say in this Q + A is official company policy.*
*Not really.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:08:29 EST
Mark Zuckerberg Wanted To Sacrifice Facebook for a Different Idea
It might be built on science, but Silicon Valley can be as fickle and fashion conscious as any Paris couturier. Back in 2004, for example, social networking looked trivial and grubby; truly cool programmers worked on swapping copyrighted music and movies. Even robotic Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was swept up in the trend, planning to sacrifice his now-$75 billion social network for a file-sharing venture, according to newly released instant messages.
Business Insider has obtained another exclusive batch of Zuckerberg IMs, and they show that when the Harvard dropout was 20 and had just moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Silicon Valley, he planned to sell Facebook so he could fund Wirehog, his largely forgotten system for private file sharing among friends. From a July 2004 chat:
Confidant: Well you should recover the shares you need to recover legal fees.
Zuckerberg: I won't pay the legal fees
Zuckerberg: The company that buys us will haha
Confidant: Cool hopefully that'll be soon so you can move on and just work on what you want to
Zuckerberg: Well it just needs to propel Wirehog
Confidant: So you have gotten responses to your national recognition?
Zuckerberg: Responses from whom?
Zuckerberg: Some more VCs. Still talking to Google and Friendster.
Two Google executives did visit in 2004 "to see if there might be a way to work with or even buy" Facebook, according to David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect, but nothing came of the talks. Which makes sense: Google was already in the midst of squandering its own social network, Orkut, because Google "viewed social networking as a frivolous form of entertainment rather than a real utility." Instead of Facebook, Google that summer bought Picasa, a photo organizer. Photo sharing: So, so 2004.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:55:48 EST
The Best Tweets About Breading, The Weird New Internet Meme
Earlier, we introduced you to the new internet craze breading—putting a piece of bread around your cat's head and taking a picture of it. Now people can't stop talking about breading! Here are the best 11 tweets about the controversial viral craze that is sweeping the internet.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:30:50 EST
Hot New Internet Meme: 'Breading' Cats
Forget planking. All the cool kids are putting their cats in bread and taking pictures of them looking like little yeasty lions. "Breading" is a throw-back to the old Japanese "putting-food-on-rabbits" meme of the early viral web, but with a modern twist.
The wacky meme of breading cats has exploded in recent months, propelled by the internet. There's an official Facebook page with more than 9,000 likes, and a popular post on the hip blogging platform Tumblr. So, it is now an official meme according to Internet Law.
But you don't want to just go sticking your cat's head in bread willy-nilly.
Here's how to bread your cat:
1) Take a piece of bread (If this is your first time, use a soft white bread. Experienced breaders will use rye or even multigrain.)
2) Cut a hole approximately 1 inch larger than your cat's head. This trips some people up. Remember: the bread has to fit around the not just the cat's head, but it's ears, too.
I'd estimate that breading cats is about 40% up the meme curve, bumping around the lower reaches of the internet—Buzzfeed hasn't even begun to shamelessly exploit it yet—so now is the time to get in. Next week you can scoff at the inevitable Today Show segment, after you've been so over breading for like three days.
Send us your pictures or videos of in-bread cats: Adrian@gawker.com. Or leave them in the comments!
Update: here is the first breading picture I received, from Matt Dennis.
Matt writes that cat's name is Boots Riley and "surprisingly enough, he wasn't mad at me for doing this..."
Anonymous Ruins California Cop's Life Over Single Dumb Tweet
It doesn't take much to set off the fury of the hacktivist collective Anonymous. Last night a California cop made a tweet suggesting he'd shoot hackers. Now he's been run off Twitter and is under an official investigation.
Richmond Police Department Sgt. Mike Rood became a target after he offered his support on Twitter to UFC President Dana White, who has been engaged in an entertaining feud with Anonymous over his vocal anti-piracy stance.
Last Thursday, Rood tweeted this:
Some Anonymous sympathizers caught wind of this last night, and his tweet was picked up by the popular Twitter account YourAnonnews. Anonymous overwhelmed the Richmond Police Department page with news that one of their cops was talking about shooting people on Twitter, and posted pictures of what appears to be Rood's badge and his truck (Rood used his Twitter handle for his vanity license plate, which is always a bad idea if you think you may become the target of a digital mob in the near future.)
The Richmond Police Department was flooded with complaints and now they're opening an investigation, according to The Mercury News. Think before you tweet: Could this summon thousands of angry nerds to destroy my life?
President Asked To Dance a Jig By Random Internet Person
Barack Obama convened the "first completely virtual interview from the White House" today in an attempt to connect directly with citizens. It turned out one of those citizens wanted the president to dance for her. Bet that never happens in the White House press room.
"I was wondering if you could stand up and give us a little jig real quick," asked "Jennifer," one of the participants in Obama's video "Hangout" on Google Plus. See the video above. The president declined, citing, diplomatically, the fact that his wife always makes fun of him when he dances, rather than the fact that it would be an insulting question even if he wasn't the leader of the free world.
Setting aside the overtones of a white woman with a southern accent asking a black man to dance a jig for her — seeTwitter for howthatwentover — the crowdsourced online interview is still a budding journalistic form, and this does not get the medium off to a particularly dignified or promising start. And if old media are any guide, it's only downhill from here.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:40:07 EST
The Toxic App that Helps Facebook Eat You Alive
"Unfriend Finder" is a browser extension that lets you know when someone has defriended you on Facebook. It's a very useful piece of software, in the sense that if you ever want to install it you know your life has taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Written up today over on Mashable, Unfriend Finder has supposedly been downloaded 44 million times. It adds a little "Unfriends" section to your profile, showing who has dropped you from their friends list, showing who has declined your friend request, and even putting a little red counter of total "unfriends" in your menu bar, just to make you feel extra shitty.
Says one sane person in the Mashable comments, "If you don't notice them missing, then they probably were not that good of friends." Indeed. But if you've been sucked into a social networking black hole, deep real-world relationships start to lose emotional ground to easily quantified but ultimately meaningless forms of online popularity, and you start to care about the answers to questions like "why are my numbers down?" and "why doesn't this quite possibly insane stranger not like me any more?" If you're a teenager, you may well grow out of this. If you're an adult, it's time for a nice long Facebook break, and to reconnect with things that actually matter IRL, like sports, alcohol, and/or trashy television.
Geek Graffiti Artist Spreads Anti-Google Propaganda In NYC
Paid Content's Jeff Roberts discovered what may be the world's geekiest stretch of graffiti on the Pulaski bridge in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. There was this Google stencil, a "Stop SOPA" tag, and a painted Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask.
The Google design is cool and timely, given the uproar about Google's new privacy policy. (Maybe it was a Bing employee?) But we dread the inevitable explosion of internet-themed graffiti; the near-future wheren our cities become covered in hashtags, hipster kitty and Twilight tags, painted by rival gangs of Tumblr Kids claiming their turf.
Groupon In Trouble For Selling Snake Oil, Literally
Reputable internet business Groupon has been banned from ever again advertising snake oil, an activity Groupon not only engaged in, but defended, back when it was trying to assure everyone of its steady growth.
In October, right before Groupon went pubic and around the time its was trying to convince everyone it was growing its way out of technical insolvency, the company launched a campaign in the U.K. to promote a deal for "Wrinkle Killer Snake Serum," which it said "helps tackle the signs of ageing, [and] leaves the skin looking younger." Groupon defended the ad to the industry-run Advertising Standards Authority by saying it made only claims of "temporary effects" and "sensory effects," which do not normally need to be proven. In other words, this was just a moisturizer.
The ASA disagreed, noting that the term "wrinkle killer" implies a long-lasting impact. It banned any further snake oil ads. A repentant Groupon now says it has "further improved our checks and processes." It's also banked $700 million from its IPO since the ad ran. Its shares haven't risen a dime in its nearly three months on the stock market, but Groupon can at least afford to stop selling snake oil now. How nice.
[Image of Groupon CEO Andrew Mason via Getty Images.]
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:32:41 EST
Google's CEO Dealt Drugs and Knew It, Say Feds
Well, this is certainly interesting: Google's CEO Larry Page knew all about ads his company ran for an illegal Mexican drug ring run by a convicted con artist and described in detail to Google executives. But the advertisements for illicit steroids were allowed to continue because, hey, more revenue for Google.
"We simply know from the documents we reviewed and witnesses we interviewed that Larry Page knew what was going on," U.S. attorney Peter Neronha told the Wall Street Journal This is known thanks, apparently, to concerned emails sent by Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg back when she worked at Google and subsequently admitted into evidence. The Feds used convicted fraudster David Whitaker to sting Google. "He walked Google executives through the illegal parts of the websites," said the WSJ. "He said he told ad executives that U.S. Customs had seized shipments, for example, and that one client wanted to be 'the biggest steroid dealer in the United States.'"
Google ended up settling for close to $500 million federal charges it knowingly assisted narcotics trafficking. Meanwhile, the company began requiring ordinary everyday users give their real legal names and other personal information in order to use its Google Plus social network and advanced features of Google's flagship search engine. It insists it needs the private data - backed up in some cases by scanned government documents - from users in order to "hold them accountable." If you think for a second that Google wants anyone's private information so it can hold them accountable, I've got some magic red pills to sell you. No prescription needed!
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:13:51 EST
The Mercenary Techie Who Troubleshoots for Drug Dealers and Jealous Lovers
A while ago, a twenty-something geek we'll call Martin arranged a meeting with some potential clients in an an unusual place: the sidewalk across the street from a police precinct on Manhattan's West Side.
"I do a lot of shit in front of precincts cause I feel a lot safer," Martin told me in an interview recently.
There were four of them, members of a Bronx drug trafficking crew. "It was like one of those TV special multinational shows," Martin said. "You got a white guy, a black guy, a Latino guy."
The leader of the crew believed he was under surveillance, and Martin made them leave their phones in the car for safety. He recalled the phones with disgust. "They had all smart phones, and I told them: Bad fucking idea. You have to scale down two generations, at least. There's too much information on a smart phone." That's where Martin could help.
Standing on the sidewalk, Martin explained the snoop-resistant system he had devised: a makeshift private cell phone network built around prepaid phones, dozens of SIM cards and plastic pill organizers—the kind seniors use to keep their meds in order.
"It keeps your comms [communication] internal from prying eyes," he assured the leader. "If someone's on your case, it trips up their investigation." All he needed was $7,000 and he could set them up with ten phones in a week.
Martin left with the cash, stacks of hundred dollar bills in his backpack, and got to work.
***
Martin is a digital fixer. He wants me to call him a "mercenary hacker," although "renegade IT guy" probably better represents his skillset. Through a long history of hanging out with hackers, selling surveillance gear, and laboring on the fringes of the tech industry, Martin has developed a combination of technical skill and lack of scruples that makes him perfect for dirty jobs involving electronics.
Many of Martin's clients are what he refers to, reverently, as "HNIs": High Net-worth Individuals. They're ambitious, wealthy New Yorkers for whom the Internet has amplified the status anxiety that has always haunted the kind of person who might be flattered by the label High Net-worth Individuals. A lot of what Martin does is sort of blackhat online reputation management. His HNIs want someone to burnish their online image by any means necessary, to game the algorithms and stats of the web like a skilled publicist greases reporters in the real world.
A businessman might ask Martin to bury an incriminating newspaper article deep in Google's search results; a small-time entertainer wants a few tens of thousands of illicit views on his new YouTube music video. Martin said he was once asked to artificially boost the popularity of a nightclub on the location-based social network Foursquare. He couldn't figure out a way past the location-based aspect of the service, so he hacked together a program on a laptop, lugged it in a backpack to the venue and automatically checked more than a dozen of fake people in.
When Martin first started, he would hang out at nightclubs and hand out his card to high-rollers. But now he's passed around by word-of-mouth. "I've got a reputation as a fixer and a problem solver," Martin said. "It's like, ‘do you use Martin?'"
Unsurprisingly, one of the more common requests from these guys—they're almost all guys—is access to a woman's Facebook or email account. They expect Martin to sit down at his laptop, type a magic keystroke and lay out the intimate communiqués of their lady friend. If only it was that easy.
"They have a lot of these fucking expectations like it's fucking Hollywood," Martin said. "I'm like, ‘Look, let me knock some reality into you. If someone tells you they can fucking do this you're being duped and you'll never see the money again.'"
After running down the delicate legalities, he'll tell them their best bet is installing a simple piece of software called a keylogger on their computer, which can secretly catch the password as the target enters it. For $3,000, Martin will install a full suite of surveillance software on phones and computers.
Martin's familiarity with keyloggers dates to when he sold them while working at a surveillance gear shop soon after graduating from college in the mid 2000s. He hawked tiny microphones to jealous lovers and hidden cameras to Muslim parents worried about where their daughters went at night. After his boss retired, Martin inherited an expensive bug sweeper and connections to a lucratively paranoid clientele, many of whom became his first clients in his current gig.
Most of Martin's clients, if not all of his tactics, are above board. But it was inevitable the drug dealers would come calling. They had been some of his best clientele at the surveillance gear shop, after all.
***
Martin showed me some of his gear the other day and explained the system he'd set up for his drug trafficker clients. He speaks with a thick New York accent and deftly picked tiny electronics out of his backpack with big hands, like a fisherman in a tackle box. He carries a leather organizer filled with SIM cards and business cards.
Martin laid a couple ancient Motorola flip phones with busted screens on the table. These were the first phones he'd given the crew, but they hadn't been thrilled with downgrading from iPhones and Blackberries to something a high school girl might decorate with Hello Kitty stickers.
"They were like, ‘I look gay in this shit, son," Martin said. So he upgraded them to the newer, sleeker Motorola i465. "It's contemporary, it doesn't look like a fake Blackberry and it's not a flip phone where they'll get laughed at the club," Martin said.
If you've seen that episode of The Wire, you know principle behind Martin's system: "Burners," prepaid cell phones drug dealers use for a short time then abandon to thwart wiretaps. Prepaid phones have become so associated with drug trafficking and crime that New York Sen. Chuck Schumer wants to require an I.D. to buy one. (Martin said if I.D.s were required he could still run his business "but I would probably charge triple because I'd have to make fake I.D.s")
But burners can be a pain. For maximum security, phones need to be switched as often as possible—a top Cali cartel manager was once reported to use 35 cell phones a day. Martin's system makes it easy for a crew to switch all their phones rapidly.
With Martin's system, each crewmember gets a cell phone that operates using a prepaid SIM card; they also get a two-week plastic pill organizer filled with 14 SIM cards where the pills should be. Each SIM card, loaded with $50 worth of airtime, is attached to a different phone number and stores all contacts, text messages and call histories associated with that number, like a removable hard drive. This makes a new SIM card effectively a new phone. Every morning, each crewmember swaps out his phone's card for the card in next day's compartment in the pill organizers. After all 14 cards are used, they start over at the first one.
Of course, it would be hugely annoying for a crewmember to have to remember the others' constantly changing numbers. But he doesn't have to, thanks to the pill organizers. Martin preprograms each day's SIM card with the phone numbers the other members have that day. As long they all swap out their cards every day, the contacts in the phones stay in sync. (They never call anyone but each other on the phones.) Crewmembers will remind each other to "take their medicine," Martin said.
Not only does Martin's system make wiretapping difficult, Martin claims it can protect the group if a phone gets compromised. If authorities snatch or tap a phone from Martin's system, they'll have access to only 1/14th of the entire network. The crew can just replace their SIM cards from that day in the pill organizer, assured that the other 13 of their SIM cards are still secure. (Update: for more information on what Martin's system is—and isn't—good for, check out this discussion in the comments.)
Martin said he had first thought up the pill organizer system while working briefly for a company that specializes in cellular forensic tools.
So far, managing cell phones for drug dealers is a tiny fraction of Martin's work. He's set up two crews with his cell phone system. After a set-up fee of a few thousand dollars, he charges around $600 a month to manage it, which mostly consists of taking a couple hours every month or so to top off the airtime on the SIM cards he keeps track of on an Excel spreadsheet.
***
I did eventually get up the nerve to accompany Martin to the restaurant in the boroughs he said was a drug front owned by his trafficker client. I am not 100% sure it wasn't just a normal restaurant run by, say, a guy who had once dealt drugs. On the way there, the rising urge to vomit all over the subway car in fear was definitely real. I thought of a thousand creative ways I'd be tortured to death after being discovered to be a reporter, not at all comforted by the paper-thin cover story Martin suggested. (I was a friend from high school helping him out. He gave me some fake last name, which I instantly forgot.)
But when we got there, torturing me seemed unlikely. Martin said the purpose of the visit was to check out a new surveillance system, which his client wanted to be able to view on his cell phone. Instead the restaurant guy mainly wanted to talk to Martin about some negative Yelp reviews the place had received, unable to understand why he couldn't simply delete them. "These are just haters," the annoyed co-owner complained of the one-star reviews. High Net-worth Individuals and drug dealers: United by an obsession over their Google results.
The restaurant was nice enough, and the only drug I saw for sale was alcohol. But the fact that the dinnertime rush consisted of Martin, me, and a few of the owner's shady-looking friends at the bar suggested the place wasn't surviving on its food quality alone. And do most mediocre restaurants have an elaborate remote-controlled surveillance camera set-up scanning every square inch, like the one we examined in the back room?
***
After leaving the restaurant, Martin and I walked down the street to grab a drink. He seemed worn out. Earlier in the week he had sent me an email fretting about the legal position his work with drug dealers put him in.
"Google Jose Luis del Toro Estrada, aka ‘Tecnico,'" he had instructed in the email. I did, and learned that Tecnico was a Mexican techie who had constructed an elaborate communications network for the Zetas drug cartel; in 2009 he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine in Texas.
"Technically, I am part of a conspiracy," Martin said at the bar. "It's not like I need the money. This was just a job to do out of boredom."
He's going to get out: "There's going to be a point some day where I'm just not going to take their calls."
To that end, Martin plans to set up his clients with an online banking system that automatically refills their SIM cards with airtime every month, so he can quit without screwing them over.
He emphasized that he has no moral problem providing IT services to drug dealers. These guys, he said, had a terrible "technology gap" compared to his millionaire clients.
"I kind of see them like they're underdogs in a way," he said.
[Pictures by Brent Rose]
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:24:32 EST
Glenn Beck Rips Off Anonymous In New Video
Glenn Beck produced this pretty spot-on right-wing parody of those infamous spooky Anonymous video manifestos. Instead of overblown anarcho-revolutionary rhetoric, it's overblown ultraconservative rhetoric. Will Glenn Beck's fans now DDoS the SEIU's website and leak George Soros' personal emails?
The spooky robot says:
When evil thrived in the political arena, we looked the other way. When it invaded our schools. Ended prayer. Replaced discipline. humiliated our children. Made them unsafe. Fed them lies. We would not believe.
We hope Glenn Beck ripping off Anonymous is the signal everyone needs to finally stop taking every bullshit Anonymous video seriously. In other news, Glenn Beck still exists, and is doing things.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:35:05 EST
Your Google Pseudonym Must Be Approved in Google Court
The anxious cyborgs who rule Google have decreed, after much controversy and deliberation, that they will alllow people to register accounts that do not match their official hu-man names. All you need to do to obtain a pseudonym is to furnish a printed "offline" news article, government document, popular Twitter account and three (3) types of bodily fluid.
We're kidding, but only about the bodily fluids: Google has announced that people who want to use pseudonyms on their accounts, who aren't famous enough to get sucked up to by Google like Madonna and 50 Cent, may apply to a sort of shadow Google Court for the right to use a pseudonym across Google Plus, Gmail and other services. An anonymous Google Judge will then "review the information and typically get back to you within a few days. We may also ask for further information." The Google Judge will review the pertinent Google Evidence, including but not limited to
- References to an established identity offline in print media, news articles, etc
- Scanned official documentation, such as a driver's license
- Proof of an established identity online with a meaningful following
It's funny how print retains its weird psychological power over electronic media, even in Google Court. Oh, well: Time to start writing letters to the local Penny Saver, pseudonymous Google Plus hopefuls!
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:53:44 EST
Lame Hacker Didn't Spy on Goldman Sachs Board Meetings Even Though He Could Have
The New York Timesbreaks the alarming story of how a hacker was able to easily gain access to numerous boardroom videoconference systems throughout the country. Alarming, because this hacker got into Goldman Sachs' boardroom but didn't even spy on the bastards once.
There's a bunch of techno blah blah about how Mike Tuchen scanned the internet and found 5,000 unprotected videoconference systems which allowed him to spy and listen into board rooms.
[Goldman Sachs'] boardroom did not show up in Mr. Moore's initial scan but an entry labeled "Goldman Sachs Board Room" popped up in the directory of a law firm that Goldman Sachs videoconferences with. Mr. Moore did not disclose the name of the law firm and said that because he was afraid of "crossing a line," he did not dial into Goldman Sachs.
COME. ON. Come oooooonnnnnnnnnnn.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:45:37 EST
The Creepy New Facebook for the Staggeringly Rich and Powerful
You can only join the exclusive new social network TopCom if you're among the 200 richest people in the world. Then again, if you're on hand in Davos Switzerland when TopCom is unveiled by scary software compant Tibco, there's a pretty good chance you're in that group.
TopCom is a highly secure private social network, a sort of "combination Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, texting, and Skype" for "the people who run the world," according to Esquire. In other words, it's like an electronic, year-round version of the obnoxiously self-important annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where TopCom will be launched later this week. Here's the happy, sanitized version of how this advanced conspiracy machine might work:
For example, Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda can post a video of himself - viewable only by the top two hundred - asking for help because a major earthquake has caused a tsunami ... and call for an immediate videoconference among the appropriate world leaders to get Japan aid in the quickest way. CEOs of companies that have facilities near the impact site... could join forces... [Specially-invited] experts on nuclear power and crisis management could instantly offer opinions on the likelihood of various disaster scenarios.
In reality, this will probably just be used by Goldman Sachs etc. to dole out orders to political minions (i.e. heads of state), for U.S. agents to initiate comical attempts to spy on everyone (Tibco counts Homeland Security and Lockheed Martin among its many clients), and for Joe Biden to attempt to "punk" his global colleagues via video chat. Not that TopCom will last very long: As Harvey Weinstein learned with his disastrous "MySpace for Millionaires" scheme A Small World, rich people don't need their own social network. They already spend enough time with one another, and known how to reach each other if need be. The rest of the time, they tend to prefer the company of people who they can control, who they can easily impress, and who are young and pretty. Those people won't be on TopCom.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:00:56 EST
Anonymous Is Launching a MegaUpload Alternative?
Anonymous really loved Megaupload. Still reeling over the loss of the best place to download the entire TLC discography on the web, members of the hacktivist collective have apparently launched an effort to build a replacement for the file-sharing service killed by the feds last week: Anonyupload.
According to the site, Anonyupload is setting up servers and should be online by Wednesday. "For your safety, our infrastructure will be out of the U.S jurisdiction ( Russia )." Ha, ha, yeah, because Russian servers are always super-safe.
Who knows if this is legit; it's been met with some skepticism among Anonymous members on Twitter. Anonymous has said in the past they're launching an Anonymous-themed Facebook alternative, Anon+, which has yet to pan out. So far, they're much better troublemakers than software developers. We'll believe in Anonyupload when Swizz Beatz comes on board.
"I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy," Smith said in a statement. "It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products."
Smith was last seen wandering the halls of Congress, shell-shocked, softly humming "Friday" to himself while muttering, "The memes... they came from the internet... my god... the memes..."
[Image via AP]
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:17:27 EST
Anonymous Rallies Behind Plight of Greedy Fraudster Millionaire
Anonymous staged one of its largest attacks ever yesterday in retaliation for the Feds shutting down file-sharing site MegaUpload for allegedly being a criminal copyright-infringement conspiracy. Anonymous should probably learn about the spectacularly greedy playboy they've rallied behind in the name of free culture (and tricked others into rallying behind).
Megaupload's fat millionaire founder Kim Dotcom (born Schmitz) was arrested yesterday in New Zealand, cowering in a safe room in his sprawling rented estate, the Dotcom Mansion. (Dotcom is a German citizen.) This is a man who changed his name to Dotcom, which he then named his mansion. Dotcom had a sawed off shotgun at his side, according to the New York Times.
37-year-old Kim Dotcom lived an absurdly lavish lifestyle thanks to Megaupload and its pirated content, like some geek Kanye West. Police seized $4.8 million worth of cars at Doctom Mansion, including a 2010 Maserati, a pink cadillac and a 2008 Rolls Royce, with license plates like "GUILTY," "EVIL," "MAFIA" and "STONED." He's been convicted of criminal hacking, insider trading and embezzlement.
Before his arrest, Dotcom was famous for his YouTube videos. In some he's racing his Mercedes at 200 mph, "in other clips, Schmitz bathes in grand marble tubs, suns himself on yachts, and cavorts with bikini-clad women," according to CNET. (What is it with Anonymous' love of womanizing geeks?)
Dotcom's sleaziness aside, the specifics of the charges against him, for criminal copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering, suggests the internet's favorite vigilante hive mind may want to steer clear. Megaupload has raked in $175 million since 2005—the company's graphic designer made $1 million in 2010, according to the indictment, as summarized by Ars Technica. This even as Megaupload employees traded Megaupload links to pirated Seinfeld episodes amongst themselves. Is the copyright battle really about letting a German hacker get obscenely rich off copyrighted material, instead of Hollywood studio execs?
But Anonymous' Operation Megaupload is still going strong: they're trying to take down the FBI's website now. If Anonymous is going to make a habit of defending millionaires just to spite the U.S. government, maybe they can help out Rupert Murdoch next. The FBI has been giving him some trouble recently, too.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:03:06 EST
The Evil New Tactic Behind Anonymous' Massive Megaupload Revenge Attack
The hacktivist collective Anonymous is in the middle of a huge revenge spree after the Feds shut down popular filesharing site Megaupload today. But they're using an evil new tactic that tricks people into helping their attack if they click an innocuous link.
The Department of Justice, MPAA and Universal Music websites have all been taken down in the past hour as part of Operation Megaupload, which is shaping up to be the biggest Anonymous campaign in months.
Here's one reason they've been able to muster so much firepower: Anonymous members are distributing a link that ropes internet users into an illegal DDoS attack against these websites simply by clicking it. The link is being shared widely on Twitter and in Anonymous chat rooms, often with no context except that it relates to Operation Megaload. I clicked it a few minutes ago because it was being spammed in an Anonymous chatroom and found myself instantly DDoSing Universalmusic.com, my computer rapidly pinging the page with no way to stop except quickly closing the window.
The link is a page on the anonymous web hosting site pastehtml. It link loads a web-based version of the program Anonymous has used for years to DDoS websites: Low Orbit Ion Cannon. (LOIC). When activated, LOIC rapidly reloads a target website, and if enough users point LOIC at a site at once, it can crash from the traffic. Judging from a Twitter search, the link is being shared at a rate of about 4 times a minute, mostly by Spanish-speaking users, for some reason. (Here's a link to the Twitter search, just don't click the PasteHTML link.)
The thing is, DDoSing is a criminal offense that could earn you 10 years in prison, if you do it intentionally. With previous versions of LOIC, participants had to acknowledge this risk and press a button labeled "fire." But now, it appears some enterprising anonymous member has retooled it so that it automatically fires if you click an unassuming link and leave a window open.
This is completely evil and could lead to huge numbers of witless internet users inadvertently attacking, say, the Department of Justice by clicking a random link they stumble across on Twitter. It may greatly increase the effectiveness of today's attacks, but it also renders them largely meaningless. Anonymous' previous attacks had what political power they had because they were acts of conscious protest; participants knew what they were getting into. This recent round seems to be not much better than a Facebook worm. The safest thing now would be to avoid clicking anything to do with operation megaupload or Anonymous—especially if it's a mysterious Pastehtml link.
Friday Morning Update: Ten websites were taken down in all, including FBI.gov, according to TIME. Anonymous also boasts that "5,635 people [were] confirmed using #LOIC to bring down sites" during the attack—no word on how many of those were unwilling participants.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:18:39 EST
Please Email Us If You Are One of the Hundreds of Women Who Have Tried to Marry Julian Assange
In a new Rolling Stone interview, pale nerd king Julian Assange claims "hundreds" of women have ambushed him and tried to marry him while he's been under house arrest in England. We would love to hear from all of these suitors.
There were stalkers at your previous location. That must have frightened you.
Yes, despite the remoteness of the location – being three hours out of London by fast train, plus another 40 minutes in a car through country roads, and then through a long private driveway into the country house. We had many people try to turn up at the front door or to ambush me at the police station. It coincided with many U.S. politicians, such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, calling for my assassination or kidnapping. Fortunately, nearly everyone who attempted to ambush me was supportive in one way or another. They were mostly women who thought they were my fiancee.
Women wanting to marry you? How many over the past year?
Hundreds.
We have a lot of questions for these hundreds of women. (And some men, apparently.) Was RyanAir offering a special $1 fare to fly to London to propose to Julian Assange? Is there a secret Facebook group, where all the potential wives arranged rideshares or something? How do they feel about the fact Julian's under house arrest for dodging rape and sexual assault accusations by two Swedish women?
If you or someone you know has tracked down Julian Assange with the intention of marrying him, please email me: Adrian@gawker.com.
Wikipedia will shut down Wednesday to protest SOPA, the civil-liberties-destroying law that otherwise indifferent rich internet people actually care about. A day without Wikipedia sounds terrifying and exhilarating all at once. Just imagine the possibilities!
The online encyclopedia is the sixth most popular site on the internet, handling 234 million page views each day on the English edition, which is the one shutting down. What will we do without it? The right question is, "what won't we do without it:"
Lie to your friends. You will be able to make up so much shit Wednesday. For example, "Ricky Gervais never married his girlfriend of 35 years because he doesn't believe in God." (It's actually his girlfriend of 29 years.) Your incredulous friends will whip out their iPhones and find.... nothing.
Make your students do actual real research on things. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales issued a "student warning" on Monday, urging people in shool to "do your homework early." But a headache for students is a boon to teachers and professors: They can force students to consult primary sources - or at least to consult secondary sources directly, rather than via an encyclopedia.
Send enemies to Wikileaks and/or Enyclopedia Dramatica. They're sorta like Wikipedia, except you can get in trouble for viewing them at work.
Disclaimer: These probably won't work on people who've figured out how to work Google Cache.
Better ideas are, of course, welcome in the comments below.
[Image of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales via Getty Images.]
Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:37:17 EST
Tech Industry Buys Itself a Mouthpiece
How did Silicon Valleys bigwigs react when their favorite trade publication adopted strict new conflicts of interest policies? They banded together to pay someone else to cover them.
Former TechCrunch reporter Sarah Lacy today launched PandoDaily, and it has quite an impressive roster of investors, including, well, everyone: "Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Tony Hseih, Zach Nelson, Andrew Anker, Chris Dixon, Saul Klein, Josh Kopelman, Jeff Jordan and Matt Cohler... funds including the CrunchFund, Greylock Discovery Fund, Accel's Seed Fund, Menlo Ventures Talent Fund, Lerer Ventures, SV Angels and Ooga Labs." OK, not quite every address on Sand Hill Road, but a whole crapload of checkbooks for a wee $2.5 million round.
"It's a long list," Lacy conceded in the announcement. "And there is a simple reason we spread the syndicate widely: This is a news site built for the startup community, so the more of them that are a part of it, the better."
In other words, when all the people financing startups also finance coverage of the financing of startups, that's not a conflict of interest so much as an awesome inside track on scoops. Just ask Lacy's investor, contributor and ex-boss Mike Arrington, the TechCrunch co-founder forced out of his own publication when AOL's editorial director took very public umbrage at his plan to invest in the companies TechCrunch covered.
"It's certainly messy," Lacy wrote of her investor-subjects. But of course the hustling, gold-rush culture of Silicon Valley loves "messy." To have a conflict is to have some tenuous membership in tech's pseudo-egalitarian club of venture capitalists, angel investors, favored journalists and, oh right, favored technical geniuses and entrepreneurs. That's why TechCrunch became the industry's bible when its conflicts were most glaring. That's how banker turned Red Herring publisher Tony Perkins leveraged boozy chats with VC pals like Tim Draper into the fattest, most celebrated journal of the first dot-com boom.
The tech industry wants comically frenzied coverage of its products and features and deals, and credulous, faux-needling coverage of its leaders, not unsanctioned stories about privacy breaches, violence cover-ups, palace coups, or messy affairs. Deeply integrated journalists are much more likely to keep their coverage within those bounds.
Now TechCrunch did know how to rile the industry when it wanted to, often quite well, and almost always under Arrington's byline. But then, for all of Arrington's conflicts, he'd bootstrapped TechCrunch; he had the autonomy that comes from not having to answer to a who's who of VCs holding his equity.
Lacy, in contrast, will spend a lot more time covering her owners. At least she's "unashamed" about that, as she put it. And points to the longtime Valley reporter for knowing how to appeal to tech titans' vanity. Ever since the changing of the guard at TechCrunch, they've longed for a more deeply intertwined publication that will cover the Valley with the fervor of a supplicant. Lacy just sold them one. It's not clear if the seventeen different stakeholders will be able to effectively block stories they don't like. But then it's not clear they'll even need to.
Hackers Attack Israeli Stock Exchange In Escalating Mideast Cyber-Throwdown
The websites of Israel's stock exchange and national airline were hit by hack attacks today after weekend threats from the pro-Palestinian hacker 0xOmar. It's the latest volley in the escalating hacker-on-hacker pissing-match currently drenching the Middle East in leaked credit card information.
Today's attacks weren't very impressive; they briefly took down the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al Airlines, but didn't impact service in either cases. Still, they've capturedheadlines because of their place in the ongoing 'cyberwar' being waged between two groups of teen hackers on either side of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
This all started started in early January, when a hacker claiming to be a 19-year-old Saudi going by the name 0xOmar leaked about 15,000 Israeli credit cards and claimed to have a million more. Besides his burning hatred of Israel, he seemed like a pretty normal teenage geek in our chat with him, with a penchant for Xbox and web design.
In retaliation for 0xOmar's attack on Israel, an Israeli teen going by the confusingly-similar name 0xOmer leaked thousands of Saudi credit card details last week. He claims to be an Israel Defense Soldier working with a team of three others. 0XOmer's crew is now joined in battle against 0xOmar by an another pro-Israeli hacker named Hannibal, who just leaked the Facebook login info for 20,000 Arab users onto Pastebin. But 0xOmar says he's getting backup, too, from some Palestinian hackers named Team Nightmare, who may have been behind today's attacks.
Meanwhile, these teen nerds' squabbling has provoked Israel into basically threatening to assassinate 0XOmar, and Hamas is jumping on board, urging hackers to keep hitting Israel. This will no doubt spur lots of scary talk about cyberwar and cyberterrorism. But this is not war or terrorism; stealing and leaking personal info is large-scale cybercrime that happens pretty much every day. Today we learned hackers stole the personal information of 24 million Zappos customers. A shitty, illegal thing to do—but not a declaration of war on our nation's bargain lovers.
Update: I just conducted an email interview with Hannibal, the crusading Jewish hacker leaking Arab Facebook logins, Here's what he had to say (not much.)
Your newest release is 30 000 "Facebook & email accounts." How many
of these are Facebook accounts, and how many are email accounts?
All combined
Please explain exactly how you got this information. Did you
compromise Facebook?
Maybe yes, maybe no. (-;
What is your background?
I'm a Young Jew. I live in an unknown location Somewhere in the world.
Why are you attacking Arabs?
Arabs are a danger to humanity, this is a huge example of the Holocaust
Are you associated with 0xOmer or the other Israeli hackers leaking Saudi credit card information?
I'm not about anybody. I work Alone
You said you've received emails from senior politicians about the information you have. Could you share any with me as proof?
I have hundreds of emails. I do not have much time
Have you stolen anything else you haven't talked about in your pastebins?
Yes. Sensational surprises soon.
Why is your name "Hannibal Lecter?"
I admire the Hannibal Lecter, a genius.
Anything else to add?
Arabs Owned By Hannibal = D
Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:45:26 EST
Use Facebook's Targeted Ads to Find Out How Many People Are Into Kinky Sex in Any Workplace
Today I was playing around on Facebook's advertising interface, and found myself learning a little more than I want to know about Facebook's employees. Facebook is happy to tell prospective advertisers how many of its own workers are into kinky sex stuff. (40, FYI.)
You probably know that Facebook makes its money from letting advertisers precisely target users based on what they put in their Facebook profiles. Using Facebook's ad interface, you can target, for example, only male graduates of Dartmouth who live in New York and who have expressed interest in kickboxing and Harry Potter. Facebook's targeted ads make privacy advocates nervous, since they can do things like out individual gay users.
They can also shed light on the sexual practices of a whole company. As you can see, Facebook says about 40 Facebook employees are into the, uh, non-traditional sexual practices I chose to target. Not bad for a company with 3,000 employees. (Of course, many people on Facebook claim to work at the company but don't, so a lot of these probably aren't employees. But that doesn't stop Facebook from claiming to sell access to 40 kinky Facebook employees.) To help advertisers, Facebook offers an estimate of how many users fall under the demographics you're trying to target. Unlike a normal Facebook search, this estimate includes people who have made their profiles private, since everyone sees ads regardless of their privacy settings.
So, log in to Facebook, click on create an ad, and see what you can find out for yourself by targeting different combinations of organizations and interests. You can learn all sorts of interesting stuff. (Works best with large corporations, churches, or colleges):
Megachurch pastor Jay Osteen recently called homosexuality a "sin." But he might want to know a few dozen members of his flock at Lakewood Church are openly gay men.
Palestinian activists might use it to argue New York Times employees demonstrate a pro-israel bias.
Incoming BYU freshmen will be interested to learn just how boring the next four years will be.
A surprising number of employees of World Wrestling Entertainment have the musical taste of 13-year-old girls.
And Coca-Cola may want to institute an anti-Pepsi surveillance program.
Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:27:20 EST
Chinese Apple Fans Are Even More Insane Than American Apple Fans
Apple fanboys in the U.S. have nothing on their Chinese counterparts. The launch of the iPhone 4s in China caused an actual riot in Beijing, with the gadget-hungry crowd flinging eggs at Apple's sparkling flagship store.
Customers including migrant workers hired by scalpers in teams of 20 to 30 to buy iPhones for resale at a markup to Chinese gadget fans waited overnight in freezing weather at the Apple store in Beijing's east side Sanlitun district.
The crowd erupted after the store failed to open on schedule at 7 a.m. Some threw eggs and shouted at employees through the windows.
The store didn't open, to protect employees' and customers' safety. To all the rich white dudes who whine about the asians "scarfing up" all the iPhones here in the states: It could be much, much worse.
[image via AP]
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:20:01 EST
Facebook Will Read Your Private Thoughts For Politico's Benefit
Facebook has issued another exciting edict on how your personal data will be used, announcing a partnership in which your private status messages and comments are mined for political sentiment. The information is then passed in statistical form exclusively to Politico for that site's trademark analysis. Don't worry about opting out, because that's impossible.
The program "may alarm some people," writes Liz Gannes of All Things D, but "Facebook and Politico say the entire process is automated and no Facebook employees read the posts." So don't worry: Facebook doesn't actually care about your private feelings, it just wants to exploit them.
The really nice thing about having no human eyes on this data is that Facebook can't do quality control. So if you're pissed off about this ridiculous misappropriation of private conversations, we urge you to fight back in the easiest possible way: Update your status to say you're really like that Huntsman fellow. Remember, there's no "h" in the "Jon." And if you need to take a couple of drinks before you can bring yourself to hit "post," no one will judge.
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:46:24 EST
Idiot Who Outed Himself As FBI Snitch Is Still Working with the Feds
Computer security consultant Thomas Ryan's ham-fisted attempt at spying on Occupy Wall Street last October exposed his own snitching to the feds. But the FBI apparently still trusts him enough to have had him speak at their big computer security conference this week.
You remember Thomas Ryan, right? The New York-based computer security consultant surreptitiously joined an Occupy Wall Street mailing list, then leaked the contents to right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart who used it to smear the movement; but in the process he inadvertently leaked his own emails in which he informed his NYPD and FBI buddies about Occupy Wall Street goings-on.
The FBI apparently decided that leaking his own sensitive emails to them did not disqualify Thomas Ryan from presenting at the International Conference on Cyber Security they hosted at Fordham University this week. Perhaps they were convinced by his boasting on his website of leading an elite "Black Cell" team of computer geeks—they love that Tom Clancy bullshit.
On Tuesday, Ryan gave a talk about "protecting your online identity, where he described "the ways in which information can be compromised in a matter of minutes." Beware of threats to your private information: It could be hackers; it could be an incompetent crusading geek giddy with the prospect of helping a conservative blowhard paint a peaceful protest movement as a terrorist cabal.
In his talk, Ryan—whom we should again emphasize leaked his own emails on the internet in an easily-searchable format—also outlined the "most effective and progressive tools to safeguard your own identity." The talk was chaired by FBI cybercrime specialist Ilwhan Yum, whom we know is buddies with Ryan since he had CC'd him on his Occupy Wall Street emails.
Unfortunately we weren't at the talk, so we can't tell you any more details. But be patient: Ryan will probably accidentally leak his notes in the next few days.
