Guess who’s back? (Back again.)
After surviving I.B. and diploma exams, I have returned to Youth Are Awesome to find an awesome new design (much love.) And what more, I bring with me another super-serious current event to shed some light on, this time on the internet.
If you’ve been paying any attention to the news-o-sphere regarding technology, you would’ve known that there has been quite a large outbreak of attacks on certain companies through the internet. Sony, Nintendo, Fox News, and even the C.I.A. experienced denial-of-service attacks. On some more severe cases, Sony and Nintendo’s information on their clients were vulnerable to be accessed by a mysterious group of internet hackers.
All this started in May 2011, when a group named “Lulz Security” hacked into the PBS website, where they wrote a fictional story on Tupac Shakur, claiming he was still alive in New Zealand. Other small acts as these did not earn them infamy until they claimed responsibility for the hacking of Sony Entertainment servers, where over 37,000 accounts (according to Sony, no incentive to keep the numbers low at all) were compromised, including credit card information and home addresses. The group claimed that they wanted to attack Sony after Sony decided to take legal action against George Hotz, who jailbroke a PlayStation 3. In the following weeks the group would continue to attack companies such as Nintendo (though Lulz Security claimed no information was compromised because they liked the N64 too much), Black and Berg Cybersecurity Consulting, and various game servers such as League of Legends. The attacks became serious when the C.I.A., F.B.I., the United States Senate and the British National Health Service all suffered some damage during these attacks.
The world’s leaders in high-quality entertainment at your expense. – Lulz Security
Seriously compromising network security and linked to the infamous organization “Anonymous” on the 4chan image boards, Lulz Security (or LulzSec for short) does not seem to attack with a incentive on profit. Their attacks mostly include denial-of-service sort and changing the various websites, often to voice their opinions. They do not believe in the American policies regarding cyber-attacks and actively speak out against them. They claim to attack government website in order to expose corruption and privacy breaches by the government (how ironic).
Nobody wants their information even remotely in danger to a third party. Yet one cannot help but think that these attacks by LulzSec may make us rethink the way we trust corporations (and sometimes government agencies) with our information. No doubt that the hackers from this website are of a high caliber. Yet at the same time, so should be the security agencies that are in charge of protecting our information. Perhaps in a sense of “technological co-evolution”, LulzSec forces internet security companies to step up their game.
But at what point do the “Lulz” end? As users of the internet, we are merely sheep, hoping that the directions from the shepherd will not lead us off a cliff. In a world that is heavily integrated with servers and bits, how can the sheep protect themselves from what appears to be (at least for now) a cunning wolf? Government restrictions on the freedom of the internet are hard to place: illiberal in some cases, not strong enough in others. It will interesting to see the response from the world in the next few months.
Also, they have a website as well as a Twitter account where they release the data that they have acquired (download at your own risk). Those who access their website will be treated to an interesting variation on the theme to the “Love Boat.
