the Global Cyber-War Score-Card

By Violet Blue

The global cyber war is on.

Visa, MasterCard, YouTube, the Church of Scientology, the MPAA, PayPal, the RIAA, Gawker Media, Warner Brothers, PostFinance… the list is overwhelming to look at.

You might immediately think of Anonymous, of Operation Payback - but there are others, such as #Gnosis, of this past weekend’s massive hacking of Gawker Media.

Contrary to current conventional thought that this is all one “group” associated with Wikileaks, even Wikileaks was taken out for over a day, right before Amazon kicked them out of the cloud, and the Anonymous site had a heavy DDoS attack resulting in 2 hours offline.

Since September of this year, major attacks have taken out (hacked, exposed, exploited or service-disrupted and largely taken offline) a lineup of companies and entities that many previously thought of as untouchable.

A significant number of those attacked openly mocked online community “hacktivists,” resting on an assumed “untouchable” status. In fact, that assumption is kind of what they all have in common.

Well, that and a certain arrogance - at least that is what was cited in the Gawker attack, which was (is) an example of serious attack that is not actual downtime. #Gnosis stormed Gawker’s shores and pillaged their villages, publishing commenter passwords, obtaining emails and BaseCamp access, and promising a full database dump. The damage is severe.

#Gnosis is new, and they are not 4Chan, or Anonymous.

The Cyber War Hacks and Attacks Scorecard

I wanted to see the big-league damage - from original Operation Payback and first Anonymous campaigns to current pro-Wikileaks DDoS attacks.

This is not a complete list, just highlights:

ACS: Law (represents Warner, MGM, Universal and Sony) Big data breach; downtime: 179 hours

AFACT (Australian copyright enforcement) Downtime: 21 hours

Aiplex Software (DDoS attack on Pirate Bay) Downtime: Over 123 hours

Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft Downtime: over 4 hours

British Phonographic Industry Downtime: .06 hours

The Church of Scientology Downtime: over 24 hours, 12 days of attacks

Davenport Lyons (known for mass “pay up” notices to individuals) Downtime: 8 hours

EveryDNS (dropped Wikileaks site) Downtime: unknown

Gawker Media (see above, #Gnosis, damge undetermined)

Gene Simmons (advocated suing filesharing individuals into poverty) Downtime: 1 day, 14 hours

Hustler (suing unprecedented amounts of individuals, threat to name individuals) Downtime: 2 hours

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (response to Pirate Bay verdict) Downtime 14 hours

Joseph Lieberman (told Amazon to drop Wikileaks) Downtime: 12 minutes

MasterCard (pulled plug on Wikileaks payments) Downtime: 1 day, 13 hours

Ministerio de Cultura Downtime: over 20 hours

Ministry of Sound (demanded identities of file sharers to force payment) Downtime: 3 hours

Motion Picture Association of America (pro-DRM, pro- “pay up” filesharing schemes) Downtime: 23 hours

PayPal (closed Wikileaks account) Downtime: 8 hours, 15 minutes

PostFinance (closed Wikileaks’ Assange’s bank account) Downtime: over 10 hours

RIAA (pro-DRM, pro- “pay up” filesharing schemes) Offline: Over 7 days

Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (Spain copyright group) Downtime: over 41 hours

United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office Downtime: est. 24 hours

United States Copyright Office Downtime: 31 minutes

Visa (pulled plug on Wikileaks payments) Downtime: 14 hours

Warner Bros. Industry (response to Pirate Bay verdict) Downtime: over 2 hours

At this writing Amazon Europe is stated as hardware failure (despite Fox News reports) - December 12, 2010, see below:

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