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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: V for Vampire-Squid-Hunting

Open Thread: V for Vampire-Squid-Hunting

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Damon Poeter at PCmag.com posts “Anonymous Threatens to ‘Erase NYSE from the Internet’“:

Anonymous declared “war” on the New York Stock Exchange this weekend and vowed to “erase” the NYSE from the Internet on Oct. 10 as the Occupy Wall Street protest entered its third week in New York City after a weekend that saw hundreds of protesters arrested during a planned march across the Brooklyn Bridge…
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The AnonMessage channel has been used to post several Occupy Wall Street-related video messages since the protest against lax regulation of the financial sector and growing economic inequality began on Sept. 17. Those messages include Anonymous’ initial “official” video regarding Occupy Wall Street and a warning sent last week to the New York Police Department that threatened retaliation if “the brutality does not stop” against Occupy Wall Street protestors…
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The threat to “erase” the NYSE from the Internet was not explained, though in comments on the YouTube video, some speculated that Anonymous was planning a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on the public-facing NYSE.com website, similar to DDoS attacks the group has used to take down websites in the past.
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Others felt that would only be a minor setback for the NYSE and guessed that Anonymous was planning a larger attack, perhaps even an attempt to actually disable trading on the exchange.

Videos & transcripts at the link. And, no, Columbus Day is not a stock market holiday , although it’s probably been a light-volume day in previous years…

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  2. 2.

    MikeJ

    perhaps even an attempt to actually disable trading on the exchange.

    The the dipshits that ran al Queda could do it, it should be possible for someone willing to put thought into it. Of course anonymous won’t want to put themselves at any risk.

  3. 3.

    Zifnab

    Somewhere, there is a computer security firm working for Wall Street that is absolutely loving Anonymous right now. I can just imagine the legion of Galtian Overlords freaking out over the thousands of things an insidious band of online radicals could do to all their little magic internet boxes.

  4. 4.

    singfoom

    Based on the video and the Calls To Action within it, it would seem to be a mass DDOS attack using the LOIC or Low Orbit Ion Cannon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOIC

    I don’t pretend to understand Anonymous’ motivations or their goals, to me, it looks like a call for other people to use the LOIC on the NYSE. The video at uses the NYSE.com site in the Call To Actions within the video:
    http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAnonMessage

    Most likely a diversion while others do more interesting hacking…IMHO

  5. 5.

    arguingwithsignposts

    The video said to download the LOIC, which is just a DDOS tool. That should be pretty weak sauce for nyse.com to handle. Maybe that’s a diversion, though.

    I’m not sure this is going to be a boon to the protest movement, though.

    Or what singfoom said above.

  6. 6.

    pragmatism

    @Yutsano: wouldn’t bother me either but the eye-talians would be gnashing their teeth and pearl clutching. The Sopranos did a good job at capturing this phenomenon. Here is the thing I don’t get–Columbus goes to the Italian royal family to pitch his idea to sail to the new world and they summarily reject him. Then he goes to other countries and eventually Spain. Aren’t the italians celebrating their own shortsightedness with Columbus day?

  7. 7.

    Mattminus

    If Anonymous was able to disrupt trading, we’d see robot drone attacks against US citizens on US soil.

    And ABL would probably rush to tell us what a great thing this is and anyone that disagrees is racist ;)

  9. 9.

    joeyess

    Anonymous declared “war” on the New York Stock Exchange this weekend and vowed to “erase” the NYSE from the Internet on Oct. 10 as the Occupy Wall Street protest entered its third week in New York City after a weekend that saw hundreds of protesters arrested during a planned march across the Brooklyn Bridge…

    That should bring out the Audio Cannons and Taser Trucks.

  12. 12.

    Zifnab

    @cleek: That’s what people have said about the Occupy Wall Street protest and the capital sit-in over in Wisconsin and all the other forms of protest and disruption.

    I’m not going to suggest that Anonymous is taking the most mature approach, but so what. It’s getting people involved one way or another.

  13. 13.

    PurpleGirl

    @Yutsano: It may be holiday for you but it isn’t a holiday for many people, depends on where you live. In NYC the schools are closed but that may be the political influence of Italian groups. For years I thought it was also a mandated holiday because my father always had the day off. Then I figured out that he took the day off because it was his birthday and his union (IBEW, Local 3) had member’s birthday as one of their holidays.

  14. 14.

    El Cid

    Naivete here — what role does the NYSE (the company, not the entire market activity taking place within its, er, borders) website have in any larger market activity?

    If the NYSE as a website were taken off the Intertoobz, what would be the damage? I’m pretty sure that trading is not running through their servers. I’m pretty sure that Citibank or Dow Chemical doesn’t freeze up if the CEO can’t log in to his NYSE.com account.

    In fact, I’d be willing to bet that few of the people I know who most eagerly follow the stock market ever considered whether or not the NYSE had any websites itself.

    Or do they mean all stock exchange activity ‘on the Internet’ of any kind? That seems quite ambitious.

  16. 16.

    ericblair

    @pragmatism:

    Aren’t the italians celebrating their own shortsightedness with Columbus day?

    More like their better grasp of known facts. Columbus got rejected several times, not because everybody “knew” the Earth was flat, but because Columbus had a really low estimate of Earth’s circumference when scholars knew damn well it was round and had a pretty accurate idea of the circumference from Greek experiments. If North America hadn’t been in the way, he’d have died with all his crew after his supplies ran out. So Columbus was totally wrong, but pigheaded and seriously lucky, and so he’s in the history books. Typical.

    And sure, I’m really going to download some DDOS tool from a hacker site to help an attack on the NYSE. Nothing can go wrong there.

  17. 17.

    The Pale Scot

    I ran across a snark and it’s been rattling in my head, I think it might as good a synopsis of #Occupy that I’ve seen.

    “I’ll accept that corporations are people as soon as a one gets executed in Texas”

    Underground.com is saying they saw it taped to a car’s back window but someone popped up saying they twittered it, so who knows.
    If I still lived in the area I’d be finding a screenpress and making T-shirts, it would get a lot play around Thompkin’s park etc.

  18. 18.

    beltane

    @pragmatism: There was no such thing as an Italian royal family in 1492. The unified Kingdom of Italy only came into being in 1861.

    In New York, at least, Columbus Day was like St. Patrick’s Day for Italians, and had little to do with the European discovery of the New World.

  19. 19.

    pragmatism

    @ericblair: thanks for the clarification. in hindsight, italy probably would rather be wrong about the facts regarding circumference but able to lay claim to parts of the new world. one of the better historical bargains.

  20. 20.

    MikeJ

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    The video said to download the LOIC, which is just a DDOS tool.

    And the network people at NYSE are probably on the phone with the NOC of every decent sized ISP in the country telling them the one line of BGP they need to type into their routers to neuter it.

  21. 21.

    pragmatism

    @beltane: yeah, this is just a half baked theory of mine that occurred to me when i was re-watching the sopranos episode about columbus day. thanks for the learnin’.
    when i lived in denver there were some fairly large native american protests on columbus day.

  22. 22.

    russ

    Methinks that the move from three letter political parties will be interesting. (GOP), (DEM) and soon to be (CODE).

  27. 27.

    Short Bus Bully

    It may or may not help the protestors, but I would love to see some Galtian overlords scrambling and shitting themselves when their interlawls shut down for an hour or two.

    I’m selfish that way.

  29. 29.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    It’s Indigenous People’s Day here in San Francisco. My son gets the day off school; I do not get the day off work. My Italian-American father-in-law gets to run his mouth about stuff his ancestors didn’t do.

  31. 31.

    Roger Moore

    @pragmatism:
    As beltane pointed out, there wasn’t an “Italian” royal family to turn him down, since Italy was divided into a whole bunch of minor states.

    And, FWIW, the Italians he approached had fairly good reasons for not wanting to investigate trans-Atlantic trade even if they had thought it might be possible. They already controlled trade in the Mediterranean, which was the existing trade route with Asia; they had no particular reason to want to open up an alternative route. That’s especially true because they lacked Atlantic ports and could only get to the Atlantic through Spanish controlled waters. Why would they want to invest in a highly speculative venture that would ruin their existing strength if it succeeded?

  32. 32.

    Keith G

    Ok, I had’t read Sullivan for about two weeks. I dropped by and read this turdlet from the Prince Princess of Rats.

    I feel both Cartman-like aversion and a worrying exhilaration. I didn’t realize I hated these bankers even more than these hippies. But it took the hippies to bring it out in me. I can’t help hoping they upset a few of the bastards.

    She just ain’t right.

  35. 35.

    lamh34

    @arguingwithsignposts: well that doesn’t make me feel any happier…lol.

    Oh well, it is what it is. The website says refunds will be issued. I bought 2 tickets in July and my “date” cancelled on me for the Oct show, so I was frantic for about 2 weeks trying to find someone to go with me. Finally my friend said she would go, so she and I both took days off, and I just so happened to have a whole week off. Now I got a whole week in October that I have to find something to do with (shrugs).

    What’s bothering me is that I bought my tickets online and the ticket vendor on Adele’s site is a UK vendor, so I’m must wondering how I’m supposed to go about getting a refund. The concert was supposed to be 2 weeks from today???

    Other than that, it’s no biggy…disappointing, but no biggy.

  36. 36.

    El Cid

    The problem with Columbus wasn’t that he thought the world was round and that others thought the world was flat, but that no one yet understood that he had to go in order to lay the groundwork for the United States of America, where Jesus would live.

  38. 38.

    Ash Can

    Count me among the Italian-Americans who don’t give a crap about Columbus Day (except when I was in college in Canada, when it was Thanksgiving — yum).

  40. 40.

    pragmatism

    @wrb: irresponsible even. may the fsm strike me down if i ever get so fat that i have to be driven from my helicopter landing 1000 feet to my son’s baseball game.

  41. 41.

    JGabriel

    Linda Featheringill:

    Something “more interesting” to the Wall Street computers or to something else entirely?

    NYSE is one of the most heavily secured sites in the world. So it’s not a particularly worthwhile target — unless you’ve discovered a new exploit or backdoor you want to test.

    So either Anonymous has a new trick up their sleeve that they want to test, or they just want to hassle NYSE with lots of low grade attacks for shits and giggles.

    .

  44. 44.

    Ian

    @pragmatism:

    The current Royal family of Italy was descended from the House of Savoy. At the time of Columbus Italy was owned by hundreds of different city-states and minor nobles. The city state of Genoa (where Columbus was from) was busy with a war with Venice. Columbus left Genoa to avoid being conscripted and then came to France, Spain, Portugal, and then back to Spain before finally heading out on his mission.

  45. 45.

    burnspbesq

    Anonymous can do pretty much whatever it wants, short of committing felonies, and I won’t give a shit. If they cross that line, then bury their asses under the nearest Federal prison.

  46. 46.

    hrprogressive

    I am really morbidly curious to know what would happen if Anonymous was actually able to shut down the NSYE, even for a day.

    Not their public website, but the actual trading?

    Maybe that’d get people to stand up and take fucking notice, eh?

  49. 49.

    Geoduck

    @hrprogressive:

    I am really morbidly curious to know what would happen if Anonymous was actually able to shut down the NSYE, even for a day.

    A day? Fifteen minutes would be enough to let loose a firestorm.

  50. 50.

    OzoneR

    @pragmatism:

    Here is the thing I don’t get—Columbus goes to the Italian royal family to pitch his idea to sail to the new world and they summarily reject him. Then he goes to other countries and eventually Spain. Aren’t the italians celebrating their own shortsightedness with Columbus day?

    There was no Italian Royal Family.

  51. 51.

    OzoneR

    @hrprogressive:

    Maybe that’d get people to stand up and take fucking notice, eh?

    If I had to guess, it would create a wave of public sympathy for Wall Street.

  52. 52.

    hrprogressive

    @Geoduck: Really, or is that snark?

    If that’s true, that just shows how little I know about how the stock market operates.

  53. 53.

    Narcissus

    If Anonymous could actually do something concrete, like make an entire day of trading vanish into thin air, I’d run naked through the streets.

  54. 54.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @Narcissus: Maybe they are planning to have pizzas delivered to the trading floor, and call up the traders and ask them what Battletoads are trading for.

  58. 58.

    soonergrunt

    Translated into IT/Network Technician Speak–
    ANONYMOUS THREATENS TO TEAR DOWN SOME POSTERS PUT UP BY NYSE!

    Until and unless they come up with something a little more interesting than DDOS against public websites, it’s neither noteworthy nor interesting.

  59. 59.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I worked for a company owned by a Native American tribe.

    We did not get October 12th off.

  65. 65.

    Comrade Dread

    I am really morbidly curious to know what would happen if Anonymous was actually able to shut down the NSYE, even for a day

    Probably Marshal Law, swift passage of a law letting the government control the internet, more laws against computer hacking so broad that they could be applied to anyone who makes a typo on an online post or uses a pseudonym, SWAT team raids on suspected hackers, another version of the Patriot Act, and possible aerial drone strikes.

  67. 67.

    MattMinus

    @hrprogressive:

    Seriously, if they were able to shut down trading for a day, which I don’t think they could even with people on the inside,
    they’d become Public Enemy #1, bigger than Al-Qaeda, the worst terrorists the world has ever known. Anyone that’s ever repeated a 4chan meme would have their door kicked in and be taken to Gitmo.

  68. 68.

    Narcissus

    Anonymous should hack into the United States Mint and put the Y U No Guy on all forms of currency.

  69. 69.

    THE

    On one occasion a couple of years ago I phoned one of the stock exchanges to report a bug on the website. I honestly thought the person at the other end was going to burst into tears in gratitude that anyone cared enough.

    I confess that I do occasionally visit overseas stock exchange websites to check on Public Holidays etc.

  74. 74.

    Anne Laurie

    @Narcissus: She Of Many Pseuds has been sin-binned by general request, and more importantly for personal attacks on other commentors. She can rag on me all she wants, but sometimes she’s like one of her JRTs — she needs to be crated until she can settle down & get over her bad self already.

  75. 75.

    Shade Tail

    Unless these anonymous-punks can actually steal some kind of incriminating info that leads to criminal charges against major bankers once publicized, I will be severely unimpressed with what they do. Petty vandalism never helps the cause, and frequently hurts by generating sympathy for the other side.

  76. 76.

    Bago

    Iff they hijack their DNS servers things could get interesting, but I’m fairly certain that the HFT programs skip the DNS lookup.

    Now, for the havoc that the HFT programs will cause when the trading patterns change because mister home day trader can’t log on… Will be interesting.

  79. 79.

    singfoom

    @Linda Featheringill: More interesting than a DDOS. Think about it for a second. The LOIC is a self contained tool, you don’t even really need to be that great at “hacking” or computers to use it, you just point it at a site.

    Basically, from my POV, they’re incredibly clever, they get tons of ‘script kiddies’ (AKA not real hackers) to use the LOIC to DDOS a site, and then real hackers in Anonymous do the real work, such as breaking into the NYSE’s systems, the actual trading computers or something besides the front facing site.

    The massive traffic to the site from the DDOS attack means that the severs are swamped and law enforcement ends up going after the DDOS kids who weren’t smart and didn’t cover their tracks. Those are the people you see arrested as “members of Anonymous”.

    All of this is pure conjecture on my part and I could be wrong, but it seems like a great way to create a bunch of fall guys for a given system breakin…

  80. 80.

    opal

    @Anne Laurie:

    You suck as a front pager.

    Your posts have three variations:

    1) Barely comprehensible wall of text.

    2) Blockquotes of entire articles with minimal comment.

    3) A bleary-eyed combination of 1) and 2), followed by some kind of weird nervous fit.

    In short: I don’t think you’re qualified to delete posts or ban people.

  81. 81.

    cleek

    @soonergrunt:

    How many people actually know that happened?

    6, maybe 7. 9, tops.

    but how many will know if they damage NASDAQ ? and will they be sympathetic ? a whole lot of people have their life savings in the stock market. not what you want to fuck with, IMO.

  82. 82.

    soonergrunt

    @cleek: Yeah. And like I said, taking down a website with a DDOS is more like tearing down or defacing a poster than anything else. They’ve never shown any ability to do more than that.

  83. 83.

    Corner Stone

    @opal:

    2) Blockquotes of entire articles with minimal comment.

    opal, my dear, this may quite possibly be the funniest shit you have ever posted here.

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