[HN Gopher] Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia...
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       Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More
       Hostile Internet
        
       Author : cooperq
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2022-03-22 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | scotuswroteus wrote:
       | The use of terrible, horrifying, absurd makes this read less like
       | a serious, considered policy position, and more of a rant. Rants
       | can be cool, but this struck me as less nuanced than I'd have
       | hoped coming from an important organization on a really
       | significant topic.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | thunkshift1 wrote:
         | I disagree, I think they make their point fair well. Note that
         | eff wants this piece to reach non-tech crowd as much as tech
         | ones
        
       | tsol wrote:
       | >The trend of half-baked hacktivism involving everyday internet
       | users is now growing into sites and games that encourage users to
       | become part of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks
       | against some Russian digital assets. For the same reasons
       | mentioned above, randomly sending attacks without thinking
       | through the consequences and potential collateral damage are
       | feel-good actions that amount to shooting in the dark. Also
       | unknown are the consequences for users that were part of this
       | campaign. Are users aware that they could have their IPs logged
       | by a potentially aggressive and vindictive target? It's an
       | incredibly irresponsible action that gives tools to ordinary
       | users without the due diligence it deserves, putting innocent
       | lives at risk on all sides.
       | 
       | I agree. I can imagine a day where the public passes along links
       | for fire to DDOS hackernews until silicon Valley puts more
       | regulations against fake news, or children on social media, or
       | some other issue. Vigilantism is always a bad idea, people get
       | carried away and before you know it anyone can be a target
       | because of a tenuous link to something considered bad. If the
       | story about the tool overwriting files on Russian computers is
       | true, then that just leads to another huge set of problems that
       | can occur.
        
         | suifbwish wrote:
         | If you own popular websites you can embed code that causes the
         | visitors to repeatedly background download large files from
         | some web server you don't like. If someone is hosting in AWS
         | people can deliberately drive up their bill by scanning their
         | site for the highest file size and just mass downloading that
         | one file around the clock. I dont support this behavior but it
         | happens.
        
       | genmud wrote:
       | Pervasive monitoring, censorship, state sponsored disinformation
       | and hacking also make a more hostile internet.
       | 
       | I think that we are legitimately at a point where people should
       | just go into things assuming they are hostile and/or unsafe. I
       | love EFF, but I think they operate under the assumption that bad
       | actors are exceptions to the rule, which is pretty naive in 2022.
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-22 23:02 UTC)