Andy Millar

A hacker group calling themselves Anonymous have declared war on Scientology.

In their declaration of war, posted on YouTube, Anonymous claim:

“With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us.

“Anonymous has therefore decided that your organisation should be destroyed, for the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment.

“We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

Organized by an online Forum and IRC Channel, Anonymous have been launching denial of service attacks on various Scientology websites. Names and contact details of Church of Scientology members have been circulated to Anonymous members.

Comprising predominantly of Script Kiddies who appear to be students (one member using the online handle xenubuster left this morning to take an exam), the Anonymous “members” download a Denial of Service script and run it from their home computer. The group contains users who have done this sort of attack from home before and have been contacted by their ISPs.

Using standard Denial of Service attacks, Anonymous appear to have been successful in temporarily taking some Scientology sites offline, but no serious damage appears to have been done.

Last night, the group was using a simple UDP flood to try and disable the DNS servers responsible for some Scientology web sites. This morning, one member of the group using the online handle xenubuster claimed “not even the industry really know how we’re doing what we’re doing“!

Anonymous have published a Long Term Strategy for their attack that suggests that their next stage involves IRL (in real life) bombardment of the Church of Scientology. They also suggest publishing this flier in areas known to have Church of Scientology members.

Given that she describes herself as a human pet – and is happy to walk around on a lead – Tasha Maltby is used to odd looks and even odder remarks.

But nothing had prepared her for the reaction of the bus driver who allegedly told the self-styled Goth and her boyfriend: “We don’t let freaks and dogs like you on.”

Miss Maltby and her fiance Dani Graves were so angered they have complained to the bus company of being “victimised”.

I find the comments by the bus driver to be rather irritating. They are even more so annoying as dogs are often on buses; I suspect that she will be much less hassle to other passengers than a dog!

Why can’t they ban religious crazies from buses instead? I would much rather have this couple on a bus with me than some religious nut who does not stop preaching to the entire bus about why their religion is the only true path to God. As much as I am in favor of free speech, I would appreciate it if they chose not to exercise their right to it in public places where I cannot escape!

• Goths and Human pets: 1
• Religious fanatics: 0

It seems that Apple’s reign of being virus free is over!

The Financial Times (06/12/2007) repors on findings by F-Secure that the number of available “malware” applications for Apple Macs has increased by almost 10,000% over the past 2 years. There are now up to 150 malware varients as opposed to the one or two that were available only 2 years ago.

Does anyone remember those Apple adverts comparing PCs to Macs? I seem to remember them claiming that there were “no virusses” for Macs… The following is now clear:

• That was a lie! There were still a small handful at the time those adverts were published.
• They probably annoyed someone.

In fact, F-Secure reports that a group known as “Zlob gang” are claiming responsibility for the massive influx of malware.

As a warning to Mac users:

“… makes programs that infect PCs by tricking users into thinking they are installing software needed to view copywrited video files.“

Once again, the attack vector of modern malware is to target users not the underlieing operating system.