I think Lulzec are funny.

[BlueMage]

Yes, things like the NHS incident and the hacking contest with the $10,000 prize were fairly noble, but what's not is basically everything else. I.E. everything where they've hacked into a company's servers/websites and released tens or hundreds of thousands of users' confidential data.

Yes, they are bringing to light the enormous issues America truly does have with cyber security, and for that, I have to give them some credit. But you think they could do it in a way that doesn't put people at serious risk.

What impetus would there be for changing the status quo if they didn't? If there's no financial risk to the companies involved, they're not going to spend money beefing up security - it's seen as a needless expense (because reducing costs is the key to higher profit folks!)

what Lulzsec is doing, very clearly, is creating that financial risk - as the holders of the information, the companies involved are legally obliged to protect that information. If they've failed to do so, and information trusted to them by their consumers gets used/abused for nefarious purposes.... well, the financial equivalent of meeting Bubba for the first time during shower-hour would apply.

Incidentally, taking down Sony is a noble goal. Anyone who played console games before the late 90s will be able to tell you why.

 

[Smagmuck_]

They hacked the CIA

I highly doubt the Central Intelligence Agency would let them go. They didn't hack the FBI either, they hacked an affiliate of them. If they had somehow hacked the CIA or the FBI, they'd have their doors kicked down faster then the local meth lab. Indeed, Lulsec didn't accomplish "Fuck FBI Friday". They just did the bare minimum. Not only are they complete dicks, they also can't even do the shit they say. DDoS isn't even hacking. It's only crashing a site. Lulsec are nothing but basement dwellers. They can all rot in a ditch for all I care.

/rant

 

[Irriduccibilli]

So you think it's funny to release 62.000 Xbox users info. It's fun to take down several websites for no apparent reason. Lulsec has lost it. Yeah, maybe it was fun to begin with, but now they are just acting like fucking brats who got nothing better to do than annoying people... for the lulz. Selfish social rejects if you ask me

I agree, I hate all this hacker douchbaggery

now onto somthing more important, you avatar, where is it from? I MUST know

Now sir, i'll just get unto that in a second. I found this site with gaming propeganda posters that I found pretty funny, i'll just see if I can find it again

Here's a link
http://www.thelaserbrain.com/?p=82

I really like the Pokémon and Mario poster as well

 

[Vault101]

So you think it's funny to release 62.000 Xbox users info. It's fun to take down several websites for no apparent reason. Lulsec has lost it. Yeah, maybe it was fun to begin with, but now they are just acting like fucking brats who got nothing better to do than annoying people... for the lulz. Selfish social rejects if you ask me

I agree, I hate all this hacker douchbaggery

now onto somthing more important, you avatar, where is it from? I MUST know

Now sir, i'll just get unto that in a second. I found this site with gaming propeganda posters that I found pretty funny, i'll just see if I can find it again

Here's a link
http://www.thelaserbrain.com/?p=82

I really like the Pokémon and Mario poster as well

ohhhh!!! many thanks! I LOVE stuff like this

this will now end up on my wall

 

[Irriduccibilli]

So you think it's funny to release 62.000 Xbox users info. It's fun to take down several websites for no apparent reason. Lulsec has lost it. Yeah, maybe it was fun to begin with, but now they are just acting like fucking brats who got nothing better to do than annoying people... for the lulz. Selfish social rejects if you ask me

I agree, I hate all this hacker douchbaggery

now onto somthing more important, you avatar, where is it from? I MUST know

Now sir, i'll just get unto that in a second. I found this site with gaming propeganda posters that I found pretty funny, i'll just see if I can find it again

Here's a link
http://www.thelaserbrain.com/?p=82

I really like the Pokémon and Mario poster as well

ohhhh!!! many thanks! I LOVE stuff like this

this will now end up on my wall

Good to hear. Glad I could help

 

[Halceon]

They're not complete bastards. I mean, they're not 'Anonymous' for fucks sake.

So taking down websites and releasing personal info in the name of free speech is a dick move, but doing the same things in the name of personal enjoyment is not? Yeah, you're right. Alligators live in houses now.

 

[Thespian]

What have LulzSec done so far?

Brought gaming websites down for a few hours.

Now, normally when I try to go to a site to find that it's down, I don't slap my knee and guffaw about it. Even if I don't really like the site. It's not bad enough for me to yell and scream, and protest either which, could be funny to laugh at if you were looking on from a distance.

But now, it's just a DDoS'd website which is pretty irritating and no more. That's what LulzSec are. Pretty irritating. And boring, too. Ugh.

 

[snowpuppy]

Yep because taking thousands of E-mail passwords and posting them online is funny.

 

[suitepee7]

btw, you may want to fix your title, its lulzsec (short for lulz security) not lulzec
and i dont mind them
just keeping an eye on what they do to make sure my stuff wasnt comped

Agreed, I don't particularly care what "teh dam hakerz!!!" do as long as they aren't hacking my computer, I'm cool.

Edit: WTF? Captcha just made me watch an AD to get a friggin phrase? What fresh hell is this?

so, is that right up until they hack something which you use? and then it instantly stops being funny.

personally, i think they are dicks. i don't find them funny, and taking away services which people use for fun, defeats the object. just because they can hack something doesn't mean they should. they aren't helping anybody, just pissing off some.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

They do good deeds too: Such as hacking into the NHS (National Health Service), but then just emailing them to make them aware of the security vulnerabilities they found.

That whole "they're doing it to raise awareness for Net security!" defenset.....went FLYING out of the window when they hacked The Fucking Escapist.

NOT an FBI front site.
NOT a corrupt e-security firm.
NOT an insecure service hosting the Credit card details of thousands.

A GAMING BLOG. Why? For teh Lulz.

Yeah, they don't have morals or "a goal". Anyone who seriously thinks they do........ gets laughed at on the Lulzsec Twitter feed.

 

[Ekonk]

They fuck shit up because they find it funny.

It's funny for them. If it seems funny to you, you may want to get that looked at.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

I know, people who have directly claimed they don't have ethics, have posted people's personal data leading to them being victims of identity fraud, man they are such comdeians. I can't wait to see their next trick! Maybe they'll shut off a cancer patient's life support to show how frail our connection to life is!

Alright I'll try and be serious. I think they are bottom feeding scum, the most immature and pathetic group of people, including the Westboro Baptists et al. I think they are cyber-terrorists, without even the faintest moral compass which AnonOps can claim, and as such they have no place in decent civilised society.

Also, as with all people who stage atacks over the internet, I think they are cowards. If they were really anything more than cowards, they would do things in public, where they could be rightfully caught and prosecuted for their acts. But instead they hide because they know they are reasonably good at what they do, which compounds my next point, that they are bullies. A bully here being someone who has power over someone, and instead of using it for the benefit of the person they are more powerful than, they use it to torment the prson lower than them. A schoolyard bully is bigger and meaner than the other kids so he beats them up. Lulsec are better at hacking than the other kids, so they steal their private information for shits and giggles.

I'm just going to assume you haven't had any of your data stolen, either by lulsec or at any point in the past. I've been a victim of identity theft, and let me tell you that anyojne who would indulge in an activity even related to it is nothing more than a criminal in my eyes.

Cowards, criminals, cyber terrorists, bullies and immature children. I think that about sums up why no one with any sort of actual working brain should find them funny.

 

[Low Key]

They suck ass because even though they are "sticking it to the man" people who aren't the man will probably get in trouble/fired for their antics.

It's the CIO's job, and the CIO's job alone, to propose and implement better security measures. They are the ones that need to recognize vulnerabilities, and they are the ones to ask for more money from the CFO and CEO to fix those vulnerabilities. Then they allot that money to the proper people accordingly to purchase the better hardware or write better code.

tl;dr, the CIO is the only one who'll be getting canned.

Even then the CIO probably has a family to support, and I wouldn't doubt that he/she had a limited budget before people's site started going down and information was stolen. It stops being funny once it has real world consequences.

If a person has a job to do and they do it badly, they deserve to get fired. Constant security breaches means they are doing a bad job.

If they constantly do then yes. But if you are Sony/facebook/that douchebag security guy they hacked/CIA and all of a sudden you get hit pretty much all at once with a crap ton of hacking there is barely anything you can do. Before this I highly doubt there was very much money or resources going to these places to make sure their networks were lulz proof. There was even an article on the Escapist where one of internet security provider said that it is almost impossible to stop these guys if they really set their minds to it.

Even the best networks aren't 100% secure, but personal data can and should be. The only reason personal data should ever be compromised is when the end user doesn't change their password, uses the same password for everything, or uses a shitty password like "1234"...which is like the majority of the users.

The reason for this is because Linux is the only thing that should be run for servers, and even system administrators can't even see user passwords. Not only that, but if AES encryption is used, it would take longer than the age of the universe to crack. Lulzsec can do bullshit like this [http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/senate.gov.txt] and this [http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/nintendo.com_webserver_configuration.txt], but it doesn't mean they got anything worthwhile. Networks can be rebuilt rather easily. I should know since that is what I'm in college for. However, a breach of personal data cannot be recovered. Once it's out, it's out.

 

[EchetusXe]

Anonymous has been around for some eight years now. Will LulzSec last that long? Well at the minute they don't seem to have any purpose or point, like attacking Scientologists or whatever. They have captured public attention with these attacks on (relatively) high profile websites.

Gain attention
Find purpose
?????????????
Get a life


As for funny. Funny? The Great Habbo Raid of 07, hackers on steroids (ok, technically that was Fox). That stuff was funny. I dunno man, back in the day raiding meant something.

 

[Brandon237]

I think they're hilarious.
Keep the lulz coming.

I'm sure you'll be saying that when they release your personal and financial details... Or your parent's for that matter if you don't really have any of your own. They are causing major damage and inconvenience to thousands of people, and with NO sense of moderation. They even attacked this site.

 

[No_Remainders]

I think, that they are causing no real harm to any of us, and are actually quite funny. They do good deeds too: Such as hacking into the NHS (National Health Service), but then just emailing them to make them aware of the security vulnerabilities they found. Or when they entered a hacking contest, won it, and turned down the $10,000 prize.

They're not complete bastards. I mean, they're not 'Anonymous' for fucks sake.

EDIT: Oh, and it's just kinda funny to see what shit they do.

Yep. No damage to anyone.

I mean, it's not like releasing 62,000 email and password combinations (which included some of my friends' ones, sadly) wasn't "damaging". Or yeah, the Sony attacks weren't damaging at all.

Yeah, no, you're wrong. They need to be stopped.

And anyway, your point about them not being "Anonymous" is a terrible argument.

Anonymous have a goal. Freedom of speech. LulzSec have a totally different goal. "Causing Mayhem".

 

[No_Remainders]

Ya see here's the thing though, if you are using the same password for everything and leave yourself open to something like losing everything like that in one go round, you are kinda equally at fault by way of your own negligence.

What about if, say, you have a different password for everything, but you use the same email for your Paypal as you do MSN & Xbox Live.

So in other words, person goes to PayPal, requests a new password. Bam. You lose that.

 

[Emergent]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_hat

That is all.
Edit: I still do think they're blackhat though.

If anything, Lulsec are white-hat hackers (they currently espouse full disclosure, grey-hats and black-hats do not). The shade-based hacker classification system (tm) is more complicated than white=good, black=bad, grey=somewhere in between.

EDIT: In fact, among the more old-school hacking types, they're considered to be doing EXACTLY the right thing by releasing these details. Grey-hats are typically mercenaries or part-time security professionals that directly profit from their "benevolent" hacking, benefiting the public less and themselves and private corporations more (the individual company might benefit, but the exploit still exists worldwide and can be used against other companies), whereas black hat hackers would never expose discovered security flaws, except to other black hats (usually for a price).

The reason white hat hacking is considered (by many old-school hackers) to generate the most public benefit is that it provides the fastest response (companies have no choice but to fix the problem once it's been publicly exposed) as well as benefiting the most possible people (the company can't decide to hide the vulnerability rather than fixing it, and more than one company benefits from the discovery).

But tens of thousands of personal account data was compromised! How could that possibly be good for anyone?

I'm glad you asked! The logic behind white hat behavior is as follows: If you disclose the data in private, the company might ignore your warnings, delay in fixing the problem, or only make a token effort to close the loophole in their system, leaving potentially millions of users at risk. Simply telling the public about the exploit without releasing the data defeats the point as well, as it becomes very easy for the company to deny the leak while also suddenly making the public very exposed. The idea here is to go with the lesser of two evils. Yes, people's data have been exposed, but at least now they know about it, and if the data had not been released they were at a very real risk of having it taken and not knowing.

A quick recap, in case that was confusing:
Color: Ethics: Stance
---------------------
White: Idealists: Full disclosure of data
Grey: Mercenaries: Partial disclosure for profit
Black: Criminals: No disclosure

 

[Neonit]

i dont give a damn about things like pron emails and such, what i do care about is, that there are people who will turn bullshit like this into a reason "why should we control internet more" by the government. just wait until new laws will be passed that limit internet freedom. so much for "lulz" then.

im pretty sure they are already doing this as we speak.


also, free pron will disappear, do you really want this to happen?!

 

[DustStorm]

They're attempting to bring issues of internet security out into the view of the public by hacking large companies, such as Sony, and by publishing e-mail addresses and passwords. While the activities that they undertake are completely illegal they do have a repsectable goal but their means are deplorable, to say the least.