India-based AiPlex Software said that when faced with uncooperative torrent sites they “flood the website with requests, which results in database error.” The admission, that the company engaged in what amounts to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, started off a momentous chain of events.

The confession irked the masses on the chat board 4Chan and many of its members, known as Anons (collectively ‘Anonymous’), plotted their revenge. Firing up their LOICs, they DDoS’d AiPlex in return, taking the site offline.

But despite letting off steam the rage did not subside and soon the MPAA and RIAA were being overwhelmed with traffic, along with the Bank of America, Visa and Mastercard who had cut off payments to Wikileaks. Operation Payback was underway and it would spread around the world.

In the three years that have since passed, authorities in various countries have rounded up some of those who coordinated and participated in the attacks. A few hours ago came the news that United States authorities have scheduled some payback of their own for more than a dozen Operation Payback participants.

A federal grand jury has indicted 13 alleged members of Anonymous on claims that they “did knowingly cause the transmission of a program, information, code, and command, and, as a result of such conduct, intentionally cause damage, and attempt to cause damage, without authorization, to a protected computer,” including those operated by the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the U.S. Copyright Office.

The indictment states that 13 men coordinated attacks by collectively deciding on targets and publishing their names and IP addresses along with proposed times and dates for the attacks. Via online postings and fliers, plus through the IRC channels #saveTPB, #savethepiratebay, and #operationpayback, the men allegedly recruited more individuals to the collective.

Interestingly, the indictment makes no specific mention of AiPlex’s illegal DDoS attacks on torrent sites, merely stating that Anonymous launched Operation Payback to retaliate “against the discontinuation of ‘The Pirate Bay’.”

In addition to United States-based targets including Warner Bros., the indictment lists attacks on the IFPI, BPI, ACS:Law, Davenport Lyons and Ministry of Sounds websites in the UK, against anti-piracy group BREIN in the Netherlands, one launched in Australia targeting the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), and another against French anti-piracy outfit Trident Media Guard.

Overall the indictment tries to paint a very bleak picture of the defendants engaging in a deliberate campaign of destruction during the course of Operation Payback. It often cites comments made by each individual as they allegedly went about arranging and motivating others to carry out attacks against high-profile targets.

“We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us,” is the Anonymous battle cry. United States authorities appear to operate with a similar philosophy.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The operation started initially as ‘payback’ against outfits that tried to stop the BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay, and DDoS attacks were organized to strike back. A few days ago, the operation changed course and instead began to go after organizations that displayed opposition towards Wikileaks.

Over the last days several high profile companies and institutions were taken offline temporarily by DDoS attacks including Mastercard, Visa and Paypal. Conversely, Operation Payback’s operation was also obstructed with the deletion of their Twitter and Facebook accounts after the news hit the mainstream media.

Yesterday, this was followed by the arrest (Dutch) of an alleged ‘member’ of Operation Payback in The Netherlands. The local police announced that a 16 year old boy was arrested, suspected of being involved in the DDoS attacks on Wikileaks related targets.

The boy, whose identity was not released, will be heard in court today and has reportedly confessed to his involvement.

According to several sources the arrestee is known online under the nickname Jeroenz0r. The authorities have not yet confirmed this, but the person using this nickname has been ‘missing’ online for the past 24 hours, and has been involved with Operation Payback for quite a while. Jeroenz0r was also an IRC operator at thefailship.net, where one of the former IRC channels of Operation Payback was hosted.

“Jeroenz0r and his server became delinked Thursday night at around midnight UTC time,” a source told TorrentFreak, confirming that the teenager lives in The Hague, where the arrest was made.

“Some of his friends tried calling him yesterday but the phone lead to voicemail. When calling his home number, his dad refused to comment on the situation. Furthermore, his local town newspaper also reported that a local 16 year old boy was arrested.”

Another source, who acts as an Operation Payback spokesman, confirmed that Jeroenz0r has been unreachable since the time of the arrest.

How the police became aware of Jeroenz0r is unknown, but we were told that he didn’t cover his tracks too well.

“Others on the network who know him a bit better knew that he was sloppy and often left traces from his actions online. Also, the Google results on him are quite impressive and indicate that he has been quite active in the torrent scene.”

In a possible response to the arrest, the Dutch Prosecution Office now seems to be under a DDoS attack. Previously the Dutch police stated that they will not go after people who ‘make their computers available” for these attacks, but that they will target people who are more heavily involved.

Update: The Failship IRC team released the following message.

Dear OM [Dutch Prosecution Office],

The remarkably swift arrest of Jeroenz0r, a 16 year old Dutch student, has been all over the international media since the event took place. While the Kremlin takes a dig at the U.S. over Assange’s arrest, while Facebook and Twitter delete the accounts of cyber activists, while over 9,000 ‘hacktivists’ are believed to be behind electronic onslaught, the Dutch authorities arrest a 16-year-old boy
suspected of involvement with Operation Payback.

The whole world reports about WikiLeaks and Operation Payback. How could an underage boy be held responsible for making the world wide news? How could the Dutch authorities hold a 16 year old boy responsible for the world being in a state of digital war?

Is it in the haste of getting something done, that the Dutch government labeled him as a scapegoat and a terrorist, just so they could say: “We have done our part about the cyber terrorists”? Is the detention and possible conviction of Jeroenz0r an act by law,
or is it –as we suspect– a political statement? Is Jeroenz0r being used to scare the
hell out of everybody who would think that they could do something about censorship and the forces our governments (ab)use?

If this would be a fair trial, what evidence would there be? He may have been a user, or even host for an IRC server, still, this may hopefully not be the primary reason? Even if he had an active role in coordinating the attacks on MasterCard and Visa, which is still improbable, Anonymous is not a personal army and will not be commanded like one. How then, would that incriminate him if everybody is responsible for his/her own deeds? One student would never be powerful enough to take down corporations like MasterCard, Visa or Paypal.

Could we accept that in todays’ society, big corporations are using children as a means of manipulating people for their own gain and benefit? What could have happened if the government had decided to stick out for freedom of expression and free speech, and refused to bend under the demands of MasterCard and Visa? It could have turned out to be a turning point in the war between big corporations and the people who get caught in the gears of the system and have no means of making their way out from the mess.

Eventually, even the government will have to decide, either to be the puppet in the hands of global corporations, or be the one who paved way for rebellion against oppressive corporations and corruption of our society.

We would like Jeroenz0r to know that Anonymous will not be giving up on him. One for all, all for one. Divided by zero.

Signed:
10.12.2010
Failship IRC team
Anonboots, Bnon, (Jeroenz0r), Kris, Paws, Zeekill

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Stepping away from the massive show of force which had brought down countless websites, Operation Payback adopted a new strategy designed to regain the focus of attention.

The operation’s committee made a list of demands for governments worldwide with the ultimate aim of getting involved in political discussion. They argued that copyright laws need to change and called for an end to anti-piracy lawsuits and censorship.

“What we are now trying to do, is to straighten out ideals, and trying to make them both heard and accepted,” a spokesman for Operation Payback told TorrentFreak.

“Nobody would listen to us if we said piracy should be legal, but when we ask for copyright lifespan to be reduced to ‘fair’ lengths, that would sound a lot more reasonable.”

It didn’t go unnoticed that this switch to a more publicly acceptable path has more in common with the direction chosen by the the UK and US Pirate Party. Indeed, Operation Payback has certainly caught the eyes of the Pirates during their 2 month campaign and today, after a huge amount of hostility in recent weeks, Pirate parties have joined their voices in a plea for peace.

“We, the undersigned, call upon you to immediately cease the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks and to instead seek out a legal method to express your frustration and disquiet with the copyright industry, and their perversions of copyright law for personal gain,” write the Pirates today in a letter to the leaders of Operation Payback.

The letter goes on to express understanding of shared frustrations within the current debate but warns that Operation Payback, with its chosen path of aggression and hostility, runs the risk of playing into the hands of their enemy and hinder those who seek to promote copyright reform.

“By continuing Operation:Payback attacks, you will hamper those who promote copyright reform and curtailment of abuses of copyright, but who do so within the bounds of the law,” says the letter.

“Instead of being able to argue for legislative reform of copyright on its own merits, they will be accused of defending criminals and promoting lawlessness. It will be easier for legislators and the media to ignore the clear benefits of fair copyrights and free speech, in favour of clamouring for harsher legislation to ‘stop those pirates and hackers’.”

The letter from the Pirate concludes with a final plea.

“Please help those of us who care about your freedoms, your rights and your liberty, and choose a more moderate and legal way.”

The big question now is whether Operation Payback will respond positively. Despite its anarchic structure and the potential for action by dissenting splinter groups, the early signs are very good for a negotiated and lasting peace.

Anonymous’ spokesperson told TorrentFreak that they plan to adhere to the Pirate Party’s request and “cease activities immediately.” A full statement is expected to be released in the following hours and we will update this article as soon as it comes in.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Initially DDoS assaults were started against the MPAA, RIAA and anti-piracy company AiPlex Software because these outfits had targeted The Pirate Bay. Those DDoS attacks were later replicated against many other targets that have spoken out against piracy or for copyright, resulting in widespread media coverage.

Even law enforcement agencies showed interest in the operation recently. Last week CNET reported that an FBI probe is underway, and TorrentFreak personally knows of at least one court case against a person that was associated with the operation.

Besides covering the results of the DDoS attacks and website hacks, very little is known about the people who are part of the operation. Who are they? What do they want, and what are their future plans? In this article we hope to solve a few pieces of the puzzle.

After numerous talks with people who are actively involved in Operation Payback, we learned that there are huge differences between the personal beliefs of members.

We can safely conclude that this Anonymous group doesn’t have a broad shared set of ideals. Instead, it is bound together by anger, frustration and the desire to be heard. Their actions are a direct response to the anti-piracy efforts of pro-copyright groups.

Aside from shared frustration, the people affiliated with the operation have something else in common. They are nearly all self-described geeks, avid file-sharers and many also have programming skills.

When Operation Payback started most players were not looking to participate in the copyright debate in a constructive way, they simply wanted to pay back the outfits that dared to target something they loved: file-sharing.

Many of the first participants who set the DDoS actions in motion either came from or were recruited on the message board 4Chan. But as the operation developed the 4Chan connection slowly disappeared. What’s left today are around a dozen members who are actively involved in planning the operation’s future, and several dozen more who help to execute the DDoS attacks.

An Anonymous spokesperson, from whose hand most of the manifestos originated, described the structure of the different groups to us.

“The core group is the #command channel on IRC. This core group does nothing more than being some sort of intermediary between the people in that IRC channel and the actual attack. Another group of people on IRC (the main channel called #operationpayback) are just there to fire on targets.”

Occasionally new people are invited to join the command to coordinate a specific attack, but a small group of people remains. The command group is also the place where new targets are picked, where future plans are discussed, and where manifestos are drafted. This self-appointed group makes most of the decisions, but often acts upon suggestions from bypassers in the main IRC channel.

Now let’s rewind a little and go back to the first attacks that started off the operation in September.

The operation’s command was ‘pleasantly’ surprised by the overwhelming media coverage and attention, but wondered where to go from there. They became the center of attention but really had no plan going forward. Eventually they decided to continue down the road that brought them there in the first place – more DDoS attacks.

What started as a retaliation against groups that wanted to take out The Pirate Bay slowly transformed into an attack against anyone involved in anti-piracy efforts. From trade groups, to lawyers, to dissenting artists. Since not all members were actively following the copyright debate, command often acted on suggestions from the public in the main IRC channel.

What followed was an avalanche of DDoS attacks that were picked up by several media outlets. This motivated the group to continue their strategy. Anonymous’ spokesperson admitted to TorrentFreak that the media attention was indeed part of what fuelled the operation to go forward. But not without some strategic mistakes.

As the operation continued more trivial targets were introduced and the group started to lose sympathy from parts of the public. While targeting the company that admittedly DDoSed The Pirate Bay could be seen as payback by some, trying to take out Government bodies such as the United States Copyright Office and UK’s Intellectual Property Office made less sense. In part, these targets were chosen by anarchistic influences in the operation.

“I fight with anonops because I believe that the current political system failed, and that a system based on anarchy is the only viable system,” one member told TorrentFreak. “I encouraged them to go after political targets just because I like Anarchy.”

The Anonymous spokesperson admitted to TorrentFreak that mistakes were made, and command also realized that something had to change. The targets were running out and the attacks weren’t gaining as much attention as they did in the beginning. It was a great way to gather attention, but not sustainable. In fact, even from within the operation not everyone was convinced that DDoS attacks were the best ‘solution’.

“I personally don’t like the concept of violence and attacking, but violence itself does raise attention,” Anonymous’ spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

“Attacking sites is one side of the story, but this operation would finally have to serve a purpose, otherwise it wouldn’t exist. We all agree that the way things [abuse of copyright] are currently done, is not the right way.”

Last week command decided to slow the DDoS attacks down and choose another strategy, mainly to regain the focus of attention. It was decided that they would make a list of demands for governments worldwide. In a move opposed to the desires of the anarchic influences, command decided to get involved in the political discussion.

Copyright/patent laws have to change, they argued, and from the bat they were willing to negotiate. They called for scrapping censorship, anti-piracy lawsuits and limiting copyright and patent terms, but not getting rid of copyright entirely. Interestingly, there is also no word in the demands about legalizing file-sharing.

To some this new and more gentle position taken by Anonymous came as a complete surprise. We asked the spokesman of the group about this confusing message and he said that there are actually several political parties that already adopt a similar position, like the Pirate parties and the Greens in Europe.

However, according to the spokesman (who wrote the latest manifesto with other members in Piratepad) they consciously chose this set of demands. “Some of us have the vision of actually getting rid of copyright/patents entirely, but we are at least trying to stay slightly realistic.”

“What we are now trying to do, is to straighten out ideals, and trying to make them both heard and accepted. Nobody would listen to us if we said piracy should be legal, but when we ask for copyright lifespan to be reduced to ‘fair’ lengths, that would sound a lot more reasonable,” the spokesman told TorrentFreak.

The demands have been published on the Operation Payback site for nearly a week, but thus far the media coverage hasn’t been as great as when they launched their first DDoS. Some have wondered whether this is the right path to continue in the first place, as it may get in the way of groups and political parties that have fought for similar ‘ideals’ for years already.

The spokesman disagreed and said that Operation Payback has “momentum” now.

So here we are nearly two months after Anonymous started Operation Payback. The initial anger and frustration seems to have been replaced by a more friendly form of activism for the time being. The group wanted to have their voice heard and they succeeded in that. However, being listened to by politicians and entertainment industry bosses might take more than that.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The operation began in September with DDoS assaults against the MPAA, RIAA and anti-piracy company AiPlex Software. The latter was picked as the first target because the outfit openly admitted to DDoSing several torrent sites, allegedly including The Pirate Bay.

Those DDoS attacks were later replicated against many other targets that have spoken out against piracy or for copyright, and last weekend the attacks came full circle when the RIAA website was taken down for three straight days.

Today, Anonymous continued their operation with a new target, and this time it’s a high profile one – The United States Copyright Office. The attack started at 3 PM GMT and took down the site for half an hour, after which it partially recovered. At the time of writing copyright.gov is very slow and barely accessible.

The United States Copyright Office is an official U.S. government body which is responsible for the country’s copyright registrations. In addition, the Office is also involved in administering copyright legislation and promoting copyright protection.

Similar to the UK’s Intellectual Property Office which was DDoSed last month, copyright.gov was chosen as a target because it is “Perpetuating the system that is allowing the exploitative usage of copyright and intellectual property,” according to Anonymous.

In addition to the DDoS attacks, Anonymous has also announced “real life” demonstrations in various countries to protest “against censorship and attempts from government entities to control the Internet.” These protests are scheduled to take place on November 5.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Although the international music and movie industries were targeted over the weekend, the attacks initially began on Friday against anti-piracy company AiPlex Software, who had earlier bragged about carrying out DDoS attacks against torrent sites. Ironically, their site proved very easy to take down.

Although a third assault against the UK’s BPI was unsuccessful (more on that later), last night another wave of attacks were launched. Anti-piracy lawyers ACS:Law, who send out tens of thousands of letters demanding cash-settlements from often innocent Internet subscribers, became the new target.

ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley has already been referred three times to lawyers regulation authorities in the UK for his behavior and his company is the most complained-about law firm in their field. Widely despised for the work they do and the manner in which they carry it out, it comes as no surprise that they became a target in “Operation Payback”.

The ACS:Law website was easily taken down last night and remains down today displaying “Account Suspended”.

TorrentFreak spoke with one of the administrators of the IRC channel where Operation Payback is being coordinated to find out more about this and earlier attacks.

“[the IRC channel] is where the entire attack is coordinated – including the pastehtml page. When the time came to DDoS mpaa.org, we had a higher number of troops in our IRC channel than ever before (700 people). Despite this, mpaa.org remained online – of course, because of their DDoS protection,” he explained.

TorrentFreak was told that the choice to launch against ACS:Law last night came as the result of a vote among the operation’s admins.

“After announcing that this was our new target,” the admin explained, “the website went down instantly.”

So while the attacks are being attributed to 4chan users, is ‘Anonymous’ really to blame? We were told that they are.

“The vast majority of our users are recruited from 4chan, and all of the targets are posted on 4chan with their corresponding posters,” TorrentFreak was told. “Once an operation of this scale has been established, the central base of operation is never usually 4chan – it’s usually a chatroom, and commands from the chatroom are echoed back to 4chan.”

“The same thing applied with project Chanology and project Titstorm (where they took down the websites of the Australian government). I was there, in both, and have contacts with the organisers.”

Interestingly we were told that not everything has run smoothly in Operation Payback.

Although an assault against the UK’s BPI managed to slow their servers, it failed to take down the site. The lack of manpower to successfully carry out the assault was due to the IRC channel used to coordinate the assault being hacked, depriving the group of their central grounds for communication. This hacking wasn’t an isolated event either. So far, three of the group’s IRC servers have been hacked.

So where will this all end? The administrator told us that he simply doesn’t know.

Update: Andrew Crossley of ACS:Law has been speaking about the DDoS attack on his site. While noting that his site is now fully operational, he described the 4chan action as “typical rubbish from pirates”.

Update 2: Crossley’s site is back down again. Taunting 4chan is not a very smart idea at all. This could get messy.

Update 3:Site is crawling and barely up – but for how long?

Update 4: 3pm UK time and ACS’s site has been suspended again by their host.

ACS:Law/Operation Payback poster here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.