12yo Canadian Pleads Guilty Of Hacking Govt Sites, Trading Info To Anonymous For Video Games.

*Source: RT

AFP Photo / Philippe Huguen

A fifth grader has admitted of being the mastermind behind hacker attacks that took down government websites during the 2012 Quebec student protests and passing some of the hacked data to the Anonymous group in exchange for video games.

The 12-year-old Canadian boy has pleaded guilty to causing three incidents that paralyzed a number of government websites including that of the Quebec Institute of Public Health, and the Chilean government.

Some sites were out of service for as long as two days, the Toronto Sun reports, while thousands of students were rallying against tuition fee hikes in Quebec in 2012, clashing with police and disturbing public order.

Police estimate that the child caused $60,000 in damages, as he appeared before the court accompanied by his father and a lawyer on Thursday.

In court, the lawyer had told the judge that the 12-year-old's actions were not politically motivated.

"He saw it as a challenge, he was only 12 years old," his lawyer said. "There was no political purpose," as quoted by Toronto Sun.

The boy, who has been in hacking since the age of nine, was practicing three basics types of attacks, a police expert told the court.

Reuters / Thomas Peter

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was one of the methods used by the fifth grader to break the government servers by flooding them with traffic and rendering them ineffective.

Another way the young Montreal hacker disabled the systems was by altering information and making it appear as a homepage with his own information. In such an attack, known as website defacement, the hacker gets access to a web server of the target and replaces the original page with a fake one.

The child also exploited security holes to access database servers. The boy allegedly had managed to mine personal information belonging to the sites' administrators and users, and sent some of the mined information to the hacktivist group Anonymous in exchange for video games.

Others involved in the hacking attack have reportedly been arrested but it was the boy who opened the way.

“And he told others how to do it,” explaining it was easy to hack, but not so easy to remain untraced, a police expert testified in Montreal court on Thursday.

According to the paper, a detailed report into the allegations will be handed over next month when the 12-year-old is expected to be sentenced.

It is not the first time in Quebec’s history that a minor has plead guilty to hacking charges.

In 2001, a 17-year-old Canadian hacker was sentenced to an eight month juvenile term for crippling several web sites when he was 15-years-old, including that of Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and  CNN, causing an estimated $1.7 million in damage.

Known as the "Mafiaboy," the teenager pleaded guilty to more than 50 charges related to the attacks. The judge in Montreal also banned the teenager from owning any non-commercial computer and talking to other hackers.

In his book, "Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man" published in 2001, Michael Calce “Mafiaboy's” real name, said that his attacks in 2000 were "illegal, reckless and, in many ways, simply stupid."

Anonymous Reveals Links Between US and British White Supremacists

The latest campaign from hacktivists with the online collective Anonymous involved divulging a trove of emails between members of a noted white supremacy group.

The content of that correspondence has also linked the group to some top members of British Parliament.

Upon infiltrating the website of the American Third Position and the emails of many of its members, hackers have come into possession with material that suggests that the US-based white supremacy group had reached out to Nick Griffin, the chairman of the British National Party and a member of the European Parliament, among others. While Griffin has in the past caused controversy for alleged hate-mongering in Europe, the emails uncovered by Anonymous-aligned operatives suggest that the BNP member is involved with Nazi ties internationally.

Hacktivists have uploaded a sizeable chunk of recovered emails from American Third Position members and implemented a search feature that makes navigating them as easy as conducting a basic Google query. By doing so, however, they may have accidently derailed the political career of the 52-year-old Brit.

“I've got my tickets for Jared Taylor's 2010 American Renaissance. Your fellow WhiteNewsNow members . . . are meeting up with some more of us and probably the most effective White activist in the world today, Nick Griffin,” reads one email from January of that year recovered in the American Third Position hack. In another from 2009, a member writes, "Today will definitely be a Pearl Harbor for the Global Warming criminals who are at this moment cringing in the 4,200-seat arena in Copenhagen where Nick Griffin is clobbering them with the truth about Climategate. Good things are happening … and this is our chance to seize the opportunity."

The correspondence suggests that ties have continued up until now, as supported by a document with the headline “A3P Proposed Conference Agenda” for May 2011. In addition to opening up discussion on the controversial Arizona immigration law that went on the books that year, the group also sought to discuss strengthening ties with BNP members across the pond.“BNP Leadership – establish contact. We need a contact!” is one bullet point on the list.

As recently as last month, other correspondence links the two international outfits. In the meeting minutes for January 7, 2012, a member of the American Third Party says that European Parliament member Andrew Brons would be joining the group for a phone conference. The reason, reveals the email, is that he had “expressed enthusiasm” over Merlin Miller, a candidate that the group is supporting in the 2012 US presidential elections.

"We don't know if [Andrew Brons] had contact with them over the phone. If he did we don't see what the issue is, he's a popular MEP. If he spoke to them he's been elected to speak to people and share ideas, we speak to everyone including Muslim groups,” a spokesman for the BNP explains to the UK’s Guardian.

In a press release from last month, Miller writes that America’s character “ has been dramatically altered” during the last 50 years as “the overwhelming white, Christian majority” is being transformed into a minority. “To question this radical demographic assault against traditional America, or divisive and unfair “affirmative action” programs – is to be classified a ‘racist,’” writes Miller.

In the website where hackers have made the correspondence available, they address the American Third Position Party as “racist losers” and warn them that the information obtained will, obviously, not be well-received.

“It’s time for these cowardly suit and tie white supremacists to sleep with one eye open. Scared much?” asks the site.

Anonymous Swoop On Mexico Govt. Sites In Copyright Law Protest.

Source: Russia Today

Online hacktivist group Anonymous has blocked access to Mexican Senate and Interior Ministry websites. The attack is a protest against a proposed law that will see those who violate copyright online fined one million pesos (over $100,000).

The proposal, from conservative senator Federico Doring, is widely seen as the Mexican version of the SOPA/ PIPA bills, denounced by Wikipedia and other web giants, as well as by the internet community at large, as a threat to internet freedom.

Google, YouTube, Yahoo, AOL and many others have likened the bills to China-style censorship. The deals were supposedly created to protect copyrighted material, but most believe they would cripple the internet, effectively killing all websites allowing user-uploaded content, endangering potential whistleblowers and severely damaging online freedom of speech.

The controversial bills have been shelved indefinitely by the US Congress after the wave of protests and blacking out of popular websites such as Wikipedia, to get the point across.

Despite the victory of internet users in the SOPA/PIPA case, however, other battles rage on. Another controversial treaty – ACTA, an international agreement aimed at protecting intellectual property – sparked mass protests in Poland after its signing by the country.

Anonymous has already targeted official websites in the countries that have signed ACTA. They struck the Polish, French and Czech government websites, as well as the sites of the Irish ministries of justice and finance, the European Parliament, Ireland’s Innovation Minister Sean Sherlock and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

The proposed Mexican law is the new target for Anonymous, who seem ready to tackle any organization or government on the planet that threatens internet freedom and free speech. Anonymous claimed responsibility for the attacks on Mexican websites on their Spanish Twitter account Friday.

Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire told a news conference that the ministry's site had been blocked late morning. It lasted for a little less than five minutes, the site was not compromised and officials were investigating, Poire said.

Doring said in his Twitter feed that Anonymous have the right to show they are against his proposal, but do not have the right to attack websites. He also insisted that the proposal "does not contemplate any criminal punishment" and would not sanction users of social networks because they do not make a profit.

This is not the first time the elusive internet collective is operating on Mexican online turf. Last October, Anonymous threatened to publish information on drug cartels in the country, with the main focus on Los Zetas (one of the most powerful and violent drug cartels) and those, who have been collaborating with the cartels, such as police officers and taxi drivers.

Anonymous posted an online message to Los Zetas drug lord Heriberto Lazcano, reminding him of the futility of trying to fight them, as the "global spirit of this struggle cannot be shot at, or burned with acid."

Over 47,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006 at the hands of the cartels.