UPDATE on Operation Payback

Movie Rental Outfit Hacked, Emails Leaked, Redirected to The Pirate Bay

This weekend was a whirlwind for Operation: Payback. GeneSimmons.com and SimmonsRecords.com were attacked with the full force of Anonymous, forcing both sites offline. Operation: Payback struck again, this time at the Portuguese website ACAPOR.pt. This attack was rather devastating, as once again poor website administration allowed for hackers to leak ACAPOR's email database into the wild. Now here's the latest:

ACAPOR

Those who understand Portuguese are currently sifting and translating the email database into English. Word on the street is that WANKERS are preparing a pre-loaded Thunderbird release - much like the ACS:Law email database.

Until a few hours ago, the site was redirecting to The Pirate Bay, however, finally some at the site realized their site was compromised and suspended the account. During that time, however, an email bomber and warez were uploaded onto the site.

GeneSimmons.com

There was a brief moment on the 17th when GeneSimmons.com was back up - just enough time for a new post to be introduced. Apparently, whatever government organization investigating the DDoS attack wasn't impressed with Gene's threat of prison rape, and made them take it down.

ACAPOR, a Portuguese organization which represents the interests of local movie rental companies, has been defaced by Anonymous as part of Operation Payback. The ACAPOR website currently shows a message from Anonymous and then redirects to The Pirate Bay. To make the shaming complete, a 640 MB email database of the outfit was leaked and posted to The Pirate Bay.

Emails can be found here:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5893441

Here is the site as I see it:

When the Portuguese movie rental outfit ACAPOR declared war on The Pirate Bay a few weeks ago, it was perhaps inevitable that it would have to deal with the wrath of Operation Payback. ACAPOR wanted to ensure that Portuguese citizens can’t access The Pirate Bay, and filed a complaint against the site.

The movie rental association claimed that The Pirate Bay is directly responsible for about 15 million illegal downloads in Portugal every year. By installing a Pirate Bay block at all ISPs, ACAPOR hopes to decrease the financial damage they claim it causes.

Aside from the complaint against The Pirate Bay, ACAPOR had also announced a separate case against Piratatuga.net, a site that links to various movie, game and music titles hosted on third party sites. With approximately 50,000 Portugese visitors a day this site is as popular in Portugal as The Pirate Bay, ACAPOR claimed.

In recent weeks dozens of outfits involved in anti-piracy efforts have been targeted by Anonymous, especially those who have targeted The Pirate Bay. Most victims suffer a few days of downtime because of a DDoS attack, but for ACAPOR the damage is much worse.

Just a few hours ago the outfit’s website was defaced, presenting the following message from Operation Payback.

Payback is a bitch, isn't it?

To whom it concerns,

Over the past years, we have borne witness to a technological revolution. The individual has become free, in the most extreme anarchistic sense, to share ideas. Some of these ideas are shared behind proxies, darknets, or similar "closed doors". Nevertheless, the ideas are out there. There have been similar instances of such revolutions of the mind. Their effects on society are inestimably great. As in past times with the invention of the printing press, so it is today that the people embrace this revolution, this new "anarchy" of freedom to share, while their autocratic rulers seek to crush this freedom.

In spite of censorship in the form of copyright law and other restrictions, the people have succeeded in distributing content to the poor, the underprivileged and the oppressed. The most numerous pirates are Chinese, as content filters restrict a vast amount of information in their country. Pirates are also numerous among the poor, as this demographic cannot afford things like college books or entertainment. Indeed, while often ignored by those interested only in bread and circuses, a vast amount of educational literature is available to the everyday pirate online. Piracy democratizes knowledge and makes education affordable.

History repeats itself. There was a time when powers that be attempted to silence the printing press, the blank cassette and the recordable CD. All of these previous attempts at censorship have failed, and future attempts of this nature are doomed to failure. Indeed, the sequestration of human knowledge for the benefit of extremist capitalism is treason against the whole of humanity. All should have the right to listen to a melody, experience a plot and learn from the aggregate of human knowledge available online.

The man on the street already knows this. He knows it when he illegally [1] gives his unused software to a friend or acquaintance. He knows it when he gives that old college book to a person in need. However, he also knows that something is wrong.

He knows that something is wrong when the artwork of little girls is raped in the name of copyright [2]. He knows that something is wrong when solicitors use copyright to blackmail thousands of people sharing information [3]. He knows that something is wrong when corrupt organizations seeking to stem the free flow of information lie through their teeth, produce false documents and spread misinformation about their opponents [4].

He knows that it is not right when his leaders inexplicably support massive capitalist enterprises over the majority opinion of their own people [5]. He know they are wrong when they use illegal means to get what they want, while hypocritically deprecating their opponents for doing the same [6].

If one were to pursue the propaganda of various community-reputable organizations such as...

• The Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA]
• The Recording Industry Association of America [RIAA]
• The British Phonographic Industry [BPI]
• The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft [AFACT]
• Stichting Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland [BREIN]

...They would come across many a morality play suggesting that, if they 'pirate' a film or an album, they are depriving a simple artist, actor or crewmember of their rightful wage. This worker won't be able to break even for their next lot of groceries because the pirate robbed them of their money.

Of course, these organizations carefully omit the fact that only a small percentage of the profits made by big media ever make it to those who actually produce it. Do they ever disclose how small of a percentage most script writers, novelists, etc., actually make? Of course not, and there is a reason why. Do these anti-piracy organizations truthfully disclose how much they receive in donations, and from whom? Of course not, and there is a reason for this also.

In the end, our DDoS efforts have been compared to waiting for a train [7]. What must the people do to be heard? To what lengths must they go to have their pleads taken seriously? Must they to take to the streets with noose and handgun before those in power take notice?

You are forcing our hand by ignoring the voice of the people. In doing so, you bring the destruction of your iron grip of information ever closer. You have ignored the people, attacked the people and lied to the people. For this, you will be held accountable before the people, and you will be punished by them.

We will not stop.

                        We will not forget.

                                We will prevail.

                                        We are anonymous.

1. [1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/first-sale-doctrine/
2. [2] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100722/09434710323.shtml
3. [3] http://technews.am/conversations/techdirt/acs_law_asks_those_who_deny_infringing_to_incriminate_themselves
4. [4] We DID NOT attack the Pirate Party, we ARE NOT affiliated with anti-Scientology activism, and The Pirate Bay has not organized this.
5. [5] http://www.which.co.uk/news/2010/01/acs-law-letter-writing-continues-197714
6. [6] http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-boss-denies-dos-attacks-torrent-site-refutes-claim-100912/
7. [7] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/22/acs_4chan/

To make things even worse the website then redirects to The Pirate Bay after a few seconds.

And the trouble for ACAPOR doesn’t stop there.

In addition to defacing the website, the ‘hackers’ also managed to grab a copy of the email database of ACAPOR. Little is known about the content of the emails at the moment, but previous leaks from MediaDefender and ACS:Law have shone an interesting light on their operations.

Portuguese speaking TorrentFreak readers who have more information on the contents of the leaked email database are encouraged to get in touch. To be continued.

First to clarify, the attack on GeneSimmons.com wasn't exactly a "hack" - rather it was a DDoS attack. In order for this type of attack to work, many computers have to connect simultaneously to the target website and barrage it with traffic (packets). If enough computers are part of the attack, the web server becomes overwhelmed and unresponsive. The attack on GeneSimmons.com was partially successful, taking the site offline intermittently until the attack ceased.

Proving those responsible behind a DDoS attack is difficult, if not impossible. The first step in their investigation is to gather the IP addresses that connected during the attack, and attempt to discern those taking part in the attack from those merely visiting. Additionally, it's possible that many of those taking part of a DoS attack have no knowledge they're even taking part of the attack, especially if botnets were utilized. Botnets are drone networks of computers taken over by the originating perpetrator, and put to work by continuously pinging the target web server. The goal of the investigation would be to find those originating the attack - a daunting task considering many members of Anonymous uses encryption and proxy servers to hide their identity.

The cyber wars continue, as the Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom was attacked by Anonymous yesterday. As of this writing, the site remains offline.

Update: Anonymous has caught wind of Gene Simmons' recent comments (see above) and have made GeneSimmons.com and SimmonsRecords.com an official target. As of this writing both sites are down

Souces:

http://tieve.tk/index.php

http://www.forum.partidopiratapt.eu/

http://torrentfreak.com/

Others

Payback is a bitch

In the news, traces of Operation Payback can be found everywhere. It may by now be clear that these are not the actions of a group rebelious vandals, but organized protests against the reign of extreme pro-copyright organizations and watchdogs for the entertainment industries. We prepared a statement why we are protesting on a seperate page.

Target:

Intellectual Property Office | Website: www.ipo.gov.uk | IP: 212.100.0.44 (port 80) | Time: 10/16/2010 05:00 PM GMT
IMMA FIRING MAH LAYZOR!1!

[Mon Oct. 18]: www.genesimmons.com and genesimmons.com now both redirect to The Pirate Bay! Thanks, Gene! Looks like you've switched sides!

[Mon Oct. 18]: Gene Simmons has surrendered! www.genesimmons.com now redirects to The Pirate Bay, however, genesimmons.com doesn't yet!

[Sun Oct. 17]: Acapor got their website defaced and their emails leaked!

[Sun Oct. 17]: The Gene Simmons attack is a response to this.

[Sun Oct. 17]: w00t, IPO is still down. Stay tuned!

Tools

You have the following tools at your disposal, split up in two different methods: communication and DDoSsing. Communication focuses on gathering attention for our cause. Use your facebook, twitter and all others to spread the word that pro-copyright organisations have gone too far and that they need to be stopped before they take our freedom of speech away from us.
You can also join us in DDoSing the targeted website as shown above, with one of the tools supplied below.

Tools:

• loic with hive mind function (windows, linux)
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• loic
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• javaloic (mac)

TODO: Add description/how-to use

Suport at: http://leetbaka.com/tpb/index

By Anónimo