Anonymous Hackers Take Down Child Porn Websites, Leak Users' Names

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http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/anonymous-hackers-child-porn-sites-1260/

Members of the Anonymous hacktivist movement are claiming responsibility for taking down more than 40 secret child-pornography websites and leaking the names of more than 1,500 members of one of the illegal sites.

The Anonymous campaign began Oct. 14, when members of the hacktivist group found a cache of child-pornography websites while browsing a secret website called the Hidden Wiki, a guidebook to hundreds of underground websites invisible to search engines and regular Internet users. The hackers singled out Lolita City, a file-sharing site used by pedophiles, and leaked the names of the site's 1,589 active members to Pastebin on Tuesday (Oct. 18), the Examiner reported.

Member of Anonymous deciding to hack a website whose stance they don't agree with is by no means shocking news. In the past year, Anonymous-affiliated hackers have gone after the New York Stock Exchange, the Westboro Baptist Church, the Recording Industry Association of America and government sites in Malaysia, Egypt, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.

However, in targeting child pornography sites, and in explaining its methods of attack, these Anonymous-affiliated hackers have revealed a deeply disturbing side of the Internet unknown to most people.

The so-called "darknet," from which this "Operation Darknet" hacking campaign takes its name, is any part of the Internet that is hidden from view — not just hard to reach, but deliberately concealed. In this instance, a darknet appears to have grown out of the free TOR routing service, which offers anonymous, encrypted Web browsing to any user.

The TOR-based darknet has reportedly grown into a private, encrypted constellation of websites offering a variety of shady and illegal services, from fake IDs and steroids to email hacking and tip on how to call in police raids as pranks. There's even a hidden site called "The Last Box" that bills itself as an "Assassination Market."

Only computers that have installed TOR browser plug-ins can access the TOR-based darknet, including its guidebook the Hidden Wiki, the security site Infosec Island reported.

In another Pastebin posting, the hackers explained that their campaign against the child pornography sites took root when they found a site listed on the Hidden Wiki called "Hard Candy," which "was dedicated to links to child pornography." The group delved deeper and discovered that nearly all of the pornography sites listed on the Hidden Wiki "shared a digital fingerprint with the shared hosting server at Freedom Hosting."

The Anonymous-affiliated hackers then issued a warning to Freedom Hosting asking it to remove the child pornography links from its server. Freedom Hosting did not comply, so the group, at approximately 11:30 p.m. (CST) on Oct. 14 shutdown Freedom Hosting's server. Freedom Hosting restored service the following day, but it was attacked and taken down again that night.

In its statement, the Anonymous members explained their goals and how they aim to achieve them through repeated pressure and consistent online attacks.

"The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape and death," the message said. "For this, Freedom Hosting has been declared #OpDarknet Enemy Number One. By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites, among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date containing more than 100 GB of child pornography. We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting's server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography."

The statement added a demand to Freedom Hosting and other Web servers hosting child pornography.

"Remove all child pornography content from your servers. Refuse to provide hosting services to any website dealing with child pornography. This statement is not just aimed at Freedom Hosting, but everyone on the Internet. It does not matter who you are, if we find you to be hosting, promoting, or supporting child pornography, you will become a target."

The trail goes cold in looking for whoever is behind Freedom Hosting. The domain is currently offline; WHOIS domain-name lookups show that the registration for freedom-hosting.com expired on Aug. 7, and the registrar is holding the URL pending renewal.
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I guess some local South African scammers and padophiles were also exposed in this, but our local SAPS do not know how to act on it.
Sucks to not have a Digital or Online Forensics division.
Trying to report a cyber crime to the police is like trying to tell them that you just saw some little green men in a UFO.
 
I thought Anon disbanded. But a good one to go after.
 
securitynewsdaily.com said:
The so-called "darknet," from which this "Operation Darknet" hacking campaign takes its name, is any part of the Internet that is hidden from view — not just hard to reach, but deliberately concealed. In this instance, a darknet appears to have grown out of the free TOR routing service, which offers anonymous, encrypted Web browsing to any user.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet
A darknet can be:

Darknet (file sharing) - a closed private network of computers used for file sharing
Alternate term for network telescope, used to monitor network traffic on unallocated IP space (information security).

Not to be confused with:

Dark Internet - machines unreachable by other computers on the internet
Deep Web - website content not indexed by search engines
Dark fiber - unused optical fiber communications infrastructure
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???
So it was just a bunch of p2p systems sharing files? I got the feeling it was a bit more organised clients/servers
 
Sick people use their real names lol
 
Surprised tho Anon only did this now... it's been around for ages! Some of the hacktivist frequent 4chan, so they obviously should've known about it long ago.
 
SaladCharger said:
So do some of the paedo's frequent 4chan too?
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Yeah, that's what I meant, threads are regularly made of it, and I found out about the hidden wiki there last year, and I ahve only been going there for 2,3 years.
 
Most of these pedo sites are boards where you have to upload new content to be a member, no credit cards involved.... people who are into TOR and its pedo scene are especially secretive and protective of their privacy so im curious as to the nature of these "names" which have been released.
 
Did a bit of checking up, seems they got usernames, which are practically useless unless the peado is dumb enough to link it somehow to a real world name. They are really blowing this out of proportion.... only way to properly infiltrate a tor site and get any meaningful data would be to control input and exit nodes. Nice gesture though from anon, hope something good comes of it.
 
I commend what they are trying to do, but the way the went about it is completely wrong. First of all, the "Names" of the people weren't obtained by the hack. What they did was get their usernames from the site, and did a simple google of that name to see if they it corresponded to someone.

For instance, some usersnames on that site were:
RedDwarf777
Pukuk
theboy99
slippy77

Which could easily just have been a innocent person who coincidently made the same username as them, and now is being hunted down by the world and being prosecuted as Paedophiles. And for the few pedos that may have had been retarded enough to make a username outside tor as the their username on the pedo board, nothing will happen to them as the cops won't have sufficient evidence.

So basically, guilty will go free, but in the mean time permanently screwing up the lives of many innocents. Job Well done Anon....
 
Nicko said:
I commend what they are trying to do, but the way the went about it is completely wrong. First of all, the "Names" of the people weren't obtained by the hack. What they did was get their usernames from the site, and did a simple google of that name to see if they it corresponded to someone.

For instance, some usersnames on that site were:
RedDwarf777
Pukuk
theboy99
slippy77

Which could easily just have been a innocent person who coincidently made the same username as them, and now is being hunted down by the world and being prosecuted as Paedophiles. And for the few pedos that may have had been retarded enough to make a username outside tor as the their username on the pedo board, nothing will happen to them as the cops won't have sufficient evidence.

So basically, guilty will go free, but in the mean time permanently screwing up the lives of many innocents. Job Well done Anon....
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Anyway for FBI agents to check the peoples PC's to see if they have visited any pedo sites? Or track the tor IP addresses to the peoples IP?
 
Helghast said:
Anyway for FBI agents to check the peoples PC's to see if they have visited any pedo sites? Or track the tor IP addresses to the peoples IP?
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The checking the people PC's could show some results. However, that would require a warrant, and don't think this is sufficient evidence for one (Could be wrong). The IP addresses would be a dead end, as the IP logged on the website, wouldn't be the same as the users IP. Tor is a very anonymous network, and the way it works is as follows. The network comprises of nodes which are the PC's on the network, and data is split up and distributed randomly between nodes. What happens when someone connects to a website is that a random node which has opted to be an exit node, connects to the site and then sends the data through various other nodes to the node (PC) that requested the site.
 
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Nicko said:
The checking the people PC's could show some results. However, that would require a warrant, and don't think this is sufficient evidence for one (Could be wrong). The IP addresses would be a dead end, as the IP logged on the website, wouldn't be the same as the users IP. Tor is a very anonymous network, and the way it works is as follows. The network comprises of nodes which are the PC's on the network, and data is split up and distributed randomly between nodes. What happens when someone connects to a website is that a node which has opted to be an exit node, connects to the site and then sends the data through various other nodes to the node (PC) that requested the site.
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Meh... most people will turf their PC as soon as something like this surfaces.

I mean what would you do to your porn if you knew the feds were on to you ? and that's normal porn (I hope).
 
Helghast said:
Anyway for FBI agents to check the peoples PC's to see if they have visited any pedo sites? Or track the tor IP addresses to the peoples IP?
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Tor has never been compromised, no way for authorities to get your real info unless they control input and exit nodes (in theory), this has never been done.

Its very different from p2p networks such as gnutella where they basically just have to look at your ip and apply for a warrant to seize your equipment, arrest you etc.

This is why the more tech savvy peados have been moving to tor and freenet but even today you can probably still find tons of people sharing

childporn on the edonkey/kad network.... difficult to nail these buggers.
 
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Nerfherder said:
Meh... most people will turf their PC as soon as something like this surfaces.

I mean what would you do to your porn if you knew the feds were on to you ? and that's normal porn (I hope).
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if you have normal porn there is no problem surely? and if you have anything to hide simply create trucrypt volume and watch them spend years and years trying to crack it.
 
Nerfherder said:
Meh... most people will turf their PC as soon as something like this surfaces.

I mean what would you do to your porn if you knew the feds were on to you ? and that's normal porn (I hope).
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:D Going under the assumption that this person was already retarded enough to use the same username for a pedo board as his You Tube or something. If he is that stupid, he prolly has his porn stashed on his desktop, saying "Click Here".
 
Fader4 said:
Tor has never been compromised, no way for authorities to get your real info unless they control input and exit nodes (in theory), this has never been done.

Its very different from psp networks such as gnutella where they basically just have to look at your ip and apply for a warrant to seize your equipment, arrest you etc.

This is why the more tech savvy peados have been moving to tor and freenet but even today you can probably still find tons of people sharing

childporn on the edonkey/kad network.... difficult to nail these buggers.
Click to expand...
So even if FBI agents put up stuff to download they can't track it the people downloading it?
 
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