PayPal, MasterCard, Visa og den schweiziske bank PostFinance har været utilgængelige på internettet i kortere eller længere perioder over det sidste døgs tid. Værst er det gået ud over kunderne i PostFinance, som ikke kunne bruge deres internetbank og for MasterCard, som ikke kunne godkende online betalinger. Alt sammen på grund af disse finansielle institutioner har lukket for midler til WikiLeaks.
Den gruppe af mennesker som har stået bag angrebene på de ovennævnte institutioner, kan næppe betegnes som hackere, men snarere er deres metoder mere lig gammelkendte metoder om at lænke sig til porten af en virksomhed. Angrebene er af typen DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) og bygger på at en stor gruppe mennesker, i frivillighed, bruger værktøjer som bombarderer en hjemmeside med forespørgsler. Det kan svare til at du trykker opdater et par tusind gange i sekundet. Værktøjerne er tilgængelige for alle, der kræves ingen færdigheder (som man ville forvente en hacker måtte have) for at benytte disse værktøjer. Som knapperne hedder i DDoS værktøjet LOIC: Aim, lock, fire!
Derfor vil jeg hellere kalde den form for aktivisme for civil ulydighed. Folk som står bag har politiske eller moralske motiver, men er ikke nødvendigvis særligt teknologisk overlegne.
Phrack (via) er lidt hårdere i mælet:
Social networking sites are making it increasingly easy to inspire angry mobs of ordinary computer users to take part in a DDoS by clicking a link […] we’re not on dialup anymore, and there’s not a lot you need to get your own “human-net” started — just a persuasive cause and a handful of idiot-proof programs. LOIC is popular for this, as are websites that send GET requests in iframes over and over and over. Next thing you know, there’s thousands upon thousands of stupid tweeters, staggering forth like something out of Resident Evil. […] Throw that into the mix and Twitter becomes some kind of pluralistic middle-class pseudo-political force to be reckoned with.
Desværre er jeg ret sikker på, at disse handlinger betyder, at der vil komme ny lovgivning som yderligere indskrænker friheden på internettet. In other news…
[video]
One website in particular has begun to get on my nerves recently. The newspaper recently revamped themselves and put up a new faster loading website. Except that the new design made room for even more annoying advertisements. Especially the kind that will play at random if you use a non-Windows platform. Full volume movie trailer with explosions.
The website might be loading faster, but in return, it manages to use about 50% of my CPU. This really pisses me off. Using an ad-blocker, the CPU usage is less than 1%. I guess this is really my point, but climate stories are big this season.
In a set of measurements of questionable scientific standard, I used a power-meter I had checked out at the local library to measure how much power my computers used, viewing politiken.dk with and without an ad-blocker.
Ubuntu 9.10 (+30W / 25%)
Without ads: 120W
With ads: 150W
Windows 7 (+15W / 11%)
Without ads: 122W
With ads: 147W
Mac OS X 10.5 (+9W / 13%) (Laptop and x5 the number of open instances)
Without ads: 14W
With ads: 23W
Say you have a web browser open for 3 hours every day and your computer uses 12W more with Flash ads, then you emit around 7 kg CO2 each year.