Posts tagged hackers
German Hackers Plan DIY Space Program
German hackers unite to make a censor free internet
There’s more than one way to stick it to The Man. There’s civil disobedience, subversive propaganda, political art, outright violent revolt - each possessing its own degree of difficulty and consequence. In a decidedly 21st-century twist, team of German hackers bent on fighting the powers that be has chosen a rather ambitious means of taking the power back: building a hacker-owned and -operated space program, complete with a constellation of communications satellites beaming uncensored Internet to users on the ground.
The Hackerspace Global Grid was borne out of a call to action at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, where hackers of all stripes gather to mull the issues of the day as they relate to their craft. Hacker activist Nick Farr - motivated by legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. - called on the community to contribute to a project that would remove the power of censorship from governments and corporations by creating an uncensored Internet in the free frontier of space.
Of course, building both a space program capable of placing satellites in orbit and a terrestrial network of tracking stations is easier said than done. Then again, it’s easier now than it’s ever been. Space - and even low earth orbit - has long been the dominion of state entities with the resources and large-scale organisations capable of very big undertakings.
But amateur rocketeers are already skirting the upper atmosphere with homemade rockets, and the idea that amateurs will soon be able to reach low earth orbit is by no means outside the realm of possibility. And even piggybacking on existing space launches, like ISS resupply runs and satellite launches, is growing less expensive, especially for smaller payloads.
Furthermore, if there’s anyone suited to the task of building - from the ground up - a system of software and hardware for tracking satellites and establishing a network infrastructure, it’s probably a team of highly skilled hackers. That’s where the Hackerspace Global Grid is starting. The group is aiming to provide ground stations on a non-profit basis for 100 euros (about $125), and plans to have three of them deployed this year for testing. And it has already begun trying to build the software infrastructure necessary to track satellites and communicate with them.
The trick will be in the placement of the satellites themselves. Placed in low earth orbit by an amateur launch, the satellites would move too quickly to be of any real use in streaming Internet data to the ground. Placed higher up in geostationary orbit (more than 35,000 kms up), the signal lag becomes great enough to restrict what kind of Internet applications can be executed. And there’s also a touchy legal issue at play here, as the BBC points out. The unregulated nature of space means the Hackerspace group can do what they want. But should a nation like China decide it doesn’t want uncensored Internet streaming to its shores from space, there’s nothing really stopping it from blasting the satellites out of the sky either.
Still, the very notion is undeniably awesome: a DIY space program patched together via a loose affiliation of hackers building an open source generation of space-faring electronics and satellite communications infrastructure that would provide free-flowing information for all. Given recent developments like SOPA, uprisings across the Arab world, and the actions of oppressive regimes like that in Belarus, its clear that the free and fair Internet is both a tool for individual empowerment and an entity whose future is uncertain. Naturally, any effort to secure a free flow of information for all.
(Source: popsci.com.au)
Russian websites targeted on election day
Websites which revealed violations in Russia’s legislative polls were targeted in a mass hacking attack their operators said was aimed at preventing the exposure of mass fraud in the country’s parliamentary elections.
Popular Russian radio station Moscow Echo and election monitoring group Golos said their websites were the victims of massive cyber attacks on Sunday, while several opposition news sites were inaccessible.
“The attack on the website on election day is clearly an attempt to inhibit publication of information about violations,” Moscow Echo editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov wrote on Twitter.
Golos said it was the victim of a similar “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack, while several other opposition news sites were down.
The Moscow Echo is popular among the liberal opposition although it is owned by state gas giant Gazprom.
After the close of polls on Sunday, the Moscow Echo website was working again but the Golos website was still inaccessible.
Prime minister Vladimir Putin, whose United Russia party is expected to win Sunday’s polls but with a reduced majority, has denounced non-governmental organisations like Golos, comparing them to the disciple Judas who betrayed Jesus.
Russia has seen an upsurge in internet use since the last elections in 2007, and analysts have said the explosion of critical material on the web poses one of the biggest challenges to United Russia’s grip on power.
Golos said on Twitter that its main website as well as the “Map of Violations” site, detailing claims of fraud across Russia, were under “massive DDoS attacks”.
Golos head Liliya Shibanova said the authorities seemed especially angry at their Map of Violations project, where people could upload any information or evidence of election violations.
“It’s a very expensive operation,” Ms Shibanova said of the attacks. “It’s a big organisation with plenty of means that must have done it.”
Ms Shibanova, who was held for nearly 12 hours on Saturday by customs officials who also confiscated her computer, said the attack consisted of 50,000 hits per second by computers attempting to access the Golos website.
The website of opposition weekly New Times, known to publish investigative reports about government officials and feature columns by jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was inaccessable for several hours on Sunday.
Business daily Kommersant was not working for the fourth consecutive day after it was hacked on Thursday and had its IP address changed.
Moscow Echo filed a complaint to the Central Election Committee demanding to open a criminal case into the attacks, and editor Mr Venediktov said he complained directly to the spokespeople of Putin and president Dmitry Medvedev.
Like the Moscow Echo, the radio station is popular with the liberal opposition although it is owned by the media arm of state-controlled Russian gas giant Gazprom.
“Any hacker attack on any resource leads to financial losses, which is essentially the same as stealing,” said the chairman of Moscow Echo’s board of directors Nikolai Senkevich, adding that Gazprom’s media holding “fully supports” the station’s concern.
Pro-Kremlin youth activists also complained on Twitter that the opposition ordered an attack on their website chronicling violations by the opposition parties, although the website was fully accessible.
Russian bloggers also complained of their inability to access their accounts on popular blogging platform LiveJournal.com. The website has been a victim of repeated DDoS attacks throughout the week and worked intermittently.
“The goal of the attackers is clear,” Anton Nossik, the media director of LiveJournal owner SUP, wrote on his blog, alleging the perpetrators are a “group of criminals” who are “probably fattened by the federal budget.”
AFP
(Source: abc.net.au)
