I thought of this thread when I read this one.
Possible Psyops campaign?
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1 ... n-twitter/
December 19, 2009, 11:26 AM
Update on Latest Attack on Twitter
By ROBERT MACKEY
A screenshot of the page users attempting to access Twitter
and an Iranian opposition Web site on Friday morning were shown instead.
In an article in Saturday’s New York Times, technology reporters Jenna Wortham and Nick Bilton report more details of the attack on Twitter we discussed on The Lede on Friday.
Despite the obvious intention of the attackers to make it seem as if the attack had come from an Iranian group, their report reminds us that we should be cautious in taking the claim of responsibility the attackers posted on the defacement page Twitter users were redirected to for an hour or two at face value.
My colleagues report:
Security specialists say it will be extremely difficult to determine who was behind the attack. There was some indication that the attack came from within the United States, but authorities are still investigating.
That is far from solid proof that the attack did not come from outside the U.S., or from an Iranian-backed group, but it seems wise to not assume that everything hackers say about themselves is in fact true.
One detail of the message from the “Iranian Cyber Army” — the way the e-mail address they printed on the defacement page, “iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAiL.COM,” used all capital letters but for the letter “i,” which was lower case — seems as if it could be the sort of apparent mistake English-speaking people trying to disguise themselves as foreigners might fabricate. Keep in mind that similar errors, which may have been fabricated, were a feature in the notes sent by the person who mailed anthrax to public figures in the United States in late 2001.
That said, a leading Iranian opposition Web site was also singled out for attack, and it remains possible that someone sympathetic to Iran’s government could have been behind the attack. Nik Cubrilovic of TechCrunch reported something quite different in a post on Friday, writing:
We have spoken to a number of sources overnight who have told us that the Iranian Cyber Army, unlike other groups with similar national monikers, is a group name that is to be taken literally – ie. it is an Iranian government group.
As we mentioned on Friday, Twitter has been a thorn in the side of the Iranian government, and there are some indications that agents working for the regime have attempted to use the micro-blogging site to fight back against opposition activists.
It is also true that the government of Iran has accused popular Internet sites of being secretly created by the American government with the specific purpose of overthrowing Iran’s Islamic Republic. As The Lede reported in September, a prosecutor in one of the public trials of opposition activists in Iran made the following charge in a Tehran court about two other American Web sites that have been used by members of Iran’s opposition to spread the word about their protests:
The United States supported Web sites such as Facebook and YouTube with the aim of influencing the rioters and undermining the government’s position both nationally and internationally. Sites such as Facebook and YouTube were devised by the United States in order to wage a psychological war against Iran.
If definitive proof of who was responsible for Friday’s attack becomes available, we will let readers know.
I mean 