Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education

Social media fail, or Web 2.0 lost a battle to information war?

So what happened today?  A combined attack on several major social media services.

Twitter was attacked by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack this morning (eastern time).

(via Arbor Networks)

Facebook was also hit, possibly twice.  First, by another DDoS.  Second, by a sudden stream of Twitter refugees.  How many crossed from microblog to status window, a million?

Livejournal was the third target.  According to their status blog, LJ joined in the suffering, with "an ongoing attack against our network and servers."

Desktop apps and services drawing on Twitter or Facebook through APIs also endured outages, as their feeding tubes closed up.

Even Google took hits.  YouTube.  Nothing too bad.  MySpace didn't; ouch.  Overall, Biz Stone describes it as

what appears to be a single, massively coordinated attack. As to the motivation behind this event, we prefer not to speculate.

Who could be responsible?  We can only speculate at this point.  Here are some ideas, and we welcome more:

• Iran.  Twitter and Facebook were used by Iranians to share information and organized.  Supporters from the rest of the world used the two to help or commiserate.  A bit of vengeance might make sense.
• An apolitical group of hackers.  This happened a few days after Black Hat, where social media vulnerabilities were discussed.  Could there have been one of those very productive hallways conversations?  However, such hacks seem to be on the decline.
• A pro-Russian hacker group, targeting just one guy.  This chap is not only very pro-Georgian (must've been amazingly, staggeringly pro-Georgian - or he is now), but has accounts on - you guessed it - Twitter, Facebook, and LJ.  Maybe the attack team was from Abkhazia.

(thanks to Steve and the manic, twitching stream of Facebook and Twitter commentators)

Fear the terrorist Twitter

Twitter has a new layer of negative reputation: it could be used by terrorists.  Yes, the latest twist on e-Qaeda or iJihad involves microblogging, according to a US Army document, "alQaida-Like Mobile Discussions & Potential Creative Uses" (pdf).  A terrorist could snoop on a Twittering US soldier, for example, or use Twitter feeds to conduct joint surveillance of targets.

To be fair to the paper, the authors offer multiple caveats, arguing that they are exploring possibilities, which might not work.

Folks on the Web have had a fun time creating graphics for this story. From Crunchgear:

 

From Podcasting News:

From Wired:

World of eQaedaCraft

Plotting terror attacks in World of Warcraft: it was inevitable that someone would float the idea.  It combines the ever-popular eQaeda meme (virtual jihadis) with the as-yet underdeveloped fear of massively multiplayer online games.  I'm just catching up to this one, but it's a goodie:

[T]wo World of Warcraft players discuss a raid on the "White Keep" inside the "Stonetalon Mountains." The major objective is to set off a "Dragon Fire spell" inside, and make off with "110 Gold and 234 Silver" in treasure. "No one will dance there for a hundred years after this spell is cast," one player, "war_monger," crows.

Except, in this case, the White Keep is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "Dragon Fire" is an unconventional weapon. And "110 Gold and 234 Silver" tells the plotters how to align the game's map with one of Washington, D.C.

(thanks to Todd Bryant and everyone else)

Update on Georgian cyberwar

Zuckerman's analysis of the Russian-Georgian cyberwar is excellent.  More stuff at Global Voices.  Key points: there's a lot of sound and fury, but very little operational achievement.

(thanks to Stevn Kaye)

Participatory mapping for US forces in Iraq

US soldiers in Iraq can use social software to fight insurgents, by adding to a collaborative mapping platform.  TIGR is designed to surface information in bottom-up, web 2.0 fashion.

John Arquilla offers a good critique, noting that the institutional structures within which soldiers work haven't changed.  A familiar issue to educators, yes?

(via Nicholas Carr)

Fears of the cut cables

The Middle Eastern internet cable cut is eliciting a series of theories, which are interesting to examine.  They reveal a spectrum of political fears, with some flavoring of the fearsome internet.

Reports claim a variety of sources that might have incapacitated the cables, from the U.S. Secret Service, to Islamic fundamentalists, or other military exercises. Others maintain the damage signifies retribution for the impending opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse, which will allow trading in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, potentially diminishing the value of the dollar.

Other theories touch on America preparing for a strike on Iran through information warfare.  Some name al Qaeda directly.  Wired finds more:

Professional terrorist fear monger Annie Jacobsen says Middle Eastern governments are lying about the real reason for the cuts. 9/11 truthers suggested the cuts came in preparation for a U.S. government-faked terrorist attack on the Super Bowl. Bloggers have suggested that the cuts are cover for the NSA installing taps on the lines using the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter.

The news cycle has advanced rapidly, leading to parodies of these theories.  The Wall Street Journal, for example, while ruling out head-mounted shark lasers,  blames Gamera.

The causes largely remain mysterious.  The number of breaks, and Egypt not finding video evidence, add to the puzzle's allure.

Previously on this topic: John Robb considers the cuts as if they were a probe.

What if this week's outage had been an attack? John Robb weighs anchor

One way of looking at this week's quartet of internet cable cuts is to consider them as an attack model.  John Robb notes that such an attack is actually inexpensive, and hard to repair, given the sheer length of cabling and the complexity of their layout.  It was also make for a good capabilities test, he adds.

Death ray repurposed as Voice of God

There's a military version of the ad technology whereby voices are beamed right into the mark's head.  LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) was designed for ship-to-ship communication.  But rumors from Iraq are that some US forces are using the weapon to project an interpreter's voice into a target's head, speaking as if they were Allah or Mohammed.  I do like the idea of realizing a giant warship is speaking to you, personally:

With LRAD, you just aim it at a member of the crew, and have an interpreter "speak" to the sailor. It was noted that the guy on the receiving end was sometimes terrified, even after he realized it was that large American destroyer that was talking to him. This apparently gave the army guys some ideas, for there are now rumors in Iraq of a devilish American weapon that makes people believe they are hearing voices in their heads...

It appears that some of the troops in Iraq are using "spoken" (as opposed to "screeching") LRAD to mess with enemy fighters. Islamic terrorists tend to be superstitious and, of course, very religious. LRAD can put the "word of God" into their heads. If God, in the form of a voice that only you can hear, tells you to surrender, or run away, what are you gonna do?

(via Signs of Witness)

Blogging to faction to failure: one movement's arc

Is the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood blogging movement falling apart?  Marc Lynch notes that one of those involved sees the energy being tamped down.  A "personal thing" attracted notice last month, but has become a faction, which the leadership doesn't appreciate. 

Interestingly, it's not a simple generational divide:

[T]he greatest pressure, I hear, actually came from the more radical and salafi youth who vehemently opposed the relatively liberal trend embodied in the blogging experiment.

Perhaps the movement will return to personal activities, underground.

(via Reason)

Muslim Brotherhood bloggers

Another population has started blogging: more than one hundred members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.  Marc Lynch, Middle East scholar and author of the fine Abu Aardvark blog, notes that this subsector of the blogosphere now constitutes an online pressure group within than Islamicist organization.

a novel feature of the Brothers’ “true face” began to emerge: sustained criticism of the platform posted by young Muslim Brothers on their personal blogs... “Is this the platform of a political party or a religious organization?” queried one youthful blogger, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Mahmoud. The posts, in turn, generated another sharp debate, not only about the platform, but also about what it means to be a member of the Brothers and the limits of public dissent...
Their jibes at the draft platform, along with those of secular commentators, were undoubtedly one reason why the draft party platform was withdrawn for revision in late October...

We might be seeing the emergence of a new generation of the Brotherhood, one attuned to a different form of information warfare:

Muhammad Hamza, a Muslim Brother and a blogger, identifies his as a “generation of the 2004 movement,” shaped by the information revolution—satellite TV, cellular phones and the Internet—and the appearance of human rights organizations.[7] Armed with handheld technology, this “2004 generation” obtains and analyzes information, and communicates with fellow Brothers and activists with other leanings, with rapidity and ease.

These blogs are also oppose people outside of their organization, namely other Egyptian bloggers with different political stripes:

Until quite recently, Arab political blogging was dominated by liberal voices, often writing in English, with little representation for the powerful Islamic trends in society. In Egypt, blogging became virtually synonymous with the Kifaya movement. Innovators like Wa’il ‘Abbas (misrdigital.com), ‘Ala’ ‘Abd al-Fattah (manalaa.net) and ‘Amr Gharbiyya (gharbeia.net) were at the cutting edge of Internet activism, offering platforms for political debate and posting firsthand accounts of Kifaya demonstrations replete with video and photographs. Kifaya members used blogs to spread information, coordinate protest activities and communicate with each other.

As the Reason post and comments point out, these bloggers also blog about life in a non-party-discplined way.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)