ECD to Protest Fur

Below is an article about the 'Electronic Civil Disobedience' to protest fur this monday. If you are free this monday, even for 5 minutes (no excuses), go to a local internet cafe or library (NOT HOME COMPUTER) and have fun. The websites are http://www.huntingdonsucks.com and/or http://www.ecd-fur.com

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,39185453,00.htm

News > Internet > Security

Wednesday 26th January 2005

Fur trade activists planning DoS attack

Dan Ilett
ZDNet UK
January 25, 2005, 16:30 GMT

A denial-of-service attack is being planned for next month by protestors
exploiting loopholes in the law

Fur trade protestors are planning to launch a denial-of-service (DoS)
attack against the fur industry on Valentine's Day.

A group dubbed "Electronic Civil Disobedience" (ECD) has pledged to flood
the email systems of unspecified organisations in the fur industry by
sending emails for several days.

The plan exploits the ambiguity surrounding DoS attacks. Experts say they
aren't explicitly illegal under the current law, leaving companies open to
attack.

On the ECD Web site, protestors wrote: "In the action on 14 February 2005
the "Protest Online Chat" will be employed. As in a chat forum, people can
talk to each other via the internet. But in the background, for every word
typed, an e-mail will be sent to a chosen target. The more people who
participate and the more text sent over this chat, the more mails will
reach the target. In this way, their email system will be flooded and
hopefully completely blocked."

The protesters appear to be developing a software tool to enable the
online chat to send emails. In a later section on their Web site, they
said:

"On the morning of the 14 February 2005 the link to the online chat will
be opened on the website http://www.ecd-fur.com. Here all further steps will be
clearly explained. Apart from that you will need "Macromedia Shockwave
Player".

ECD claims that people who take part in this DoS attack will not be
breaking the law.

"Electronic civil disobedience is not illegal. And that will continue to
be the case for now. It is practically impossible to bring to account
hundreds of online activists who are strewn across the world. It's also
not about not taking responsibility for our own actions. People who
participate in civil disobedience know what they're doing and are proud of
it."

Last year, Lycos' Make Love Not Spam campaign highlighted that DoS attacks
are not covered by British law. The government has indicated that it
wishes to update the Computer Misuse Act to make launching these attacks a
defence, but at present companies may have trouble in prosecuting anyone
who starts DoS attacks.

"The Lycos thing has shown a lack of ability [in the law] to prosecute for
DoS attacks," said Mark Smith, solicitor for Olswang, back in December
2004.

"You would struggle under current laws to bring a case against someone.
The problem is that DoS attacks cross jurisdictions."

Security company MessageLabs has been watching the ECD Web site develop.
Paul Wood, chief information security analyst, said that this is one of
the first cases that public organised groups, as opposed to hackers, are
to use DoS attacks in a political campaign.

"It's a grey area," said Wood. "When this happens it could be interesting.
Hacking and virus attacks are illegal. DoS attacks are going down the same
path. But I don't know if the attacks are against fur traders or just all
people in the fur industry."