Telstra Fears LulzSec Attacks, Hesitates On Internet Filter (opens in new tab)

Could it be that LulzSec/Anonymous are the revolutionaries of the next decade?

Early revolutionaries are always seen as criminals. Only in retrospect and only after they provoke major changes in the society does the society recognize them as some kind of heroes. But until that happens, they will be persecuted and some of them caught and treated like criminals. And I'm not saying they are completely innocent or anything. But all revolutionaries eventually provoke some damage. But that damage is insignificantly small compared to the changes they eventually cause.

Things are definitely getting really interesting, and I think this is just the beginning. The more the Governments will try to censor the Internet (which seems like the case lately), the more of these people will rise to fight against them. My money is on them.

Curious. Anonymous went after a slough of aussie government and telco sites a few years ago when the blacklist was announced, but that action was limited to DDoSes. At the time, there was only a minimal acknowledgement from Conroy et al of the downtime, and nothing from telcos. This seems to be entirely different. It seems that Telstra is conflating LulzSec with Anonymous, and presuming that the blacklist (something Anon hates) will attract the ire of LulzSec, whose attacks have been far more damaging than Anon's.

It's easy for somebody who follows the issues closely to deride this as misinformed paranoia, but I wonder what a lay person, even one who had heard of the two groups, would think about their respective motivations and capabilities. It could well be that the people who advise on these decisions simply saw the name "LulzSec" and, knowing something about Internet culture, assumed they were connected to Anonymous and shared common desires. What's scarier, that person could rightly be considered an expert on the matter in most lay groups.

Awesome, LulzSec could end up becoming the internet's Batman

If ever the LulzSec issue was one of black and white to me, it has now become gray.

The symbol of the French revolution was the guillotine. The freedom of the people wasn't won with good behavior. Just saying.

LulzSec, as a Telstra customer, thank you!

All bs. It's a funding ploy. I don't believe Telstra really fears LulzSec. But I bet they can convince the police (government) they do. Means more money for the project.

Can somebody explain to me why investing in something like CiscoGuard does not obsolete this kind of attack? Eight years ago I heard about this technology, the ability to drop packets at line speed, and I have been confused since that DDOS has remained effective. I understand cost barriers, but again, that was eight years ago.

Someone high up at Telstra has something to hide

Okay - if this is true then it's really quite astonishing. That these groups might be having a deterrent effect on corporations is pretty incredible.

I wonder if all those ISPs considering implementing draconian piracy controls are fearing the same kind of retribution.

Could it be that it will be these few and scattered children which arrest the slide into fascist information control toward which we seem to be headed? It still seems incredibly unlikely - yet for the first time it suddenly seems possible.

Here's the link to the original article: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/hackers-put-te...

We (who care about freedom speech) need to get the politicians to listen to us...

We need a more effective way to jerk their chain than by committing crimes: with 4Chan/LulSec, we risk losing the propaganda war, dramatically.

Makes me glad I have never given them my credit card info. I bet they are looking at dozens if not hundreds of unpatched / out of date servers and realising they are basically wide open with no way to upgrade those things in anything like the timeframe they have available. In fact, they probably realised they can't even do an internal audit to find that out in 2 months. In the past they would probably laugh it off, but seeing what happened to Sony I bet they are seriously contemplating what could happen to their business.

I would assume that this 'fear' is really dissenters within the company trying to create FUD to ward off further censorship or filtering. It's either that or it is a PR campaign to get more funding.

This is certainly an interesting development if at all accurate and not just a ploy for funding like many claim.

What I think of, though, is that now that Telstra has announced they are scared of LulzSec (whether or not they really are), they made themselves the perfect target. They have admitted they are willing to be coerced. So what should LulzSec do? They should target Telstra hard, immediately, and just sit on the information. Wait and see what Telstra does, and once they start acting on something LulzSec doesn't like, threaten to drop the information. And then of course they will do it anyway at some point because they are in it for the lulz. But in my mind, Telstra has made themselves target #1 for LulzSec over the next few days.