Gizmodo
For currently unknown reasons, several internet griefers decided to screw with epileptics last weekend by posting flashing and multicolored images in a support forum run by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation. About three percent of epileptics are photosensitive, which means that the flashing lights and colors can trigger migraines or seizures. Way to go, assholes.
Monitors of the Epilepsy Foundation's board responded quickly and managed to take down all the offending posts about 12 hours after the attacks began. Though the foundation reports that nobody was killed by the prank, a handful of people were adversely effected. It's like Snow Crash with fewer katanas and more 15-year-old kids who need to be pummeled in the face. Where's Hiro when we need him?
RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old IT worker in Ohio, clicked on a forum post that caused her screen to suddenly be overtaken by a pattern of various colored squares flashing rapidly. The assault made her "lock up," she said.
"I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts," she told Wired. "I was on the phone when it happened, but I couldn't move and couldn't speak."
Very circumstantial evidence points to Anonymous, the infamous hacker clan with a grudge against the Church of Scientology. But, even with my limited knowledge of the hacking world, they don't sound like the right culprit to me. Though various members of Anonymous are pricks, they're also sanctimonious pricks. I've never head of them doing anything without loudly attaching a cause to it first. [Wired]
Comments
Sounds like /b/ work to me.
Assholes indeed. Perhaps we should take up a collection so that the Epilepsy Foundation can purchases some Gibsons.
I have it on good authority that they are quite difficult to hack.
Come on... this kind of attack isn't right.
Or maybe this is the church of Scientology's way of getting to Anonymous who if I recall is against scientology not epileptics....
Plus they are sort of known for planting stuff on people who are against them....
@P3nnst8r: I would be more than a little suprised. Their collective assholery has been used for society's benefit recently. That is, when they aren't blowing up vans.
This is what Dick Cheney does for "shits and giggles", when he isn't plotting new wars to enrich Halliburton and Exxon.
Obviously it was done with the intention to fuck epileptics up.
Assault is what that is.
Way to go, Asshats!
They do such things to entice public attention. Exactly what we are giving them with posts such as these.
I just had an Andromeda Strain moment.
Yeah, nice going assholes! What did you do next? Punch your grandma?
Normally, I'm not the violent type, but these people deserve to put to sleep indefinitely.
I'm sorry, but doing crap like this isn't funny, it is a crime punishable by law. Hope they catch the f*ck.
I found out one of my good friends is epileptic a few days ago. Finding out about this attack pissed me off. Some people just don't use their brains correctly.
"Anonymous, THE infamous hacker clan"? You gotta be kidding me. /b/tards are more like a Zerg horde if anything, and "Anonymous" shouldn't be capitalized as if it were some established group. You post there without inputting a name, and you show up as anonymous. Oh god, you're a hacker now!
I doubt they'd do something like this as a collective. It's probably more akin to the few stragglers that don't follow the pathing of the rest, so they wander off and end up pulling in trouble. Meaning, I really doubt they'd go through all that trouble with the intention of actually trying to injure people who haven't done anything to them.
Its like hacking a pacemaker...what a bunch of idiots, why they don't get a real job?
I'm always amused when people talk about the Anonymous hackers guild, like it's the next SLA. There is no anonymous group, it's just the occasionally actions of people who might or might not post on 4chan.
Well, I'm not going to debate who's a more infamous hacking clan - and whether one group of hackers is more worthy of the hacker name than another.
In fact, despite my own headline, I wouldn't even really call this hacking. It doesn't take much computer skills to flood a board with inappropriate content (in this case, flashing lights and colors), just a lot of douchieness.
This is so very, Very wrong. My wife has epilepsy. I can't stop laughing.
I like to consider myself a hacker but only in the context of ethical or good-intentioned hacking. I realize that the word "hacker" carries a hugely negative connotation to non-technical people and it's because assholes like these. Seriously, they ruin it for the rest of us. People who hack devices and create drivers for the benefit of everyone are my kind of hackers.
These douchebags should be sodomized with a 2x4 and endure a slow, agonizing death...
The CoS has a proven history of trying to scapegoat its critics. CoS likes people to know they will pay a price for investigating or criticizing the church so as to discourage people from doing so. It works. I'm afraid of criticizing CoS, so I've toned down my remarks from what I'd like to say.
If Anonymous thinks CoS is bad it is highly unlikely Anonymous would be interested in hurting people through a hack. Wired was very irresponsible in its reporting. It is far, far more likely that someone (*cough*) is trying to make Anonymous look bad and is willing to hurt people do so. Now who has an official policy of trying to destroy their enemies by any means necessary--a policy formerly called "Fair Game" but no longer referred to by name for fear of bad publicity, but, of course, the policy is still in effect--?
All you have to do is look at the visceral reaction to this hack and, because of that reaction, how willing people are to attribute the hack without evidence to an enemy of the Church of Scientology. How perfectly convenient. Too convenient.
Have a care. Criticize the action but be careful who you blame. Don't let your emotions turn off your sense of reason, they way the attacker probably wants you to.
How exactly did they "hack" anything? Sounds like some asshole-griefers, they just sign up for forum accounts, make a webpage that has the flashing images on it, and just create a post with a seemingly innocuous link to it. Coding a page to perform that way doesn't sound like hacking, just simple java coding. Sounds like they are trying to hang this on "Anonymous" so they need to call them hackers. Doesn't sound like they actually hacked anything, though, am I missing something?
It's a good thing the hackers at CES didn't flash the TVs on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off.
Scientologists have always been very good at planting circumstantial evidence, if you catch my drift.
Circumstantial evidence being Anonymous is the only group of hackers known to mainstream media so they are behind everything on the internet thats bad.
wait, the thing about them being against scientology wasn't a joke then? are there really people who out there who are scientologist besides tom 'crazy' cruise?
I don't understand how anyone could ever find this funny. A joke is one thing, but this could have actually hurt someone.
lol. Guys, anonymous IS NOT A GROUP. It has no define membership, it has no leaders, anyone who claims to be anonymous is anonymous. This means that people of all types will do good stuff and bad stuff under the name of anonymous. This is anonymous's only weakness. And it could be our downfall if you people do not recognise that the crueller ones among us do not represent us as a whole.
Guys, it's the work of /b/. I was around when the threads were made. There are a lot of terrible people on there that think it's funny.. They think they can be internet superheroes under the guise of an "anonymous" group. Half the people don't even care about Scientology, it's just someone fun to harass without guilt.
..I should really stay away, but when you're bored on Caturday..
Anonymous is now denying and disavowing violence and or illegal acts, they claim that their war agains CoS is purely ideological.
+ Watch video
All the same I think NORAD should change the SIOP launch codes.
Whoever did this is a bad machine.
I love the internet. There are people in this world, dying by the thousands, for various causes, but a group of people are worried about Epileptics getting "targeted" on a forum?
Come on people, get your priorities in order. This was a REALLY sh*tty "attack" on innocent people, but there are real problems to be dealt with.
And how the hell does it always manage to come back to Scientology somehow? lol
though the attack is definitely going too far (these people did not deserve this to happen) its still should go into the record books. As it was posted somewhere else (earlier gizmodo post maybe?) this is the first time that a physical attack was done over the computer...pretty amazing if u think about it.
maybe someone with the skills could write a nice userJS (ahm, greasmonkey) script for epileptics, that turns of all kind of blinking and flashing.
AS far as my understaning of User Scripting goes, this shouldn't take longer than a half hour
Then suddenly... newfags, everywhere.
Unless you're an oldfag who has been a /b/tard for more than a year, nothing you read or see will make you understand the real /b/. The current /b/ is masked by kids who think it's 'cool' to be in raids and shout out memes.
This headline made me spit my drink out in laughter.
This is just a very thin line away from other gizmodo approved pranks. You encourage them enough and they take it one step further.
I don't buy your "disgust" for it.
@Mummyscurse:
Yer so politically cool! Can I hang with you?
Of course who wanted to launch the , they could always consult the gooracle:
[www.cdi.org]
Even SAC has to write their password down and tape it the underside of their keyboard.
Consider the possibility.
I see BLam fishing for a creative way back from the edge crossed at CES. I also sense a swelling thread of indignation in the face of culturally destructive dreck... even behind some of the most puerile punk comments.
It'd be really cool if this kind of dialog actually helped figure out where the line should be.
I love how we refer to all of the people involved with attacking Scientology as an official and organized group now. It's more like a group of cats. For the moment they've all seen a rather interesting creature to treat as prey. And as soon as they've either killed it or grown bored, they'll scatter to the four winds again.
yeah i doubt its them they arent suck dicks
@Finstern : After all the things I have heard about Scientology, I wouldn't put it past them to plant some messed up crap like this on somebody else.
@HKLV: congrats, first intelligent comment in a while.
And for the cretins who think this is cool, anybody who doesn't live in a shoebox has known that blinking lights can sometimes trigger seizures since the Pokemon debacle in the 90s.
@alukard: People escalate pranks on their own to these levels, not beacause of some website that likes to have fun. Your probably one of those people that believes the Columbine shootings were because the shooters played Doom and listened to Marilyn Manson or that GTA makes children commit more violence. All the blame rests on those who did this, no one else.
Just because you like to have fun doesn't mean that that you can't be disgusted when somebody does something that knowingly could cause death or serious harm.
anonymous... hacking?... the closest anonymous has gotten to hacking, is the 'hacking' of jpegs in the creation of the diabolical de-motivational poster.
Anonymous is not a coherent organization, and has no restrictions on "membership." Pretty much, any asshole with an internet connection can be Anonymous. Blaming the "organization" is like... blaming a forest for a falling tree. Sure, the tree is in the forest, and hey, it is your car that is under it, but the forest wasn't at fault. ... Of course, in this case, it isn't a forest of trees, but of assholes.
@adaorardor: You got a point there. Not known for their hacking, known for their Cracking. If you try and visit any Scientology website, you will know what I am talking about. They DDOS those things daily. Anonymous has escaped the asshole of the internet and have started to spread.
Wow - didn't expect to see a Contra: Hard Corp. graphic anytime soon. Well done!
Oh, and methinks Anonymous is being framed by the Scientologists. Just a hunch.
@AZTriGuy: ugh. a simple gif is not "java coding"
[www.encyclopediadramatica.com] (SFW, but don't go out of that page)
CoS is totally framing Anonymous. Don't get me wrong, I did think it was hilarious, but it isn't something Anonymous would be clever enough to do, usually it's just mass-registering and spamming memes, or DDoSing, not something clever like this =p.
Check out the statement by 7chan admins on the ED page.
Lol'd hard @ DirkusMaximus's post.
Hope this doesn't come off too unsensitive =p.
before any of you say it was /b/ it was not, it was not Anonymous either, it was people from 7ch. know your facts.
They do it for the lulz, not "with a cause" last I remembered. :P
But this is just stupid.
Unfortunately, I don't doubt it. You know, anonymous can produce awesome things sometimes... but sometimes, tacgnol prevails.
That's right, posting a gif on a forum is now considered hacking. Anything more complicated than making your myspace friends only is considered hacking now.
Fucking retarded, thy name is Gizmodo.
@rfjason: It's says that they posted images and shapes that flashed. Flashing lights and images are known to cause problems with epilectic's. Nowhere does it say that the gif is what the hackers posted.
Fucking retarded, thy name is rfjason, who cannot read a story.
@sargeant: apparently you missed the first word in the title which is HACKERS
Srsly, if you're going to have a comeback, don't be a gay about it.
When we all loose the ability to be anonymous online we know who to blame.
so maybe Microsoft are assholes too for having screensavers with flashing colors.
normally epileptic people use a screen filters or special glasses so no matter what happens on the screen they're never at risk.
those who got fucked should be more careful when they use a computer.
/b/ != "Annonymous", this magical hackin