Anonymous Hacker Takes Down 20 Percent of Dark Web in Child Pr0n Operation

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

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Newsweek is reporting that more than 10,000 websites were taken offline on Friday after a hacker associated with Anonymous targeted Freedom Hosting II, a hosting company allegedly hosting child pr0n. (Warning, the linked story, while safe for work, does starts playing automatically.) According to the hacker some 50% of the sites taken down contained child pr0n.

There are a few large communities centered around child pornography on the dark net and it is probably responsible for a large amount of traffic. However, the percentage of sites hosting child pornography is low, as most services distance themselves from it, can’t handle the traffic or generally don’t allow user uploaded content.
 
Don't buy it.

First, the HACKER claims half of the 10k sites were child porn....Yeah ok. Where is this information coming from? Sounds like a random ass hack and trying to make them selves feel special.

Not very good writing when the only source is the one who did the hack. It is like asking a burglar why he broke into the store and he says "because I was rescuing people from inside".
 
Well it could have been "10,000 sites" that all direct to 10 sites/sources. Or it could have been like a cartel, taking down its competition. Or it could have been a convenient way for a botched FBI honeypot to close its doors after being discovered. Who knows. I prefer legal (barely) myself. :happy:
 
lilbabycat said:
Well it could have been "10,000 sites" that all direct to 10 sites/sources. Or it could have been like a cartel, taking down its competition. Or it could have been a convenient way for a botched FBI honeypot to close its doors after being discovered. Who knows. I prefer legal (barely) myself. :happy:
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At least they didn't call it "over 9000" sites. :p
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, if you consider vigilanteism good then yes.

No doubt about it, its pleasing to see someone do something about Child Pr0n, the methods though... They can be debated.
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what the fact that they did something the police and government wouldn't do because it's a low priority to them? it's more about putting them on the radar for the public so that they have no choice but to do something about it now and that's exactly what he did. now if he hacked them and then started posting personal information all over the place about the owners and people that used it thats a whole different story.


lilbabycat said:
Well it could have been "10,000 sites" that all direct to 10 sites/sources. Or it could have been like a cartel, taking down its competition. Or it could have been a convenient way for a botched FBI honeypot to close its doors after being discovered. Who knows. I prefer legal (barely) myself. :happy:
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thats how most sites like that work, probably a couple thousand sites connected to a 1 server each. basically makes it a royal pain in the ass to ever shut down direct access without killing all the sites at the same time.
 
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IMO better that a hacker take it down than the FBI take it over and continue to distribute...
 
BlueFireIce said:
Don't buy it.

First, the HACKER claims half of the 10k sites were child porn....Yeah ok. Where is this information coming from? Sounds like a random ass hack and trying to make them selves feel special.

Not very good writing when the only source is the one who did the hack. It is like asking a burglar why he broke into the store and he says "because I was rescuing people from inside".
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Yeah, I questioned that part of the article as well, but they made it clear they were quoting the guy, so I'm OK with it. He's apparently started to dump data too, including email addresses.

Probably too soon to independently verify his claims, but it looks like there is at least something to them.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
what the fact that they did something the police and government wouldn't do because it's a low priority to them? it's more about putting them on the radar for the public so that they have no choice but to do something about it now ........................
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The FBI does do something, but the FBI has to go about it in a legal fashion or else they botch the case and the evidence is thrown out, and the bad guys get away. No anonymous, they don't have to be so picky, and unfortunately, illegally accessing a protected computer system is still illegal even if the site is hosting illegal content.

What this do-good hacker did was publicize his own criminal activity. With a little luck the FBI will look harder for the kiddie porn scrubs and give this guy a walk, but if they have more evidence against him then the the others, he's screwed. A conviction is a conviction.
 
lcpiper said:
What this do-good hacker did was publicize his own criminal activity. With a little luck the FBI will look harder for the kiddie porn scrubs and give this guy a walk, but if they have more evidence against him then the the others, he's screwed. A conviction is a conviction.
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More than that, they may have compromised ongoing investigations, put more people at risk, and ultimately make it harder to catch these people than before.

For example, user1234 was actively posting new content. LEA has him tagged and tracked, looking to not only stop the pedo, but stop the active abuse. Hacker anon comes along, shuts down the sites, publishes some crap (which may or maynot be useful, and LEA likely had anyway if hacker did) and walks away patting themselves on the back for a job well done. In the meantime little cindy is still being abused by user1234 who has now gone to ground.

This is the problem with vigilantes, often they just make things worse and only have the perception of making them better. They need to fuck off, or join LEA.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, if you consider vigilanteism good then yes.

No doubt about it, its pleasing to see someone do something about Child Pr0n, the methods though... They can be debated.
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Yeah agreed.
Unfortunately this type of approach can leave their fingerprints instead of those that government agences need to track and also trash data they need.
Would had been better if they just take the server information and the various protection links they use even if obtained-hacked illegally and forward it on to a few national agencies and those supported such as the IWF: https://www.iwf.org.uk/
From my experience on reporting the agency will investigate rapidly but may leave it active for 1-4 weeks (the big ones for quite awhile longer) if it is not easy for the public to come across it accidentally.
I think the IWF reports suggested last year most of the child pornography identified-tagged is sourced just by 9 criminal organisations.
Of equal concern though is children-teenagers with internet access/cameras and belonging to various social groups where they can be suckered-convinced into uncompromising situations and then 'blackmailed' to take it further and these content being distributed more openly, this is a newer trend agencies such as IWF are also really concerned about.
If have a child or teenager that is probably the biggest thing to drum into them, and would be one of my concerns if a parent as kids-teenagers seem to think they are more protected with what they do in their bedroom with less inhibitions.
Cheers
 
I'm going to assume this hacker wore a hoodie, because everyone knows real hackers wear hoodies. It's in the manual.

hacker-wearing-hoodie-650.jpg
 
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They did a good thing. Despicable things on the web, if only they'd find out the names of the users, and while they are at it, go further into the terrorist networks (which I think are also part of the child pr0n network). Victory for the good guys.
 
scojer said:
So Anonymous actually did something good?
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We should stop thinking of "anonymous" as a monolith. Its just a loose knit vigilante mob with a general shared culture.
Taking down the sites doesn't catch the guys making it or sharing it. This makes it harder for the officers who investigate the sites of the dark web to try to put together the bits necessary to catch them. This guy just screwed up months of investigative time.
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Maybe, maybe not.

The only thing I've learned about law enforcement is that their job is really not to enforce laws in and of itself. Their job is keepers of the peace.

If some random gang bangers get shot every other day or pedos are keeping a low enough profile, then the peace is maintained and for the most part they are fine with that. But when the eye of society focuses on something, with a spotlight shone on child abuse like has been done recently, and people start to feel unsafe then the peace is disturbed. Thus, by the recent attacks and exposure of pedophile rings and pizzagate and so forth forefront in the public consciousness, it is placing tremendous pressure on law enforcement to devote resources to cracking down on this so that the peace can be maintained.

Its like when that guy petitioned the government forever to fix potholes, and for years they did nothing, so finally he went around with neon pink spraypaint and drew giant dick and balls around each pothole, and voila all the potholes were fixed after a media frenzie where it captured the public's attention.

So I'd wager they have done a lot of good.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
At least they didn't call it "over 9000" sites. :p
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Or stuck with the original script and said it was over 8,000. Still think it's more than a little surprising that the "whole" of the dark web would supposedly have so few sites. Shouldn't there at least be in the low millions or tens of millions?
 
Teenyman45 said:
Or stuck with the original script and said it was over 8,000. Still think it's more than a little surprising that the "whole" of the dark web would supposedly have so few sites. Shouldn't there at least be in the low millions or tens of millions?
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There are if you read actual research on the matter. Most people, like this article, act as if most of the dark web is nothing but child porn, but it is not, most servers will not allow it to be hosted either, but there are a lot of pages to try and cover. The actual amount of websites on the dark web that deal with child porn or illegal things is actually a very VERY small percentage of sites. He claims half of them are child porn and he took them down, which means he HAD to have visited each page and confirmed it to be child porn right? And if he visited each site and claimed admin access to, why not just take down the child porn sites and leave the rest alone?

So many holes in this it is not even funny.

I understand the do gooder mindset, but when that involves a bulldozer approach, it is never good.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Another way to look at it is that a malicious hacker took down about 5000 websites that had nothing to do with underage p0rn.
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That's what I was gonna say. This whole thing seems fishy and is using the CP angle to look like the good guy or get more publicity.
 
Ducman69 said:
The only thing I've learned about law enforcement is that their job is really not to enforce laws in and of itself. Their job is keepers of the peace...........
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Don't confuse city cops with FBI agents or even a Sheriff's Office, they all are very different organizations. General statements lumping them all together under the same title are usually incorrect in many ways.
 
"“I came across several child porn sites [on Freedom Hosting II’s server]. That’s why I decided to search for an exploit and hack them,” the hacker tells Newsweek." Which somehow later turned into "Messages left on the hijacked websites claimed the hack had taken down 10,613 sites, which according to the hacker included scam sites and “50 percent child porn.”"

Pretty talented hacker if they were able to determine that 50% of 10,613 sites have child porn. Can't do that by hand so, he must have developed software to automatically parse child porn. He should release his automatic child porn finding code to the FBI. /s
 
And let's come up with a name for it .... something snazzy .......

...... I know !

We can call it a script
 
There are active investigators around the world. They are part of ICE units (Integrated Child Exploitation). NECMEC http://www.missingkids.com/home.

Don't think for a second that there aren't people working on this. Anonymous needs to think a bit before doing their thing. In this case, its not helping. If anonymous want to help, crack the anonymous VPN systems the perps use to hide their asses as they travel to go and do these crimes.
 
Slade said:
There are active investigators around the world. They are part of ICE units (Integrated Child Exploitation). NECMEC http://www.missingkids.com/home.

Don't think for a second that there aren't people working on this. Anonymous needs to think a bit before doing their thing. In this case, its not helping. If anonymous want to help, crack the anonymous VPN systems the perps use to hide their asses as they travel to go and do these crimes.
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Any chance you are talking about the other ICE ?

icelogo_2.png


https://www.ice.gov/overview#wcm-survey-target-id

Investigating Illegal Movement of People and Goods
ICE special agents, officers and attorneys enforce provisions of approximately 400 federal statutes. This large and diverse body of laws is reflected in the wide array of offices, programs and projects that make up ICE. People are smuggled and trafficked, while children are sexually exploited at home and abroad.
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Maybe it's just a coincidence (y)


I did some checking and I am seeing many news references to ICE as Internet Child Exploitation, and most seem to be Canadian News stories., I am thinking this is what Slade was referring to.
https://www.alert-ab.ca/about-alert/teams/internet-child-exploitation-ice/

ICE units investigate the sexual exploitation of children through the Internet ..........
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I am still looking to see if this is an actual Canadian Law Enforcement entity or something else.

OK, it only took one more click;
It seems that these ICE units are part of ALERT, which is a collaborative Law Enforcement effort of Alberta CA. It seems they mix members of many different Law Enforcement agencies and create "Teams" that each focus on specific types of crimes. I think they are very similar in concept to an "Interagency Task Force" in the US.
 
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-year-old-passenger-from-her-pimps-police-say

Uber driver Keith Avila picked up a passenger Monday night, a girl in a short skirt who looked to be about 12 years old. That was the first sign that something was off, he would say later.

Two women got into his car with the girl outside a house in Sacramento. Halfway to their destination — a Holiday Inn in Elk Grove, Calif. — they asked Avila to turn up the music, he said.

Then the women turned to the girl. Avila listened in.

“They were describing what they were going to do when they get there: ‘Check for guns. Get the money before you start touching up on the guy,’ ” Avila said on Facebook Live minutes after he dropped off the passengers, then called police to report the women whom he suspected of prostituting the child.
Click to expand...
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, if you consider vigilanteism good then yes.

No doubt about it, its pleasing to see someone do something about Child Pr0n, the methods though... They can be debated.
Click to expand...

I agree. They could have set back law enforcement investigations which set some of these sites up as honey pots.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
I agree. They could have set back law enforcement investigations which set some of these sites up as honey pots.
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It's arrogance.

I'm a hacker and I'm so smart, and see what I can do.............., absolute arrogance.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
I agree. They could have set back law enforcement investigations which set some of these sites up as honey pots.
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Yep, look how they captured David Browning and others who used Playpen: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...n-site-admin-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison/
FBI used various techniques/malware and kept the site going for a little while to build a full profile of the structure and use by the group and associates.
Also law enforcement agencies tag-watermark various pictures and videos to be able to track their distribution, which because of this hacker (if they actually did do anything) it is now unknown how many are new sources,where from,etc.

Cheers
 
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