Are you Anon!

I saw this report on a show I watch on the G4 network, I am not 100% if it was displayed on the standard news on local channels but I thought this was an interesting article to relate to database. Now despite the fact that this involved real people and their fight towards a goal it has much to do with database as any of my other past topics.

As the title of this topic says....Are you Anon. Well for those out of the loop, Anon short for Anonymous is group of individuals who are completely unknown in what they look like but have a strong force backing over the Internet. They are a faceless, leaderless group that randomly choose organizations or individuals that don't quite meet up with their moral beliefs and ethical views of the world. Recently they has made public that they are now setting their sights on the Church of Scientology. They feel this organization needs to be completely dismantled and brought down for the alleged crimes against them. My article has to deal with some of the steps they took to take down Scientology.

This all started by a posting of a video posted onto YouTube that interviews Tom Cruise and him talking about Scientology. Scientology requests the video to be brought down under the argument of copy right infringement. Because of that the video leaks out to other websites where they show it in full and ignore the demands of Scientology to bring it down. Because of this they have aroused the eyes and ears of the group Anonymous who are fighting against Internet censorship, another big topic in the U.S. at the moment. The group Anon has many computer user and hackers in the group where they have effectively put the Church of Scientology on notice. Using computer mischief they have rendered many websites that belong to Scientology useless using Denial of Service attacks and data fax spamming. They have also created a computer voiced video that was posted on YouTube declaring their actions onto Scientology.

Though the article was short their were many instances of Network violations present. Though I am not sure I agree with their DoS ( Denial of Service ) method to take down alot of Scientology's websites I do however understand what they are trying to do. Using their own websites and completely bringing them down falls in the line of Network Security. At some point some of the Anon hackers must of gained either admin. privilege's or access their servers and overloaded them with commands and requests. At the same time this happening it was reported through another source that while they had access to their servers a number of their databases with copy written material, exclusive to Scientology, had been taken and distributed over the Internet. So we are dealing with a group who are very good with computers but can use them in very bad ways such as taking information off of others databases and servers etc. However it's not all criminal activities they are pursuing. To wrap this all up there was a huge protest at many of the Scientology owned facilities by hundreds of people all wearing some type of mask protesting Scientology. All of which claimed to be apart of Anon.

I thought this article was very interesting because of its ties with Database and Network Security. It even had a human side to it of what people will do so that their voice and opinion is heard. The fight will be a long one in my opinion with many casualties I fear. A protest like this that challenges laws in the U.S. where a group fights for human rights and the other fights for freedom of religion. It will be a tough fight for the both of them, and I fear not to voice my over all opinion because I have read of many others going to jail because of comments they made in the regard. So I will leave it at this and watch from the sidelines as this story further unfolds.