_________________________________________________________________ Centura _________________________________________________________________ HATE HACKERS: KILLING DIALOGUE ON THE INTERNET __________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright © 1996 San Francisco Examiner
Note the usual misuse of the term "hacker."
(Sep 28, 1996 02:18 a.m. EDT) -- One or more hackers using racist and other hate terms have erased tens of thousands of messages used by a wide variety of political discussion groups on the Internet, exposing new concerns about the security of the worldwide computer system.
At least one Internet customer -- in Oklahoma -- has been blamed for some of the more than 30,000 killed messages and has been cut off by his service provider.
"Obviously, the individual responsible is no longer around here," said William Brunton, president of Internet Connection of Tulsa, one of several service providers of Usenet news groups that were victimized during the weekend. "You can be assured it's not going to happen again from here."
The author really doesn't understand USENET, does he (or she)? Evidently, one of the persons posting the cancels was doing so out of this company.
He said he had turned information over to federal authorities and could not comment further.
In Washington, D.C., an FBI spokesman declined to confirm whether the matter was being investigated although it was unclear what, if any, laws may have been violated.
The messages were deleted from system discussion sites used by gays, Jewish groups, Muslims, feminists and other politically oriented groups.
The perpetrator or perpetrators used so-called "cancelbot" software programs labeled with such phrases as "fagcancel" and "kikecancel."
Besides Brunton's small Oklahoma firm, Internet service providers whose discussion groups were victimized included industry giants Netcom Inc. of San Jose, and UU Net Technologies of Falls Church, Va. Officials of those firms were not available for comment.
And operating out of these? Or is it simply that the groups in question are carried by these firms?
While some believed such attacks pose a serious threat to the sanctity of the Internet -- which is virtually unregulated save for a generally adhered-to protocol known as "netiquette" -- others were less alarmed.
Usual mixup between USENET and the Internet, of course.
"There actually are no laws against that sort of thing," said Jonah Seiger, policy analyst for the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. "Obviously, it's sort of annoying."
He said a cancelbot, or a forged cancel message, is "a malicious vehicle and not good netiquette."
[...]
Two years ago, when some immigration lawyers "spammed the net" -- electronically plastering news groups throughout the Internet with a single message, an advertisement telling how to get a green card -- "it was the first time someone figured out you could cancel those messages," Seiger said.
Since then, phony cancelbots have appeared with some frequency. In one of the better-known cases, the Church of Scientology used cancelbots to erase messages from news groups used by some of its members with whom the church was engaged in a legal battle.
The security of the Internet has also been brought into question recently after hackers altered home pages operated by the CIA and the Justice Department.
[...]
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