User:Z00r/Chanology internet summary

Early Internet Actions
Project Chanology began its campaign by organizing a series of denial-of-service attacks against Scientology websites, and flooding Scientology centers with prank calls and black faxes. The group was successful in intermittently taking down Scientology websites from January 18, 2008 through at least January 25, 2008. Other early Chanology internet actions included releasing YouTube videos, promoting stories on the website Digg.com, and using a technique known as Google bombing to associate the Church of Scientology website with the search terms "dangerous cult".



Denial of Service Attacks

Using denial-of-service attacks, Anonymous had early success rendering major Scientology websites inaccessible and leaking documents stolen from Scientology computers. This resulted in a large amount of coverage on Social bookmarking websites.

According to Jose Nazario, security engineer with the company Arbor Networks, the denial-of-service attacks on Scientology.org flooded the site with 220 megabits of traffic, falling into what he considered to be a mid-range attack. Speaking with SCMagazineUS.com, a security strategist for Top Layer Networks, Ken Pappas said that he thought that botnets were involved in the Anonymous operation: "There are circles out there where you could take ownership of the bot machines that are already owned and launch a simultaneous attack against [something] like the church from 50,000 PCs, all at the same time".

In response to the attacks, on January 21, 2008 Scientology.org was moved to Prolexic Technologies, a company which specializes in protecting other web sites from denial-of-service attacks. Attacks against the site increased, and CNET News reported that "a major assault" took place at 6 p.m. EST on January 24, 2008. Anonymous escalated their attacks, and as of January 25, 2008, the Church of Scientology's official website was still inaccessible. By February 4, 2008, Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw told the Los Angeles Times that the Church of Scientology's websites "have been and are online".

Unintended Casualties

Calling Anonymous a "motley crew of internet troublemakers", Wired blogger Ryan Singel said that on January 25 2008, while attempting to bypass the Church of Scientology's Prolexic servers, users of a misconfigured DDoS tool inadvertently and briefly struck Etty Hillesum Lyceum, a Dutch secondary school in Deventer.

Another group related to the project, the "g00ns", erroneously targeted a 59-year-old man from Stockton, California on January 26, 2008. They had posted his home phone number, address and his wife's Social Security Number online in order for people to target them. They believed that he was behind the counter-attacks against Project Chanology-related websites by the Regime, a counter-hack group who had hacked one of the planning facilities of the Project Chanology attack. The Regime was attempting to gain personal information of the people involved in Project Chanology and turn that information over to the Church of Scientology. After discovering that they had falsely targeted the couple, one of the g00ns called and apologized.

YouTube Videos

On January 21, 2008, Anonymous announced its goals and intentions via a video posted to YouTube entitled "Message to Scientology", and a press release declaring a "War on Scientology" against both the Church of Scientology and Scientology's Religious Technology Center. In the press release, the group states that the attacks against the Church of Scientology will continue in order to protect the right to freedom of speech, and end what they believe to be the financial exploitation of church members.

The Anonymous YouTube video shows time lapse video of clouds while a synthesized voice addresses the leaders of Scientology, stating "We acknowledge you as a serious opponent, and we are prepared for a long, long campaign. You will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your methods, hypocrisy, and the artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell. You cannot hide; we are everywhere." The video goes on to state "We shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the church of Scientology in its present form ... We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." The Tom Cruise video, referred to as a "propaganda video", is specifically named at the beginning of the Anonymous YouTube posting. By January 25, 2008 only four days after its release, the Anonymous video had been viewed 800,000 times, and by February 8, 2008 had been viewed over 2 million times. Author Warren Ellis called the video "creepy in and of itself" and a "manifesto, declaration of war, sharp political film".

In a different video posted to YouTube, Anonymous speaks to the news organizations covering the conflict, and criticizes the media's reporting of the incident. In the video, Anonymous criticizes the media for not mentioning objections the group had raised to certain controversial aspects of the history of the Church of Scientology, and cited past incidents including the death of Lisa McPherson. Lisa McPherson was a Scientologist who died in 1995 under controversial circumstances and the Church of Scientology was initially held responsible and faced felony charges. These charges were later dropped, and a civil suit brought by McPherson's family was settled in 2004.

Digg Coverage

In addition to the DDoS attacks against Church of Scientology websites, Anonymous organized a campaign on one of their websites to "begin bumping Digg," referring to an attempt to drive up Scientology-related links on the website Digg.com. On January 25, 2008, eight of the top ten stories on Digg.com were related to either Scientology related controversies or Anonymous and the attempt to expose Scientology. Digg CEO Jay Adelson told PC World that Anonymous had in fact not manipulated the site's algorithm system, but instead stated "They must have done a very good job of bringing in a diverse set of interests ... It just happened to hit a nerve that the Digg community was interested in." Adelson stated that two other instances which similarly dominated the main page of Digg in the past have included the Virginia Tech Massacre during the aftermath of the incident, and the 2005 London bombings. Adelson commented on the popularity of Scientology to the Digg community: "In the history of Digg, there's no question that the topic of Scientology has been of great interest to the community ... I can't explain why."

Google Bomb

On January 29, 2008, Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews reported that a Google bomb technique had been used to make the Scientology.org main website the first result in a Google search for "dangerous cult". Miller asserted that Anonymous was behind the Google bomb, and that they had also attempted to make Scientology the first result in Google searches for "brainwashing cult", and make the website Xenu.net the first result in a search for "scientology". Rob Garner of MediaPost Publications wrote that "The Church of Scientology continues to be the target of a group called Anonymous, which is using Google bombs and YouTube as its tools of choice."

scratchpad
The group was successful in taking down a Scientology website on January 18, 2008.

Local Church of Scientology chapter sites were also affected.

Speaking to Sky News, the chief executive of Internet security firm 7safe.com said that it was possible that the group used a denial-of-service attack in order to take down the Scientology website.

Organizers of February 10, 2008 protests against the Church of Scientology by members of Project Chanology told the St. Petersburg Times that the event is well-timed because it will take place on the birthday of Lisa McPherson.

Danny McPherson, chief research officer at Arbor Networks, stated that 500 denial-of-service attacks had been observed on the Scientology site in the week prior to February 4 some of which were strong enough to take down the website.

By March 19, 2008, Anonymous's early guerilla tactics against Scientology had been adopted to fight spam in a Russian effort called Project Antirobot.

This second video was taken down on January 25, 2008, with YouTube citing a "terms of use violation".