Few people would dispute the significant role the Internet plays in political affairs but the recent election in Iran took this role to a new level. Prior to the election, the Iranian authorities blocked access to the social networking web sites. Supporters of the opposition party used social networking sites to recruit hackers and coordinate highly targeted attacks focusing on key web sites of President Ahmadinejad.
Top Social Networking Sites:
* Twitter
* MySpace
* Facebook
* BeDo
* Friendster
* Hi5
* LinkedIn (groups)
* Ning
* Classmates
* Reunion
Before
Candidates and their supporters opposing President Ahmadinejad had been using the social networking sites to spread information as part of their election campaigns and organized events.
During
In the heated battle for the presidency, the social networking sites were used to coordinate analysis, and report abnormal events that were said to be taking place and to rally all those who were supporting a regime change in Iran. In fact there was even a “Cyberwar guide for Iran elections” posted for download by would-be hacktivists.
After
Shortly after the election results were announced, political hacktivists launched a series of cyber attacks targeting high value web site of the Ahmadinejad regime. The Iranian opposition supporters coordinated a series of cyber attacks that successfully managed to prevent access to many pro-Ahmadinejad Iranian web sites, plus the President’s site and other government sites. The DDoS attacks were successful and sites were brought down by traffic from an estimated 500,000 computers. Twitter and Facebook are thought to be the primary sources where computer users could download the software necessary to join the ranks of the political hacktivists.
President Ahmadinejad took decisive steps and basically turned off the Internet in Iran for about an entire day. His action, blocked access to information being distributed by the opposition party and the coordination of the cyber revolt activities. The social outrange was collected, focused and targeted into a political weapon and the enabling technology was the Internet. Many find it hard to believe a 500,000 node DDoS attack army could be assembled that fast without prior planning. Some have speculated that outsiders may have had a hand in the rapid assembly of the cyber capabilities used in the post election cyber attacks. Given the massive distributed sources of attack, it is hard to believe this could have been pulled together in a few short hours.
The role of the Internet in politics has increased and the events in the Iranian election are the latest example of the power and influence the Internet can and will have to impact and influence political campaigns and elections. A few have termed these actions — citizen-based political warfare. The opposition party turned their collective power of influence into a political weapon through the use of social networking sites. The events that took place in Iran represent a harbinger of what is sure to come. There is no doubt the implications social networking sites will have on politics from now on.
Yes these sites are amazing tools to share info and challenge entrenched establishments. My one concern is that such intrusive/destructive hacktivism can amount to vandalism verging on anarchism, which is definitely not transparent democratizing. Interesting piece in yesterday’s NY Times about the Twitter Revolution in Iran, there have been instances of malicious hoaxes, provocations, false rumors being planted, and at least one noted Western reporter had his identity stolen to legitimize fradulent quotes. Well nothing is perfect, there are agitators and con men in every crowd.
Assembling a hundred thousand or so bots in a day would be difficult in any other situation, but when social networking & news aggregation sites had the clients linked on their pages in the open, it’s not surprising at all they could collect that many. Further if a handful of botnet operators who had the capability previous is part of that total, then 500,000 seems rather small.
you are right.the DDOS bring down the whole sites completely.to defend around these massive DDOS attach they filter all traffics from outside iran that come to the websites.for example if you checking the Ahmadinejad related website (www.farsnews.com , http://www.leader.ir , …) you will not get any webpage.all of their websites only accept incoming connection from inside iran (only ip addressees belong to IR).but from inside the iran the internet contents servery censored .public emails like yahoo not working and the internet connections speed is too slow (so no one can upload photo/video from inside of iran and the conflicts to Youtubes and the other websites).
My good admiral, the only solution is to nuke the internet from orbit! It is the only way to be sure.
Indeed, the Internet may be used abusively.
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SCANDAL! SCANDAL! SCANDAL!
EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!
George W. Bush continuously criminally stalked Margie Schoedinger to the point that she could not get away from it, and she committed suicide in desperation to escape: he murdered her.
Andrew… RELAX! This forum caters to a narrow set of interests, namely defense-related technology and news. There are other places to get your statement out that are a lot more appropriate, where your message is less likely to be viewed as intrusive and weird.
I heard Al Quaeda #3 said the same thing about Iran. Hmmmm…
I heard Al Quaeda #3 said the same thing about Iran…
Ptsfp
Your question about how this would be handled in the U.S is interesting. We have scene loosely connected ad-hoc cyber militia respond over one weekend a few years back. This caused great concern from our DoD and State Department — given they have basically no control over how they responded and what they did. In fact this was the event that led me to write an article on the accidental triggering of a cyber war.
I’d agree with daskro — with existing botnets and commoditized hack scripts pushed out via existing social networks, a 500,000-node DDoS sounds quite feasible without prior planning.
You’re looking at a population primed towards certain courses of action by their ideology and with capability that can be deployed in a decentralized fashion within hours on an ad hoc basis. It’s happening at meme speed, now, and that’s a game-changer.
Kinda makes you wonder who would have been following @PaulRevere, if the technology had been around…
Iran pissed off the internets. A half mil DDOS is nothing.
Anonymous delivered. We are legion.
Kevin,
Is the article you mentioned still available? I would be interested in reading it.
Thanks,
Dan
(Ptsfp)
iran has been trending on twitter for so many days now!
30 Dead in swat today. You can imagine what will happen when this is used to show the effect of bombing in Afghanistan every day, day after day after day.
Dan
The abstract article is available the full paper is not. Give me your email and I will sent it to you.
A+ to this blog. EXCELLENT JOB DONE. i kept it as a bookmark. thanks.