On September 11th 2014, a fascinating media hack began surfacing online. A hack so intricately designed, it is clear that someone put a lot of effort into planning, seeding and trying to spread the rumor, using multiple services, including Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. We do know that many of the profiles involved, especially on Twitter, are of Russian origin. We still have no idea who specifically was behind the attempt.
The hoax claimed that a chemical factory in Centerville, Louisiana had exploded and was leaking hazardous chemicals everywhere. This began spreading, initially through text message alerts received by citizens of a neighboring town, and then around the web. The first Google search result, returned a fake wikipedia page (now deleted) tied to this supposed explosion. The page linked to a 30-second YouTube video where a camera was pointed towards a TV screen showing a fuming building along with ISIS fighters reading a message. Additionally, a Facebook page of a fake media outlet named ‘Louisiana News’ published a statement claiming that ISIS takes responsibility for the explosion in Centerville. And on Twitter, a full-blown tweet storm emerged, reaching peak velocity of one tweet per second.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Ezber Bozmak on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:26PM
Or maybe the story of the media hack is the real media hack!
Duhduh-dun!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:36PM
that someone put a lot of effort into
My favorite part of the story no one is talking about is if you read the story (and it was a good one) there is no nebulous "anonymous did it" or "we have no idea" but clearly it looks like the Russians did it. So specifically the interesting part to me is no one wants to talk about how someone made it look like the .ru did it.
Since Russians aren't generally stupid, that means if the russians actually did it, that some one or some group consisting of the subpopulation of russians who are stupid, ran that stunt, which is mildly interesting. In the USA our stupid people mostly become youtube comment writers or economists.
Or if external 3rd party false flag, someone who wants to make the .ru look bad (probably someone living in the greater Ukrainian area) wants to make the .ru look bad but even our own stupid journalists didn't fall for it, or the theoretical Ukrainian dude dramatically overestimated the intelligence of the average american journalist (which I guess is possible for someone who doesn't know anything about our culture of stupidity) such that our journalists were too dumb to "figure it out" in between sessions of picking their noses possibly off camera.
Or if internal false flag, someone is really tickling the bear trying to start a fight with Putin. Our policy with Russia has been legendarily stupid over the past couple years, probably because of that idiot in charge with a nobel peace prize is a warmonger, or being totally wishy washy maybe his advisors are hyper hawk warmongers, its hard to categorize the exact incompetence.
So the common theme of all possible explanations for the event is stupidity, with the assumption that its isolated to just one of the many world players. I thought that was an interesting analysis. Not everything that happens, happens because of stupidity, but this overall story does seem to require at least one of the many world players to be really dumb.
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:50PM
What would you have done differently with regard to Russia?_
subicular junctures
(Score: 3, Funny) by wantkitteh on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:11PM
I can imagine the meeting at FSB headquarters:
"Ivan, look, someone faked that we did this fake attack on America."
"That's weird, Sergei."
"I know - why would we *fake* an attack like amateurs? We just do the damn thing if we want!"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:21PM
Not initiate an armed revolution in a neighboring country thats historically Russian territory?
From memory isn't the only reason Ukraine has the Crimea land is Khrushchev got drunk one night and reassigned the province for administrative purposes, not even exaggerating?
It would be like the Russian KGB initiating a revolution in Miami arguing its not really part of the USA anymore (which is arguably true) so the USA has no legitimate complaint, and then sending them arms.
One nice thing about the Russians is they tend not to be overly expansionist. Leave them the heck alone and they'll leave everyone else alone, more so than most nations anyway.
(Score: 3, Informative) by buswolley on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:55PM
I suppose, maybe. I was not aware of a preponderance of evidence that the U.S. intervened (funding/arming rebels) in Ukraine, but I do seem to remember a popular uprising after the then Ukrainian president ditched courting the EU for a deal with Russia,; a deal many felt sold out their country to Russian control when many felt that a future with the West would be better.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @05:12PM
From memory isn't the only reason Ukraine has the Crimea land is Khrushchev got drunk one night and reassigned the province for administrative purposes, not even exaggerating?
Does it matter? In the decade before that the USSR forcibly deported a fifth of the crimean population to other countries. [wikipedia.org] That seems like a significantly worse geopolitical decision regarding the region's autonomy.
One nice thing about the Russians is they tend not to be overly expansionist. Leave them the heck alone and they'll leave everyone else alone, more so than most nations anyway.
How many countries in the last 50 years have annexed more territory than the Russian Federation?
Invading former vassal states that have become sovereign countries isn't acceptable.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2015, @07:13PM
Not initiate an armed revolution in a neighboring country thats historically Russian territory?
And historically Ukrainian, Ottoman, Mongolian, Greek, etc territory.
It would be like the Russian KGB initiating a revolution in Miami arguing its not really part of the USA anymore (which is arguably true) so the USA has no legitimate complaint, and then sending them arms.
Only if Miami were actually (rather than the meaningless "arguably") not part of the US. We have an actual example where the USSR actually did initiate a revolt in former US territory, Cuba. The US was quite butthurt over that.
One nice thing about the Russians is they tend not to be overly expansionist.
Last time, it only took several thousand nuclear weapons to curb their not-overly-expansionist expansion (which incidentally overran twenty or so countries over the course of about three decades). And really, if one looks at history, one sees a large number of centuries of overly expansionist expansion (starting with Moscow as a city state in 1283). I guess I just don't see this tendency of which you speak.
My view on this is that Russia probably could have gotten away with this, if they had stopped with the annexation of the Crimea peninsula. Now they've created a bigger mess without an exit strategy. I think everyone is familiar with how those tend to settle out.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday March 12 2015, @03:01AM
We have an actual example where the USSR actually did initiate a revolt in former US territory, Cuba.
Do you have any evidence of this? I thought Castro only established relations with the USSR after the revolution. Wikipedia seems to agree: [wikipedia.org]
Soviet planners, resigned to U.S. dominance over the Western hemisphere, were unprepared for the possibility of a future ally in the region. According to later testimonies from Nikita Khrushchev, neither the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee’s nor KGB intelligence had any idea who Castro was or what he was fighting for. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev advised them to consult Cuba’s Communists who reported that Castro was a representative of the "haute bourgeoisie" and working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.[3]
Not that Khrushchev (or Wikipedia) would be above lying. It would be really interesting if there was proof that the USSR was behind the Cuban revolution.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 14 2015, @03:00AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:51PM
Legendarily stupid, or calculated to help foster a new cold war? If we're going to be trotting out conspiracy theories it's worth considering that people seem to be wising up to the fact that the "security" measures taken for the "War on Terror" add very little security against terrorists, but granted a great deal of power easily targeted at our own populace. A new Cold War with those scary, crazy Russians could be just the thing to get people to stick their head back in the sand and let the authoritarian state take a few more great strides forward.
Of course, if that was the plan I would expect the media to be completely on-script with "it was the evil Russians"...
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:16PM
Maybe the media sent the letter back to whichever TLA it came from with a note attached saying "no-one will buy this and the Russians will sue us for defamation if we suggest they'd be this stupid" only it got lost in the post.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:23PM
only it got lost in the post.
I'm sure the NSA has a complete copy somewhere, probably right next to all of Hillaries emails.
(Score: 1) by Pr. L Muishkin on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:52PM
Hmmm, media you say? Let me see what Bill O'Really has to say on the subject.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Wednesday March 11 2015, @07:59PM
I'm not running into many people that are wising up to the fact that the "security" measures taken for the "War on Terror" add very little security against terrorists...
Most of the people I talk to just say that they have nothing to hide, and are completely fine with giving up their privacy and rights. And then /I/ look like the crazy one!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday March 12 2015, @12:30AM
And justifiably so! After all you're the one wasting your time talking to them. :-D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:00PM
> So the common theme of all possible explanations for the event is stupidity
Gee, just over-simplify all the nuance out of the story to come to a pre-determined conclusion why don't you.
Seems to me that what happened here was a second or third generation attempt at media manipulation. Prior generations used blatant astro-turfing - new accounts who had never said anything before cut-n-pasting the same series of claims.
Much of the net is wise to that sort of simplistic tactic, it only took about a decade. If you look at commercials from the 50s they seem so blatant and inartful to us because, as a society we've learned to recognize their methods for what they are. But at the time those commercials worked because the population was inexperienced. So now the manipulators are moving on to more sophisticated tactics that attempt to address the obvious weaknesses of their previous methods.
But, as with any new process, of course they are going to make errors. Nobody ever gets better at something without making mistakes. It doesn't matter what their goals are, learning from mistakes is the human method. That these guys failed this time just means they will learn from the failure and next time they'll do a better job. There are already hints of somebody trying to improve their technical methods by building up ever larger twitterbot armies with superficially plausible comment histories. [shkspr.mobi]
(Score: 4, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:59PM
> There are already hints of somebody trying to improve their technical methods by building up ever larger twitterbot armies with superficially plausible comment histories.
MISSION. FUCKING. ACCOMPLISHED: http://xkcd.com/810/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:01PM
If so, I'd rather think of the Chechenian area. Especially, being a Muslim area, the idea of faking it as ISIS attack would be much more obvious to them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @06:00PM
The hoax here is that the Russians were behind the hoax.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday March 12 2015, @03:17PM
Or maybe it was just someone like the crop circle guys, but having figured out that social media does not fact-check and therefore can be readily hoaxed, yet is often taken as gospel by the news media.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:37PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:47PM
Who are "we?". How is it known that the profiles are of Russian origin? Is the research method adequate?
The order of the day is to question everything.
Reliable sources that have the right access is gold in this situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:35PM
Therefore I start by questioning the order of the day. ;-)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:47PM
Incidentally, and this is rather funny, that quip is often misattributed! (usually to Mark Twain and Winston Churchill)
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:56PM
>> A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.
> Incidentally, and this is rather funny, that quip is often misattributed! (usually to Mark Twain and Winston Churchill)
It was, of course, William Shatner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:30PM
Except that a mistake is not a lie, especially a mistake that does not misrepresent the meaning.
At the very worst, its appeal-to-authority fallacy. But that doesn't really apply to aphorisms which gain popularity not because of the author but because they are considered self-evident.
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:55PM
Fake ISIS Attack on Louisiana Chemical Plant
Done!
...
Wait, is the first word of the headline an imperative verb or an adjective?
I'm in trouble.
returned a fake wikipedia page (now deleted)
"Fake" as in it wasn't actually on Wikipedia? Or "fake" as in a real Wikipedia page, but with false information?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:18PM
yes
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:04PM
Maybe it was a page on a fake Wikipedia?
(Score: 3, Funny) by fritsd on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:19PM
Maybe it was a page on a fake Wikipedia?
You mean http://www.conservapedia.com/ [conservapedia.com] is a front organisation for ISIS??!?
... wait, that actually explains a lot..
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:15PM
I always suspected a connection between ISIS and the deletionist wing of wikipedia. Proof at last!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:02PM
It's true! The information is from the future transmitted here using secret alien technology they don't want you to know about!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:13PM
That's a pretty clear hint that people can't distinguish various Muslim militant groups. ISIS only barely has any international ties at all. They're predominantly pseudo-military, not cell-based in their structure. They're very interested in "local" concerns.
I mean, the hypothetical notion of them attacking the US isn't beyond possibility, but to think they're involved in any given thing shows a pretty clear recentism bias, that barring substantiating evidence can easily be ignored.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:37PM
Eh, they were probably playing off the hype around this photo-threat [go.com] to the whitehouse from nearly a year ago. And given that the nightly news can't stop talking about ISIS, it doesn't really matter if ISIS is here or not, anyone looking to make people flip out only cares about the perceptions, not the facts.
For all practical purposes the only extremist terror groups in the US are guys like the sovereign citizens. [fbi.gov] But you never hear about them on the news.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:13PM
I do hear about Sovereign Citizens on the news. They're usually pretty laughable, but the ones that actually do commit violent acts make the news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:43PM
So maybe "never" is an exaggeration.
But, compared to the amount of coverage dedicated to people saying ISIS is a threat to the US, its only a tiny exaggeration.
(Score: 1) by Inops on Wednesday March 11 2015, @05:07PM
The vast majority of these "terrorists" aren't paying taxes or refusing to pay parking fines. They're not cutting off people's head because their god tells them. There's a reason they're not reported on much.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @05:28PM
Over the last decade they've killed more civilians in the US than any other terrorists. Terry Nichols was one too.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/alleged-louisiana-cop-shooters-linked-sovereign-citizen-movement/story?id=17038353 [go.com]
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/deadly-arkansas-shooting-sovereign-citizens-jerry-kane-joseph/story?id=11065285 [go.com]
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-01-abortiondoc_N.htm [usatoday.com]
http://phoenixcriminallawnews.com/2012/03/michael-lee-crane-appears-at-hearing-squawks-like-bird.html [phoenixcriminallawnews.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @06:40PM
Also this couple who recently killed three people in a walmart in vegas. [forbes.com]
It seems like only the most egregious sovereign citizen murders gets reported as being linked to the movement. Often times they are just "anti-government nuts" - maybe because they are white so a lack of an obviously distinguishing feature means hardly anybody looks very deeply at their background. Easier to do a superficial analysis and leave it at that.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Wednesday March 11 2015, @06:06PM
They made the news in Colorado several years ago. Colorado has very strong easement laws to protect wildland access. They bought a huge plot of land in the middle of nowhere backing up against a national park. Then they decided they did not like all the offroad vehicles using the established trails that cross the property, so they put up fences and armed guards to threaten people that come up the trail.
The sheriff's department and park rangers showed up and arrested them all, and a judge firmly explained that that shit will not fly.
The crossing remains open and unmolested, but now with a fence running along both sides of the trail for the duration of the property- which would have been the smarter solution in hte first place.
(Score: 3) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:37PM
Also, many seem to have a hard time distinguishing between Daesh and Iran, even though Iran is actively fighting Daesh. Of course, many of that crowd are the sort that basically believe that everybody in the Middle East other than Israel is a mortal enemy of the US that can't be negotiated with.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 11 2015, @05:42PM
If people paid attention to the actual details like the distribution of Sunni, Shia, Kurds and others, we'd just adjust a few colonial-era borders and call it a day.
There's no income in peace. It doesn't sell quite as many bombs, newspapers and drones, and it would lower the price of oil and cause more Muslims to reach their thirties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @05:54PM
If people paid attention to the actual details like the distribution of Sunni, Shia, Kurds and others, we'd just adjust a few colonial-era borders and call it a day.
(1) FYI, Kurds are primarily sunni.
(2) While that would improve internal strife, it might not make that much difference in the long run. One of the reasons these countries resist splitting is because of natural resources. Divide up the natural resources and that increases incentive for war. War is even easier when the other country is a bunch of people that are "not our tribe."
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday March 11 2015, @06:23PM
Iraq is already divided on the ground. The ISIS map overlays the Sunni-majority map, from the border to the eastern parts of Baghdad. The Kurds are independent for all but oil (not that they don't want, but Turkey/US isn't letting them). And the Shia control the rest, and have been a bit too happy to abuse the power they finally got back.
Did you notice how ISIS has been completely unable to take territory outside of Sunni areas? They've eliminated the other Sunni groups, and rely on the better-Sunni-than-else concept to hold territory.
It's not going to improve tomorrow:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/risks-mishandling-tikrit-offensive-150311051311135.html [aljazeera.com]
While it would suck for the other minorities, there is little doubt that breaking up iraq into the main three groups would be a lot better than having a continual cycle of violence. Having a clear border inside which to leave ISIS, would make more sense than bombing them until a credible Sunni leadership magically materializes out of thin air to restore a balance in Baghdad.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 11 2015, @06:26PM
*western parts of Baghdad. (D'oh!)
There are also maps showing how Baghdad itself lost all its diverse areas since 2003, and now is a series of segregated boroughs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @07:28PM
You are argureeing with part of what I said and ignoring the other part.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 11 2015, @08:50PM
Kinda.
Let's quote wikipedia:
"The Kurds have ethnically diverse origins.[31][32] They are culturally and linguistically closely related to the Iranian peoples[32][33][34] and, as a result, are often themselves classified as an Iranian people.[35] The Kurdish languages form a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian languages.[36][37]"
Though I agree about the Sunni comment, it's not the whole truth, neither the defining element of the Kurds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds#Religion [wikipedia.org]
Which is likely why the "Sunni" ISIS has an issue with them (and completely unrelated to Saddam-era oppression of the kurds by the Sunni, of course...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @11:53PM
> Which is likely why the "Sunni" ISIS has an issue with them
The sunni ISIS has a problem with all non-batshit muslims.
Plus the kurds have lots of oil.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday March 12 2015, @12:24AM
> The sunni ISIS has a problem with all non-batshit muslims.
Reductio ad PHBum.
And if that pig Latin doesn't make sense, remember how 100 years ago a lot of guys had to run out of trenches to face a storm of bullets. The overwhelming majority was there because of context and bad politicians, not because they were especially looking to murder the guy on the other side, let alone anyone on another continent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @01:15AM
Sorry, your point is lost on me.
I don't do well with people who won't just state their point but expect to me to figure out completely from context, most of which is internal to their own head.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Wednesday March 11 2015, @09:34PM
I thought about it some more, and I actually find it quite scary:
The facts say, that people have conducted an experiment on the Louisiana population, and the purpose of the experiment was to study how fast disinformation spreads in that population.
Why I find it scary is this: what *kind* of people feel the need to think of and execute such an experiment? What are their plans? It sounds like the precursor for an attack:
1. start disinformation campaign on the internet
2. at time X hours after (1) (X is determined from the outcome of this experiment to be the time the attention of the blogosphere peaks on (1) ), begin the actual attack.
It reminds me a bit of the book "Rainbows End".
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday March 12 2015, @04:33AM
That's a possibility perhaps but doesn't seem to actually do much compared to just doing the attack in the first place or doing as has been done many times: attacking again after a short while.
It might work as redirection, a feint just before an attack elsewhere, but seems too superficial to me. That could easily be explained by it being a test though. Still it would be simpler and far more effective to do an actual feint attack instead of an imagined one, it could be as simple as setting fire to a gas station or two which could easily be automagiced as well for anyone able to do an actual attack. I don't really see the point of it.
Reminds me: did anyone ever figure out the attack on the power station that happened a good while ago where someone shot up a bunch of electrical transformers?
Back to the fake attack: it's US-centric beyond/despite the ISIS thing. I don't think most people in the world would care much even if it was real and they heard about it. Muslims killing someone isn't rare, they've long ago (seventies, PLO etc.) managed to make themselves into staple bad guys to most other people, something blowing up in the US isn't unheard of either, seems to happen every week. Also everything looks like it could have easily been prepared in advance and scripted to run automagically at the press of a button.
The US government loves stuff like this but it seems much more likely it was just some individual buying/leasing some accounts and spending his or her free time testing how easy it would be to manipulate something into existence and seeing what happens, how long it lasts, and/or maybe even whether they/someone gets caught or blamed (I think it's safe to say one would expect the story to be identified as false relatively quickly). The Russian “connection” is so weak they most likely didn't even aim for it.
Maybe all they wanted was to make fools out of any media reporting it as true? Media isn't trustworthy in the first place but maybe the aim was to make it a tad more apparent?
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2015, @06:24AM
Waaay more likely to be purely an information campaign because actual "boots on the ground" vastly increases the risk of getting caught. If they can't get their hands on any of you it is a lot harder to figure out who you are.
My first guess is manipulating the stock market. Leverage up on options or other derivatives and when the market is all wobbly and chaotic from the rumours and pseudo-news, go for the throat. A lot of people think that is what to airline stocks during 9/11 too.