Journalist vs. the Syrian Electronic Army 43
New submitter Drunkulus writes "Journalist Ira Winkler has an article about his personal run-in with the Syrian Electronic Army. While admitting that the SEA has succeeded in hijacking the Wall Street Journal's Twitter accounts and defacing the RSA conference website, he calls them immature, inept script kiddies in this Computerworld column. Quoting: 'These people purport to be servants of the genocidal dictator of Syria and came together to support him, but they wasted their hack on what amounted to cyberbullying. This is not behavior that the SEA's Syrian intelligence handlers would condone. The SEA wasted an opportunity to promote its message, while divulging previously unknown attack vectors. ... I don't think that sort of immaturity will go over well with the SEA's Syrian intelligence bosses. And that could have implications for the influence of the group in the future.'"
GENOCIDAL? (Score:3, Insightful)
Assad is a strong-man, indeed, but he protects a multi-ethnic, woman-empowering and minority enabling nation-state. Secular modernists, Christians, Druze, Alawi, Sunni and Shia, along with unusual proto-Islamic and pre-Christian minorities are treated equally as Syrian.
The armed, "Syrian" opposition, that seeks to topple him? Not so much. These are the
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The armed, "Syrian" opposition, that seeks to topple him? Not so much. These are the Wahabbist fighters sponsored by US and Qatari dollars - who'd implement whippings and stonings for teaching girls to read.
The Syrian opposition consists of multiple parties, the one you describe being a small fraction. The sad thing is that they do not agree with each other substantially.
You are making Assad sound like a defender of his country. No doubt that is what he thinks. But he and his army have committed atrocities
The U.N. commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria confirms at least 9 intentional mass killings in the period 2012 to mid-July 2013, identifying the perpetrator as Syrian government and its supporters in eight cases, and the opposition in one.[526][527]
By late November 2013, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) report entitled “Violence against Women, Bleeding Wound in the Syrian Conflict”, approximately 6,000 women have been raped (including gang-rape) since the start of the conflict - with figures likely to be much higher given that most cases go unreported.[528][529][530]
According to three eminent international lawyers.[531] Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees. Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained and bore signs of torture. Some had no eyes; others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution.
find this and more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Indeed, not genocide, but: When the political opposition started to demonstrate, and Assad began to detain, torture and kill them systematically, thes
Re:GENOCIDAL? (Score:4, Informative)
Up until US propaganda started, which was during the Libyan revolution (which we paid a lot of money for, and even bombed quite a few people) Syria was known as the most modern and open society in the Middle East. These are not "stories", go read pretty much anything prior to the Libya revolt. Women in Syria could work and drive, they were not force to wear coverings. There is and was no "State" Religion, which for the Middle East is unheard of (including our 'allies' Saudi Arabia and Israel). There were plenty of Christians and Jews and yes several varieties of Muslims.
Claiming Assad is genocidal requires a new definition of the word! The people revolting have actually been "revolting" since at least the 1980s attempting to over throw the Government of Syria primarily to convert the country to Sharia Law under 1 Islamic Religion. Again, that is a fact not a "story". Syria is no more Islamic as a Country than Russia is Christian. People make that false claim based on the President's beliefs, but that would be like claiming that the US was Catholic under Kennedy and Quaker under Nixon.
Assad has been against US policy of imperialism for as long as he's been in office. He wants to remove Syria from the US Petrol Dollar (quite like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi) but of course you may not see the significance. His plans to do so started around the same time as Libya, and suddenly the revolutionaries in his country gained a lot more people, money, and weapons. Kind of like Libya, wow!
If you want to say that "he's a dictator so we should hate him" then you had best look at our primary ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. Then take a close look at Israel and what they do to Palestinians. If you want to claim someone is "X" at least do the friggin homework to back it instead of taking someone's word for it.
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In the US, Obama carries on with a popular approval of just under 50%. Let us not dwell on the US Congress, which is wobbling around 10%.
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Extraordinary claims require at leas some evidence, and I never saw Assad persecute anyone for their Religion. In fact when he first took office he prosecuted people that discriminated. His dad was much the same, so if you want to claim he's committing genocide show me some facts.
Facts speak to me, not opinion based largely on fallacy and false information.
Though they were occasionally subjected to violence by Palestinian protesters, the Syrian government took measures to protect them. There was a Jewish primary school for religious studies, and Hebrew was allowed to be taught in some schools. Every two or three months, a rabbi from Istanbul visited the community to oversee the preparation of kosher meat, which residents froze and used until his next visit.[45]
I'm not sure you read the article you linked very well. Or perhaps you were just ignoring the whole of my post where I was claiming that Assad is not
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Perhaps you are confusing me with another poster. I never made the claim that Assad is committing genocide.
No, I'm not confusing you with a different poster. You ignored the summary of my post and chose to try and nitpick. If you are nitpicking and ignoring the purpose of my post (which has the word genocide all over it) you are either defending the person making a false claim or attempting to subvert the topic.
I think you need to learn to read better, and understand that if you make claims, people are going to check them and hold you to them.
I think you should be more courteous in conversations you butt in to, and expect criticism when you are rude. I can read just fine, and it was not me attempting to hijack your post.
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When UN evidence has repeatedly shown that Rebels are the ones using chemical agents, and sects of the FSA admit to making, smuggling, and using the chemical agents, I perceive your claims as simple bullshit.
That's not to claim Assad is innocent, but rather we have no evidence that he has used any chemical weapons on his own people. We have hearsay from the same people that claimed Saddam was creating WMDs and going to dirty bomb every city in the US.
I don't trust US propaganda any more than I trust someon
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You're 99% right, but haters and belivers (of the USA propaganda) are going to focus on the 1% doubtful affirmations you make to try to discredit you. People of the USA, you and we (I'm spanish) are under the same type of government that Hollywood portraits as Hitler Nazi Germany.
Proof of the lies about Lybia, Siria, etc. are that they are told in the media (cnn, etc) just when it is necessary. Gaddafi had a good reputation over the last years before the "arab Spring", bussines with european nations wer
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I agree with you completely on all accounts. I try to be careful not to give information that can be doubted, at the same time I can not possibly cite decades worth of reading materials. So people will do the homework, or not. Makes no difference to me and my knowledge personally. As the old proverb says "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink".
Where I believe many people go wrong arguing against US policy is to build straw man arguments. I don't think Gaddafi for example was a great
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He's worse in that he's a lot better-equipped, with his own mechanized army and all...
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They're still alive?
http://www.theonion.com/articl... [theonion.com]
Amateur? SKiddie? Takes one to know one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ira Winkler is a journalist now? That seems odd to me. Attrition.org has an excellent summary of all the different smells of bullshit that emanate from this guy. [attrition.org] He also got thrown out of Microsoft after conning them into hiring him to teach a class on application security where he literally used little dinosaur figures to try and teach the class. He was feckless...and this was *before* Microsoft got as good at security as they are now, before they developed their own SDLC, etc.
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I actually question the entire story Winkler puts forth. How does he even know these guys are actually Syrian? The two people he named had vaguely middle-eastern names, but even he admits they were located outside of Syria. How does he know they're not some minor criminal enterprise or just trolls pretending to be with Syrian intelligence?
The other question is, if these guys are actually Syrian intelligence, why even bother wasting all these resources just to attack a guy who is basically a nobody? I'm sure
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well at this point he is basically making a story about him being attacked as a rehash of the actual happening.
nobody gives a shit. the Syrian dictator the least(which gets us to another point, even if they were real then their "handlers" wouldn't probably have a clue either or were busy with the actual war..).
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"he literally used little dinosaur figures"
Curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal!
Not too shocking really (Score:2)
Computerworld is not even considered a trade rag anymore, it's generally considered a Microsoft advertisement. Hell, even the Windows geeks I work with hate that magazine. When factoring in the writer, the magazine, and the rhetoric used in the article, I can't help but wonder if this is a ploy by the propaganda machine to start drumming up for war with Syria again.
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Attrition.org has an excellent summary of all the different smells of bullshit that emanate from this guy.
I have no dog in this fight - I have literally never heard of "Ira Winkler" before today, at least that I remember. But from a quick review, the linked page seems needlessly argumentative and dismissive. Do you really need to take shots at people for saying cliches like "opinions are like a**holes - everybody has one?" Is that a reason to disqualify this guy from having an authoritative voice?
Again, I don't know this guy and there may be dozens of reasons to blow him off as a blowhard douchebag. The linked
The U.S. is much better at attacking journalists (Score:2)
Who needs hackers.
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Yes, you're wrong. The Arabs are supposed to be descended from Ishmael. It was the Edomites who were descended from Esau.
Wha...?! (Score:4, Informative)
I used to deal with cleaning up the aftermath of the SEA daily. I see no evidence of nation state intelligence agency backing. They're mostly script kiddie exploits. They hit vulnerable older versions of popular software like WordPress and its plugins. Then they upload PHP web shells that are basically no different from r57 or c99. Spidershell would an improvement. Before the civil war they typically defaced sites with new pages decrying Israel's existence and calling for others to join them in defacing sites. Every other site defacing operation was basically the same or better.
just for the record... (Score:1)
Quote from TFA:
"These people purport to be servants of the genocidal dictator of Syria [...]"
Assad is a dictator... BUT NOT GENOCIDAL - on the contrary, he protects Syrians (of all ethnicities/religions) from the GENOCIDAL (Sunni Muslims) Islamists (their "moto" is: "Shia's in the grave, Christians in Beirut"! So... genocide-ethnic/religion cleansing!)
I am a Greek, living in Greece - i don't have any relations with Syrians but since i am a close neighbor i think i understand good enough the situation there. Keep in mind that in Syria there are many Greeks -living there from even befo
Assad (Score:4, Insightful)
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that he may be bad, but the alternatives are far worse. In most countries it seems the Arab Spring has had little beneficial effect in terms of Freeeeedom!
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Revenge (Score:2)
Sounds like he's trying to get back at them by making their bosses mad at them.
Not Official (Score:3)
They seem to be an uncontrollable incoherent, loosely affiliated group without any hierarchy who just use the brand as a PR banner. Like Anonymous or Al-Qaeda.