Begun the Scientology War Has
ChrisB on Jan 24 2008 at 9:52 pm | Filed under: Chris' Page, Religion and theology, Technology
So making the news today, a group of hackers calling themselves Anonymous, has declared “war” on the Church of Scientology. It started with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on CoS and CoS sponsored websites, but moved on today to claims that the group had hacked Prolexic, which is a company employed by Scientology to protect them from these DDoS attacks. They seem to have a flair for the dramatic, announcing their attack on Prolexic, and calling for others to join them outside the Church of Scientology in London on a date in Oct.
Now this sort of thing has happened before but what makes this interesting is the apparent organization of the attackers, the widespread negative media attention Scientology has gotten over the last few years, and the advancement of technology. Each generations war is fought differently, and I think we may see something similar in this “internet war”. This seems to be well thought out, planned and coordinated.
How long will this last? What is the goal? Will they attackers be caught and/or shut down? Or will they just get bored and move on to something else? They seem to be submitting their news to Digg.com frequently, so check back there periodically for the latest.
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Thanks for the heads up on this. I don’t know why some hackers messing with Scientology is much more interesting than if they were pestering Baptists.
Roland,
There’s a myriad of reasons why. First would be the high profile nature of Scientologists. America (and the UK even more so) is obsessed with their celebrities. Second, would be the odd nature of the beliefs, and the recent press it’s gotten over the years from news stories and satires like south park. Third would be the history Scientology has with the internet and the litigious nature. They have tried to shut down a scientology newsgroup back in 99 I think it was, they are banned in Germany still I think, and threaten with law suit any website hosting their secret documents, or media (like the recent release of Tom Cruise giving some 10 min long acceptance speech for a sceintology award.
All these combined with the apparent planning and organization done by this group are making it big news on the web, especially with the people in the 20s and younger. It remains to be seen though whether this isn’t just a flash in the pan, soon to fade away after any retribution targets them.