It’s impressive, but then when you get to the last line, mind= blown.

Troy McClure 4Chan Screencap is a post from: The Inquisitr

This is not a repeat from December, 2010.

Credit card giant Mastercard has again been downed by hacktivists for their “fiscal embargo” and “unlawful banking blockade against Wikileaks,” six months after the financial giants got together to shut out the controversial info-dump website. The initial embargo by financial institutions led to a massive international hacktivist attack on Visa, Mastercard and PayPal dubbed “Operation Payback” late last year.

Mastercard.com appears to be up again following the reported distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and no mention of the service disruption was made by the company on their Twitter account to apprise customers of the situation. (However, Mastercard has tweeted at length about baseball-related discounts.) It is unclear whether further attacks on the financial institutions blockading Wikileaks are in the works, but the organization tweeted:

Hactivists take down MasterCard in protest over the continuing illegal WikiLeaks fiscal embargo mastercard.com

The unlawful banking blockade against WikiLeaks in 6th month: The culprits: VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Bank of America, Western Union.

The unlawful banking blockade against WikiLeaks continues; we call for de-listing the banks involved http://t.co/LjFqBl6

Mastercard did not officially comment on the attack.

Mastercard Again Taken Down By Hacktivists In Wikileaks Vengeance is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Lulz Boat has docked to tweet out a press release regarding the intentions of LulzSec, the group that hacked Sony, the CIA and several gaming targets over the past week.

Unlike most Anons, LulzSec doesn’t ascribe their actions to any greater political, moral or social ideal. As the press release- copied below- indicates… they’re really just doing it for the lulz. However, the group points out that not all hackers hack for notoriety, and whether users of the internet realize it or not, most are easily hacked. So they’re really doing everyone a public service by illustrating inadequate security procedures across the internet. Also, the lulz.

Interestingly, today’s LulzSec tweets also deny a feud with the frequently linked entities 4Chan, /b/ and Anonymous. @LulzSec tweets:

Saying we’re attacking Anonymous because we taunted /b/ is like saying we’re going to war with America because we stomped on a cheeseburger.

Full text of the LulzSec press release:

Dear Internets,

This is Lulz Security, better known as those evil bastards from twitter. We just hit 1000 tweets, and as such we thought it best to have a little chit-chat with our friends (and foes).

For the past month and a bit, we’ve been causing mayhem and chaos throughout the Internet, attacking several targets including PBS, Sony, Fox, porn websites, FBI, CIA, the U.S. government, Sony some more, online gaming servers (by request of callers, not by our own choice), Sony again, and of course our good friend Sony.

While we’ve gained many, many supporters, we do have a mass of enemies, albeit mainly gamers. The main anti-LulzSec argument suggests that we’re going to bring down more Internet laws by continuing our public shenanigans, and that our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you. But what if we just hadn’t released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony… watching… abusing…

Do you think every hacker announces everything they’ve hacked? We certainly haven’t, and we’re damn sure others are playing the silent game. Do you feel safe with your Facebook accounts, your Google Mail accounts, your Skype accounts? What makes you think a hacker isn’t silently sitting inside all of these right now, sniping out individual people, or perhaps selling them off? You are a peon to these people. A toy. A string of characters with a value.

This is what you should be fearful of, not us releasing things publicly, but the fact that someone hasn’t released something publicly. We’re sitting on 200,000 Brink users right now that we never gave out. It might make you feel safe knowing we told you, so that Brink users may change their passwords. What if we hadn’t told you? No one would be aware of this theft, and we’d have a fresh 200,000 peons to abuse, completely unaware of a breach.

Yes, yes, there’s always the argument that releasing everything in full is just as evil, what with accounts being stolen and abused, but welcome to 2011. This is the lulz lizard era, where we do things just because we find it entertaining. Watching someone’s Facebook picture turn into a penis and seeing their sister’s shocked response is priceless. Receiving angry emails from the man you just sent 10 dildos to because he can’t secure his Amazon password is priceless. You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it. We release personal data so that equally evil people can entertain us with what they do with it.

Most of you reading this love the idea of wrecking someone else’s online experience anonymously. It’s appealing and unique, there are no two account hijackings that are the same, no two suddenly enraged girlfriends with the same expression when you admit to killing prostitutes from her boyfriend’s recently stolen MSN account, and there’s certainly no limit to the lulz lizardry that we all partake in on some level.

And that’s all there is to it, that’s what appeals to our Internet generation. We’re attracted to fast-changing scenarios, we can’t stand repetitiveness, and we want our shot of entertainment or we just go and browse something else, like an unimpressed zombie. Nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan, anyway…

Nobody is truly causing the Internet to slip one way or the other, it’s an inevitable outcome for us humans. We find, we nom nom nom, we move onto something else that’s yummier. We’ve been entertaining you 1000 times with 140 characters or less, and we’ll continue creating things that are exciting and new until we’re brought to justice, which we might well be. But you know, we just don’t give a living fuck at this point – you’ll forget about us in 3 months’ time when there’s a new scandal to gawk at, or a new shiny thing to click on via your 2D light-filled rectangle. People who can make things work better within this rectangle have power over others; the whitehats who charge $10,000 for something we could teach you how to do over the course of a weekend, providing you aren’t mentally disabled.

This is the Internet, where we screw each other over for a jolt of satisfaction. There are peons and lulz lizards; trolls and victims. There’s losers that post shit they think matters, and other losers telling them their shit does not matter. In this situation, we are both of these parties, because we’re fully aware that every single person that reached this final sentence just wasted a few moments of their time.

Thank you, bitches.

Lulz Security

LulzSec Press Release Confirms: Doing It For the Lulz is a post from: The Inquisitr

Defenders of Wikileaks and all around decent chaps Anonymous and new lulzists on the block LulzSec have begun trading barbs- apparently after some 4Chan users got pissy with LulzSec’s habit of downing gaming services like MMPORG EVE Online. Users on /v/ were reportedly angered after yesterday’s rampage of lulz resulting in several outages. One Reddit user commented:

That kind of already happened when Lulzsec DDOSed MIncraft and EVE Online. /v/ went out in droves and DDOSed to death anything related to Lulzsec. It was like watching a glorious internet civil war take place. “We ride our chocobos to war and enter the fray” was the rallying cry on /v/ today.

The wrath of Anonymous is feared the internet over due to their DDoS habit, but LulzSec has taunted the beast several times on Twitter in the past 24 hours:

It should also be noted that 4Chan is currently down for reasons unknown. Some have criticized LulzSec for hitting softer targets, but the hacking collective just addressed the issue of target severity in response to Twitter criticism:

@Quadrapodacone Hey jackhammer, get some attention span and check our releases page. We’ve hit two agency websites already.

On Twitter, LulzSec has also been promoting a “hotline” (614-LULZSEC) for users to call in desired hacking targets rather than posting them on Twitter. You can follow the lulz in real time by keeping an eye on their feed there.

Update: Reuters has picked up the feud, and reports that calls made to the LulzSec hotline result in the following message:

We are not available right now as we are busy raping your Internet. Leave a message and we will get back to you whenever we feel like.

[Monocle tip to VB]

4Chan, LulzSec Bicker Over Gaming Targets is a post from: The Inquisitr

Dude… what he really wanted to know about was leveling up…

Hugging a Girl, Explained by Gamers is a post from: The Inquisitr

Alt, all-caps text: STUDENTS ARE CALLING PRESIDENT JOHNSON EN MASSE TO PROTEST THE BOMBING AND IT’S JAMMED THE WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD. COULD THEY COLLAPSE OUR CRITICAL PHONE SYSTEMS? HAS THE FIRST TELEPHONE WAR BEGUN? STAY TUNED FOR MORE ON THIS DANGEROUS NEW TECHNOLOGY.

[XKCD]

XKCD rags on Anonymous is a post from: The Inquisitr

Upvote the sun, I LOL’d.

[wondertonic via TDW]

Anonymous sets sights on newest target… snow? is a post from: The Inquisitr

It seems Gawker writers may have poked the hornet’s nest a few too many times this year, as a group of shadowy internet pranksters have cracked the fuck out of all of Gawker Media’s web properties to retaliate for the snarky blog’s “arrogance.”

Do you use a “life password” and comment on the Gawker site? It seems many Gawker slash Twitter users may have, resulting in a flood of spam posts about Acai berries so prolific, it was originally thought to be a worm that was “spreading like wildfire.” The group taking responsibility for the hack hasn’t officially said any of Gawker’s 4chan baiting posts were the catalyst, but Gawker hasn’t been shy with the number of insults levied at the notorious imageboard.

So what do you need to know about the massive Gawker hack?

Signs of a breach were there, but no one noticed it for what it was and Gawker peeps wrote it off right away. Says TNW:

Back in November, (Nick) Denton was told by a co-worker that he was spotted logged in to the Campfire backend, this was not him. Instead of safeguarding his credentials, Denton is convinced by other staff members that it was his own fault and doesn’t change his passwords, something he may later regret.

Gawker says Twitter accounts weren’t compromised, but the influx of cross-user spam suggests otherwise. Whether you used the same password or something else was afoot, check your Twitter account for unauthorized tweets, and consider changing your password just in case.

This is probably like the herpes of database breaches. Information that’s been made available reveals a still-shockingly weak number of passwords used for the site, thousands of which were the word “password.” While your Gawker commenting account getting hacked isn’t the be all and end all of internet embarrassments, many of the users affected by the breach probably use the same password/email combo across the web.

This particular hack will probably keep on giving long after it’s no longer newsworthy. Furthermore, many of the hacked and posted accounts were linked to federal work email addresses, NASA, large banks and other massive entities where we can only hope those using them practice a modicum of password diversification.

Well, I’m sick of this bullshit, how can I delete my Gawker commenter account? Not currently an option, so if you’re among those who have been affected by the breach, tough titties, sayeth Gawker.

Also, Gawker writers thought the idea of 4chan or a similar entity coming after them was pretty funny. Gnosis, the group who say they carried out the attack, released a chat log among Gawker writers where they expressed a desire for 4chan to “bring it on.” It would appear, in fact, it has already been brought:

rian M

The headeline of your post should be “Suck on This, 4Chan”

Maureen O.
I like the call to make today Everybody Write About 4chan Day

Hamilton N.
Nick Denton Says Bring It On 4Chan, Right to My Home Address (After The Jump)

Ryan T.
We Are Not Scared of 4chan Here at 210 Elizabeth St NY NY 10012

Richard L.
don’t forget Fourth Floor

Ryan T.
Right! And Brian’s headcut illustration

Ryan T.
As the lead image

Brian M.
Oh, 4Chan does not want to mess with me once I wind my neck up at them

Brian M.
#giirrrrrrlllllllll

Maureen O.
hey guess what, 4chan has already declared gawker the winner of the 4chan war! we won!

Richard L.
VICTORY

Richard L.
what’d they say?

Jim N.
USA! USA!

Richard L.
MR. OBAMA, TEAR DOWN THAT MOSQUE!

Maureen O.
they say that this day will go down in history as the day 4chan failed.

Richard L.
that’s terrific.

Also? Hamilton Nolan and Richard Lawson called commenters “peasants” as news of the breach began spreading yesterday. Pic above, but the attitude displayed in the chat (“oh, well. unimportant.”) has not garnered Gawker any sympathy since the incident became public knowledge.

One last thing? Fleshbot was part of the data dump, so that should be interesting.

Gawker Media hack about as bad as it could possibly be is a post from: The Inquisitr

In addition to Visa and Mastercard, online payment processing giant PayPal has been knocked offline tonight by a loosely affiliated group of web users protesting the financial restraints placed on the Wikileaks operation.

As of now, Visa is back up and running and Mastercard appears to be mostly operational. However, PayPal is not accessible- although BoingBoing reports that the service is still functioning despite the site outage.

Mashable posted a list of attacks associated with Operation Payback:

After pulling the plug on payments to WikiLeaks, Mastercard’s website was taken down and remains out of service.

Senator Joe Lieberman’s website was taken down for 12 minutes (the first .gov site to be attacked).

Sarah Palin’s website was taken offline by a small group of Anonymous attackers.

The group sent spam faxes to Joe Lieberman’s office and to PostFinance.

PostFinance was attacked the hardest, leaving customers without the ability to conduct online banking.

They took down the website of the lawyer representing the two women who were allegedly raped/assaulted by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The group took down Assange’s Swedish prosecutor’s website.

PayPal has not addressed the outage on their Twitter feed as of yet.

PayPal downed by ‘hackers’ for Wikileaks censure is a post from: The Inquisitr

The “group of hackers” responsible for taking Mastercard’s main site offline for hours today (a basic version of the site appears to be back up for now) has successfully disrupted service on Visa’s website as well after an open call was made on Twitter for supporters of freedom of speech on the internet to launch a DDOS attack.

About two hours ago, an account on Twitter used to organize the attacks (Anon_Operation) sent the following tweet to followers:

TARGET: WWW.VISA.COM :: FIRE FIRE FIRE!!! WEAPONShttp://bit.ly/e6iR3X ::: SET YOUR LOIC TO irc.anonops.net :::#DDOS #PAYBACK #WIKILEAKS

Quickly following up with:

http://isitup.org/www.visa.com IT’S DOWN! KEEP FIRING!!!#DDOS #PAYBACK #WIKILEAKS

Just minutes ago, the account also re-tweeted the following message:

verified.visa.com is a better target, take that out and ecommerce transactions will grind to a halt!

As of now, Visa has been down since the call was issued on Twitter, and the company has not addressed the outage. Earlier, Mastercard tried to pass off the outage as due to “heavy traffic on its external corporate website.”

UPDATE: As of 6:08 EST, @Anon_Operation has been suspended.

‘Operation Payback’ continues, Visa site offline is a post from: The Inquisitr

Although topics related to Wikileaks and Julian Assange have been mysteriously not trending on Twitter the last few days (prompting many Twitter users to grumble about censorship), early this morning “Mastercard” briefly was a trending topic on the site due to an ongoing distributed denial of service attack on the credit card behemoth.

As of now, Mastercard’s site remains inaccessible and times out when opened. The first tweet announcing a successful DDOS came very early this morning- about four hours ago, per Twitter:

‘WE ARE GLAD TO TELL YOU THAT http://www.mastercard.com/ is DOWN AND IT’S CONFIRMED! ‘#ddos #wikileaks Operation:Payback(is a b****!) #PAYBACK

Mastercard offered a brief statement on the global outage, carefully sidestepping any mention of an attack:

MasterCard is experiencing heavy traffic on its external corporate website – MasterCard.com. We are working to restore normal speed of service.

There is no impact whatsoever on our cardholders ability to use their cards for secure transactions.

Amazon, Paypal and Visa have all been floated as upcoming targets for their lack of support for Wikileaks, as well as Twitter for what some users see as a deliberate suppression of the #Wikileaks hashtag. No word from Mastercard on when they expect to recover from the attack.

Anons knock down Mastercard in Wikileaks feud is a post from: The Inquisitr

Mall purveyor of teenage dissent Hot Topic has revised their stance on the ‘Rage Guy’/'Race Guy’ t-shirt flap after just a day, opting to keep the shirts in stock after decision-makers at the chain determined that backlash against the sale of the internet-sourced t-shirts was a “hoax.”

Citing KnowYourMeme.com, Hot Topic made this statement on their Facebook page announcing that the shirts won’t be yanked from Hot Topic locations or the chain’s website after all:

After many hours researched and many communities identifying this as a hoax, we’ve made the decision to continue carrying the “Rage Guy” t-shirt. It is NOT racist.

Check out the link below with updated info.

Per KnowYourMeme, the retailer made this statement in between the first announcement and the second:

A little meme update for you all. The whole “race guy” was a hoax. Period. People need to get a life.

We refuse to cave to bad people doing bad things. Any other negative comments on our fans’ posts will be deleted.

Check out this article by geekosystem.com: http://www.geekosystem.com/hot-topic-ends-fffuuuuuuu-shirts/

Comments from other Facebook members on Hot Topic’s wall indicates that they’ve not given up on pressuring the retailer to pull the shirts just yet, but Hot Topic has yet to address the “Rage Guy/Race Guy” shirt issue since yesterday’s final statement on the matter.

Update: Hot Topic changes mind, will continue to sell ‘Rage Guy/Race Guy’ shirts is a post from: The Inquisitr

Say what you want about 4chan, they get shit done.

The internet doesn’t take being stolen from for profit very lightly. As a whole, the reaction towards corporate entities or businesses using their memes, jokes and collective creativity to shill stuff at the mall frosts their balls. So when an enduring meme popular on 4chan, Reddit and funny pictures sites showed up on a t-shirt at Hot Topic, the “rage guy” rage ignited.

You might know him as the FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU guy, or if you’re a Redditor, you’ll recognize him from the r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu subreddit. The meme is broad and depicts a stick figure enduring any number of life’s hassles (or triumphs), generally a four-square comic ending in “FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU” or “F*ck yea” or “Everything went better than expected.” There are also rage girls (distinguishable by bangs and a hair bow), and approximately twenty-kajillion incarnations of the comic are posted daily around the interwebs.

Amusingly, 4chan used one of their baser defining characteristics to get Rage Guy t-shirts yanked from Hot Topic in record time. Via Reddit is a call sent out to anons to briefly change Rage Guy to “Race Guy.” The plan was to circulate the new racially offensive versions of the meme, including to news organizations who would be all over Hot Topic selling racist t-shirts like a fat kid on cake.

It worked. Hot Topic posted this message on their Facebook page announcing the nearly-immediate discontinuation of the Rage Guy shirt from their stores and removal from their website:

Rage Guy is the character Hot Topic sells, see the original post from 1 year ago. The character focuses on interesting situations, check out the image gallery.

Race Guy is the newest iteration posted this afternoon, today (the character everyone is talking about).

Who created Race Guy? We don’t know. Who created Rage Guy? We don’t know. We sold the shirt because it is pop culture and the series was funny. Why not let our customers express they’re interest in meme’s? So now what? Well, Hot Topic is the last company to support racism. Hell, we support diversity and wear it proudly. Now that the character represents racism because of these unknown creators – we will no longer be selling it.

After tonight (11/17), it will be removed from our website. Next week, it will be removed from our stores.

4chan cows Hot Topic into pulling ‘Rage Guy’ shirt in record time is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ignoring the fact that the very name – Tea Party makes as much sense for a political party name as the Pirate Party – it seems that the silly named political organization got some unwanted attention last night.

Yes folks the Tea Party saw a massive increase of new users all through the night who then proceeded to fill the photo section of TeaParty.org with some highly questionable and not to mention NSFW images. One of them is so NSFW that we can only point you to the link of the link to this picture of Sarah Palin (double warning – NSFW).

As of a few minutes ago when I checked the site has been cleaned up but both Reddit and Boing Boing have saved some of the great work for posterity. sort of like this one.

4Chan’s newest target – The Tea Party website is a post from: The Inquisitr

The girl shown in a widely circulated video drowning six newborn puppies in a river has been identified by police in Bosnia after a massive grassroots internet effort to find her.

Much of the effort to identify the blonde teen, who wore a bright red hoodie as she drowned the six yipping puppies, was spearheaded by /b/, who have a history of finding and identifying animal abusers. Users of 4chan were also largely responsible for locating the woman who was filmed on CCTV in Britain last month trapping a pet cat in a trash can for fifteen hours. The cat in that case survived the trauma. 4chan users have successfully stepped in to ID cat abusers prior to that as well.

The puppy drowning vigilante campaign got a boost when Transformers director Michael Bay offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the girl’s apprehension by authorities:

Bosnian police nab girl who drowned puppies on viral video is a post from: The Inquisitr

Christopher Poole, better known to the internet as 4chan’s moot, spoke at TED 2010′s “Provocation” session.

moot, 21, was revealed as 4chan’s creator by the Wall Street Journal in 2008. He said in an interview with TIME on the same day his identity was disclosed that his “personal private life is very separate from (his) Internet life … There’s a firewall in between.” Which is fitting for a young man backed by an army known to the internet at large as “anonymous,” based in a community known primarily for it’s nameless, anything goes menu of pornography, schadenfraude and extraordinarily crass humor.

Indeed, /b/ wouldn’t be what it is without the ability to post anonymously, and moot is puzzled at the growing trend away from anonymity on the web. moot’s talk on the subject is particularly interesting in light of the growing privacy nightmare visited upon us this week in the form of Google Buzz- even the tech savviest among us found ourselves in awkward situations with current boy or girlfriends, former employers and random one-time acquaintances we may now randomly be “following.”

Interestingly, what seems to be one of the highest impact points of moot’s talk was the saga of Dusty the Cat, infamously tracked down in 48 hours by anonymous after one anon posted pictures of the cat being abused. Although a contradictory point on the surface, it kind of illustrates how privacy and the net really are an illusion. Ars Technica points out that moot “didn’t speak to the dangers” of mass internet anonymity, but the Dusty anecdote seems to illustrate that we may all be throwing the anonymous baby out with the social networking bathwater:

…he insisted that anonymity is a good thing, yet we’re all giving it up voluntarily. He wasn’t talking about the NSA or tech policy or anything like that. Rather, he said sites like 4chan may go the way of the dinosaur because people are choosing to join social networking sites and persistent identity services. One of the ‘Net’s greatest strengths is disappearing as a result, but moot claimed that sites like 4chan show that a lot of good can come of anonymity, too. He seemed puzzled as to why everyone wants their identity tied to so much of what they say and do online. Do people hold back? Do they censor themselves?

Reflecting on my own long-time internet tenure, I have personally scaled back my disclosure in a big way over the past few years. (Yes, the postings you read daily are the censored me. You’re welcome.) Reading over the Ars Technica post made me nostalgic for the days I said what I wanted on the internet, when real names weren’t required, and I knew and errant status update wouldn’t make it into the eyes of my mother, my boss or my best friend from junior high.

Perhaps it was inevitable, and the march towards living publicly on the internet is an unstoppable force. But it would be a sad, sad day if the last true unfiltered cross section of the web ceased existing. The internet doesn’t just know who you are at all times now- it knows where you are, how you’re feeling, what you’re eating and who you associate with. It kind of makes you long for a time and datestamp and a “‘sup /b/” on your disembodied left boob, doesn’t it?

[Ars Technica, Image]

4chan’s moot talks anonymity at TED 2010 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Although user reports about 4chan access on Verizon Wireless vary, the 4chan status blog reports that Verizon may have taken the inadvisable step of “explicitly” blocking the site.

4chan is famous in part for large scale retaliation against such censorship, and the internet is gleefully rubbing its sweaty palms together in anticipation of shenanigans against Verizon for blocking the popular imageboard. Moot has posted twice on the 4chan status blog seemingly confirming that the lack of access was a conscious decision by someone at Verizon:

Over the past 72 hours, we’ve been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards.

After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic to/from boards.4chan.org, only on port 80 (HTTP). No other subdomain/IP/port is affected, which leads us to believe this block is intentional.

A call was placed to their support staff last night, and we were told that the ticket would not be looked at until Monday at the earliest, and: “You’ll need the customer to call to request it be unblocked…”

If you’ve been affected by this block, please contact Verizon Wireless customer support. The numbers we were given are: “Verizon Wireless NRB: (866) 298-5373″ and “Verizon Wireless DSO: (800) 770-1179″.

Note: Users with mobile browsers that proxy (BlackBerry, Opera) won’t necessarily have issues accessing the boards.

And the follow up:

After an hour and a half on the phone, we’ve received confirmation from Verizon’s Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are “explicitly blocked.”

If you’ve been affected by the block, please call Verizon NRB at (866) 298-5373 to file a complaint.

EDIT: If NRB can’t help you, try Verizon Wireless Support at (800) 922-0204.

The Washington Post reports that if the site was deliberately blocked due to off-color content, Verizon may be violating FCC rules:

If true, the move would violate guidelines by the Federal Communications Commission that prohibit Internet service providers such as Verizon, AT&T and Comcast from shutting down Web sites for their subscribers. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is crafting controversial regulations that would make those principles stronger and allow the agency to punish companies that don’t treat all content equally on the Web.

However, a series of tweets just posted on the account of a man who describes himself as the “Verizon Wireless PR Guy” rapidly back away from the suggestion that the 4chan block was intentional:

@jlist No 4Chan block, but protecting network for users always top priority.

Buby23 4Chan has green-light again. Never a block on 4Chan but some of its other sites were launching network attacks.

@mediagadfly Some 4Chan web sites potentially disruptive of Verizon network now have green-light. We are monitoring network for harm

If that’s the position they’re taking, I hope they’ll take the time to explain why a representative for Verizon seems to have indicated otherwise.

Update: The PR rep above denies Verizon blocked 4chan for content:

Verizon doesn’t monitor wireless web connections for content, communication type or style. We will ward off attacks on our network.

Verizon Wireless blocks 4chan? is a post from: The Inquisitr

People across the web gleefully anticipated the telecommunications giant getting its ass handed to it for censoring /b/. AT&T quickly backed down, but not after letting us all know they were censoring sites for the hell of it. At the time of the incident, 40-60 million Americans were prevented from accessing parts of the site.

But is there anyone who could take on 4chan fearlessly? (NSFW language.)

[Image: XKCD]

4chan vs. Twilight, XKCD style is a post from: The Inquisitr

AT&T has lifted the ban on the infamous 4chan image boards, stating that a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack connected with 4chan’s IP addresses was affecting one of their customers.

In an official statement from AT&T:

“Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic.

Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.”

Source: BNO News

AT&T un-bans 4chan is a post from: The Inquisitr

The global internet censorship debate landed in the home of the free Sunday with news that AT&T has censored the popular 4chan /b/ image board.

The censorship was first reported on Reddit, where users confirmed with AT&T that the site had indeed been censored, and was not being blocked due to a technical issue. 4chan owner Moot later confirmed the news, saying that the /r9k/ was also blocked and that AT&T users should “call or write [to] customer support and [AT&T] corporate immediately.”

The censorship at this time extended only to AT&T DSL customers, with wireless (3G) customers believed to be unaffected. Erling Løken Andersen notes that 15.5% of all US internet users use AT&T DSL, meaning that /b/ is now blocked somewhere around 40-60 million people in the United States.

There is no official word from AT&T on the decision yet, and given that it’s Sunday still in the US none is likely until business hours Monday. 4chan users though aren’t particularly happy about the decision, with /b/tards currently discussing ways to fight back against the imposition of censorship.

The decision by AT&T to censor /b/ may also further spark further debate around net neutrality; love or hate 4chan, the decision by a provider to start censoring sites is the beginning of a slippery slope to unaccountable corporate imposed draconian censorship that should have no place in allegedly free democratic societies.

There is also the question of why censor /b/ now and not previously? Could a third party such as Scientology have lobbied for the decision?

Censorship comes to America: AT&T blocks 4chan /b/ is a post from: The Inquisitr