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Title: Novelty Of An Overloaded Transformer Author: Anonymous Language: en Topics: anarcho-nihilism, hacking, insurrectionism, egoism, violence, technology
Once upon the time, hacking was all about the spontaneous emotions as
raw, uncaptured and wild. It was never about the meaningful action, nor
for some cause, the act of hacking was merely for the fruit of extreme
thrill, challenge and stubbornness against all authority. It was the
indescribable defiance of resistance that reached out and smugly
slamming at the system where it hurts. Moreover, a hacker often find
themselves align with how an Egoist saw themselves. A hacker had no
nationality because there are no borders on the vast array of networks.
They had no societal constructs like race, gender and class because
anonymity shields them from all intrusive puncturing. Most importantly,
hackers earn their respect among each other through demonstration of
personal skill and experience, not based on materialism. You could never
own a network, there is always somebody out there wield similar power to
take over what you deemed to own, thus you can do the same toward them.
All hackers mutually understand this fundamental knowledge. Hackers were
the Union of Egoists who could wield unchecked and uncaptured individual
power to destroy a system, for joy and thrill. A hacker is their own
master thriving on the phone line or the computer network. But time has
changed and hacking becomes a commodity that is recuperated by all
elements of society.
Like all illegalist praxis, once the system find its use in exploitation
of the population, it is actively being used as the means of societal
control, effectively normalize all struggle and rendering any resistance
as useless attempt to crash the system. While the term hacker originated
from bourgeois institution like MIT, the concept of hacking predates
civilization. There is always somebody out there, whether in the free
wild or under a mossy basement, putting together something that were not
designed to work together, and make it functions in completely
unexpected way, for the rare, raw and real sense of joy. Most of the
hacks had no purpose and they were done for the sake of doing. The
system turned this reality around and slam a label (civic hackers),
badge (pentesters) or class traitors (NSA) on everything to control,
commodify and criminalize the act of hacking. Even among the first
forerunners of hackers themselves divided with the concept of cracker as
to fruitlessly attempt to define somebody who hack for 'bad', or script
kiddie as someone who hack without understanding the tool nor technique
they used. Ironically, many of the so-called cypherpunks fall under both
of these categories, where they would hack to resist the authority but
without understanding of why their so-called meaningful hacks turned out
to be a wasteful attempt at changing the system from within. Thus, the
cypherpunk movement is a self-explanatory example of fruitless talents
aiming to hit the system but ending up hurting their own, an expected
movement particularly popular among right-libertarians. The petty
attempt to slap some label on hacking or moralize it, has been ridden
through out the history of hacking.
This article won't name the bourgeoisie and class traitors who work for
the system directly or indirectly. However it will give examples of
hackers on the illegalist side, to analyze and dissect their actions,
and what necessity of steps would-be hackers among readers can learn
from their mistakes. Even so, no critique could amount their actions
because the act of hacking is never captured, as the main purpose of
this article is to observe hacking as an action of joy, and not to
capture nor impose these moment onto the readers, you as the readers
must discover this journey through your own uncaptured knowledge and
experience.
As mentioned earlier in the article, hackers and Egoists share common
methods and struggle through out their journey toward pains. Hacking is
the informal nihilist approach to the society, how it should interact
with the environment, and how a hacker should analyze the circumstance,
forming their best scenario for future thrills. A hacker’s thrill is
never captured, it was sent and gone in the network, every packet is
spent, along with the instant but impermanent happiness that had
profound impact on the target. An act of hacking itself is the unique
and uncaptured moment of joys that every hacker explored nihilistically
and digitally battering a target.
Hacker only utilize new techniques and tools unless they stop proving
useful for a hacker’s targeting. Even when hacker used exact same
technique, every target is the new chapter of exploitation and refreshed
challenge and joy. As the world is ever changing, so is the hack. But a
hacker’s goal is never about changing the system, but to act as a form
of extracted vengeance, often without intention of meaningful purpose.
While the mainstream media saw hacking as the sadistic action toward a
person or a property, hacking has existed and function exactly as many
forms of expropriation, extracting the stolen values and redistribute
them toward the masses. In a way, the act of flooding a network with SYN
packets have more use in existence than a CEO exploiting some designer’s
sweatshop. Because overloading a transformer or pipeline could have
profound impact on the real world, better chance of taking the lives of
class traitors.
Captured
Here lies two examples of two well known characters among the scene of
anarcho-hackers, Anarchaos and Phineas Fisher. One is captured and one
is free. One hacked within the organization of Anonymous, and one is an
individual who carried out their acts on their own term. Both had
profound impacts from their hacks. The author of this article
acknowledge that giving known hacks as examples of nihilist approach
does not completely on the path, but they are the best examples of
joyous hacking to punk the system.
Anarchaos, also known as Jeremy Hammond, was an Anonymous and Lulzsec
member. Prior to AnonOps, he was known for founding the hacker’s
tutorial website HackThisSite and gave a speech at DEF CON. Anarchaos
participated in Lulzsec’s op called AntiSec, as the main event that led
up to Stratfor hack. Precisely because of Stratfor event that Anarchaos
was caught, partially because of Lulzsec’s leader Sabu became an
informant prior to founding of AntiSec, which was a honeypot to entrap
many hacker groups. Stratfor server compromised by Lulzsec was a
honeypot set up by Sabu and an FBI informant. Anarchaos was caught
because he trusted an organized group.
Phineas Fisher, an anonymous hacker who called themselves revolutionary
anarchist and blackhat. They are known for hacks such as FinFisher,
Hacking Team and AKP. All of these hacks had shown exceptional
experience and techniques required to carry out sophisticated targeting.
Moreover, Phineas Fisher had done these attacks as individual and
depended on no trusted contact. When the Spanish police arrested two
unaffiliated persons, Phineas Fisher retired their name and went
underground, but no doubt they are still free and well spent their days
to hack the system.
As seen that taking the insurrectionary and individual approach to
hacking would last your struggle longer than stayed or depended on
organized group to survive. When it is up to their term in order to
safeguard you from the walls closing down, it will never happen, because
a hacker’s nature will never allow them to trust anyone, and opening up
bigger chances for them to turn on each other. Hacking is the long and
depressing self-discovery pathway that ones must experience on their
own, far away from others for their own survival.
On personal experience, the author of this article had survived
organization and roam free as an individual. Once every while, they
shred the names and adopt new identities. It is painful to live this
way, at the same time it is the blessed living that survival also
equates to resistance, as vengeful self-discovery rather than giving
some sense of purpose. It is pure masochistic joy and thrill to send a
police precinct into darkness, letting them taste their own medicine.
The author acknowledge that they could have done more to mess up that
precinct, such as setting it on fire by overloading the gas line, or
shut off the HVAC, but there is plenty of other times to create mournful
widows of class traitors.
Digitally battering your targets should never be taken lightly, nor
having any mercy on them. Capitalism’s and leviathan’s reach is no
bound, and they have no mercy toward the land and creatures. Why should
then there be any mercy toward the destroyers? The only clear
uncontested answer shall be, that utter destruction upon capitalism and
its structure is the only solution. Hacking delivers unreached and
uncaptured power on the table, for those who seek to wield this as the
means of resistance, both as individual or collective.
The problem with many of these so-called successive hacks is that they
left no profound impact or damage on the physical world. Lulzsec and
Anonymous went all out as a fiery flame, only to be discovered as a
speck of dust that left no imprint to the real world. Stratfor is still
operational and HBGary back to business. To the extend of Phineas
Fisher, one of their hacks were profound because they took $10,000 worth
of Bitcoin from an online bank, and donated to Rojava Plan. However
there are still plenty of rooms for hacks that have impact on the
physical world, through property and personal damage.
While media lamented that Stuxnet as the forerunner of cyberweapon,
those who had been in the battlefield for long time remembered
differently. In the 80s, CIA overloaded a Soviet pipeline with timed
malware, or called logic bomb, delivered to the terminal of the pipeline
control by physical medium. Both Stuxnet and CIA’s logic bomb had
profound impact on the physical world. Both event created environmental
and property damage, the Soviet pipeline’s explosion was one of USSR
worst industrial disaster, and Stuxnet wasted dozens of Iranian’s
nuclear fuse rods. More recent but familiar event were 2003 Northwest
Blackout, where an employee set off a modified worm crashing one of the
mainframe that control electrical terminal and shut down the entire
grid. 11 dead. Or the Russian shut down Ukrainian grid in the Eastern
region. And the latest attack where NSA shut down Venezuelan electrical
grid. As these shown by real example how hacking could strike the system
where it hurt the most, there are unlimited potentials waiting to be
discovered. There is still chances and times for anyone to strike back
at the system, using the means of hacking.
Hacking doesn’t require specific intelligence to explore it, as hackers
span across anyone, however hacking does require extensive art of
observation, where observation could be by visual, sound or other
senses. The author of this article urge its readers look at hacking like
an art and not a pre-programmed action, because even delivering physical
damage with styles take creativity. Know your target, while an example
like vehicle can be moved, most of the time your physical target does
not move or change. The more stable a target the more it depending on
the system, and usually compromising the box only take one attack
surface. Many times your target’s weakness located in the most obvious
places, and you shall never overlook them. The author overloaded an
electrical transformer in a North American city, where the ICS terminal
for this specific grid was discovered through a search engine called
Shodan. The author also infected the terminal with embedded malware that
automatically sending commands to overload infected terminal, and soon
another transformer in another part of the region was exploded in midst
of the night. The sheer joy was a small segment from random unexpected
exploding transformers.
Anarchists as hackers could bring repeated deadly blow to capitalism and
its society, potentially and profoundly changing the entire landscape of
resistance. However the depressing reality is that many of so-called
anarchist hackers happened to work within the system, embolden
themselves in the legality, sometime even embrace the system and create
negative societal impact toward the oppressed group. Overtime many
so-called anarchists who work within hackerspace or startup to build or
make things, they could have spent their times much better in
development of resistance and defense against the system, rather they
are coddling with the conformity of how the system dictated their
productivity. Truth is that many in the Left refused to move outside
their shell, moreover they are comfortable inside the conformity that
they afraid once leaving it, that they cannot prove themselves useful to
anyone. This is the absolute false thinking that set many legal hackers
in the perpetuated psychological prison. They do not need to prove their
experience and skill to anyone, nor to their target, but themselves. As
mentioned, hacking should be the joyous art of uncaptured emotion, and
not to leave any mark behind. The only such legacy a hacker could leave
behind is when they remotely turn off the braking system of a Crown Vic
while it was on the highway with a pig in it. Let them taste their
medicine for your own enjoyment. Make your joy and thrill real.
Nihilist hacking is the act of jacking yourselves into the network and
pump your mind full of instant yet short-lived joys. It is important to
weaponize those joys toward the sense of survival. While the Left
prioritize purposes as their means of hope, nihilist hackers should
always be doing their acts as purposeless and only for the sheer
violence of resistance. Resistance against the pigs coming down to your
home and take away your family. Resistance against the military lining
you and your friend up against the wall one by one. Resistance against
fascists herding you into death camp. Violence is resistance, and
resistance is survival.
As Phineas Fisher put it, “Hacking gives the underdog a chance to fight
and win.” While the states are capable of causing terrors through
technology, hacking brings these terror back to the states. An
individual hacker could do more damage to a single group or organization
than an organized union ever could. When syndicalists and communists
debate among themselves in union hall on how to bargain the boss, a
nameless nihilist hacker could already be doing that by overloading the
gas pump at a filling station and blow up the valve, thus killing the
boss and any collaborator in the process. It only takes few lines of
code to grant these magic toward the hatred. A chain of insurrections
could all begin with a single command sent.
Hacking should never be used to oppress the commons. Instead, hacking
must be utilized to bring absolute destruction to any element that aimed
to attack and repress. Hacking brings death to your enemy, and when done
right you could repeat this without being discovered. A hacked joy is
never caught, and it stayed uncaptured.
Blackhat – who hack for expropriation, survival and illegalism. The
author of this article and mentioned hackers fall in this category.
Whitehat – someone who hack for the system, to defend and strengthen it
against blackhats. Majority of legal hackers fall under here.
Grayhat – who hack for thrill but sometime work within the system, or
can be seen as the fence-riding of hacking.
Civic Hacker – someone who hope to bring societal change by working
within the system. The techno reformist, often get paid to do so.
Pentester – a whitehat who get hired to hack the system so they can
understand how to protect it better.
Cypherpunk – hackers who sought to resist against some authority but
they later end up defending it. Best example of this is Wikileaks.
Script kiddie (skid) – supposedly those who have no understanding of how
a technique or tool works. Ironic that all self-taught hackers began as
a skid.
Phreaker – a phone hacker. Phreaking is another example of how hacking
predates the internet development.
Cracker – its original meaning was for blackhat, modern definition is
for those who reverse engineer copyright protection like DRM in
proprietary software and release as warez.