Independent Journalists, Activists Politically Targeted in Criminal Hacking Campaign

NOVEMBER 15, 2013 BY JASON ROBINSON LEAVE A COMMENT

Jason Robinson
21st Century Wire

Now criminal hacking activity has drifted into the grass-roots political arena…
The digital realm has never been more politicized as it is today. Never has the discourse in news and information been so diverse and expansive. Readers are happy, content consumers are happy. Many see this as progress for society as a whole, but unfortunately, others do not – and they are even prepared to go to extreme criminal lengths in an attempt to shutdown freedom of speech and expression online.

There’s high-brow hacking – like whenAnonymous takes down a transnational corporation’s website, or a government department (most of the time to a cheering public). Then there’s low-brow hacking: criminal malware, phishing scams and malicious hacking – mainly confined to privacy invasions, and perhaps more serious felony crimes like identity theft, and credit card theft. All these have become part and parcel of life on the internet.

Well, there is now an even lower, type of gutter-brow category now, where hackers are being deployed to attack… political dissenters, free speech advocates and independent journalists.
In the last six months, a string of criminal hacking scams has been exposed, ones that are targeting individuals (watch their videos below) from highly successful alternative media outlets, including Stuart Rhodes founder of the organization Oath Keepers, Dan Johnson of PANDA(People Against the NDAA), Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange.org, and most recently, Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton of TruthStream Media – to name only a few who have been targeted so far.

In each instance, hackers used fake email with various file attachments, most likely in an attempt to plant illicit pornographic material onto activist and journalists’ hard drives. Once infected, hackers would be expected to break into the infected computer, take screen shots of the planted material along with other ID documents, and then post these online – in an attempt to frame their ‘target’ in the court of internet opinion.

A similar such attack was also exposed recently, where hackers unsuccessfully attempted to frame one prominent internet talk radio host as being “an FBI informant” by hacking his eFAX account and sending a forged FAX to an FBI office in California, then posting it online, alongside his social security card, marriage certificate, phone library contacts and personal family photos.

Watch these three videos below, explaining the politically targeted, malicious hacking scam:

Alinsky Tactics?

This latest string of attacks is sophisticated and organized, but aside from obvious malicious attempts to slander activists and journalists, there is likely a larger, political intent at play here: to disrupt, and destroy organizations and alternative media coalitions from within. Students of ‘Saul Alinsky Techniques’ will quickly see how such targeted campaigns are straight out of the“Rules for Radicals” playbook. Sabotage, scare, intimidate – all techniques proven in the field of radicalism.

It’s sophisticated Cointel Pro, and not dissimilar to the types of operations carried out overseas when intelligence agencies work to increase divisions in tribes, labor unions, communities, before softening them up and preparing a region for an election, regime change, or even a foreign invasion.

Even if hackers perpetrating these crimes may be working autonomously, you cannot rule out the possibility that they are being managed in some way by a third party, be it gov’t or corporate. This is evident by the overt political nature of these related attacks. 

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