UK Indymedia | Hackers: Unite For Burmese Freedom!

One very effective way of removing power from a despotic regime is by taking over the tools of control. You can bring down the 'master' using the master's tools - you just have to be clever about it - and persistent.

The Burmese military government (junta) has held 50 million Burmese people under an iron fist for 20 years, and effectively under a dictatorship since 1962. Free communication with the outside world is strictly controlled and filtered, and all media is effectively state controlled:

"The state controls Burma’s main broadcasters and publications. For the most part, the media are propaganda tools and tend not to report opposing views except to criticise them. Editors and reporters are answerable to the military authorities."

(BBC News)

Bloggers and other cyber activists within Burma risk their lives by publishing any information counter to the government line, but they still do it because they believe that freedom of expression is worth that sacrifice.

You don’t have to make such a sacrifice, but if you have computer skills, can breach firewalls, routers and web site security then you could greatly assist the people of Burma. By taking down official Burmese government propaganda and posting pictures, information about the protests, information about the lies of the Burmese junta, and news of the huge support being offered by the rest of the world - preferably in Burmese - then you could help free the people from this terrible regime.

If the information is removed, do it again - automate the attacks, do whatever you can to ensure that the Burmese can see the truth about their government.

You may have hacked for fun, or personal gain in the past - now you have a chance to hack for freedom.

Target sites:

http://www.myanmar.com/

http://www.myanmar.com/news/index.html

http://www.mrtv3.net.mm/ (blocked from external access)

http://www.mofa.gov.mm/ (blocked from external access)

http://www.moha.gov.mm/ (blocked from external access)

http://www.mpt.net.mm/ (blocked from external access)

http://www.myanmar-information.net/

http://www.myanmar.com/myanmartimes/

http://www.mnped.gov.mm/ (blocked from external access)

http://www.myanmar.com/newspaper/kyaymon/index.html

http://www.myanmar.com/newspaper/nlm/index.html

(From

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/10/01/hackers-unite-for-burmese-freedom/)

how to do it and make it a amass attack

this is the os they use

http://www.fortinet.com/

very heroic but be careful you may be breaking a US law thats applied worldwide.Even this site for hosting the idea of such an attack could be open to a vindictive US lawyer,because the software and firewall is US

Hacking into a foreign country would only be illegal if a nation decided to press charges, and as Burma has no extradiction agreements with any country (as far as I know) then outside hackers should be free to hack away.

I wrote this piece and did the research, but am frustrated at not having the relevant skills. I know some very good hackers who are the kinds of people who would do this - but they would lose their jobs if found to be carrying out "renagade" work (or rather, saving lives and giving people some freedom). I do know that there are many people out there with the skills, and the guts to do the job - so if you do, then please have a go.

K.

Good and still active resistance channels:

http://ko-htike.blogspot.com/

http://burmamyanmargenocide.blogspot.com/

http://bbwob.blogspot.com/

Thanks for this. The internet-based revolution continues! Please can people pass this on to the hacker sites.

who posts on here could enlighten you.

If any administrators are out there, then a promotion of this item would be very helpful, as it would then appear on the main news feeds, rather than just the more marginal ones.

Cheers.

...where would be the best place to advertise this kind of action?

I tried to ask on a (non-political) chatroom but i was a bit nervous as we never know who's monitoring those things ... it would be unlikely that the junta's spies would but you never know. Also I would be nervous about possible police attention, etc, if word gets out that you are trying to hack a major government's computer network. someone there actualy warned me off getting involved because of possible consequences.

The junta sites however, look VERY shoddily designed, like they are from 1995 or 1998 (which to be fair they probably are)

does anyone have any ideas as to who i could ask? I will try and get hold of some people but i can never predict when they're going to be online ... and i dont have an email for one of them.

I just feel so awful not being able to do anything when those people are being killed ... FUCK :(

Hey mate, this is not the kind of thing that's going to get sites closed down (anyway, Indymedia has lots of mirrors, as do all other good sites).

I managed to get this onto Slashdot for a while, but noone took the bait. The fear you talk about seems to be real, but is borne of ingrained paranoia. The Burmese junta are not a major world government - they are not even recognised as a government by many authorities - and they have no sway in the industrial west.

As I said, hacking into a nation's computer systems is only illegal according to that nation's laws - they have no jurisdiction outside of their country. You are quite safe.

Also, in no cases has this request been removed from any web site - formally or through attack. So please put this wherever you can.

K.

my, it all sounds so easy- you can all just save those poor people of Burma without leaving the comfort of your living room and no doubt if successful you would spend the rest of your life congratulating yourselves

whilst the ugly relality is that in 2000, pro-palestinian hackers from the comfort of their living rooms attacked Israels largest ISP only for Israeli Defence Forces to retaliate against Palestinian ISPs and internet cafes

so go ahead, launch the attacks and be grateful you won't have to face any consequences or alternatively you could travel to Burma as a tourist and act in person

no wonder this country is such a mess!

……would you want to piss on someone trying to make a difference? And the comparison between Burma and the Israel Palestine situation is a best crass & thoughtless. Yet another example of the conflict comparison bullshit that seems to exist at the moment. Lets make a set of “Top Trumps Cards of international conflict” shall we and we can all sit back and score points off of each other for the rest of days.

that sitting around like I am doing now tapping mindlessly away at my keyboard is, that using the Internet to bring down a government is not going to happen

so what if you knock down a Burmese government propaganda website- do you think its not going to go back up again- anyway what difference do you think it would make to the average Burmese citizens life- internet access is not particularly high in Burma so I don't think many people would actually notice

if you want to communicate with people in underdeveloped countries the Internet is probably not the best place to start- the US government did not use the Internet to distribute propaganda prior and during the assault on Iraq- it dropped leaflets on towns and cities from the air

THE POINT IS THAT THE BURMESE GOVERNMENT MAY RETALIATE AGAINST BURMESE CITIZENS WHO HAVE PLAYED NO PART IN ANY HACKING ACTIVITY IN ORDER TO RETALIATE AGAINST PRO-BURMESE HACKERS ABROAD

hence the comparison with what happened during the second intifada is not fallacious- it is an example of the way governments act in totalitarian states

if any of us are going to make a difference we have to start thinking about less high tech ways of organizing to make a difference- the Internet is auseful means of communication but there is an opportunity cost to using it- the time I spend online when I could be doing other things - things where the consequences affect me and not others who have not specifically asked me to take a particular action on their behalf.

used balloons to bomb the USA in world war 2,very low tech.Maybe Burma could be leafleted the same way.

Hi Keith,

Jocks right in many respects. Hacking is more than taking websites offline. They could be defaced temporarily, but the purpose of that is to embarrass and frankly the Myanmar government sites are such obvious propaganda that it is probably best to leave them as they are. To be effective you have to gain entry to a computer system, steal the data so that it is known to be compromised or modify it without leaving a trace that it has been modified. The difficulty with doing that is without understanding Burmese it is pretty impossible, so you'd need to pair up Burmese speakers with hacktivists.

Your legal advice seems slightly dubious to me. Although I doubt the UK authorities would prosecute for hacking a Burmese government website, they may prosecute any hackivist for that if they've been trying in vain to prosecute them for other stuff. And most hackivists didn't just start because of Burma. Bear in mind, effective hacking doesn't require great skills nowadays, there are automated scripts and tools which are available for security administrators that effectively automate it. You are bound to have seen some names on SlashDot or the Register.

Also, you don't need to hack or do anything illegal to swamp a computer system with data. If you read the Myanmar websites you posted and follow all the links on it, and then the links from the linked sites, you can compile a more complete list of both websites and email addresses. You can then search the web for similar addresses. Everyone knows how to email with an attachment. So if you were to get enough people around the world to email that list of addresses with various sizes and types of attachments from various accounts, as often as possible in as short a period of time as possible, then those email servers quickly clog up. The same type of manual denial of service can be targetting the webservers. That is something you could be organising.

I note with interest that the main site you linked to carries a front-page advertisement for the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist exam stating "The exam should be taken by those who want to become database administrator, software developer and system administrator". This indicates a few things - 1) Microsoft are complicit in Myanmar 2) Myanmars systems are poorly administered and full of security holes. In the old days when IBM was the big brand name, there was a slogan 'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM', I'm guessing the Burmese government equivalent is 'no one ever got executed for buying Microsoft and Cisco'. I know some people who developed the Cisco router NMS, I'll pass on your request to them. Firewalls are useless if you have the keys to the door.

ahimsa,
Danny

PS Serfdom - have I been boasting again ? Thanks for the rather undeserved recommendation.

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Pagoda/8160/

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Pagoda/8160/geobook.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

myanmar.com

66.225.112.65
Record Type: IP Address

OrgName: Economic Computer Systems Inc. dba Mid Atlantic Broadband
OrgID: ECSIDMAB
Address: 608 William St.
City: Fredericksburg
StateProv: VA
PostalCode: 22401
Country: US

NetRange: 66.225.64.0 - 66.225.127.255
CIDR: 66.225.64.0/18
NetName: ECS-MABB-NETWORK
NetHandle: NET-66-225-64-0-1
Parent: NET-66-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: PEEWEE.STAFFNET.COM
NameServer: ROBERT.STAFFNET.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2003-05-05
Updated: 2004-05-06

OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE571-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse Department
OrgAbusePhone: +1-540-373-1882
OrgAbuseEmail:

abuse@midatlanticbb.com

OrgNOCHandle: NOC1520-ARIN
OrgNOCName: Network Operations Center
OrgNOCPhone: +1-540-373-1882
OrgNOCEmail:

dnsadmin@midatlanticbb.com

OrgTechHandle: ENGIN11-ARIN
OrgTechName: Engineering
OrgTechPhone: +1-540-373-1882
OrgTechEmail:

webmaster@midatlanticbb.com

Registrant:
UNIQCOM
9327 Kings Post Ct
Laurel, MD 20723
US

Domain Name: MYANMAR.COM

Administrative Contact :
Winn, Thomas

TWINN21227@AOL.COM
9327 KINGS POST CT
LAUREL, MD 20723-1385
US
Phone: (301) 604-4755

Technical Contact :
Smartnet / MidAtlanticBroadband

dnsadmin@SMART.NET
200 South President Street
Suite 300
Baltimore, MD 21202
US
Phone: 410-792-4555
Fax: 410-727-8266

Record expires on 25-Sep-2010
Record created on 26-Sep-1995
Database last updated on 06-Oct-2006

Domain servers in listed order: Manage DNS

NS1.SMART.NET 66.225.112.68
NS2.SMART.NET 66.225.116.2

Domain Name: MYANMAR.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL:

http://www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS1.SMART.NET
Name Server: NS2.SMART.NET
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 06-oct-2006
Creation Date: 26-sep-1995
Expiration Date: 25-sep-2010
>>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:49:21 UTC <<<

Current Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
IP Address: 66.225.112.65 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)
Record Type: Domain Name
Server Type: Apache 1
Lock Status: clientTransferProhibited
Web Site Status: Active
DMOZ 6 listings:

Directory:

http://www.myanmar.com
Title: Myanmar.com
Description: Official site of the State Peace and Development Council offers links to government ministries but also to news, history, religion, tourism, entertainment and culture. In English and Burmese.
URL:

http://www.myanmar.com

Directory:

http://www.myanmar.com/Ministry/finance/
Title: Ministry of Finance and Revenue
Description: Official site of the Ministry of Finance and Revenue.
URL:

http://www.myanmar.com/Ministry/finance/

Directory:

http://www.myanmar.com/Ministry/culture/
Title: Ministry of Culture
Description: Official site of the Ministry of Culture.
URL:

http://www.myanmar.com/Ministry/culture/

Directory:

http://www.myanmar.com/Ministry/imm&popu/
Title: Ministry of Immigration and Population
Description: Official site of the Ministry of Immigration and Population.
URL:

http://www.myanmar.com/Ministry/imm&popu/

Directory:

http://www.myanmar.com/myanmartimes/
Title: The Myanmar Times
Description: International weekly journal from Myanmar. Covers both international and local news.
URL:

http://www.myanmar.com/myanmartimes/

Directory:

http://www.myanmar.com/people/mon.html
Title: The Mon People of Myanmar
Description: The Mon people of Myanmar and their historical significance to the development of current Myanmar customs, culture and religious beliefs.
URL:

http://www.myanmar.com/people/mon.html

Web Site Title: Welcome to Golden Land - The ultimate guide to Myanmar
Meta Description: Myanmar.com is the ultimate guide to Myanmar, the site will contain tons of information on its people, its beautiful tourist destinations, where to go and eat, which supermarkets offer the best prices and so on.
Meta Keywords: myanmar, burma, burmese, yangon, rangoon, union of myanmar, southeast asia, asia, asian country, myanmar news, burma news, myanmar language, new light of myanmar, nlm, kyaymon, mirror, news, daily news, entertainment, education, e-government, places, peop
Secure: No
E-commerce: No
Traffic Ranking: 4
Data as of: 25-Nov-2006

I'm glad this has got people talking. As a former IT Security manager (sadly without hacking skills) I know most of the ins and outs of hacking protection and how to make hacks stick. as I said, one OoB or DoS won't make a difference, but a random DDoS could do.

I accept, Jock, that bringing down the web sites won't change everything, but outsiders are very limited in what they can do. Repercussions against Burmese people can hardly be worse than in 1988 - the junta will already stop at nothing to supress the people - but I somehow think that hacking will not lead to this. The junta live by violence and misinformation - take away half of that and the violence becomes hollow. Don't forget, we are talking about a large amount of people here who are as much in the mindspace of the junta as most westerners are of the consumer culture. They have to be given a chance to find out the truth for themselves. Beyond that, as I said, all we can do is politcal - and a fat lot of good that is doing.

Keith

06.10.2007 14:29

Myanmar.com, USA

06.10.2007 15:05

WhoIs

Thanks

06.10.2007 17:20

Hackers: Unite For Burmese Freedom!

Comments

why not explain

take a look

this sounds

Not Illegal - but then does it matter?

I have no skills but news, pics and video from the resistance are here:

Danny

Promotion please

Does anyone know...

No need to worry

wihout a clue

Why...

the point is

The japs

Keith

Myanmar.com, USA

Thanks

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