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Kizzume
Site Admin
Joined: 31 Dec 1969
Posts: 2787
Location: Tacoma, WA USA
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 Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 3:17 pm Post subject: Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients via Computer |
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http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/epilepsy
| Quote: | Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.
The nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation, which runs the forum, briefly closed the site Sunday to purge the offending messages and to boost security.
"We are seeing people affected," says Ken Lowenberg, senior director of web and print publishing at the Epilepsy Foundation. "It's fortunately only a handful. It's possible that people are just not reporting yet -- people affected by it may not be coming back to the forum so fast."
The incident, possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims, began Saturday, March 22, when attackers used a script to post hundreds of messages embedded with flashing animated gifs.
The attackers turned to a more effective tactic on Sunday, injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users' browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics.
RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.
Fultz says she "locked up."
"I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts," says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d'Alene, Ohio. "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak."
After about 10 seconds, Fultz's 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.
"Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures," says Browen Mead, a 24-year-old epilepsy patient in Maine who says she suffered a daylong migraine after examining several of the offending posts. She'd lingered too long on the pages trying to determine who was responsible. |
Too much Jackass (tm)? Too much derogatory programming? What the fuck?!
Teenagers pissing on a disabled person who has fallen, now crap like this.
People seem to believe that "anonymous" (the anti-Scientology people) is responsible for this--but I've yet to see any evidence presented that shows this.
Anyway--either way I look at it, this is horrible!
I understand to a tiny degree the mindset that makes people make computer viruses. I was a teenager once. Generally, the goal is NOT to actually hurt people, it's to cause a disruption. When people do THIS (the quoted article), what are they getting out of it? The fact that they could kill people? The joy that they're really hurting people?
Are they so desensitized that they don't even really think about the fact that there are REAL people on the other end of that?
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technocrat
Joined: 04 Dec 2007
Posts: 216
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 10:47 pm Post subject: |
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They're assholes. That's really all there is to it. Some people're worthless shitbags.
It can be explained partly via the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
1. Anonymity + Internet + Normal Person = Fuckwad
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