Unbelievably Uncool: Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients via Computer

From Wired.com

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.

Link

This intentional assault is just as bad as hitting someone in a wheelchair with a baseball bat. What kind of person thinks this is funny or acceptable behavior on the internets? There is a thread of anonymity woven through our online identities, which makes it easier to intentionally hurt another person.

As people, good and rotten, connect more easily through the internet than any other medium. Technology isn't the problem (hello--prank phone calls, mail scams, telegrams from land sharks), it's us.

There will always be harm from unthinking or malicious people and we'll strive to create disincentives for bad behavior be it prison or DOS attacks. As individuals we always retain control over how we choose to react.


The Wired Story adds an interesting wrinkle:

Circumstantial evidence suggests the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective of griefers best known for their recent war on the Church of Scientology. The first flurry of posts on the epilepsy forum referenced the site EBaumsWorld, which is much hated by Anonymous. And forum members claim they found a message board thread -- since deleted -- planning the attack at 7chan.org, a group stronghold.

The war of ideas, even on the internet, had physical consequences. I'm personally on the side of Anonymous and think that CoS is a gigantic cult designed to relieve the non-critical of their money and ability to think. However, I feel this way about most, if not all, religion. Since it is difficult to parse out the actual identity of a poster on any message board (ahhh...the double edged sword of anonymous free speech), it is also easy for enemies to co-opt each other's identities, cause havoc and then try to surf the spin.

Here's the 7chan.org Editors' reply:

ATTENTION: Newcomers from Wired, Digg, Engadget, Slashdot, etc. by OverlordXenu - 3/29/08 @ 7:46PM PDT#

I would just like to discuss this nasty business about a terrible raid on a forum for the poor people who suffer from epilepsy. What happened there was terrible, and we feel deeply sorry for those affected.

Users of this site did not actually attack those individuals. The Church of Scientology posted numerous threads across many *chan sites, and then informed people that Anonymous had been attacking victims of epilepsy. They did this under their "fair game" policy, to ruin the public opinion of Anonymous, to lessen the effect of their lawful protests against their virulent organization.

I must say, it is disgusting that the CoS is willing to drag innocent people down with them, in an attempt to save themselves. How could anyone be a willing participant in their terrible organization?

Sadly, none of our staff were online at the time of the thread's posting, so we were unable to take it down.

We are truly and deeply sorry for what happened to these innocent people,
Thank you for your time spent reading this apology,
The Administration and Staff of 7chan.org

Feel free to email us at the above address or address us on our IRC server, and we will be happy to address any of your concerns regarding this terrible incident.

The truth may be somewhere in the middle, but there's no certainty. There is never certainty when it comes to senseless violence--why did they do it? Why did they choose this group or type of person to target? What were they trying to accomplish, if anything? Where was the empathy? Did they think at all? Who are these assholes? Why aren't they under the tires of my car right now?

Each of us has some aspect of our life that can be exploited by jerks. On a long enough time line, we will be victims of a serious harm like this attack. We can try to help craft disincentives, formal and informal, but our greatest asset is acknowledging that we have the ability to choose to not let some jerkwad control our lives. We can control our reactions.

And we don't have to do it anonymously and alone.

* New Vocab: Griefer: a slang term used to describe a player in a multiplayer video game who plays the game simply to cause grief to other players through harassment. Griefing is a malignant form of emergent gameplay.