James
Cardenas
The LulzSec Hackers are a group of young British men who were
sentenced to time in prison for hacking into major global organizations such as
the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The young hackers (ages ranging from 18-26 years old) stole data and personal
information such as emails and credit card material from millions of
people. The young hackers then proceeded to post the stolen information
onto their website as well as file-sharing sites like PirateBay. Much of their
theft and online crimes were done in the comfort of their own homes.
Stealing information and completing distributed denial of service attacks to
crash websites was nothing more than a game to those involved; each of whom had
a pseudonym to maintain their anonymity.
In the case of the LulzSec hackers the young men involved Ryan
Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Mustafa Al-Bassam and Ryan Cleary each had pseudonyms;
Kayla, Topiary, tFlow, and Viral respectively. This incites the idea that
the LulzSec hackers may have been too caught up with their made up imaginary
characters, that they failed to recognize the repercussions of their online
actions. Judge Deborah Taylor, who sentenced the hackers for their cyber
crimes said, “What they
considered a cyber game had in fact had real consequences.” So young,
naive, and unaware of what trouble they were actually getting into it’s likely
that the main motivation behind their crimes was simply how far they could
really go; that is, what level they could reach in this cyber game of
theirs. The hackers became detached from the real world and existed in a
virtual world as Kayla, Topiary, tFlow, and Viral.
As these made up characters, the normal demands and responsibilities of the
real world no longer inhibited their inclinations for committing a crime.
The LulzSec hacker’s actions were indeed stimulated by the online disinhibition
effect and their behavior is most closely associated with having had a
dissociative imagination.
Camilla
Monsen Borgan
The 23
years old Norwegian politician Tor J. Helleland hacked, in
July 2013, into iCloud accounts to several girls in Norway. From
their iCloud-accounts he stole naked pictures and posted them on
porn sites. He was revealed by anotherNorwegian IT-expert, who used
months to figure out his identity.
In this
case, the most likely reason for disinhibition which motivated
Mr. Helleland, seems to be dissociative
anonymity. Tor Helleland has in an interview told that he
became addicted to hacking girl’s accounts. The
main reason why he did this, was because he wanted to show
that he in fact could break into these accounts. To get access to
these iCloudaccounts, so no one could see him, he was altering
his ID and changed the password from the girls' account, and he
passed through the security questions, and linked this new password to his own
email.
The
girls have said in an interview that they are scared over that he has monitored
them. With an alternative to do online things without right ID, Mr. Helleland
did not have to act like what he should in the real life.
This
monitoring who none of the girls have seen, indicates that he pretend
to be the girls. What he did, could not be related to him -who is an evidence
for dissociative anonymity.
Calvin Lu's Internet Crime Report:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/us/suicide-of-girl-after-bullying-raises-worries-on-web-sites.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
In Miami, Florida, a 12-year old girl named Rebecca Sedwick committed suicide because of online harassment. Rebecca was cyber-bullied in one school for over a year by 15 middle schoolers. Her mother pulled her out of school and into a new one because the school didn't put a stop to it. While at her new school, however, Rebecca downloaded apps ask.fm and Kik and Voxer. Soon, the harassment began to return because of a boy Rebecca had dated for a while. She began to cut herself as people sent her hate-messages. Eventually she went to an abandoned Cemex plant nearby and killed herself.
I believe the main cause of this cyber-bullying is disinhibition by “dissociative imagination,” as Suler calls it in his article “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” Dissociative imagination refers to the feeling that what happens on the internet is not real and has no consequences on the real world. This causes people to be disinhibited because they feel more free to act however they want due to the perceived lack of consequences. The students who were sending Rebecca hate-messages asking her to kill herself would probably never have done so in a situation where they were face-to-face. The students probably knew what Rebecca looked like, and had probably talked to her before, so I felt that “solipsistic interjection” might not have been as applicable here. The bullies were probably disinhibited because they felt like their actions online followed a different set of rules. Online, everything might seem like a game, where social norms don't apply. What happens online might seem very distant from reality. I don't think they actually believed Rebecca would ever kill herself because of their hate-messages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/us/suicide-of-girl-after-bullying-raises-worries-on-web-sites.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
In Miami, Florida, a 12-year old girl named Rebecca Sedwick committed suicide because of online harassment. Rebecca was cyber-bullied in one school for over a year by 15 middle schoolers. Her mother pulled her out of school and into a new one because the school didn't put a stop to it. While at her new school, however, Rebecca downloaded apps ask.fm and Kik and Voxer. Soon, the harassment began to return because of a boy Rebecca had dated for a while. She began to cut herself as people sent her hate-messages. Eventually she went to an abandoned Cemex plant nearby and killed herself.
I believe the main cause of this cyber-bullying is disinhibition by “dissociative imagination,” as Suler calls it in his article “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” Dissociative imagination refers to the feeling that what happens on the internet is not real and has no consequences on the real world. This causes people to be disinhibited because they feel more free to act however they want due to the perceived lack of consequences. The students who were sending Rebecca hate-messages asking her to kill herself would probably never have done so in a situation where they were face-to-face. The students probably knew what Rebecca looked like, and had probably talked to her before, so I felt that “solipsistic interjection” might not have been as applicable here. The bullies were probably disinhibited because they felt like their actions online followed a different set of rules. Online, everything might seem like a game, where social norms don't apply. What happens online might seem very distant from reality. I don't think they actually believed Rebecca would ever kill herself because of their hate-messages.
Assignment # 2
Sissel-Merete Pedersen
“Sorronto man arrested
on cyber crimes charges”
Bobby Moffitt was a 23 year old man living in
Sorrento. He pretended that he was 17 years old on a social networking site. A
part of his ID was hidden since he lied about his age to a girl under 16 years
old. They physically meet and they started a sexual relationship. The age of
consent in Orlando, Florida is 18. How the girl discovered the fake age of this
man is not written in the article, but she found out and Bobby Moffitt got
punished. He had to go to prison and had to pay compensation to the girl.
Bobby Moffitt used a fake age and lied to the girl
that he was 17 instead of 23. John Suler (2004) explains that if a person use a
fake ID or hide something of their ID they are using a dissociative anonymity.
When people are online some persons are acting and doing thinks they never
would do in real life. This is called disinhibition. Bobby Moffitt would
probably not lie about his age to this girl in real life, facing her face to
face.
Suler (2004) also explains that dissociative
imagination is when people online are thinking that if they do something on the
internet, it is not real and it has no consequences. I think Bobby Moffitt
thought that since he lied to this girl about his age online, it did not matter
that he was 23 in real life. Since he was hiding some of his identity to this
girl it was not him in real person and it would not have any consequences. This
man and girl met in real person and started a sexual relationship and he also sent
her some inappropriate pictures online.
I think that Bobby Moffitt had bad confidence.
Online he could be invisible and act that he was someone else. Most likely he
would not have lied to someone in real person the first time they met saying he
was 17. Online Bobby Moffitt was invisible and he did not need to worry about
his looks. He got positive responses from this girl, and she believed that he
was 17. He could meet this girl being another person then himself since he lied
about his age. The girl was the victim in this case. She felled in love with
this guy and had sex with him. Fortunately this guy got couth and punished with
prison and payment. Hopefully he now understands how much he has hurt this
girl. Her life will be affected of these incidences the rest of her life.
Recourse:
Suler, John "The Online
Disinhibition Effect" CyberPsychology and Behavior vol.7
no.3,
2004
Rubal Sekhon
Citadel named botnet
operator steals $500 Million from bank accounts worldwide in the last 18
months. Pirated copies of Windows software are corrupted by packaging the
botnets with the software and forcing individual computers to run the bots that
are controlled by servers operated by hackers. This specific program (Citadel)
was probably running in Ukriane as the program was set-up to not attack PCs in
Russia. Microsot partnered with the FBI to shut down 455 Data centers that were
operating in this ring but have not found any people responsible. The banks
usually reimburse customers for their losses in such cases, but the article
reports that business customers may have to absorb the losses themselves.
These crimes were
committed due to disinhibition caused by invisibility. Invisibility of the
perpetrators because the hackers are smart and can't be traced via their
programs (bots). Invisibility of the infected computers and their owners that
are running the bots and suffering. Invisibility of the people losing their
money because they are just seen as bank accounts in numbers from various large
institutions. Solipsistic Introjections also plays in with the disinhibition
due to invisibility as it records people in a text form, both IP addresses of
infected computers and serial numbers of bank accounts that are stolen from.
Yet, the consequences of receiving the stolen money and the danger of getting
caught and being punished for the crime are very real.
Anna Gaia: "U.S. indicts hackers in biggest cyber fraud case in
history"
In
the largest cybercrime case in US history, five men have been charged with
hacking and credit card fraud amounting to a loss of over $300 million for the
companies involved. Prosecutors approximate that the group of five Russian and
Ukrainian men stole at least 160 million payment card numbers. The five
combined their different tasks: Vladimir Drinkman and Alexandr
Kalinin hacked into networks, Roman Kotov mined the networks for
data, and Mikhail Rytikov provided anonymous web-hosting services to hide
their activities. Two of the suspects are currently in custody. The men sold
payment card numbers to resellers, who then sold them on online forums or to
“cashers.” In order to hide their activities they disabled their victims’
anti-virus software and stored data on various anonymous hacking platforms.
While many of these breaches have previously been reported, the security breach
against Nasdaq OMX Group has just come to light. A source stated that the
hackers created their own landing page on the Nasdaq website, “where users were
directed when they wanted to change their passwords.” The other breaches
include the theft of over 130 million credit card numbers from Heartland
Payment Systems Inc., 30 million payment card numbers from British payment
processor Commidea Ltd, and 800,000 card numbers from Visa Inc.'s licensee Visa
Jordan. Other targeted corporations include J.C. Penney Co, JetBlue Airways
Corp, Carrefour SA, Global Payment Systems, and Bank Belgium.
Of
the different causes of online disinhibition listed by Suler, the most likely
motivation for the criminals was "dissociative anonymity." It is
difficult to determine who people are on the internet as they may have no name,
or at least not a real one. Suler states that this anonymity gives people a way
to “separate their actions online from their in-person lifestyle and
identity.” (322) The hackers were clearly knowledgeable and skilled at
navigating the web and tampering with the private information of big name
companies, hiding their activities by way of having no name, not even using
pseudonyms. It is likely that the sense of anonymity led them to feel that
their online actions couldn’t be “directly linked to the rest of their lives.”
(322) Consequently, their online identities as hackers became
“compartmentalized selves”, and they did not feel responsible for their crimes
in real life outside the internet. They did not truly comprehend the magnitude
of their crime. Therefore, also, they likely did not think that their online
thefts could have serious real world consequences, such as prosecution, which,
as this article demonstrates, clearly has become reality.
Roselind Westbye
Assignment
#2: Analyses of an online crime
John Gotti of
cybercrime
Last
Tuesday A San Francisco based man named Ross William Ulbricht was arrested for
running a billion dollar drug business online. With an eBay like design, the
customers of the website named ”the silk road” could buy substances like heroin,
directly from the supplier. The site even had a customer review system, which
allowed user to tip each other about good products, and successful shipping methods.
”The
silk road” was operated on The Onion Router (TOR) network. This network uses
more than three thousand relays to help the users stay anonymous. The site also
used an electronic payment-system called Bit coins. This is an open source
currency, created to avoid authorities and banks controlling the users
transactions.
The
online “disinhibition” effect was most
likely a motivating factor for the 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht. The fact that he
as a facilitator could stay completely anonymous and invincible, was probably
what made him take the risk of a life in prison. Selling drugs in an anonymous online
network might seem like the perfect crime, but when the business grows to a
billion dollar franchise, its impossible to stay in control.
http://nation.time.com/2013/10/04/a-simple-guide-to-silk-road-the-online-black-market-raided-by-the-fbi/
Avery
Sebastian
Sid:22929014
Rebecca
Ann Sedwick, a 12-year-old Florida girl committed suicide after suffering
months of ruthless cyberbullying form other girls this of her town of Lakeland
in central Florida. Rebecca jumped form a platform at an abandoned cement plant
near her home on Monday. Dozens of girls have been identified as possibly
involved in the bullying of Rebecca. The bullying started with a fight over one
of Rebecca’s ex-boyfriends. According to her mother Tricia Norman, Rebecca
received text messages that said things like “You’re ugly”, “Why are you still
alive?” and “Go kill yourself.” After such harassment, the mother had pulled
Rebecca out of school and transferred her to another, closed down the girl’s
Facebook page and took away her cellphone. However, Rebecca secretly signed on
to the new app Kik Messenger and the bullying resumed until she finally changed
her user name to “That Dead Girl,” and committed suicide. Her death is the
latest in an apparently growing phenomenon of youths driven to taking their own
lives after suffering cruel treatment online via text and photo messaging
applications.
For the whole story: http://news.yahoo.com/us-girl-commits-suicide-cyber-bullying-160924387.html
This
is an example of Suler’s “disinhibition” reasoning behind cybercrimes. In
Rebecca’s case, the closest reasons for disinhibition would be a combination of
solipsistic introjection and invisibility. Solipsistic introjection is how a character
is shaped for how the person presents themselves via text communication. One
can argue that the girls involved in the bullying were jealous and used forms
of texting and apps to send Rebecca to scare her away from her ex-boyfriend so
they can never talk again. They used this method to maybe intimidate her and
present themselves with an image that presents a psychological presence and
influence Rebecca to go and move on to someone else.
Invisibility is disinhibition caused by the criminal not
being physically visible or present. This is relevant in Rebecca’s case as well
because the cyber-bullies we able to embarrass Rebecca for a wide audience and
personal audiences through applications and cellular devices without putting
their own faces on the crime. Although the girls names show up on the applications
and through text messages, the girls are never visible, and therefore safer
from any particular blame.
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