D'Oh: Embarrassed Canada Zaps Thousands Of Web Sites In Response To Yes Men Hoax
Jack Linthicum
spills over into fake sites emulating Canadian government ones. The
photo feature is available at the citation. Problems ensued when the
request from Canada resulted in 4,500 personal and small business
sites being taken down in addition to the fake Yes Men sites.
D'Oh: Embarrassed Canada Zaps Thousands Of Web Sites In Response To
Yes Men Hoax
Justin Elliott | January 7, 2010, 9:01AM
Yes Men Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum
The Canadian government managed to temporarily wipe out 4,500 personal
and small business Web sites last month as it frantically grappled
with a climate change hoax by the Yes Men, enlisting the national
cybersecurity agencies of Canada and Germany in the process, a Danish
web hosting company and the Yes Men tell TPMmuckraker.
Yes Man Mike Bonanno, one of the marquee personalities of the lefty
activist group, tells TPMmuckraker that the experience, in which a
German Internet service provider shut down the Yes Men's parody Web
sites in response to a Canadian demand, is "really unfortunate for
free speech on the Internet. The kind of scary thing about this is
that these hosting companies seem so eager to act in the interest of
whoever has the most power."
The overzealous response by Canada echoes the Chamber of Commerce's
handling of a similar hoax in December: namely, suing the Yes Men in
federal court.
[TPM PHOTO FEATURE: THE YES MEN'S CAREER]
Our story begins with an elaborate prank executed by the Yes Men
during the Copenhagen climate conference last month. In a series of
fake press releases, Canadian officials announced the country, whose
intensive extraction of oil from tar sands has raised the ire of
environmentalists, was reversing course by setting ambitious new
emissions-cutting goals, as well as pledging billions of dollars for
Africa.
"Contributing to the development of other nations and taking full
responsibilities for our emissions is simple Canadian good sense,"
Canada's environmental minister was quoted as saying in the phony
press release, which led reporters to the parody Web site enviro-
canada.ca. A later Yes Men press release featuring an outraged (but
also made-up) response from Canada was linked to ec-gc.ca. The real
site of Environment Canada, the country's environmental protection
agency, is at ec.gc.ca.
Canadian officials were apparently not pleased by the prank, which
garnered the usual amused headlines around the world. So at some point
in the week after the Dec. 14 hoax, an official named Mike Landreville
from Environment Canada's Intellectual Property Office fired off an e-
mail demanding "on behalf of the Minister of the Environment" that the
two Yes Men Web sites be promptly deleted. (More on to whom the e-mail
went in a moment.)
Landreville stated that the sites "infringe Environment Canada's
Intellectual Property and acts as a phishing site to the official
Departmental site." (Here is an image of one of the sites.)
Landreville's e-mail, which you can read here, was provided by the Yes
Men and their Web hosting company. Environment Canada spokeswoman
Laura Cummings confirmed to us that it had asked for the sites to be
taken down; Landreville himself declined to comment when reached by
phone yesterday.
So who did Environment Canada ask to eliminate the fake sites? The
Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre, of course. That agency
describes itself as devoted to "the protection of national critical
infrastructure against cyber incidents."
CCIRC, as its known, then forwarded the Environment Canada request to
CERT-Bund, its German counterpart, asking for assistance.
CERT stands for Computer Emergency Readiness Team; for context, you
can read about US-CERT here. CERT-Bund in turn sent an e-mail to
Serverloft, the German ISP that was providing Internet to Pi-Web, a
Copenhagen-based company that was hosting the parody sites for the Yes
Men.
By this point, it was Dec. 21, the day when things went seriously
wrong. At about 8:30 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, Pi-Web technical
officer Ole Tange got an alarm that the server was down, he told
TPMmuckraker. But instead of just killing service for enviro-canada.ca
and ec-gc.ca, ServerLoft had turned off a whole block of IP addresses,
Tange says. That led to 4,500 sites being temporarily wiped out --
mostly "family owned businesses or private individuals' sites," Tange
says. Also knocked off was Pi-Web's own site.
After two hours and some angry phone conversations with Serverloft in
which Tange says he became "not very calm," Internet service was
restored to the block of IPs, but only on condition that Tange pull
the Yes Men sites.
Tange, who has composed a timeline of the events on his Web site,
tells us that one frustrated small businessman customer has threatened
to take his business elsewhere. But the bigger problem, he believes,
is that no government entity issued a warrant, and he was never asked
by Canada, or anyone, to simply take down the sites.
"We really feel bad about it," he tells TPMmuckraker. We really
subscribe to the UN declaration of human rights. This is a human
rights violation of article 12," referring to the prohibition of
"arbitrary interference" of a person's "correspondence."
Serverloft did not respond to a request for comment. But here's an
interview (in German) with the company's CEO. The Google translated
version of the interview suggests the CEO declined to comment on the
number of sites knocked out.
Tange, for his part, says his company can't afford to pursue the
matter on its own. "We would love if someone like the Electronic
Frontier Foundation would take up this matter. We would be more than
happy to help."
vaughn
"Jack Linthicum" <jackli...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:6b26337c-a7eb-46dc...@m25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
> Left wing group seems intent on upsetting meetings like Copenhagen and
And the military naval angle to this story is...???
Vaughn
Eugene Griessel
Exactly the same as the military naval angle of your reply.
Eugene L Griessel
It is by the grace of God that we have in our country three
unspeakably precious things: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Conscience,
and the Prudence never to practice either. - Mark Twain
- I post only from Sci.Military.Naval -
Andrew Swallow
for commercial purposes, such as selling, then the taking down of
the web sites will have disrupted the companies. Preventing attacks
on civilian trade is a traditional duty of the navy.
In this case the "Yes Men Hoax" may not have been aimed at the
companies and the disruption was probably just governmental
incompetence. However next time this is likely to be a deliberate
attack. A small group performing a judo attack on the companies
using the strength of the government.
Andrew Swallow