Privacy Digest

Anonymous Hackers Track Saboteur, Find and Punish the Wrong Guy - Via Threat Level:

Anti-Scientology agitators have repeatedly harassed and threatened violence against a 59-year-old PG&E worker and his wife, who they mistakenly flagged as pro-Scientology hackers.

John Lawson, who lives in Stockton, California with his wife Julia, began receiving threatening phone calls around 2 a.m. Saturday morning. He didn't know why until THREAT LEVEL explained that a hacking group calling itself the g00ns posted his home address, phone number and cell numbers, as well as Julia's Social Security number, online. The obscene and threatening calls have continued through Tuesday, according to Lawson.

The calls are just one small offshoot of an ongoing, larger attack on the Church of Scientology by a ragtag group of internet troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous. The group says it is targeting Scientology in part for its use of litigation to suppress unflattering documents on the internet.

Over the weekend, the g00ns thought they had caught a hacker who had busted into computers being used to help coordinate the online attacks and real world protests against Scientology.  But Lawson says the callers have the wrong guy.

"I don't even really know how to use a computer," Lawson said.

His phone just keeps ringing, Lawson said, and when he answers, callers spout vulgarities and threats and then hang up. On Monday, he got a call that seemed to originate from the Virgin Islands. The caller  threatened to kill him.

"They have got the wife really scared because they have my address," Lawson said. "I think I am going to buy me a gun today just in case."

The Stockton police came out on Sunday to take a report, and Lawson has put fraud protection alerts on his and his wife's credit reports.

Lawson wants his personal information off the internet but doesn't know who to talk to to get it down.

The address of the site with their personal information was shared in online chat rooms where members of a group called Anonymous congregate to plan attacks on the Church of Scientology. The site's URL was also submitted to Digg, where it made it to the front page.

Planning for those attacks was disrupted in the last four days by a counter-hack group calling itself the Regime. That group hacked and severely disrupted 711chan.org, one of the central planning facilities for the Anonymous attack. 

According to an e-mail from the hacker to THREAT LEVEL, the Regime's "main objective was to obtain logs and various data including usernames and passwords" and "to take down our targets in the best way possible to bring as much embarrassment/shame as we could to the offending organization."

The hacker said his group turned over the purloined data to the Church of Scientology.

Soon after, the g00ns claimed to have found out where the Regime was hacking from, and managed to obtain personal information about the Lawsons. John Lawson believes that information came from Comcast, his ISP.

A Digg commenter suggested that the g00ns tracked down an IP address used in the attack on 711chan and traced it to Lawson. If that's the case, the group overlooked the possibility that Lawson's computer or router had been compromised and was used by the real attacker as a proxy that would hide the attacker's real location.

For his part, Lawson doesn't care about the how or why, he just wants the calls to stop.

"I called three news places in Stockton just to get something out there to let them know they have the wrong guy," Lawson said.

This isn't the first time that the anti-Scientologists have hit the wrong target.

Last week, participants downloaded hacking software that accidentally targeted a school in the Netherlands, rather than a Scientology site. That misfire lasted only a few minutes, but its lesson seems not to have been learned by online vigilantes who think their righteous ends justify illegal means.

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)