In Attack on Vatican Web Site, a Glimpse of Hackers’ Tactics

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The attack was orchestrated by the well-known, if shadowy, group called Anonymous. It began as an attempt to disrupt World Youth Day registration and information.
The campaign against the Vatican, which did not receive wide attention at the time, involved hundreds of people, some with hacking skills and some without. A core group of participants openly drummed up support for the attack using YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Others searched for vulnerabilities on a Vatican Web site and, when that failed, enlisted amateur recruits to flood the site with traffic, hoping it would crash, according to a computer security firm’s report to be released this week.
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The attack was called Operation Pharisee in a reference to the sect that Jesus called hypocrites. It was initially organized by hackers in South America and Mexico before spreading to other countries, and it was timed to coincide with Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Madrid in August 2011 for World Youth Day, an international event held every other year that regularly attracts more than a million Catholic youths.
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Much as in a grass-roots lobbying campaign, the hackers spent weeks spreading their message through their own Web site and social sites like Twitter and Flickr. Their Facebook page called on volunteers to download free attack software and implored them to “stop child abuse” by joining the cause. It featured split-screen images of the pope seated on a gilded throne on one side and starving African children on the other. And it linked to articles about sexual abuse cases and blog posts itemizing the church’s assets.
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nytimes.com/2012/02/27/technology/attack-on-vatican-web-site-offers-view-of-hacker-groups-tactics.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

The Vatican has declined comment.
 
Scott_Lafrance said:
Seriously? Of all of the things Anonymous could be doing, hacking World Youth Day is on their priority list?
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No more or less productive than anything else they’ve been doing. They’re terrorists, what do you expect?
 
These are also the people publishing the home addresses and phone numbers of police for all the criminals who they’ve arrested to see.

They are not known for thinking things through.
 
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