Like every other tent at Standing Rock, the media tent at the Oceti Sakowin camp, commonly called “big camp,” is filled with volunteers. They gave each of us a rundown of the camp’s rules. (We feel like the “no drugs or alcohol” rule was stressed more stringently once they learned we wrote for Cracked.) Eventually, a press liaison named Michael explained that the open WiFi networks were basically a honeypot. “There are a number of unsecured WiFi networks within an eighth of a mile” of the camp. Those who connected would discover that their email passwords had been changed and they were temporarily locked out of their accounts. Michael also reported that the WiFi at the press tent “gets DDoS’d every couple of hours.”
Open WiFi is possible to spoof fairly simply, using legitimate-looking portals to collect any entered data, like email addresses and passwords. Setting up an attack can be as easy as hiding a device in a desired location and waiting for people to connect. Michael referred us to a pair of cybersecurity experts from NYU who’d been gathering data on all this for a while. One expert, whom we’ll call “Chuck Justice,” documented an ARP-basedDDoS attack on the press tent’s WiFi. “In [an] ARP attack, the DDoS agents constantly send a barrage of ARP requests to the gateway to tie up the resource of attacked gateway or host.” ARP-spoofing like this can be used to simply stop service, or to conduct a man in the middle attack. No condom. No cab fare home. Just a raw, unapologetic cyber dick-down.
This is a Wireshark simulation of what he observed in the midst of one such attack, based on the data he gathered at the time. It suggests that something funky is happening and that digital war zone photography probably won’t ever win a Pulitzer. Chuck noted that an open hot spot appeared as soon as the attack commenced. “Because the network was slow due to this DDoS, people would be tempted to join an insecure network.” The other expert, Ted, joined this network, and while he was performing a network diagnostic, “someone accessed [his] Gmail.”
The Standing Rock Hacks: Cracked Unravels A Real Conspiracy
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