Then in March (3-28-2008), someone loaded the forums of the Epilepsy Foundation with hundreds of animations that caused seizures in about 3% of people with Epilepsy. The medical term for this kind of epilepsy is 'photosensitive'.
There are about 50 million people with epilepsy in the world. That makes 150,000 peo
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ple vulnerable to flashing images. Not a huge number, but doing it is much more personal than snooping a wireless line into a wired network.
Even ignoring the possiblity of a rare but fatal seizure (status epileptus), what they did can be harmful to the epileptic and to others. The epileptic will be more lethargic and less likely to respond well when another driver cuts them off, and (IIRC) it can lower their seizure threshold so they are more likely to have one at a critical time like when they are driving.
Just like it takes a hardened person to look someone in the eyes as they knife another, this kind of thing is much more than curiosity that got out of hand.
The Epilepsy Foundation had to close their site one day and they have a new rule: no animation, GIF files, or rich text can be posted anywhere on their site.
Photosensitive epilepsy can be triggered by video games or old TVs that flickered when the horizontal positioning was off. Video games are also known to trigger seizures. And used to (I don't know about now) have warnings about it. But those are cases the person with photosensitive epilepsy can avoid and the results are not intentional. These animations were deliberately placed where a sensitive person is most likely to run into them. Creating these images wasn't accidental either since it would take a lot of work to get the animations to flash at just the right frequency.
While an epileptic seizure is not as physically painful as many people claim, there is a rare kind of seizure that can be fatal. Someone is playing with fire in another persons living room.
Do the perps know how malicious these attacks are? I doubt it. Do they care how juvenile and immature they are? Again, I doubt it. The 13-year-old script kiddies of a decade ago look so much more mature compared to these "hackers" (I use word extremely liberally here).
We need a new term for people who perpetuate these kinds of attacks: Babies bullies from hell? This kind of bully is so lame that they only attack easy targets that are not able to stop them. If this sounds too much like hate-mongering I'm sorry, but I am angry here.
update: 05-12-2009:
they did it again. This time they target ted a state-run Pharmacy in Virginia (it was supposed to track medicine use and find people who were abusing prescribed medicine. About 35.5 million drugs for 8 million people were copied and deleted from the system. The state might get their records back if they paid the $10 million ransom, but the citizens will still have their personal information, SSN, Drivers License, medical records stolen.
The numbers aren't as big as the big id theft in theft in 2008 (Walmart, TJMaxx, Marshals, etc). But what is happening to the honorable role that hackers used to claim? Old school hackers like Emmanuel Goldstein need to take notice. They need to encourage another term (crackers is usually used) to separate their actions from those of the idiots that do things like this. If real hackers don't get something going then the public and the MSM (main stream media) are going to do it on their own. You can't just say "call them what they are- a criminal". People have been categorizing criminals for years. A burglar is different than an embezzler who is different than a murderer.
references
New EFA posting rules:
http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/efforums/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=1...
The EFA statement about the attack:
http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/aboutus/pressroom/action_against_hacke...
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