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[Full-disclosure] The Harry Potter hoax, or manipulating the mass media for fun and for profit.

##################################################################### 
Title            : The Harry Potter Hoax 
 
Class            : Social Engineering / Denial Of Service 
 
Severity         : Critical 
 
Solution Status  : Unpatched 
 
Vendor           : The Media 
 
Affected versions: The People 
 
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- OVERVIEW: 

Harry Potter book has not been stolen.


It has been an homebrew experiment of a well known military tactic named 
Psychological Operation (PSYOP), applied to Information Warfare.



In less than 48 hours a fake news has realized 200 newspaper publication 
(including BBC, CNN, REUTERS) , 10.000+ blogs, many TV reportage, from the 
India to Southamerica.



PSYOPs can be summarized as: the creation of a fake information, a partial 
description or censorship applied to mass media.



PSYOPs are widely used by non-democratic governments in different countries 
around the world and by big political-economical lobbies in western countries.



Our goal was to provide the world with a Proof of Concept of how vulnerable is 
today information society and let you think seriously about that.




- DESCRIPTION: 



The Harry Potter book apparent theft has been made up as a simple 
exemplification of the power of PSYOPs in polluting mass media information flow 
with fake and useless news, distracting the attention of the masses from real 
problems and their solutions.


PSYOPs are well known since world war II and widely used to influence the 
perception of evenements. A wide literature on the subject is available on and 
offline, from military, intelligence agencies and governmental sources.


The mix that allowed a completely fake news to gain in less than 24 hours the 
honors of primetimes allover the world is as cheap and simple as terrific in 
its efficacy:

.a futile but really widespread subject for which an high expectation is 
already set worldwide

.a salad of religion, technology and language

.an accurate choice of the entry point in the information flow



Far more articulated Psyops are conducted on a daily basis in different 
countries around the world, manipulating  the reality perceived by millions of 
people and, with that, manipulating you, The People.

Could we distinguish what is true from what is manipulated?

Are you aware that information warfare is for real and not only a good subject 
for best sellers' novelists?




- EXPLOITATION METHODS:


Targets of PSYOP can be different: in our scenario we choose to target ordinary 
people, in order to demonstrate how little effort is needed in order to achieve 
the worldwide diffusion of wellbuilt news. 



Controling the masses is a formidable tool for putting under pressure the 
decision makers.


What we see everyday in the news, in a way that is indipendent from the media 
streaming them, is a battle for the control of our perception of facts.



Let's see how PSYOPs can be deployed, by leveraging on the global media stream:


1) by building fake information for primary effect: a fake, or a partial true 
news is spread along the more influencial media. The better this news is built 
and sustained, the more impact it will have on the perception of originating 
facts among the media consumers. An important effect is that the attention is 
distracted from the fact and its eventual witnesses.

example: The man on the moon  


2) by building fake informations for manipulating large consensus. It is 
possible to create news for attracting attention around a person, a society, a 
trend. The apparent targets are the news consumers intended in terms of "public 
opinion". This way is possible to foster support to unpopular governmental 
decisions or to damage the consensus towards someone or something. The latter 
being the actual target of this kind of operations.

example: 911


3) by building fake attribution of an anonymous action: when an unpopoular 
action bring the attention, the attribution or the linking to a certain 
organization, society, etnicity, produces a negative view of the target. Even 
if the news is later denied, the first perception made a strong point in 
conditioning the media consumers.


4) by manipulating the timing of news disclosures in order to attract and/or 
retain the media consumers attention: time control the publication,

insist on old notice, expose with strong emotional language. 

example: Osama Bin Laden releasing videos just before or after something 
important is gonna happen in the Bush administration




5) by censorship, both implicit and explicit. Explicit censorship can be acted 
by suppressing news from the media stream.

Implicit censorship is better acted on internet by low ranking in search 
engnines, blog manipulations and/or restriction, limitating by technical means 
the access to uncontrolled sources of information.

A drawback effect of this form of censorship is that, for its nature, internet 
is yet for the great part not controllable.


example: The China Firewall / Pics of USA soldiers' coffins not allowed to 
enter the media stream.


All the mentioned techniques are used by a plethora of selfdefining democratic 
countries to control the way we perceive their lobbyistic management of 
collective goods. We quoted the United States just as the most selfevident 
example. Others are not better.

"The sleep of reason produces monsters." Francisco Goya

The motivation: Religion as opium of the people (Karl Marx)
The soidisant thief is motivated by religious concernings expressed by the 
actual Pope of the catholic church about Harry Potter.



The "undeniable news"

The theft of the last book (7 millions of copies are expected to be sold the 
first day of its appearance on the bookstores shelves) of Harry Potter's saga, 
one months before its publishing date.

Undeniability is because "if the editor had ufficially answered to the rumors, 
maybe they're real!", but also in absence of official answers, rumors continue 
to appear credible.

Such a news can be passed mouth by mouth, link by link all over the world



The information stream entry point

The "undeniable news" is posted on a mailing list on internet. This mailing 
list is read primarily by information security professionals and hackers of 
different kind.



- TOOLS


tor 

free webmail account



Put together all the ingredients. Glue them with the poor english of the medium 
young bored wannabe and a minimum of technical depiction of the theft.

By using TOR (http://tor.eff.org) to anonymize the connection, create an 
account on a free webmail and post the message on the selected entry points.

Wait for the news to appear on mainstream media, leveraging on the fact that 
Harry Potter is a wellknown subject among people of all sort, that journalists 
love hackers related news, and that religious motivation is another intriguing 
attractive. 



- CREDITS



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6225910.stm
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN2028966520070621
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070620/wr_nm/harrypotter_hacker_dc
http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/20/news/newsmakers/harrypotter_hacker.reut/index.htm?section=money_topstories
http://abcnews.go.com/WaterCooler/wireStory?id=3302244

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/Today/Entertainment/2007/06/22/4280784-sun.html

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,21948797-7485,00.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/hacker-reveals-potter-ending/2007/06/21/1182019255700.html

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Infotech/Internet__Telecom/Hacker_reveals_Potter_ending/articleshow/2140753.cms

http://www.ilmessaggero.it/articolo.php?id=3792&sez=HOME_SPETTACOLO

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Spettacoli/2007/06_Giugno/21/harry_potter_finale_storia.shtml

http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.html?in_article_id=54200&in_page_id=7&in_a_source=

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/4104229a6009.html

http://www.zataz.com/news/14333/Harry-Potter-and-the-Deathly-Hallows.html

http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=46&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=417675&idseccio_PK=1026

http://www.elcomercioperu.com.pe/EdicionOnline/HTML/olEcUltimas/2007-06-20/olEcUltimas0411400.html

http://www.eldia.com.ar/edis/20070621/20070621180304.htm

...and counting...



this is reported from http://insecure.org

June 21 -- Our web servers are struggling to keep up with the load after press 
reports that a hacker posted Harry Potter spoilers to a mailing list we 
archive. We have no idea if the spoilers are true or not, and reading it could 
affect your enjoyment of the book! So you might prefer to pre-order the book 
and try to be patient until July 21 instead. But if you really want the 
spoilers, [...]



http://news.google.com/news?ncl=1117416748

108 news published talking about Harry Potter, the number of blogs reporting 
them is at the moment 9.791, may be it will continue going up.



Many TV news had reported it and the security guru Schneier wrote an entry on 
his well known blog 
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/06/seventh_harry_p.html




- WORKAROUND

Stop believing everything you read in the news.


- NOTE FOR JOANNE ROWLING AND OTHERS WHO MAY BE CONCERNED


If you are pleased about the publicity feedback received from our operation 
and/or you have found our recipe useful, make a public greetings by donating to:



Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://www.eff.org



Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org 



TOR Project: http://tor.eff.org/donate.html.en


- NOTE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

If you are a human rights organization you should care about psycological 
operation and information warfare mainly related with the right of free speech.
Please help keeping the provided PSYOP MATERIAL both in pdf and zip format 
available trough your website. The risk is that they disappear from the 
internet.

The documents
http://rs114.rapidshare.com/files/38768457/WAR-dot-COM_-_the_internet_and_PSYOP.pdf
http://rapidshare.com/files/38768826/PSYOP_in_21_century.pdf
http://rapidshare.com/files/38769127/information_operations_and_cyberwar.pdf
http://rapidshare.com/files/38769308/PSYOP_-_coordinating_worldwide_psychological_operations.pdf

The collection of all documents in PSYOP_MATERIAL.zip
http://www.momoshare.com/file.php?file=3e1e54d89867046019cb4c3a0ad0234b



This is our last communication about Harry Potter Hoax


Luther Blisset

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