[liberationtech] Avaaz, is this for real?

[Sahar Massachi]

I'm a bit concerned about all the muttering about Avaaz's sensationalism.

Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding something, but the following
scenario seems pretty plausible to me:

The Avaaz site comes under some sort of attack. The tech team at Avaaz
gives a quick "idiots guide" to what's going on to their communications
team, and then goes back to trying to deal with the problem. The
communications team has a partially confused understanding of exactly
what's going on, but tries to deal with the situation as best they can.
When technically minded journalists want to talk to Avaaz, the
communications staff doesn't want to bother their still-hard-at-work tech
team, so they give unsatisfying, vague, and unhelpful replies to these
journalists".

Am I missing something?

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Miles Fidelman
<mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>wrote:

> Steve Weis wrote:
>
>> "...globally-distributed botnet of thousands of computers..."
>>
>> Someone could rent thousands of botnet agents for two days for a couple
>> hundred dollars:
>> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/**security/study-finds-the-**
>> average-price-for-renting-a-**botnet/6528<http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/study-finds-the-average-price-for-renting-a-botnet/6528>
>>
>> "Avaaz does not have any further information about who is behind it..."
>>
>> They were claiming that this was an attack so sophisticated and massive
>> that it could have only been perpetrated by a nation state or large
>> corporation, yet they have no further information about who was behind it?
>> I think they hyped it up to drive fundraising.
>>
>>
> Particularly since nothing about it has shown up on any of the usual
> system admin, network admin, or security related lists.
>
> --
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra
>
>
>
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-- 
Sahar Massachi

c: (585) 313-6649
t: twitter.com/sayhar
w: saharmassachi.com
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