something from a photograph. Politics has long been a fertile field
for this form of manipulation: During the Soviet era, image editors
removed a number of disfavored Communist Party officials from
photos with Stalin. Americans did the exact opposite: In 1950, a
close race for the U.S. senate seat for Maryland was affected when
Senator Joseph McCarthy’s staff faked a photograph by adding a
Communist Party official to a photo of a rival politician. The photo
was widely distributed before being revealed as a forgery, and many
people believe that the false association with communism con-
tributed to the rival’s defeat.
11
Attacks through photo forgery may be especially dangerous be-
cause they can be hard to detect. A manipulated photo released by
the government of Iran shows how easy it is to pass off a photo-
graphic fraud. In mid-2008, Iran conducted a missile test, but only
three of its four missiles actually fired. Iran digitally painted over the
failed launcher with a copy of a successful missile launch and sent the
photo to newspapers. Many Western newspapers, including the Los
Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, ran the forged photo on their
front pages.
12
A close examination revealed the manipulation (iden-
tical smoke trails, a ghostly shadow, and redundancies in the clouds),
but not until the newspapers had already been printed.
Another example shows the democratization of photo forgery. In
2004, an individual political activist combined an old photograph of
Senator John Kerry—then running for president—with an old im-
age of Jane Fonda rallying against the Vietnam War. The manipu-
lated photo appeared to show Kerry sitting just three feet away from
Fonda. It was quickly circulated as “evidence” of Kerry’s alleged lack
of patriotism. In reality, Kerry was never that close to Fonda, but the
visual association with Fonda’s unpopular tactics may have influ-
enced many voters. Some voters never found out that the image was
faked, others didn’t believe the correction, and yet others subcon-
sciously associated Kerry and Fonda as a result of the image even
after learning that it was fake.
13
In the words of the photographer of
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one of the original (legitimate) images, “People just see it, and it cre-
ates this impression that it really happened.”
14
The problems of photo manipulation are a preview of what is go-
ing to happen soon to video. Technology is only a short step away from
democratizing digital video manipulation. Special effects software like
Adobe’s After Effects® package now provides video editing power once
reserved for Hollywood studios. Creative home moviemakers have
used this software to make almost-believable special-effects videos
purporting to show San Francisco being invaded by a Star Wars fleet.
15
The video quality is as good as that in the original Star Wars movies,
and some scenes are crisp enough to look real when viewed online.
Soon, manipulating digital video will be almost as easy as manipulat-
ing digital photography. We must prepare for a new era in which nei-
ther photo nor video can be believed.
The Breach of Privacy
Another sadly common form of online reputation attack occurs
through breach of the victim’s privacy. Whether accidental or inten-
tional, all privacy breaches cause a uniquely personal harm to the vic-
tim. Often, the victim’s deepest secrets or most intimate moments are
revealed to the world. This can be intensely embarrassing, to the
point of causing the victim to withdraw from social contact and re-
treat into isolation.
The subject of a privacy breach can be anything personal or em-
barrassing. One common form today involves sex and videotape: a
jilted ex-lover posts provocative private photos or videos of the vic-
tim on the Internet. Some may even go so far as to post a “sex tape”
showing the victim engaged in intimate relations. This attack is so
common that there is even a name for it: “revenge porn.”
16
One of the first incidents of online “revenge porn” probably hap-
pened sometime around 2000. That was the heyday of file-sharing
networks like Kaazaa and Napster, which allowed users (mostly col-
lege students) to share multimedia files with each other. It all started
Types of Internet Attacks 12 9
when a female student at a major U.S. public university filmed some
very intimate videos for her long-distance boyfriend. Although it has
never been proven, many people believe that the boyfriend then
placed the files in his “shared files” folder during an argument, which
made the videos accessible over the file-sharing network. Soon, the
videos were being copied from campus to campus and were saved
by tens of thousands of people. The woman was mortified, to the
point of being afraid to search Google for her own name.
17
To t h i s
day, the videos can still be found online. More recently, in Italy, one
man was sentenced to two years in jail for creating a website that
showed his ex-girlfriend in pornographic photographs, along with
her phone number.
18
He had also sent more than 15,000 e-mails
containing indecent pictures of his ex-, all done without her con-
sent, of course.
Privacy breaches are not limited to intimate photos and videos.
Public revelations about private facts like sexual preference can also
cause immense embarrassment. Some people choose not to reveal
their sexual orientation to the world, whether because they live in a
conservative place or because they work for an employer who is not
tolerant. An attacker may injure the victim by “outing” him: revealing
the victim’s sexual orientation without his consent. Recently, several
politicians have been “outed” by online activist communities. Any
other private fact of this nature can be used as an attack, including
HIV status, status as a crime victim, sexual history, or anything else
intensely personal.
Harassment and Hoaxes
Some attackers harness the Internet to harass their victims. These
attacks rely on the anonymity of the Internet, the social distance cre-
ated by it, and the fact that many readers never do any serious fact-
checking of their own.
One form of online harassment uses the power of a large group
to overload the victim’s communications. The goal is to flood a vic-
tim’s e-mail, phone, fax, or postal mailbox with so much material that
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they lose the ability to communicate. The massive audience of the In-
ternet makes this attack possible: the attacker simply fabricates a rea-
son why many people should call, fax, or e-mail the victim and then
spreads that fabrication as far as possible.
One of the first online attacks of this kind happened in the
wake of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Okla-
homa City.
19
The attacker used an AOL message board (a precursor
to Internet forums) to spread a fake advertisement for t-shirts re-
lated to the bombings. The fake advertisement claimed that the
shirts bore shockingly offensive slogans like “Visit Oklahoma . . . it’s
a blast!” and “Finally a day care center that keeps the kids quiet—
Oklahoma 1995.” Readers were instructed to call “Ken” at a phone
number in Seattle if they wanted to order a shirt. Of course, there
were no shirts for sale, and the phone number listed was that of Ken
Zeran, an innocent victim who had nothing to do with the fake ad-
vertisement. Hundreds of people called Zeran to tell them how they
felt about the shirts. The advertisement (and Ken’s phone number)
was quickly copied across the fledgling Internet, and an Oklahoma
radio DJ even read it aloud to his listeners. Soon, Zeran’s phone was
ringing off the hook with angry callers and death threats. The
prankster who created the malicious advertisement has never been
publicly identified.
This kind of attack continues today. In 2008, a video of a vicious
fight among nine teenage girls was posted to the popular video-shar-
ing site Youtube.com. In the “comments” section, an anonymous user
posted the name, home address, and phone number of several of the
pugilists. Another anonymous user posted the phone number and
home address of “Darlene Ashley” and claimed that Ashley was the
mother of one of the aggressors shown in the video.
20
In reality, Ash-
ley has no children and had no connection to the incident whatso-
ever. But hundreds of callers simply assumed the comment was
correct and deluged her with messages like “we’re now coming to get
you, you have nowhere to run.” Some even challenged her to fights:
“So you like to beat up on girls, huh? You want to meet somewhere
Types of Internet Attacks 13 1
in Florida? I’ll teach you a lesson.” Ashley stopped answering her
phone after she received other threatening messages.
Another similar attack does not even require a controversial issue.
The attack is carried out by simply listing the victim’s phone number
as the way to receive technical support for a popular product or as a
means to reach a popular celebrity. One group of pranksters listed their
own phone number as being that of basketball legend LeBron James.
21
Within twenty-four hours, they received over 200 calls from fans. Had
they used a different number (and other pranksters certainly have),
they could have caused chaos.
SWATing
One of the most dangerous online attacks is a practice called
“SWATing.” This frightening tactic is still very rare, but there have
been several well-publicized incidents. The term “SWATing” comes
from the acronym for the heavily armed “SWAT” units found in
many police departments. The goal of a “SWATing” attack is to
cause the police to break down the victim’s door on the basis of a
false report of a standoff or burglary in progress.
Anonymous attackers used to be able to “SWAT” by taking ad-
vantage of a security weakness in antiquated 911 systems: Until re-
cently, many police emergency call centers relied on the same caller-ID
systems used by households. It was thus possible to use Web-based
phone services to call the victim’s local 911 from anywhere in the
world but to use “caller-ID spoofing” to make it appear that the call
came from the victim’s home phone number. The attacker would then
pretend to be the victim, claim to be calling from the victim’s house
(which the 911 dispatcher would verify on the basis of the fake caller-
ID information), and describe some dire emergency: One attacker
claimed that there were armed robbers in the victim’s house; another
claimed that the victim was holding hostages at gunpoint. In each
case, the 911 dispatcher sent armed police to the victim’s house in
search of the emergency. In one particularly brazen attack, the at-
tacker went further and tried to trick the victim into believing that he
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