Skip to main content

Home/ Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University/ Group items tagged ddos

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Mike Wesch

Boxxy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for deletion page. Feel free to edit the article, but the article must not be blanked, and this notice must not be removed, until the discussion is closed.
  • Boxxy (also known by the YouTube handle boxxybabee) is an internet meme created by a series of YouTube videos of an American girl referring to herself as Boxxy which became highly popular during January 2009.[1] Her videos have been the subject of much speculation over the reasons behind their making, given their nonsensical and hyperactive nature.[2] Topics covered in Boxxy's most famous video include her assertion that she is not on drugs, her eyeliner, two males named Steve and Brandon, a film about The Beatles, her supposed husband, and her awareness of her digression during the video.[3]
  • The girl known as Boxxy was a user of Gaia Online and had only uploaded three videos in total to YouTube, all in the first week of January, 2009.[when?][4] Within a week, her videos had gained over a million views, reaching two million by January 20.[4] Her YouTube channel was also the most subscribed to during January 2009.[1] On 4chan, the videos caused a great amount of strife when posts related to them became excessive on the site's /b/ imageboard, eventually leading to a DDOS attack against 4chan because of Boxxy,[5] described as a "civil war" on one of the world's biggest websites.[1] Her YouTube account was hacked, and threats of releasing her name and other personal information to the public if she made any more videos were made by the individuals who hacked into her account[who?].[2]
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Boxxy has divided opinion on 4chan, between those who greatly like and those who greatly dislike her, and this was the cause of the DDOS attack, with attitudes ranging from love to hate.[1][2] A large number of parodies, spoofs and spinoffs relating to Boxxy were also created by YouTube users during the period of Boxxy's fame.[2] Boxxy also led to notable speculation and reflection over the very nature of internet memes, why they occur, why they exist, and how they will be seen in the future, especially given the fact that they make their subjects famous for being famous.[1][6] The "Boxxy" internet meme has been compared to rickrolling[1] by The Guardian technology correspondent Bobbie Johnson.
Kevin Champion

Kevin Kelly -- The Technium - 0 views

  • In the case of the One Machine we should look for evidence of self-governance at the level of the greater cloud rather than at the component chip level. A very common cloud-level phenomenon is a DDoS attack. In a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack a vast hidden network of computers under the control of a master computer are awakened from their ordinary tasks and secretly assigned to "ping" (call) a particular target computer in mass in order to overwhelm it and take it offline. Some of these networks (called bot nets) may reach a million unsuspecting computers, so the effect of this distributed attack is quite substantial. From the individual level it is hard to detect the net, to pin down its command, and to stop it. DDoS attacks are so massive that they can disrupt traffic flows outside of the targeted routers - a consequence we might expect from an superorganism level event.
  • Unsurprisingly the vast flows of bits in the global internet exhibit periodic rhythms. Most of these are diurnal, and resemble a heartbeat. But perturbations of internet bit flows caused by massive traffic congestion can also be seen. Analysis of these "abnormal" events show great similarity to abnormal heart beats. They deviate from an "at rest" rhythms the same way that fluctuations of a diseased heart deviated from a healthy heart beat. Prediction: The One Machine has a low order of autonomy at present. If the superorganism hypothesis is correct in the next decade we should detect increased scale-invariant phenomenon, more cases of stabilizing feedback loops, and a more autonomous traffic management system.
  • 3) Perhaps 4chan is its face? Perhaps Anonymous speaks for the ii? Memes drift up out of the morass of /b/tards into the world, seemingly without a concrete source. “I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER” may be the global intelligence saying “hi”… or perhaps more poetically, babbling like a baby. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564928060441097.html?mod=rss_E-Commerce/Media
  •  
    Kevin Kelly is an amazing theorist about technology and here outlines the potential of it creating a global superorganism. Section II about autonomy is very interesting in context and a commenter suggests that perhaps Anonymous is the emerging face of this autonomous superorganism. Very intriguining indeed, but do you buy it?
Mike Wesch

The Boxxy Story - 0 views

  • Accusations began to fire. Just who would want to try and throw people off the trail and confuse them, and who would have a new, large photo of her? Boxxy herself, or a close accomplice was the consensus. They must have caught wind of her full name being found, and merely be attempting to mitigate the damage by stirring the pot with false leads. 
  • It sounded semi-plausible, but, unbeknownst to the vast majority of /b/ at that moment, the CBRC had long since uncovered a photobucket account which was later seen to contain the same photos, so the implication is obvious, members of the CBRC were trolling /b/ with the photos in a attempt to throw them off, as they themselves were close to breaking into her accounts and did not want Anonymous to do it first.
  • We have no way of verifying if they were telling the truth, or if any of the claimed locations were in any way accurate but the mere possibility of this is shocking indeed. Thankfully, these were almost certainly fake - one of the addresses was a mall, one of the phone numbers was for a chiropractor.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • Within a couple of hours, CBRC had breached her Youtube account, via successfully guessing the secret answer for her email account, deduced from the stack of information they uncovered.
  • Or phishing her with a fake email, depending on who you listen to.
  • They then made her videos private, uploading a video warning her to never post another video again. This attracted 1000 comments within an hour and became the most commented video of the day on Youtube. So that brought it to an end, in theory. They had removed the ‘cancer’.
  • So after all that, was the ‘chemo’ even effective? No, not really. A look at /b/ will reveal Boxxy threads are still being posted. By essentially martyring the Boxxy meme, CBRC have simply created a new groundswell of people willing to troll with her image, as well as genuine resentment at their actions. 
  • Now she has her name, age, dozens of photos, school, internet accounts, alleged phone numbers, and alleged location available online, along with the details of several uninvolved friends. Nobody could have predicted she would create so much chaos, not least Boxxy herself. She had no idea what she was getting herself into by posting a response video.
  • This entire debacle ultimately stems from those who spammed /b/ with her image and pissed off so many people.
  • The lesson for all of us here, obvious as it is, is to think about what you divulge online. Is your Myspace secure? Is your Facebook account private? What forum accounts contain your details, and can they be traced and linked to each other? Everything you write online can potentially be linked, as if it were a jigsaw, and a profile of your life built up. I know plenty of people who have publicly viewable Facebook accounts containing their D.O.B, phone numbers, emails, addresses, places they work, go to college and so on. This is lunacy. This is asking for trouble. Boxxy didn’t do this, yet was still tracked down. 
  • “First, we, CBCR, pretty much made all the breakthroughs in the investigation. I don't care if it sounds arrogant, but if you look through our now-leaked dox, you can see that everything that was found on 4chan was found by us beforehand.”
  • Give people anonymity, and they become de-individuated, whether it be on an image board or in a rioting mob.
  • he same internet machine that could propel you to the top of the Youtube charts and hand you online fame will happily chew you up and spit you back out just as quickly, with zero remorse or consideration for the consequences. This is the reality of the internet today, this case is not the first, and surely not the last.
  • A few examples of fakes:www.youtube.com/user/boxxiebabee  www.youtube.com/user/therealboxxybabee www.youtube.com/user/boxxxxybabeee www.youtube.com/user/boxxyfriendsonly www.youtube.com/user/B0xxxybabee www.youtube.com/user/boxxybaabee www.youtube.com/user/boxxybabee2 www.youtube.com/user/thenewboxxybabee
  • And of course:www.youtube.com/user/Boxxyakamoldybread 
  • P.P.S Some distasteful and blatantly fake photoshopped news items are being posted on /b/ claiming Boxxy is dead. The fakes are very poorly written and contain numerous flaws. Again, don’t be fooled.
  • It's Friday January 16th. On Youtube, the user 'boxxybabee', has 21,800 subscribers, 1.4 million video views and over 38,000 comments on her videos and channel, yet she only signed up 8 days ago, and has only 3 videos. Many people were, and are confused. How did this happen? By documenting what I personally saw, I will show you.
  • The story essentially begins back in April 2006 when 'Boxxy' joined the anime forum/game based site Gaia Online under the username 'M o l d yLunchboxx'. It appears Boxxy returned from a Gaia hiatus at the very end of 2007, and embarked on a posting spree which lasted a week. It was during this first week of January 2008 that she made two Youtube videos for two fellow Gaia users, '4DM1RALAWESOME' and another referred to simply as 'Ant'.
  • Boxxy's last login to Youtube was February 2008, and for Gaia Online, April 2008.
  • The story now takes a leap forward to December 27th, 2008, when, according to Encyclopedia Dramatica, the video 'FOAR 4DD1 FRUM BOXXY' was posted on i-am-bored.com. This was spotted by someone at 7chan, who embedded the video at the top of the random '/b/' board. 
  • This writer first saw FOAR 4DD1 on January 3rd, 2009, when the video was posted as a 'you rage you lose thread' on the /b/ board at 4chan, with the 'Expert' level afforded to those who would withstand the entire video without wanting to tear out their hair or hurt small animals. /b/tards saw what has been labelled 'the most insane display we've ever seen on youtube' and 'the cutest girl you've ever seen'. This was the true start of the Boxxy phenomenon.
  • Over the next couple of days, interest grew, and Boxxy threads began to populate /b/. Why have her videos lain virtually unviewed and untouched for 51 weeks only to be brought up now. Who was this girl? What was the cause of her unique behaviour - her vivacious mannerisms, head bobbing, jaw grinding, random accents and rambling? Was she really 21 as her profile stated? Speculation began. Some pulled out their wikiPHD and speculated, tourettes? ADHD? Drug abuse - cocaine, ecstacy, meth? No, just too much coffee, according to others, or simple acting up to the camera. Comparisons to Zed from Police Academy and Heath Ledger's Joker were immediate.
  • Regardless, a split already began to emerge at /b/. Half of /b/ appeared smitten, captivated by this pretty, wacky girl drenched in eyeliner, but the rest were having their patience tested. Whilst a group of /b/tards declared 'Operation Valkyrie' on Boxxy - intending to find, raid and destroy as much as possible - youtube, myspace, facebook, photobuckets, etc in search of an identity and the 'upper boob' sign mentioned in 41DD, others simply sat and dismayed at the whole effort. Why try and raid the accounts of someone who hasn't logged into any known accounts for almost a year? Many /b/tards resented the obsession with someone who was not only inactive, but a Gaiafag, emo and a camwhore to boot. As one naysayer put it, it was: 'proof that /b/ is full of 13 y.o boys'.
  • The known accounts, Youtube and Gaia, were quickly spammed with the Operation Valkyrie tag. Via analysis of so called 'Gaiafaggotry' forum posts, /b/tards extracted two pictures of Boxxy from her Gaia friends photobucket accounts, and threw out possible names.
  • On January 6th, someone claiming to be Boxxy posted two previously unseen photos on /b/. A troll, surely? The same day, her Youtube account disappeared and her Gaia account became inaccessible to the public. Was this the real Boxxy intervening, or simply trolls posting photos from photobucket under her guise, and hacking into her accounts and shutting them down? It was also on the 6th that a clearly fake Youtube account was created - 'Boxxyakamoldybread'. Even though the videos are clearly of lower resolution than the originals, some were fooled by this, and some probably still are.
  • The 'boxxy lovers' of 4chan were by now declaring her the 'Queen of /b/' and a instant new meme. The haters labelled this as a perfect example of a forced meme. To them, she was the epitome of the 'cancer killing /b/'. Battle lines were being drawn.
  • On the 9th, Boxxy delivered. She addressed 'recent events', said she was in fact free of drugs and personality disorders, and proved it actually was her posting her photos on /b/. Whilst /b/tards were scrambling to find her identity and spamming her accounts, she was there, watching.
  • his interest generated over 70,000 views within 12 hours, pushing the video onto the first page for most viewed of the day on Youtube.
  • Identical chaos was occurring at 7chan, with the /b/ first page 100% filled with Boxxy at some points. On the 10th, with Boxxy now approaching 400,000 views and 10,000 subscribers, Operation Clampdown was declared. If Moot did not ban the users spamming boxxy threads on the 4chan /b/, the site would be brought down via a DDOS. 
  • On the 12th, Youtube 'celeb' Sxephil included Boxxy in the intro for his new video, and used her face as the thumbnail. Personally, I found it extremely cynical of Phil, a Youtube partner who makes money from views, to advertise his extremely boring video about Joe the Plumber with Boxxy's face. What a dick. Worse still, the exposure to his 310,000 subscribers sent several thousand more people to the Boxxy videos.
  • There are many patently absurd theories about Boxxy. If you listen to the drooling idiocy leaking through the interweb, you'll be told she is in fact an actress hired by Gaia Online to promote their product (that's why she says she moved on to bigger and better things, huh, morons?), the whole thing is a giant trolling exercise meticulously planned by her and accomplices, the entire thing was perpertrated by 7chan users attempting to cripple 4chan, she's a paid actress akin to lonelygirl15, or most bizarrely of all, a claim has been put forward that she is a fraud mocking the mannerisms of a 15 year old girl who lives in Chicago, orchestrated by said girl's obsessed crush who is angry at his unrequited love. Some people actually believe this.Well, there you have it. That's pretty much what happened.
Mike Wesch

Deep Thought: 4Chan.org Threatend By Internet War Against Boxxy - 0 views

  • There is a large movement amoung 4chan.org users to perform a DDOS attack on the site at 7:00PM EST tonight.
  • The group of users are calling the attack under two codename: Operation Valkyrie and Operation Clampdown. The goal of the attack is to, according to the boards at 4chan, “stop the spread of the boxxy cancer.”
1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20 items per page