Epilepsy Foundation

On March 22, 2008, unknown H@Ck3R$ infiltrated the forums of the Epilepsy Foundation. The attacks started out with simple gif images, but as soon as Anon accidentally realized that html worked on the forums more sophisticated JavaScript redirect codes were created, this caused mass headaches, twitching, and mild seizures among the forum members, but not the desired effect; accidental an heroage. The raid seemingly originated at a thread on 420chan, when /i/ was located at not420chan, (though 7chan seemingly got the credit because of their batshit unwarranted self importance) and caused a media shitstorm when members of the forum called the press. The story was covered by Wired and subsequently posted to Slashdot, Digg, MetaFilter and elsewhere.

The Raid

News report (note how the Church of Scientology gets involved)

Nevar Forget 3-22-08

“	Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures	„
—Epilepsy Forum member, Wired News

“	I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts. I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak. It was a spike of pain in my head, and the lockup, that only happens with really bad ones. I don't think I've had a seizure like that in about a year.	„
—Another Forum member, Wired News

The dastardly Eric Bauman claims credit during the raid.

The raid itself occurred in one stage, a simple zerg rush which /i/ is accustomed too. On Saturday, the initial wave of attacks involved simply registering as new members on the Epilepsy Foundation and then spamming flashing GIFs in the site's various subforums, along with the typical pro-Ebaums comments that accompany any /i/nsurgent activity. This caused mass headaches and pain among the forum's regular viewers, who presumably reacted in a similar fashion to Angry German Kid. Within about an hour into the raid, the attacks became more sophisticated, using TinyURL links to drive the hapless, twitching epileptics to a blinking Javascript app which was specifically designed to trigger seizures and to party hard.

Video of the raid

Epileptic Reactions

“	In our upping of security on the forums, we have established the following new rules: No animated images are allowed to be used anywhere from now on. No GIFs are allowed at all anymore as well. No rich text is allowed in the body of messages at all, either. Thank you in advance for paying attention to these rules and helping us to keep an orderly, pleasant and safe community for all.	„
—Staff

The forum mods finally got online on Sunday and shut down the forum for 12 hours, which is apparently how long it took them to permanently disable embedded images and JavaScript. Thus ended the invasion.

Media Reactions

Front page of Slashdot

The first report by Wired News was posted on Wired on March 29th, a week after the actual event. The article assumed that the raid was carried out by Hackers on Steroids, but also mentioned the possibility that it could have been instigated or executed by Scilons. Reactions to the Wired story ranged from expressions of disgust to calls for justice to disbelief that the noble Anonymous could stoop so low. Reactions to the raid itself were generally ambivalent.

A comment on Slashdot

Chan Reactions

While some members of /b/ and Anonymous were upset, others noted that Anonymous is chaotic neutral, and hence they felt free to lol and lol some more at the whole situation. Accusations of newfaggotry and moralfaggotry were thrown about with abandon as Anons accused each other of either going too far or being weakling Protestfags who weren't aware of the true nature of /b/. Some argued that this invasion was a welcome return to /b/'s original viciousness, where laughter was often mingled with guilt, and that the Scientology protests were merely drawing in newfags who didn't realize this yet.

Excuses

According to 7chan admins, Scientologists posted threads calling for the raid on 7chan's /b/ and made it seem like members of Anonymous were the ones fucking with the Epilepsy forum—counting on the negative media stories from this attack to undermine the positive press that Project Chanology has so far received. This is a known Scilon technique called "dead agenting". This never happened though and it was just 7chan extending their e-peen to get some press coverage.

After being linked to the raid in numerous media reports, 7chan posted the following message to its front page:

“

ATTENTION: Newcomers from Wired, Digg, Engadget, Slashdot, etc.

by OverlordXenu - 3/29/08 @ 7:46PM PDT

Hello, and welcome to our website.

I would just like to discuss this nasty business about a terrible raid on a forum for the poor people who suffer from epilepsy. What happened there was terrible, and we feel deeply sorry for those affected.

Users of this site did not actually attack those individuals. The Church of Scientology posted numerous threads across many *chan sites yesterday, and then informed people that Anonymous had been attacking victims of epilepsy. They did this under their "fair game" policy, to ruin the public opinion of Anonymous, to lessen the effect of their lawful protests against their virulent organization.

I must say, it is disgusting that the CoS is willing to drag innocent people down with them, in an attempt to save themselves. How could anyone be a willing participant in their terrible organization?

Sadly, none of our staff were online at the time of the thread's posting, so we were unable to take it down.

We are truly and deeply sorry for what happened to these innocent people, Thank you for your time spent reading this apology,

The Administration and Staff of 7chan.org

Feel free to email us at the above address or address us on our IRC server, and we will be happy to address any of your concerns regarding this terrible incident.

„

—7chan's admin's

Happy Ending

In the end, however, some good came of it all. In their recent press release on the raid, the Epilepsy Foundation said

The Epilepsy Foundation’s quick [12 hours l8r, LOL — Ed.] reaction to a recent attack by hackers on one of its online forums raises awareness of the need for Web security for some health organizations

[...]

“This was clearly an act of vandalism with the intent to harm people, and we shut the attack down immediately [12 hours l8r, LOL — Ed.],” said Eric R. Hargis, president and CEO of the Epilepsy Foundation. “We’ve established deterrents in the system to prevent similar incidences.”

Nefarious deed or lulzy prank? History alone will judge. It may be, however, that by hipping the no-doubt dorky and clueless Poindexters of the Epilepsy Foundation to the laughable state of their online security, the cock sucking adolescents of 7chan may have inadvertently done some good after all. As a result of this unintended benefit to tards everywhere, perhaps the Great Easter Raid of 2008 and its cum-gargling chanfag perpetrators will be judged less harshly by the World Of Tomorrow.