Evil Hackers Prey on Epilepsy Patients
This has to be about the most depressing story about hackers I’ve ever heard, unknown assailants have been uploading scripts to an epilepsy support site that is triggering debilitating seizures to members of the forum in question.
The non-profit Epilepsy Foundation, which has messages boards to support epilepsy patients, has been bombarded with scripts that reveal hundreds of animated messages that have been leading to painful seizures by those who click on them. One woman was rendered catatonic for a period of several minutes by what she described as one of the worst episodes she had ever encountered.
The hackers then took it to the next level by inserting JavaScript into the messages that redirected users to an even more complex page that contained images meant to trigger both photo and pattern sensitive epileptic patients.
According to Wired Magazine’s Kevin Poulsen, there is evidence the attack may have been perpetrated by notorious griefers “Anonymous,” best known for their assault on Scientology. But the evidence of this is only circumstantial and doesn’t seem to fit with their MO. It may be that copycats who sympathize with Anonymous are going in a new, more sinister direction.
Thanks to Wired for the article this post was based on.
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