The article included below is (in my humble opinion) the origin of the phrase, "
There is no Cabal". It is at least my first encounter with the dreaded
Cabal (
There is no cabal).
Paul G. Derbyshire originally posted this article detailing his paranoid delusions in August of 1996 to Carleton University's USENET server. HTML formatting is my own.
Now that I think about it, he probably saw "There is no Cabal" typed in a message or an Organisation: header somewhere in news.admin.net-abuse.misc, and figured it must be them out to get him.
Submitted for your perusal.
-- NotMike
Subject: The Cabal FAQ
From: pderbysh@chat.carleton.ca (Paul Derbyshire)
Date: 1996/08/18
Message-Id: <4v76qs$569@bertrand.ccs.carleton.ca>
Newsgroups:
carleton.general,ncf.general,ncf.sigs.irc,alt.silly.group.names.d
(More Headers)
The Cabal FAQ:
This FAQ is to bring you information about the Cabal.
- What is the Cabal?
- Who are the Cabal?
- Who are their targets?
- What do people have to do to become targets?
- What exactly do they do to their targets?
- What is the future of the Cabal?
- What can be done to speed things up?
1. What is the Cabal?
The Cabal is an organisation of thirteen Carleton University students
whose purpose seems to be to select from among the people they meet
certain targets, who are then harassed in a very vicious fashion in all
electronic media. It seems to be an extracurricular activity motivated
by hatred and done as a source of entertainment and as a way for the
cabal members to punish everyone they dislike.
2. Who are the Cabal?
Cabal Membership Sheet, gained by intrepid espionage:
(A friend of mine secretly joined them and then left with inside info)
- Jamie LaBrash (Ring leader)
- Kia mennie (Second in command)
- Enver Pletilic (Security officer in charge of physical action)
- Jennifer Coulter (Spy, rachel used to have this job. Searches usenet for a
target's postings and is advance scout of attack force)
- Sean Maguire
- Erdem Onder
- John Edwards
- Andrew Metcalfe (Inside man on Carleton U's CHAT admin)
- James Carriere
- Dave O'neill
- Mike Shaver (Another strong-arm man)
- Someone I forget, inside man on freenet's administration
- M. Vasquez (Strong arm man, computer expert with hacking skills. His job
is to subvert computers, to variously interfere with targets'
accounts and IRC sessions and whatnot, and censor newsgroups.)
These individuals are sometimes seen in various forums appearing to be
harmless.
Do not be fooled. They are merely very good actors. Be wary of all 13 of
them;
cross one of them even slightly and all 13 will come down on you very
hard.
The cabal attempts to keep its existence secret but only in a halfhearted
way. They purloined a newsgroup called carleton.students.cabal, originally
it had another purpose now long forgotten, and have used it as a forum for
discussion, although their major planning is done by exchanged e-mail.
Some
of their intercepted e-mail led to the nearly too late forewarning of
their
latest target of a plan to trick the administration into revoking his
account.
3. Who are their targets?
List of cabal targets and former targets:
- Paul Derbyshire
- Patrick Campbell
- Michelle Tribe to a small extent
- Prism Bostelaar to some extent
- Amy Sheen
- (unknown guy in New Zealand)
- Chad Emmett (?)
Four of them, Paul, patrick, and Chad, plus the New Zealand target, have
been assaulted in the characteristic three stage fashion they use when
they go to all-out war with a target.
Three, Amy, Michelle and Prism, have been sent nasty e-mails and flamed in
newsgroups but have not borne the full brunt of their hatred.
Someone who stumbled on them got this e-mail:
There is no cabal. Forget that you even saw this `sig.' You are
being watched, and all of your online activities are being carefully
monitored. This is a warning.
They have some hacker skills. A major player in the cabal has the ability
to subvert freenet's IRC. His script enables following someone
automagically onto every channel where they go that is not invite only; he
also has a script command to op himself in any channel. They can monitor
things like how much time a user has left in a session, and can delete
files from other users' work directories, and change other users'
passwords.
(They used this last on a friend of mine and on Patrick Campbell.)
4. What do people have to do to become targets?
Not much.
Merely disagreeing on a matter of opinion with one of the thirteen, or
having a brief skirmish in a newsgroup, or being perceived as annoying by
them for any reason be it the color of your hair or some way you behave,
may bring them down on you. They are not consistent, as people that cross
them may be given the full treatment, flamed a bit, only receive nasty
e-mails, or be ignored entirely. Why they target some people and not
others
is unknown but it is known that they preferentially target people they
don't think will fight back. They also concentrate on one target at a
time;
if another person annoys them while they are after a target, the other
person gets only a comparatively mild flaming.
Paul Derbyshire was targeted and given possibly their worst ever attack
for the most interesting of reasons. One of the Cabal approached him one
day on the National Capital Freenet and pretended to befriend him. After a
while she began asking him to do various nasty things to the previous
target, Patrick Campbell. These included spreading rumors about him and
hacking his account.
When Paul refused to have any part in this and began avoiding her, the
Cabal used its characteristic three-stage full frontal assault after a
latency period of less than a week.
Patrick Campbell, Chad Emmett, and the New Zealand guy crossed them in
unknown ways.
Amy Sheen, Michelle tribe, and Prism Bostelaar appeared in newsgroups
publicly defending one of their targets; all three were flamed in e-mail
and two of the three were publicly flamed in newsgroup but did not incur
the full three stage assault thank God.
5. What exactly do they do to their targets?
It is not a pretty sight believe me.
Minor targets, those that annoy them but they don't take a particular
twisted disliking to, receive one or more especially vitriolic e-mails. I
have seen some of these and they are so violently abusive they burn
themselves into monitor phosphor in seconds. Strangely, the Cabal
refrains from making racist or sexist remarks in these messages but this
is perhaps their only virtue.
It is thought that they only harass one or two people at a time. The
assault on Patrick Campbell stopped as soon as they fixated on Paul
Derbyshire. When they were crossed by three later people they decided not
to change targets and gave them only a minor flaming.
The major targets get a characteristic three staged attack aimed at them.
Before this there appears to be a few days latency period, probably while
they use their e-mail network to plan things and fabricate certain
documents that they utilise in Phase One. When they have organised and
synchronised themselves they attack like a precision military unit.
In Phase One the target watches with exquisite dismay as flamewars
bloom abruptly and simultaneously in several of their favorite newsgroups.
First one of the Cabal attacks them viciously in several groups, by making
assorted slanders. Within a few hours or days several others join in. The
newsgroup attack team includes Jamie LaBrash, Kia Mennie, and several
others.
The slanders do not include sexual or racial elements, rather they have a
characteristic structure. The flame includes a documentary style
description of a fictitious incident in which the target supposedly did
something embarassing, comitted a crime, or did something else to be
ashamed of. This is delivered in a dry and matter of fact manner. The
libelous posting goes on to list fictitious e-mail addresses of people
that
supposedly witnessed the fictitious incident. They also contain URLs of
web
resources supposedly documenting the incident in more detail. It is
implied
that the Cabal has an army of people that follow a target about with
hidden
cameras monitoring them. This despite the fact that the fictitious
incidents are usually said to have happened at a time prior to the cabal
choosing their target!
For a week or two this is what goes on. The target's followup posts
denying the accusations are flamed viciously and followed up by more
invented incident reports in a vicious cycle. People that ask that it be
taken to e-mail, target included, are ignored. The target's mails to the
Cabal members telling them to stop it are ignored, and usually the Cabal
members ensure that it can't be taken to e-mail by telling the target and
the postmaster and sysadmin that the target is not to mail them again. In
preparation for phase three however, one of the Cabal sends mail to a
system postmaster and the target asking the target not to mail again
and saying any more mail is harassment, but arranges for the copy sent to
the target to bounce. This way the postmaster thinks the target is
committing
harassment knowingly if further mail is sent but the target is not aware
of
this fact. This is the mouth of a very nasty trap.
Although no insults are made to the target's race, sex, or sexuality, the
target's intelligence and mental health are insulted severely. A common
slander is a claim that the target was in a mental home once, or in a
juvie hall or some such.
At the end of phase one, the target's social life begins to suffer as
there
are nasty rumors circulating and the like.
Phase Two commences then. In Phase Two some flames are kept up in
newsgroups,
but the brunt of the attack shifts to spreading rumors of a vicious sort
via
e-mails, IRC channels, and other things the target is not there to see.
Rumor spreading also occurs at outside-the-net gatherings and social
functions
where Cabal members attend.
Phase Three follows shortly. Phase Three is most vicious of all. It
consists of a multi pronged attack the purpose of which is to get the
target kicked off of computer systems. The purpose of the first two phases
is to destroy the target socially. The third phase is to get them out of
the Cabal's hair, so that they cannot counterattack, or bring the admin
down on them.
Many methods are employed simultaneously. Cabal members approach the
target
at various outside-the-net gatherings, at the target's home, or on IRC and
deliver threats that they have to leave the computer system or they will
be
physically assaulted or killed. This is intended to scare the target off
the
machine(s). Then they attempt to get the user banned from systems by
tricking the sysadmin with the aforementioned mail harassment trick. The
cabal member that performs the trick starts flaming the user in various
places to incite them to send them mail. Then the Cabal member tells the
admin that it is harassment and tells them to delete the target's account.
Thirdly, they attempt to sabotage the target's account(s) by hacker
methods. One possibly several Cabal members are capable hackers.
Attempting
to ban the target from IRC, subverting IRC to ban them from every channel,
and cracking the target's account and changing their password are favorite
tactics of theirs. A cracked account is also used to send mail and do
things in IRC that are not nice, in the hopes that these will be
attributed to the target and cause trouble for him/her. The target is
often
shocked to see an e-mail message to a friend, berating or flaming the
friend and ending with his/her own signature!
During phase three, also, the hackers of the Cabal censor some of the
target's postings. Postings they make that attack the Cabal, are in the
Cabal's newsgroup, or are offensive to Cabal member, are deleted somehow
even though nobody but the person who posted is supposed to be able to
delete an article. How they subvert the system is not known but they can
do this on CHAT and in usenet, and possibly on freenet too.
6. What is the future of the Cabal?
The future of the Cabal is very short. Many of its members have lost all
credibility by slipping up in their flaming attacks in Phase One. This is
especially the case when someone tries to track down one of the
"references" they cite to support one of their libelous fictitious
accounts
of the target doing something or other socially unacceptable. There is
evidence of internal strife and it is suspected some former members have
been kicked out. Many of them have gotten warnings from the administration
of one or both systems about their activities.
The Ottawa Police are investigating some Cabal members because of Phase
One
fictitious accounts of a target's "criminal activity"; the police see
these
attacks by the cabal as possible obstruction of justice. It is believed
the
administrators of both systems are also keeping tabs on the cabal and
especially their stolen newsgroup. The admin of both systems have reason
to
dislike the cabal as being noncontributing members, being harassing, being
a bad example to others and giving the system a bad name. Probably most of
the cabal members will be ejected from the systems instantly as soon as
they cross the line by making a single posting or remark that is
especially
obnoxious, racist, or in some way against the law.
7. What can be done to speed things up?
Several things.
- Avoid the cabal members, all 13 of them. The two former members are probably
harmless.
- If you see a flamewar viciously attacking someone who seems to have done
nothing offensive and seems to be defenseless, do two things. One, report
the abuse to the system administration. If enough people bug the admin
about the actions of the same Cabal member that member will get suspended
eventually for his or her actions. Secondly, post in defense of the victim!
You can expect some nasty mail from the cabal members and possibly flames
in a newsgroup or two. Ignore these and do not under any circumstances
talk to or directly refer to the Cabal culprits.
- If you are a newsgroup moderator and see Cabal activity kick out the Cabal
members.
- If the Cabal attacks you with their major attack pattern,
- Don't panic;
- Immediately complain to administration about it;
- Rally support from friends;
- DO NOT E-MAIL ANY CABAL MEMBER no matter how politely as they will try
to get you kicked off the system with that harassment trick;
- Follow up their posts only to deny flatly the phony claims they make
of your supposed criminal activities or whatever, and to poke holes
in their credibility. Do not flame them, criticise their members, or
hurl abuse at them, publicly; only calmly refute them and ignore any
abuse they send at you. That way others see that they are flaming and
abusing and being irrational, and that you are not, and they lose
credibility. If you flame them back people see you and the Cabal member
as being equally bad and equally at fault, including friends, and
including system administrators.
Hopefully we shall all see this Cabal dissolved and gone forever inside a
few weeks.
.*. "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not
-() < circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a
`*' straight line."
------------------------------------------------
-- B. Mandelbrot | Paul Derbyshire (PGD)
ao950@freenet.carleton.ca
______________________ ____|
pderbysh@chat.carleton.ca
A quiet kind of guy | I'm on the Web at:
http://chat.carleton.ca/~pderbysh