Thread: Anonymous weaponizes Twitter, retaliates against MegaUpload takedown

Anonymous weaponizes Twitter, retaliates against MegaUpload takedown

The Daily Caller – 28 mins ago...

Hell hath no fury like a hacker scorned.

Following Thursday’s takedown of file-sharing network MegaUpload by the Justice Department, the hacktivist collective struck back Thursday evening and launched its famed DDOS attack against websites for the Department of Justice, Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, Universal Music and other related sites.

This time, however, Anonymous got creative with their tactic: they spread a link in Anonymous chat rooms and through Twitter that would automatically upload a program that repeatedly redirects a computer to a target website. When enough computers attempt to access the site at the same time, the servers crash from an overload of traffic volume.

The tactic, which has been used by the group for years, is called a Low Orbit Ion Canon.

According to Gawker, the link is being shared at a rate of 4 times a minute.

Anonymous weaponizes Twitter, retaliates against MegaUpload takedown - Yahoo! News

January 19, 2012 6:17 PM PrintText

Justice Dept. website shut down in apparent hack

(CBS News) The website of the U.S. Department of Justice was shut down Thursday in what the FBI called a denial of service attack following a piracy indictment involving the file-sharing site Megaupload.

The public websites of Universal Music and the Motion Picture Association of America were also shuttered. On Twitter, the loosely-organized hacking group Anonymous claimed responsibility for the hacks.

Internet relay chats supported by the Anonymous collective show participants discussing the DOJ site being down and talking about other U.S. government sites to target, including the Recording Industry of America.

In addition to the Megaupload indictment, the activists are angry about two proposed antipiracy bills backed by the music and movie industries, SOPA and PIPA, that critics say would give authorities broad power to shut down websites for the mere accusation that they had pirated content on them.

Numerous websites including Wikipedia and Reddit "blacked out" on Wednesday, deliberately hiding their normal content and posting messages protesting the antipiracy bills. Many U.S. entertainment and media companies, including CBS Corporation, back the legislation.

Full coverage of SOPA, PIPA at Tech Talk

"Seems like some friendly ships are launching torpedos justice.gov as we speak. The site seems down to us! (via @AnonOpsSweden)," Twitter accounts associated with the Anonymous online activist group posted Thursday following the apparent hacks.


Another tweet by the AnonOps account said: "Tango down! universalmusic.com & justice.gov// #Megaupload."


Shortly before the outage, seven people were named in an indictment and four were taken into custody on online piracy charges, including Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz, the founder of Megaupload, the internet file-posting service that claimed 50 million daily users.


The site allows users to post digital files - text, movies, music, computer programs, and more - and provide a link for others to download them for free. It charged users for premium accounts that permitted faster and more frequent downloads.


A DOJ spokeswoman said she was trying to get comment on the matter and Universal Music had no comment.

Justice Dept. website shut down in apparent hack - CBS News

This is a very big deal that Anonymous is taking on DOJ. Nice to see them put some heat where it belongs on the corrupt DOJ, DHS, and other tentacles of the Obama administration.

W

So we learned the DOJ and Anonymous can both shut down a site

but only DOJ can put you in jail afterwards.