Anonymous goes on DDoS rampage after MegaUpload shutdown

[Leeky]

The loosely knit online hacker collective went on the rampage yesterday afternoon after news broke that several Megaupload.com staff members had been arrested, including its founder Kim Dotcom. They are accused of online piracy and the popular file sharing service was pulled from the internet.

Within minutes after the news spread, the so-called hacktivists had assembled, and #OPMegaupload had begun in what became an evening of nonstop DDoS attacks likened to the virtual equivalent of a nuclear bomb on pretty much any company or government entity pro SOPA or PIPA.

“We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn't think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us,” they later posted on Pastebin, along with their targets, and personal information of various heads of organizations.

If you had any doubt as to Anonymous’ abilities yesterday proved otherwise, in what became an awe inspiring display of power. Within an hour most of the targeted websites were out for the count, throwing up error pages or not even loading at all.

“You feel censored yet? We sincerely hope you like your own medicine!” the hacker collective said in a comment directed at the FBI.

The full list of targets were:

• Department of Justice (Justice.gov)
• Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA.org)
• Universal Music (UniversalMusic.com)
• Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation (Anti-piracy.be/nl/)
• Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA.org)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI.gov)
• HADOPI law site (HADOPI.fr)
• U.S. Copyright Office (Copyright.gov)
• Universal Music France (UniversalMusic.fr)
• Senator Christopher Dodd (ChrisDodd.com)
• Vivendi France (Vivendi.fr)
• The White House (Whitehouse.gov)
• BMI (BMI.com)
• Warner Music Group (WMG.com)

Universal Music’s website is currently down for maintenance, although it’s uncertain whether that is related to Anonymous’ DDoS attacks yesterday. While I’m writing this article, the RIAA website won’t even load, the HADOPI law site is displaying a page saying the site is offline due to technical problems and the French website of Universal Music is displaying errors on page loads due to excessive page requests. Even Warner Music Group’s website is refusing to load occasionally as well.

I can’t help but think of the timing of the FBI’s arrests for Megaupload staff. Just the day after the largely peaceful outcry against the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation, which was a huge success, with various Senators withdrawing support for the bills.

After public support had all but eroded they needed something to justify their fight against piracy and 'cyber criminals' to the masses. Has Anonymous just inadvertently fallen into that trap?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/47115-anonymous-goes-on-ddos-rampage-after-megaupload-shutdown.html

 

[hitech0101]

Surprised they didn't do it yersterday when SOPA was being discussed.

 

[Guest]

lolololol.

enjoy butt rape prison you pirate a-holes!

 

[CrisisDog]

Awesome.

 

[mevans336]

I am concerned that this brand of "hackivism" is not going to accomplish much but embolden lobbyists to push for further legislation; and the next time it may be to allow the government to turn off an individual's service to the internet if your IP is detected in a DDoS flood.

Unless there is super-secret research on the horizon on DDoS attack mitigation, I'm not sure what choice Anonymous is giving law enforcement. Trying to throw bandwidth at the problem is a losing battle, as Anonymous seems to be able to increase their botnet power faster than most websites can keep up.

 

[Guest]

Lee, this is not objective journalism. Techspot writers usually do better than this, you sound like you came from Neowin.

"an awe inspiring display of power"
This is your personal opinion.


"After public support had all but eroded they needed something to justify their fight against piracy and 'cyber criminals' to the masses. "
This is a completely unsubstantiated claim.

 

[Guest]

The page is comparable to a personal column in any newspaper, it's partly meant to be the author's opinion.

 

[captaincranky]

OK, let's get real! Anybody that runs around calling himself, "Kim Dotcom", should be arrested for felony bad taste and egomania.

 

[Leeky]

Lee, this is not objective journalism. Techspot writers usually do better than this, you sound like you came from Neowin.

Thank you for the feedback.

"an awe inspiring display of power"
This is your personal opinion.

This is fact. Knocking out one server which highly likely has multiple redundancies, as well as additional protection to reduce the effect of DDoS attacks in a very short space of time is a feat in itself. Doing that to 14 different websites inside a few hours is without question wielding an enormous amount of power. Reports suggest Anonymous were launching an attack on some websites within 15 minutes of the news breaking.

For a loosely-knit group of hackers, that is a display worthy of the comment I made. It would be impossible for someone at least half informed not to feel they sent a strong message.

I realise no server is infallible in regards to DDoS protection, but these websites have been targets for a while now, and will have put policies in place to further protect themselves from DDoS attacks.

"After public support had all but eroded they needed something to justify their fight against piracy and 'cyber criminals' to the masses. "
This is a completely unsubstantiated claim.

Its not unsubstantiated at all. Public support in general is against SOPA and PIPA.

The withdrawal by over a dozen Senators from the proposed Protect IP Act as it is currently written on Wednesday highlights the general consensus of the constituents in their respective localities.

My point in the article was the timing of the FBI raid on Megaupload. It was almost perfect in respect to the timing after the events of the previous day. It is entirely possible authorities predicted the response it would receive, and therefore timed it exactly when they did as a means to provide further evidence of the legislation being required further down the line. Time will tell on that, as always.

 

[Guest]

This article is all personal. Right down to posting the video. Nothing from the other side. No quotes from DoJ as to how they feel about the attacks. In fact it seems nobody nowhere has been quoted from the "Law" side of this extravaganza. Of course anything they would say would be deemed an insult to the Anonymous and would cause them to retaliate further.

 

[fimbles]

Censorship is bad.

The actions taken to fight the censors may not be to your taste. But at least someone stood up to fight.

 

[Guest]

"This is fact."

It is not fact. Something like this cannot be a fact. It can be a fact that someone said it was awe inspiring and you can quote them, but an event cannot be inherently awe inspiring.

Like the previous person posted, it is all personal. This is ok, I suppose, if that is your intention. But, I typically enjoy techspot over sites like slashgear and neowin because techspot will leave out this sort of thing and report in a more objective manner.

"they needed something to justify their fight"
This is speculation and conjecture. Have you interviewed anyone from the senate, house, mpaa, riaa? No; you have made an assumption. Just because public support is obvious doesn't lead to these conclusions, and even if it did, that is not your job as a journalist to come to the conclusions. You report the news and let the readers come to conclusions.

I didn't mean to get rough. You can pass this all off if you don't consider that to be your job, or consider yourself a journalist. Maybe that is the case.

 

[Chazz]

They launched attacks within 15 minutes. Meaning they probably didn't even read the Indictment. Doesn't sound worthy of praise to me. Jumping to conclusions is never a good thing.

 

[Leeky]

I didn't mean to get rough. You can pass this all off if you don't consider that to be your job, or consider yourself a journalist. Maybe that is the case.

I do not feel I have caused any misinterpretation in this article, though in hindsight it is a little more "opinionated" than coverage I normally write.

I'll take your comments into consideration when writing future news coverage. Once again thank you for the feedback.

 

[Mister_K]

chazz said:
They launched attacks within 15 minutes. Meaning they probably didn't even read the Indictment. Doesn't sound worthy of praise to me. Jumping to conclusions is never a good thing.

With people who have issues with their reading skills, probably it will take more then 15 minutes to read but these are hackers, whether mild, advanced or newbies (script kiddies or what ever some people call them) I am sure they read quite fast.

Took me 5 minutes to read, though I skimmed through some bits ...

 

[Guest]

GREAT Job Anonymous !

 

[andy06shake]

Good going Anonymous, F**k them up good and proper!!!!

 

[Guest]

Isnt it funny. A loose knit group of cyber-****** crashes some websites. Yea thats going to change public opinion.....not! Really the ANON ppl are pretty damn dumb in general. AT some point everything you do on a computer is tracked somehow and someway. Eventually they are going to get caught. So you crashed some websites whoopee!! ANON's actions are no more effective then
a little kid prank calling someone. If ANON wants to be taken seriously they need to take actions that do little more then inconvence ppl. It looks more like ANON is throwing a temper tantrum then doing anything radical. WAH! WAH! You arrested someone!! So im going to DDoS your websites. ANON seems to forget that the world ran non stop before the internet. And if the internet goes down...I guess ppl will have to actually do something radical....face to face communication lol.

 

[bugejakurt]

mevans336 said:
I am concerned that this brand of "hackivism" is not going to accomplish much but embolden lobbyists to push for further legislation; and the next time it may be to allow the government to turn off an individual's service to the internet if your IP is detected in a DDoS flood.

Unless there is super-secret research on the horizon on DDoS attack mitigation, I'm not sure what choice Anonymous is giving law enforcement. Trying to throw bandwidth at the problem is a losing battle, as Anonymous seems to be able to increase their botnet power faster than most websites can keep up.

Very well said!

 

[Guest]

"This article is all personal. Right down to posting the video. Nothing from the other side. No quotes from DoJ as to how they feel about the attacks. In fact it seems nobody nowhere has been quoted from the "Law" side of this extravaganza. Of course anything they would say would be deemed an insult to the Anonymous and would cause them to retaliate further."

Guest, if you appose SOPA, PIPA, or ACTA what have u done to fight?

 

[Timonius]

And HOW do we know this is 'two' different groups exactly?

 

[shamus087]

I love Anonymous, they're great.

I like the article.

 

[Guest]

What is appose anyway ?

KUDOS to Anon

 

[theusmale2]

right on!!

 

[Guest]

ANON is doing a great job in my opinion making people think about what their actuly doing by crashing those site's they basicly said look this is what your planning on doing to the world... If SOPA, PIPA actuly do go through... well u can basicly wave good by to the internet... well atleast any freedom the government deems unworthy of your viewing...

 

[Chazz]

artix said:

chazz said:
They launched attacks within 15 minutes. Meaning they probably didn't even read the Indictment. Doesn't sound worthy of praise to me. Jumping to conclusions is never a good thing.

With people who have issues with their reading skills, probably it will take more then 15 minutes to read but these are hackers, whether mild, advanced or newbies (script kiddies or what ever some people call them) I am sure they read quite fast.

Took me 5 minutes to read, though I skimmed through some bits ...

Reading skills has nothing to do with it. It will take time for multiple people to read, understand, form a consensus and then plan a coordinated attack. With the speed of this I'm quite sure this was just a knee jerk reaction to reading a article.