A hacking group simply identifying itself as "Anonymous" has taken credit for a recent string of high-profile cyber attacks against the websites of businesses, banks and politicians that have either spoken out against or stopped doing business with whistleblowing site,
WikiLeaks.
Since Monday of this week, targets have included Swiss financial institution PostFinance,
Joe Lieberman, Sarah Palin,
MasterCard, Visa, Paypal and, most recently, Amazon.com.
While the group's members are, like their namesake, anonymous, this recent bout of attacks isn't the first of its kind by those involved.
Anonymous
Anonymous has claimed responsibility for cyber attacks against various targets since 2006, including a well-documented series of attacks against the
Church of Scientology in 2008.
You'll recall that early in 2008, a video featuring Tom Cruise that was produced by the Church of Scientology found its way onto
YouTube somehow and was removed after the organization accused YouTube of copyright infringement. In retaliation for what it deemed as censorship, Anonymous launched a series of attacks against the Scientology website and organized several in-person protests at Scientology centers.
The group's name, Anonymous, is believed to be a nod to the
4chan internet forums. Members are permitted to post forum topics under the name "Anonymous," which may be part of the reason our own Lev Grossman half-jokingly
described the site as "a wretched hive of scum and villainy."
Though the content contained on 4chan can definitely get a bit rough around the edges, the site has spawned some of the more memorable internet memes in recent history—
Rickrolling being one of the most popular—and has an uncanny ability to mobilize its users for or against certain causes.
While some members of Anonymous may also be 4chan members, a person believed to be involved with the @Op_Payback Twitter account
told Mashable, "Make sure everyone knows that we are not 4CHAN. 4CHAN has nothing to do with this."
Operation Payback
Anonymous launched what it calls Operation Payback in September of this year, with the goal of disrupting targets that it sees as overly aggressive when attempting to enforce copyright law.
The group has taken down the websites of the
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in recent months, accompanied by attacks on a pair of KISS front man Gene Simmons' websites after
he advised attendees at a media industry convention to "Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don't let anybody cross that line," in response to piracy.
In the past week, Anonymous has shifted its Operation Payback efforts towards banks that have blocked payments to WikiLeaks or frozen WikiLeaks' assets, and has gone after several companies that have recently stopped doing business with WikiLeaks.
Operation Avenge Assange
It appears that Operation Payback has spawned a new initiative known as Operation Avenge Assange. A
recently-created flyer from the group says that WikiLeaks founder "
Julian Assange deifies everything we hold dear" and urges people to "spread the current leaked cables" and even to "upvote" Assange on TIME's 2010
Person of the Year list.
The flyer also indicates that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks will be planned and, indeed, several have already been carried out against companies such as Paypal, Visa and MasterCard—with
Amazon next.
A spokesperson for the group
told The Guardian the following:
"We're against corporations and government interfering on the internet. We believe it should be open and free for everyone. Governments shouldn't try to censor because they don't agree with it.
"Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any from of censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with."
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
The methods used by groups like Anonymous to take down its target websites vary in scope, but many fall under the umbrella of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
DDoS attacks are generally automated, highly-repetitive requests by a large number of individual computers for access to certain files or pages on a target website to the point that the servers running the website get overloaded and either slow to a crawl or shut down.
Supporters of Anonymous' initiatives use software known as the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) that's generally used by network administrators to stress test their networks. However, Anonymous uses a modified version of the software that lets users target a specific website en masse and basically stress test it repeatedly until it stops functioning.
Recent Attacks
Recent attacks against websites under the guise of Operation Avenge Assange have been as follows:
Monday 12/6
PostFinance: Swiss bank accused of freezing WikiLeaks assets
Tuesday 12/7
Swedish Prosecution Authority: Issued warrant for Assange's arrest in London
EveryDNS: Handled the routing of traffic to WikiLeaks.org website but stopped providing service after being overloaded with traffic and DDoS attacks against WikiLeaks
Wednesday 12/8
Joe Lieberman: Attempted to stop WikiLeaks from releasing recent diplomatic cables
MasterCard: Stopped WikiLeaks payment processing services
Borgstrom and Borstrom: Swedish law firm representing the two women who have accused Assange of inappropriate sexual contact
Visa: Stopped WikiLeaks payment processing services
Sarah Palin:
Referred to Assange as "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands."
Thursday 12/9
Paypal: Stopped WikiLeaks payment processing services and froze WikiLeaks assets (assets
have since been released)
Amazon.com: Removed WikiLeaks documents from its servers, and is selling WikiLeaks documents
as a Kindle e-book
UPDATE: It looks like the group's attack on Amazon.com has been called off. A representative apparently told Mashable, "With the Amazon attack, they are simply toooo big for us right now. Maybe at a later time we can try again with them."
