By now, most of us already have some idea about the notorious decentralized activist group of hackers collectively known as ‘Anonymous’. For those of you who don’t, Anonymous is a global organization of online activists that come together in protest under a common agenda from time to time. The groups primary method of action is the DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack, where thousands of anon members clog a website server, rendering it inaccessible. The group claims it is under no leadership, and mostly members interact through shady chat room websites or image forums such as 4chan. ‘Anon’ first rose to prominence through such coordinated attacks as ‘Operation Tunisia’ and the Paypal website attack, but perhaps they are most widely known through their role in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Now, after the recent Megaupload crackdown, Anonymous has retaliated by carrying out a massive online attack on many American websites. Just hours after the international arrests of some of Megaupload.com’s webmasters, websites of the The Department of Justice (DoJ), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and even the FBI were brought down by coordinated DDOS attacks. Anon members claim that this was their largest online attack to date, with reports of more than 5000 people being involved.
Anon’s actions are primarily portrayed as a protest to maintain the Internets neutrality and freedom, and come just a day after the protest of hundreds of websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit over the impending SOPA legislation under deliberation in the US senate. It is now worthy of speculation what ramifications the attacks will have on the future of Megaupload.com, one of the webs largest file-hosting sites.
