Immediately after the DOJ took down a number of file sharing sites, the hacker group named Anonymous hit the U.S. Department of Justice, Recording Industry of America, Motion Picture Association of America and Universal Music, with denial of service attacks.
On Thursday afternoon, Anonymous claimed credit for cyberattacks that knocked offline the websites of the U.S. Department of Justice, Recording Industry of America, Motion Picture Association of America and Universal Music. The so-called denial of service attacks that overwhelmed those sites with junk traffic came less than an hour after the Justice Department announced the takedown of the Mega sites, along with the arrest of former hacker and Mega founder Kim Dotcom and six others, who are being indicted on charges of copyright infringement and money laundering.
“One thing is certain: EXPECT US!,” wrote the Anonymous-linked Anonops Twitter feed Thursday just after the Mega raid, adding a hashtag for Megaupload.
“Anonymous/Megaupload backlash update: http://RIAA.ORG is now Tango Down,” wrote the Twitter feed Anonnews less than one hour later, as other Anonymous feeds claimed credit for downing Justice.gov and Universalmusic.com.
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The raid on the Mega sites, which were massively popular among Anonymous’ young, copyright-flouting contingent of the Web, come just as the Internet is mobilized for protest against Hollywood’s copyright regime. Wednesday marked a largely successful day of protest against the copyright-enforcing Stop Online Piracy and the Protect IP Act, with Reddit, Wikipedia and other popular sites going dark in protest of the bills. The Department of Justice’s raid on the Mega sites just a day later must seem to many in the anti-copyright movement as a retaliatory move aimed at showing that even without SOPA or PIPA, law enforcement can take action against sites that Hollywood accuses of copyright infringement.
Updates from Forbes show that The U.S. Copyright office and FBI.gov were also hit hard by the group.
Here is a question to think on: If the U.S. Government cannot protect their own sites from a group of hackers, how safe do we feel about their capabilities in protecting our Internet against cyber terrorism coming from our enemies?
Hat Tip Candice Lanier's Tech News.