'Anonymous' hackers claim to take down Justice Department, Universal Music websites

• Karuta wrote on 2012-01-20 04:48

  NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In one of the U.S. government's largest anti-piracy crackdowns ever, federal agents on Thursday arrested the leaders of and shut down Megaupload.com, a popular hub for illegal file sharing.
  
  Hours later, Megaupload's fans turned the table on the feds. "Hacktivist" collective Anonymous said it set its sights on the U.S. Department of Justice and apparently knocked the agency's website offline.
  
  "We are having website problems, but we're not sure what it's from," a DOJ spokeswoman told CNNMoney.
  
  The DOJ website glitches came soon after various Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous took aim at the agency.
  
  Anonymous's favorite weapon for these attacks is what's called a "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attack, which directs a flood of traffic to a website and temporarily crashes it by overwhelming its servers. It doesn't actually involve any hacking or security breaches.
  
  "One thing is certain: EXPECT US! #Megaupload" read one tweet from AnonOps that went out mid-afternoon.
  
  One hour later, the same account tweeted a victory message: "Tango down!
  http://universalmusic.com & http://www.justice.gov// #Megaupload"
  
  Universal Music's website also went down Thursday afternoon. The music company had been locked in a legal battle with Megaupload over a YouTube video that featured many of Universal Music's signed artists promoting Megaupload's site.
  
  The websites of the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America also went down Thursday afternoon. On Twitter, AnonOps took credit for the crashes.
  
  The Anonymous attack came soon after the DOJ announced the indictment of seven individuals connected to Megaupload for allegedly operating an "international organized criminal enterprise responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of copyrighted works."
  

  
  
  Source: http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/19/technology/megaupload_shutdown/
• Lolicon wrote on 2012-01-20 04:51
  Sh*t's going down, son.
• Kollin wrote on 2012-01-20 04:53

  Quote from Jerain;742279:

  Sh*t's going down, son.

  
  
  Literally.
• Ithiliel wrote on 2012-01-20 04:53
  I was wondering what Anonymous would do about this.
• Chiyuri wrote on 2012-01-20 04:55
  Don't take the resident of the internet lightly.
• Kollin wrote on 2012-01-20 04:56

  Quote from Chiyuri;742283:

  Don't take the resident of the internet lightly.

  
  
  Yup. We all have nothing better to do, so don't think we won't devote our lives to making things harder.
• Karuta wrote on 2012-01-20 05:00
  Apparenlty they just took these down as well, just happened so no official articles yet
  
  
  www.bmi.com
  www.utahchiefs.org
  www.copyright.gov
  www.riaa.org
  
  EDIT:
  if you would like to follow what their doing
  
  the hash tag on twitter is OpMegaupload
  
  

  [Image: http://puu.sh/dWqi]
• Blassreiter wrote on 2012-01-20 05:11
  I hope the Mabinogi hackers join in this brigade and leave Mabinogi forever alone. HIGH FIVE!! ..... Anyone?? Anyone?
  
  
  
  :fail3:
• Kingofrunes wrote on 2012-01-20 05:11
  They better be taking safety precautions because the government will be right on their asses in no time if they don't
• Karuta wrote on 2012-01-20 05:20
  Looks like they aren't done either as they said more sites are to go down.
  
  fbi.gov is the next to go down apparently, or already went down briefly.
  
  It's being said that nearly 27,000 computers (intentional and unintentional) are involved. One of the anon twitters confirmed earlier that 5,635 people participated in the attacks. Affected sites are bouncing in and out of life, and are at the very least super slow to load. Anon agents are currently trying to coordinate their DDoS attacks in the same direction via IRC.
• Sayoko wrote on 2012-01-20 05:26
  The Department of Justice has angered the sleeping dragon.
• Guyverunit4 wrote on 2012-01-20 05:27
  And so 2012 begins.
• Joker wrote on 2012-01-20 05:32
  HACK THE PLANET!!!!!!!!![SPOILER="Spoiler"]
  
  

  [Image: http://electrokami.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hackers-1995-hack-the-planet.jpg]

  [/SPOILER]
• Spartaaaaa wrote on 2012-01-20 05:36

  Quote from Blassreiter;742300:

  I hope the Mabinogi hackers join in this brigade and leave Mabinogi forever alone. HIGH FIVE!! ..... Anyone?? Anyone?
  
  
  
  :fail3:

  
  
  But then Nexon will start going after them!
• Karuta wrote on 2012-01-20 05:43
  http://www.wmg.com/ is now down.
  
  
  http://www.tweetwall.de/opMegaupload
  
  Using that is making it easy to follow what's going on. xD