Anonymous hacks Justice Department to hit back against Megaupload shut-down
Hacktivist group Anonymous hacked the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday, in the escalating fight against anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA.
An indictment has been made against file-sharing giant Megaupload, which was taken down on Thursday by the U.S. government.
Accused of costing copyright holders over 500 million dollars in lost revenue, the site issued a statement before being shut down, arguing that allegations made against it were “grotesquely overblown”.
The Justice Department issued a statement saying that four individuals involved with Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand on Thursday, the day after thousands of websites temporarily shut themselves down in protest of proposed acts SOPA and PIPA. The acts have been deemed as promoting media censorship, as well as stifling creativity and freedom of expression.
Megaupload hosts millions of files uploaded by users in order to be shared easily across the web. In their statement the site notes “that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate” and goes on to say that if the “content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas.”
In a matter of hours, hacker group “Anonymous” struck out in retaliation, taking down the Department of Justice and Universal Music Group’s websites, as well as that of the Recording Industry Association of America. A member of the group is quoted in saying “more is coming” and that Anonymous, as well as other groups working in cooperation with it, intend to “damage campaign raising abilities of remaining Democrats who support SOPA.”.
Shortly afterwards, attacks were made on the Whitehouse website, Copyright.gov, BMI.com, as well as that of the Motion Picture Association of America and the FBI.
The attack quickly escalated into the largest such action in Anonymous' history, with over 5000 people using LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon, an open source program enabling those without hacking skills to perform denial of service attacks on target websites) to take down several pro SOPA/PIPA, media, and government websites.
"Let's just say, for #SOPA supporters their #SOPAblackout is today. #Anonymous."
@YourAnonNews, an Anonymous affiliated Twitter feed.