Anonymous, the hacker collective hacktivist group, is once again planning to target Facebook in an attack scheduled on Jan. 28 - at least, that's what a video uploaded to Youtube on Monday was claiming in the name of the hacker network.
"An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people and the government of the United States," the video begins. "While SOPA and PIPA may be postponed from Congress, this doesn't guarantee that our Internet rights will be upheld."
Following the U.S. government shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload on Friday, Anonymous attacked the U.S. Department of Justice's website, among others.
Monday's Youtube video calls on the American people to participate in the hack by downloading Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), the tool that was successfully used to target the U.S.' Department of Justice. LOIC crashes websites by sending thousands of information packets to their servers.
The video gives instructions for downloading and running the program, as well as a time - 12 a.m. on Jan. 28 - to launch the attack. No time zone, however, is distinguished.
"Would you like to become part of the greatest Internet protests and first official cyber war?" the video asks. "Operation Global Blackout is ongoing and everyone can be a part of it."
Facebook is one of the world's largest websites, operating through thousands of servers located across the world. In the video, Anonymous acknowledges the difficulties of attacking such a large site.
"While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to bring it down," says the Anonymous voice. "Anonymous needs the help of the people."
YouTube commenters have raised an important question, "Why would Anonymous want to crash Facebook, after the site came out against SOPA and PIPA?"
The video essentially equates the privately-owned company with the U.S. government, with no explanation for the linkage. CNET postulates that Zuckerberg took too long to voice his opposition, landing his social network a spot on the potential targets list.
The global network of hacktivists had made this threat before, and promised to shut down the site on Nov. 5, 2011, over user privacy concerns. Ultimately, no attack was executed. And although there was a spam attack, it came out on a later date and was immediately neutralized by Facebook. The loosely-connected hacker network called the threat the work of peripheral members.
In the fall of 2010, the hacktivist hacker collective group "Anonymous" started Operation Payback, the longest and most widespread attack on anti-piracy groups, lawyers and lobbyists in history.
Initially, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) assaults were started against the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and anti-piracy company AiPlex Software because these outfits had targeted The Pirate Bay.
Those DDoS attacks were later replicated against many other targets that have spoken out against piracy or for copyright, resulting in widespread media coverage.
Last week, the tag #OperationPayback is appearing once again in several places as "Anonymous" is once again targeting anti-piracy outfits who managed to strike against The Pirate Bay.
Earlier last week, the site of the Finnish CIAPC (Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre) went dark after they won a Pirate Bay blockade, and today the same happened to the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN (Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland) who won a similar case.
The Pirate Bay, meanwhile, is encouraging users in the blocked countries to get prepared to use TOR (The Union Router) or a VPN (Virtual Private Network).
But they may not even have to...
In the Netherlands, the local Pirate Party already set up a proxy at tpb.piratenpartij.nl, and they are determined to provide Dutch users access to the torrent sites in the future.
The hacktivist collective Anonymous now targets the UC Davis police officer who was filmed casually pepper-spraying passive students protesters.
A new 10-minute video attributed to the shadowy "hacktivist" group threatens the officer directly and and publicize his personal contact information, including his cell phone number and an alleged home address.
The voicemail on the working cell number for Lt. John Pike was full Tuesday.
"Dear Officer John Pike, we are Anonymous. Your information is now public domain," a computer-generated voice narrating the Anonymous video states.
"Expect our full wrath," the voice continues as viral video of the Friday incident plays in the background. "Anonymous seeks to avenge all protesters... We are going to make you squeal like a pig."
The ominous message, which ends with a photo of Lt. Pike and the sounds of shrieking pigs, makes no excuse for exposing Pike to potential reprisals. Moreover, Anonymous urge people to harass the said officer.
"We have no problem targeting police and releasing their information even if it puts them at risk because we want them to experience just a taste of the brutality and misery they serve us on an everyday basis," it says.
UC Davis authorities were aware of the Anonymous threat Tuesday, a source in the campus police department said.
The source declined to comment further, referring questions to a spokeswoman who was not immediately available.
University officials and campus police are facing an angry backlash from students and protesters associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement who are demanding the firing of Pike and others involved in the confrontation.
Widely circulated videos show Pike calmly spraying a bright orange stream of police-grade pepper spray into the faces of protesters sitting on the ground with arms linked.
The image of his outstretched arm has become an internet meme, cut and pasted into iconic scenes of serenity including a photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono lying in bed.
Since the incident, two unidentified UC Davis police officers and the police chief have been placed on administrative leave.
This is just a recap of last week's news regarding Facebook porn attack. Facebook users had been facing awkward moments as graphic images of sexual and violent posts turn up in their feeds, but who's behind this attack? How did this "porn and gore" problem" manage to manifest on a site supposedly well protected?
It was reported that Facebook users who innocently clicked a tempting link inadvertently flooded their feeds with extremely graphic images of sex acts, mutilated animals and people, and even "Jesus porn," which were automatically posted for all their friends to see. Angry users took to Twitter to vent their disgust with "unstoppable torrents of hardcore pornography and gory, violent pictures," and threaten to decamp to Google+. Facebook acknowledged the issue, blaming it on a "coordinated spam attack," and said it was fixing the problem. But who's to blame for Facebook's flood of photos of dead dogs, Justin Bieber photoshopped into compromising positions, and naked octogenarians?
The week's editorial staff has 4 theories:
Theory 1: Blame Anonymous
What is anonymous? Who are they? Actually, there is little information about this group, but they are a group of hackers that practice online activism, they are what we call "hacktivist." Previously, they have threatened to destroy Facebook on November 5, however, this attack did not took place, as it was said that there was no signal from their leader, and that this attack hasn't been decided by all of its members, but by only a fraction of them. Their reason was "Facebook has been selling 'sensitive' user information to government agencies and giving secret access to security firms so that they can spy on Facebook users — as all data is stored on Facebook's servers and can be accessed at anytime." According to Kevin Parrish in Tom's Guide, Anonymous did threaten to attack Facebook using a powerful "Guy Fawkes virus" they developed. That virus purportedly takes control of your Facebook account and then infects your friends' accounts.
Anonymous threatens to destroy Facebook.
Anonymous announces operation to release Guy Fawkes virus on Facebook.
Anonymous had posted videos, "blatantly admitting to the Facebook attack." I buy it, says Adrian Chen in Gawker. "Spamming gore and porn is definitely one of Anonymous' trademark moves."
Theory 2: No other hackers are behind this
"I find it hard to believe that Anonymous would stoop to this," says Chris Matyszczyk in CNET News. And "indeed, Facebook told CNET it knows who is responsible" for this malicious, massive spam attack, and is readying legal action. Even if Anonymous is not officially behind this, says Emil Protalinski in ZDNet, it only takes a few "ex-members to pull something like this off."
Theory 3: Blame Facebook itself
The flood of violent and pornographic photos and video links is actually "the type of spam we've seen on Facebook before," says Protalinski, only now it's "coming in at a much faster pace." Even the link bait is the same — "Kim Kardashian, etc.," says Violet Blue in ZDNet. So what's changed? "Facebook's recent timeline upgrades" make that spam easier to propagate. And while grannies and impressionable teens are the ones being exposed to this thrash, the attack is "a bizarrely clever slap at the one thing Facebook is such an extreme hypocrite about": Adult content.
Additionally, note that Facebook Developers module can also serve as an entry point for such attacks. It has happened before, only that this is the big one.
Theory 4: Blame the gullible users
Hackers couldn't have done this without the help of easily fooled Facebook users. "My own Facebook news feed is image-spam free," says Kashmir Hill in Forbes. Why? My Facebook friends and I apparently aren't "unwise enough" to fall for the bait. Unless you click on links in messages like "OMG, I can't believe Kim did this" or "Wow, I can't believe you did this in this video. I LOLed," you and your friends won't "end up with naked grandmas and photoshopped teen idols in your feed."
This is true as most Facebook users who aren't familiar with spam usually bite the bait. Most especially if the bait is intriguing, eye-catching, or popular. The worst part on this is that once one of them caught the bait, it is shared on the news feed, and when friends see it, they also join in. Sometimes, they simply comment, which is still unwise, because by commenting, although they didn't fall in the trap, they could still risk their friends who would be able to see the link with the comment.
