Over the weekend, a small fringe group of hackers from the infamous collective Anonymous announced its intention, via online video, to bring down the New York Stock Exchange website October 10.
Traditional media quickly picked up on the story, but like all Anonymous groups, this one doesn’t speak for the rest of them. In fact, other Anonymous groups have come out to disagree with the proposed “mission.”
The two-minute video calling for the attack on the NYSE website was uploaded on October 2, and appears to be made in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The narrator, who uses a text to speech program a la Stephen Hawking, states:
“We witness the government enforcing the laws that punish the 99 percent while allowing the 1 percent to escape justice, unharmed, for their crimes against the people.”
“We have observed this same government failing to enforce even the minimal legal restraints of Wall Street’s abuses. This government who has willingly ignored the greed at Wall Street has even bailed out the perpetrators that have caused our crisis.”
“We will show the world that we are true to our word. On Oct. 10, NYSE shall be erased from the Internet. On Oct. 10, expect a day that will never, ever be forgotten.”
The group plans on “erasing the NYSE [website] from the Internet” by using LOIC or, “Low Orbit Ion Canon,” an application that allows even non-technical volunteers to add themselves to a horde of computers that make repeated requests to one target server. The technique, known as a “Distributed Denial of Service” or “DDoS,” overwhelms a site with traffic to bring it down.
So far the video has been viewed over 70,000 times and has collected a little over 350 comments, many of which question whether such a move would be beneficial to the Occupy Wall Street movement. (Other YouTubers were quick to point out that the url nyse.com isn’t connected to actual trading servers, while others reminded this Anon group that LOIC is easily traceable.)
Anonymous members over on AnonNews.org seem to agree that such a move would be detrimental to Occupy Wall Street.
They’ve issued a press release condemning the idea, saying it would be “irresponsible and you would be signing your own ticket to jail.” The press release said that disrupting the NYSE website would bring Occupy Wall Street more bad press, which is something they want to avoid.
No word yet on whether the Anonymous group who made the video will continue its plans for October 10th, but support from other Anonymous groups isn’t high.
AnonOps, the Twitter profile of Anonymous Operations at Occupy Wall Street, tweeted 20 hours ago, along with a Fox News news link about the NYSE video:
“We’ll say it clear: We won’t hack Wall Street. Please FBI invest the resources in better things!”
Image credit robertpflynn
