Anonymous Takes Down CBS.com After Megaupload Raid
Hacktavist group Anonymous temporarily brought down the CBS website on Sunday, and has continued to attack several others. The attacks are presumably in retaliation for recent actions against file sharing sites, including the (now defunct) SOPA and PIPA legislation, and the arrest of the founder of file sharing site Megaupload.
The CBS attack was unusually powerful as it seems that the entire website was completely deleted, which would have required Anonymous to actually gain access to the CBS system. Anonymous normally uses DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, which don’t necessarily remove the website, but rather prevent it from functioning by flooding it with coordinated traffic.
Anonymous apparently also took down the website of Universal Music. UMG had been a vocal opponent of Megaupload, and had recently removed one of the sites videos from YouTube even though it had no authority to do so.
The group has made several other recent threats, including a claim that they will take down Facebook on Jan. 28. But without a central authority, it is difficult to identify legitimate threats from Anonymous; many, including several against Facebook, have passed without any action.
