Anonymous Threatens the Internet With "Operation Blackout"

[unicorn69]

The Escapist : News : Anonymous Threatens Internet With "Operation Blackout"

Andy Chalk | 29 March 2012 5:43 pm

Anonymous has promised to blow up the entire internet at the end of the month.

You might want to stock up on freeze-dried food and 5.56mm ammunition over the next day or so, or at the very least a book or two you've been putting off, because Anonymous, the wild ghost riders of the internet, are pulling the plug on March 31.

"To protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, on March 31, anonymous will shut the Internet down," a message on Pastebin warns. To be precise, Anonymous isn't actually trying to "kill" the internet, a fact the message readily admits. Instead, it's just going to make it a pain in the ass to use for awhile.

"In order to shut the Internet down, one thing is to be done. Down the 13 root DNS servers of the Internet. By cutting these off the Internet, nobody will be able to perform a domain name look-up, thus, disabling the HTTP Internet, which is, after all, the most widely used function of the Web," the message explains. "Anybody entering 'https://www.google.com' or ANY other url, will get an error page, thus, they will think the Internet is down, which is close enough. Remember, this is a protest, we are not trying to 'kill' the Internet, we are only temporarily shutting it down where it hurts the most."

Technical details about how "Operation Blackout" will work, as well as instructions on taking part [which, to be clear, I am absolutely not encouraging anyone to do] are included in the message. "It may only last one hour, maybe more, maybe even a few days," the message says. "No matter what, it will be global. It will be known." It concludes with the usual rambling justification for shenanigans and of course the "We are Anonymous etc." boilerplate.

Can this work? It sounds reasonable enough, at least for those of us who don't know what "the ramp linux client is located under the ramplinux folder and needs a working installation of python and scapy" means, but I'm sure the more technically adroit among us will ride in soon enough with reassurances that it's all a bunch of impossibly nonsensical technobabble and we have nothing to worry about. Or, conversely, that the end of the world is nigh. Either way, we'll find out for sure on Saturday!

[IMG]https://cdn.themis-medi*****m/media/global/images/library/deriv/80/80635.jpg[/IMG]

[Paul]

dafuq anonymous. simply dafuq.

[Terio]

well... we are saturday
internet is still on...
probably going to be like the Operation facebook...

[Atrox]

troll operation is troll

[[MPGH]Ethereal]

Operation gay.

They aren't going to do jack shit.
Maybe if more of them were actually hackers, and not a bunch of 13 year old fags that learned how to ddos

[unicorn69]

well... we are saturday
internet is still on...
probably going to be like the Operation facebook...

https://news.yahoo.com/anonymous-prob...112339461.html

Anonymous Probably Won't Shut Down the Internet This Weekend

By Alex Fitzpatrick | Mashable – Fri, Mar 30, 2012

Twitter handles associated with Anonymous are suggesting that "Operation Blackout," a rumored attempt to shut down the Internet scheduled for March 31, was never an officially sanctioned plan.

Operation Blackout calls for a highly-focused Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on what it said are the Internet's 13 root Domain Name System (DNS) servers. It was announced in February as a protest against SOPA, Wall Street and "our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world."

[More from Mashable: A History of Hacktivism [INFOGRAPHIC]]

The release suggested such an attack would temporarily disable the DNS system, which turns a web address such as "www.mashable.com" into an IP address that directs a user's browser to the proper server. That's not exactly the same as taking down the entire Internet, but Anonymous said that didn't matter.

"Anybody entering 'https://www.google.com' or ANY other url, will get an error page, thus, they will think the Internet is down, which is, close enough," reads the release. "Remember, this is a protest, we are not trying to 'kill' the Internet, we are only temporarily shutting it down where it hurts the most."

[More from Mashable: Obama Gets More Online Visitors Than GOP Candidates Combined]

As the weekend drew nearer,Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous denied such an attack was on the horizon.

What is this #OperationGlobalBlackout nonsense? I thought we settled this back in February? It won't happen. Stop asking us about it! >.<

— Anonymous (@yourAnonNews) March 29, 2012

For the billionth time: #Anonymous will not shut down the Internet on 31 March. #OpGlobalBlackout is just another #OpFacebook failop. #yawn

— Anonymous (@yourAnonNews) March 30, 2012

The account also argued that such an attack would be self-defeating. If Anonymous shut down the web, it would be removing the forum the group uses to express its political and ideological grievances.

Think for a moment: Why would #Anonymous shut down our playground, the Internet? Really, how would that help ANY of us? #NextQuestion

— Anonymous (@yourAnonNews) March 30, 2012

Even though this account is backing off "Operation Blackout," Anonymous prides itself on its leaderless structure -- so an operation may be carried out by a small handful of members in the group's name. However, even if Anonymous (or part of Anonymous) attempted such an attack, many cybersecurity experts doubt it would be successful.

"It's not even technically feasible," says Dave Marcus, director of security research at McAfee Labs. According to Marcus, the DNS system has a great deal of redundancy, security and load-balancing measures in place.

"That doesn’t mean if they tried, there wouldn't be odd consequences with routers and other things like that," says Marcus. "But they’re not going to be able to knock the DNS servers offline. The thing that would worry me is what would happen to traffic along the way. Let's say you can't get to an exit on expressway that you want to get to, and everyone else is trying to get there as well. It creates odd routing problems and unintended consequences."

Marcus added that Anonymous would need tens of thousands of connections (or botnets) to even attempt such an attack, a number likely to be beyond their capabilities.

Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFare, pointed out that the idea of DNS relying on only 13 servers is a fallacy.

"There are hundreds of other servers scattered across multiple locations," says Prince. "Those servers are regularly under attack, they’ve sustained fairly massive attacks launched against them and they are run fully redundantly. I think the likelihood anyone could knock the root server system offline is extremely low."

Prince added that Anonymous once unsuccessfully tried to take down Amazon -- and if Amazon could withstand an attack, the DNS system certainly could. If need be, says Prince, outside organizations like his would "step up" to host backup DNS servers.

"I think you would see other organizations stepping up to add additional resources to mitigate an attack," says Prince. "There are more good guys on the Internet than bad guys -- and we’d bind together fairly quickly to ensure the Internet continued to run."

SEE ALSO: The Evolution of Anonymous

Do you think Operation Blackout is an officially-sanctioned Anonymous event, or is it just a rumor? Sound off in the comments below.

1. CIA Website

Hacked: CIA website, in addition to several international law enforcement accounts Date of Incident: Feb. 3, 2012 What's Known: Anonymous made Feb. 3, 2012 the "day of action" of coordinated efforts to take down several government web properties. In the CIA.gov hack, personal data from Alabama court papers -- Social Security numbers, birthdays and addresses -- were exposed. Confidential emails from a Mexican mining agency were also released. The same day, hackers forced their way into a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard, the UK's Metropolitan Police Service. The 16-minute call was posted on YouTube with the headline "Hacked for the Lulz." Arrests: British teens Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis were arrested in connection with the hacked conference call. British officials who gained possession of Cleary's hard drive described him as “a 15-year-old kid who’s basically just doing this all for attention and is a bit of an idiot." Image courtesy of Flickr, 4d4mbr0wn

Click here to view this gallery.
Images courtesy of Flickr, gaelx

This story originally published on Mashable here.

[Royce]

that^

[Kprizzy]

They can't take down ATT .

[[MPGH]Wyo]

Bullshit .

[Alen]

As if a collective made mostly of script kiddies could ever take down the root dns servers. What people don't seem to realize is that those things are meant to handle enough traffic to sustain the web, ain't no lil collective taking them down.

[FangedBeast]

How they will do this idk, but i support Anonymous' motto/aim

[XxDarkAngelzXx]

We are Anonymous.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
We are legion.
Expect us.

nigguhs b mad

[[MPGH]arunforce]

Oh look, it's March 31st and it's still up.

[Cole]

As if a collective made mostly of script kiddies could ever take down the root dns servers. What people don't seem to realize is that those things are meant to handle enough traffic to sustain the web, ain't no lil collective taking them down.

yah i didnt get that either
these servers were meant to handle more than the worlds population not to mention protocols in place to handle DDoS and an infinite amount of backup servers..

[Jigsaw]

>anonymous

Also stop c+p this shit please, we all can see how incapable you are to write your own texts about the subject.