The Evil New Tactic Behind Anonymous' Massive Megaupload Revenge Attack


The Department of Justice, MPAA and Universal Music websites have all been taken down in the past hour as part of Operation Megaupload, which is shaping up to be the biggest Anonymous campaign in months.

Here's one reason they've been able to muster so much firepower: Anonymous members are distributing a link that ropes internet users into an illegal DDoS attack against these websites simply by clicking it. The link is being shared widely on Twitter and in Anonymous chat rooms, often with no context except that it relates to Operation Megaload. I clicked it a few minutes ago because it was being spammed in an Anonymous chatroom and found myself instantly DDoSing, my computer rapidly pinging the page with no way to stop except quickly closing the window.



This is completely evil and could lead to huge numbers of witless internet users inadvertently attacking, say, the Department of Justice by clicking a random link they stumble across on Twitter. It may greatly increase the effectiveness of today's attacks, but it also renders them largely meaningless. Anonymous' previous attacks had what political power they had because they were acts of conscious protest; participants knew what they were getting into. This recent round seems to be not much better than a Facebook worm. The safest thing now would be to avoid clicking anything to do with operation megaupload or Anonymous—especially if it's a mysterious Pastehtml link.

Friday Morning Update: Ten websites were taken down in all, including, according to TIME. Anonymous also boasts that "5,635 people [were] confirmed using #LOIC to bring down sites" during the attack—no word on how many of those were unwilling participants.