Everyone's favorite site for sharing videos, music, photos & other files has come to an end because people have been suspected of sharing copyrighted materials. The founder "Kim Dotcom" was arrested for this matter along with 3 other Megaupload executive in a leased $30 million mansion at Coastville near Auckland on Friday, 20 January 2012. You can watch an official YouTube footage of the raid here.
After the US Government has seized the site, Anonymous supporters attacked the websites of the Department of Justice, the FBI and Universal Music Group, among others. The hacktivists used a technique called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) to overload their targets servers with web traffic and effectively force them offline.
“We sincerely hope you like your own medicine!,” it said in a comment directed at the FBI. This was written in an article "Anonymous attacks FBI websites over Megaupload raids" by Christopher Williams.
There are two types of program that promotes DDoS attack: LOIC & HOIC. What it does that the user 1st input the url which will automatically display the IP of it then a simple push of a button will flood that url servers with packets that lead to temporary shutdown. Depending on the number of servers, more people will need to target the same IP in order to shut it down. The site can come back up once the attacker decides to stop the DDoS.
The Anonymous decided to shutdown various US government sites after they seized Megaupload.
"We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn't think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us," they wrote on website Pastebin.
Speaking of music industry sites, when I payed a visit to those sources, I sometimes get a funny looking banner & a weird music playing in the background with nothing to click on. Whenever a source is hacked, you'll get an update on either facebook or tweeter from @AnonOps saying, "Anonymous Victory!", with a link of the hacked source.
New Zealand’s police website police.govt.nz has also allegedly been targeted by the group after as Dotcom, Batato and two others were arrested in Auckland by the authorities carrying out warrants on behalf of the US for pirate material. The website will give a common error "The server is not responding"
"Megaupload was taken down w/out SOPA being law. Now imagine what will happen if it passes. The Internet as we know it will end. FIGHT BACK," wrote @YourAnonNews on Twitter in a reference to the ongoing battle in Congress over the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). This caught the protesters attention and those who were hackers decided to shutdown the government. Megaupload had a premium service so that members can download files with no restrictions compared those who are freebies. Now members couldn't get a refund from their account since it was seized.
There is another article regarding the Anti-piracy laws, "What are SOPA & PIPA? Why all the fuss?" by Larry Magid where he describes & explains it. To summarize the whole thing, the 2 laws are used to put an end to online piracy just like ACTA. People were creating a lot of fuss about it because they fear about the heavy online surveillance & what will happen to the freedom of internet. If your website causes a minor violation of the law then it could lead to censorship or even banned.
Google & Wikipedia was blacked out for 24 hours to get everyone's attention of the protest against these laws & they have to sign a petition to stop this law from going into effect. Ask yourself! What will happen to our privacy? Internet won't be safe anymore while the governor is watching our every move.
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