by Caleb Smith
Nowadays, almost everyone has heard of Anonymous. The 'hacktivist' group has been to blame for most internet security breaches for the past several years. Although most of their targets (corporations or government agencies) have labeled them as terrorists, their following has continued to grow all over the world. Anonymous doesn't have a leader, and it doesn't even have a specific agenda. The group's only goal is to punish those who hurt others; Be it small-scale (the Steubenville Rape Case last week), or large (FBI). While they exact operations in different ways, their most prominent form of protest is in hacking. Their weapon of choice: DDoS.
DDoS stands for "Direct Denial of Service," and has been used to shut down even the most secure of websites. The method in which DDoS works is very simple; Just overload a system with an immense amount of traffic, and nobody can access that network for a while. There are more eloquent ways of describing it, but that's the basic definition. There are several different ways to start a DDoS attack, but they all end in the same result; The system completely shuts down. This can work for websites, and also internet connections. From my experience in tech support, I've seen department stores that couldn't run their credit cards or operate their registers because they were attacked. I had to hide my giggling when I tell them there's nothing I can do. And there is NOTHING that can be done once 'teh lazor' is aimed at you. There are security companies that can offer light protection to keep the traffic at bay (Westboro Baptist Church hired one to protect them from Anonymous. Didn't work.), but in reality, there isn't a way to stop it unless you physically destroy every server sending a signal.
DDoS attacks are illegal in the US. A member of Anonymous was arrested for even mentioning DDoS in a YouTube video. It's not even a light misdemeanor charge like grafitti, it's a full-fledged federal crime. But why? From what I've seen, every DDoS attack has been made in protest of something. Westboro was taken down because of hate speech, the Church of Scientology's website (the attack that made Anonymous famous) was disabled because it was seen as an elaborate scam. Not only are DDoS attacks done with seemingly noble intentions, the plain truth of the matter is: it doesn't hurt anybody. It makes websites inaccessible, or internet unusable for a few hours. The only harm it causes is sales or advertisement revenue, and let's face it, we can do without buying things for a few hours.
On January 7th, Anonymous felt a need to end the taboo by creating a petition to decriminalize DDoS attacks, as they fall under the category of 'free speech.' The attacks are made in protest or as a reminder that the people hold more power than is believed. Sometimes, Anons send an attack to a network like Sony, just to show that it can; to show that corporations depend on consumers, and once they are gone, the corporation is nothing. They believe it is exactly the same as picketing or a 'sit in,' which is constitutionally protected. The petition is quoted below.
"With the advance in internet techonology, comes new grounds for protesting. Distributed denial-of- service (DDoS), is not any form of hacking in any way. It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any "occupy" protest. Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time.
As part of this petition, those who have been jailed for DDoS should be immediatly released and have anything regarding a DDoS, that is on their 'records,' cleared."
You can sign the petition at http://tinyurl.com/abdmmzj
The petition is still several thousand signatures away from its goal of 25,000. Anonymous' goal is to educate the public on this matter and allow this new form of protest to be legal. Legal or not, they'll keep doing what they do, but this shows to be a gesture of cooperation with the current government. Tell me: if they're really terrorists, would they make a petition?
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