As the world reels from the attack in France at the headquarters of Charlie Hedbo, the often dark world of internet hacktivists have pledged to respond, launching what some are describing as a full on cyber-war.
Two well-known internet activist groups, Anonymous and their pro-Palestinian counterpart AnonGhost have begun a campaign to bring attacks to the World Wide Web, with many social media accounts and websites already falling victim to both groups’ actions.
The Mirror is reporting AnonGhost has already targeted and crippled 100 websites in an operation it is calling #OPFrance, posting an ISIS flag with the words “Death to France. Death to Charlie.”
In response to this first wave of attacks, and the instigating incident at Charlie, Anonymous began counter attacks beginning with the above video begin posted along with a statement through its Belgian Youtube account and a written statement on Pastebin.
The statement pledges to defend the freedom of speech and retaliation against those that would attack it.
“Freedom of speech and opinion is a non-negotiable thing, to tackle it is to attack democracy. Expect a massive frontal reaction from us because the struggle for the defense of those freedoms is the foundation of our movement,” the statement said.
While specific details have not been released by Anonymous previous attacks by the loosely grouped organization have been what is called a DDoS attack, short for a distributed denial of service attack, where a website is effectively shut down by overwhelming the website’s resources. While the attacks do not usually cause permanent damage to a website, it is often a struggle for website operators to return the website to normal operations.
DDoS attacks in the U.S. can be criminal, falling under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
So far neither group has claimed to attack the other, but Anonymous has been successful in shutting down social media accounts linked to extremist Islamic groups and a pro-Isis website.
Most likely any attack against either group would be a takeover of social media or a “doxx” attack, in which the private information of an individual would be released on the web.
The first website claimed to have been brought down by Anonymous was a French terror supporting website, ansar-alhaqq.net, still currently unreachable. Anonymous took credit for the attack on Twitter using the hashtag OPCharlieHedbo with the message “expect us.”