Anonymous Tricks Bystanders Into Attacking Justice Department
Several anons speaking to Wired on condition of anonymity voiced dismay that a tactic they consider to be the modern-day equivalent of a sit-in (denial-of-service attacks leave no lasting damage) was ethically corrupted by the new version.
“Preying on unsuspecting users is despicable,” said one anon, speaking to Wired in an online chat. “We need to fight for the user, not potentially land them in jail.”
The new auto-firing variant seems to have been developed as part of an occupy effort by Occupy BMV (Ocupemos La Bolsa Mexicana de Valores, or the Mexican Stock Exchange) against the Mexican treasury secretary several days before the Megaupload arrests. The adaptation doesn’t seem very sophisticated, and uses a 1990s-era proxy server called anonymouse.org that doesn’t hide the tracks of Javascript requests, making its addition unlikely to help its users evade detection. (A number of people are being prosecuted for allegedly using LOIC to participate in the 2010 denial of service attacks against Paypal, part of a retaliation campaign for the payment processor voluntarily cutting off donations to WikiLeaks.)