The Evil New Tactic Behind Anonymous’ Massive Megaupload Revenge Attack

The hacktivist collective Anonymous is in the middle of a huge revenge spree after the Feds shut down popular filesharing site Megaupload today. But they’re using an evil new tactic that tricks people into helping their attack if they click an innocuous link.

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 universalmusic.com, my computer rapidly pinging the page with no way to stop except quickly closing the window.