Anonymous Reacts to Megaupload Takedown With “Largest Attack Ever”

Anthony Ha

Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media, advertising, and random startups. Previously, he worked as a staff tech writer at Adweek, a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing.... → Learn More

Thursday, January 19th, 2012
anonymous

Hacker group Anonymous isn’t happy about the takedown of file-sharing site Megaupload, and as a result, it’s targeting some big companies and government agencies.

Earlier this afternoon, interspersed with a stream of anti-SOPA and PIPA tweets, the main Anonymous Twitter account declared, “The government takes down #Megaupload? 15 minutes later #Anonymous takes down government & record label sites. #ExpectUs.” Specifically, the group claimed responsibility for taking down the Universal Music, RIAA (the record industry’s lobbying arm), MPAA (the movie industry’s lobbying arm), and Department of Justice websites, among others. As of 3pm Pacific, the sites were still down for me, although some comments on Twitter suggested that they were returning online sporadically.

The group also claimed that the current attacks were “the largest attack ever by Anonymous,” with 5,635 participants. And it looks like the campaign is ongoing — Anonymous says it’s going after the FBI’s website next: “Get some popcorn… it’s going to be a long lulzy night.”


Product: Megaupload
Website: megaupload.com

Megaupload is an international one-click hosting website driven by Megaupload Limited, Hong Kong, available in many languages. The basic service is available for free and allows users to upload files of up to 1024 MB. Free users cannot download files larger than 1 GB, however. Free registered users are offered 50 GB of total file storage. Premium users are offered 1 TB total file storage. After a successful file upload, the user is given a unique URL which allows others...

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