Hacker collective Anonymous has once again been implicated in the purported imminent takedown of the world's biggest social network, but the credibility of the report is shady.
According to a video posted on YouTube yesterday, the loosely-knit hacker group that has attacked financial and government Web sites around the world, is planning on bringing down Facebook on 28 January, despite the fact that “Facebook has at least 60 000 servers”.
The narrator of the video says the move follows last week's pervasive online protest against US anti-piracy legislation, since put on hold. “An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people and the government of the US. While SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (the Protect Intellectual Property Act) may be postponed from Congress, this doesn't guarantee that our Internet rights will be upheld.”
The Anonymous “voice” calls on Americans to participate in the Facebook assailment by downloading Low Orbit Ion Cannon, which - according to Mashable - is the tool that was successfully used to attack the US Department of Justice following the US government shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload on Friday.
The video mirrors a similar threat issued by the global hacktivist network last year, when the group promised to shut down Facebook on 5 November, over privacy concerns. This did not come to fruition and the group maintained the threat was the work of rogue members.
The warning has this time proved to be similarly dubious, with a post from the AnonOps Twitter account that reads: “Again we must say that we will not attack #Facebook! Again the mass media lie”, while a post at 10am this morning from another associated account, @YourAnonNews, reads: '#OpBlackOut - FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr are not going to be DDoSed. Why would we kill our way to communicate? #Anonymous”.
YouTube and Facebook users have questioned the motive behind the hacker collective taking down a site that last week stood in solidarity with protests against anti-piracy legislation that would see curtailment of Internet users' freedom and set a precedent for online censorship.
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