Did Anonymous Take Down CIA.gov? 125
jfruh writes "The CIA's website has been down intermittently since Friday, apparently the victim of a DDOS attack. One of the more interesting questions of the story is whether elements of Anonymous are behind this — a question that even prominent members of the Anonymous movement can't seem to answer with any certainty. Perhaps this is obvious, but it seems that an anarchic, leaderless grouping can be hard to keep tabs on."
The short answer is: No. (Score:4, Interesting)
No one took down the CIA.gov website. Did users "take down" Twitter when it faltered under too much load? There's a difference between unavailable and taken down. During a (D)DoS, the servers are still there, still serving content to some, not taken down at all, it's just that there is more traffic than they can handle.
Compare this "taken down" to when the MPAA has a video "taken down" from Youtube. The specific video is no longer accessible, even when plenty of bandwidth is available.
That said, I wouldn't put it past Anonymous agents, that they would send a DMCA "take down" notice complaining that the CIA.gov site is infringing on Anonymous' imaginary property rights; However, I don't think it likely that such an action would result in their site being taken down (the CIA's that is).
Re:The establishment needs a target to blame (Score:4, Interesting)
Any "terrorist" attack, blame it on Al-Qaeda.
Any "hacking" on any government or multi-national coroporation website, blame it on Anonymous.
Soon people will stand united against these "fringe" groups, and keep giving up their freedom in progress.
Anonymous has quite openly made asses of themselves to the point where people suspecting them is pretty justified. They've made a MO of poking angry bears with a stick to hear them growl. I'll feel not one whit of sympathy when these clowns are sitting in a courtroom getting their federal indictments.
Re:I keep my mouth shut when I hack the CIA (Score:2, Interesting)
Correct! I'm disappointed with what's happened to slashdot in the last couple of years. The level of discourse here used to be much higher, and I kind of miss the old ./. A lot of posters on this topic still can't seem to wrap their brains around Anonymous and what it is. They seem to swallow the media's view of Anonymous as an "organization." An organization implies a hierarchy with leaders and managers and footsoldiers and minions, like a corporation or an army. But Anonymous is nothing at all like that. Anonymous is a movement , not an organization. It is proof that anarchy can be a productive force in society, can expose graft and corruption and can make us all better off because no one individual can take credit for the actions of the group. Many people assume that governments, law enforcement agencies and corporations are corrupt and evil, but they accept this as simply the cost of doing business, the cost of running a community in a peaceful, orderly manner where the winners always win and the losers know they cannot win and should simply accept their lot in life. Anonymous does not accept this as the status quo, and will do whatever it takes to expose the corruption of politicians, police officers and CEOs and incite those who are paying attention into taking action against their oppressors. They've managed to change the world in only a few short years, triggered revolutions in the middle east, presented evidence of crimes committed by police and covered up by bureaucrats, humiliated multi-national corporations and exposed the FBI and Scotland Yard as a bunch of clueless blowhards who can't be bothered to observe even basic network security practices.
Yeah, I'm proud of Anonymous and what we've accomplished, but I'm keeping my own mouth shut because Anonymous has many mouths and many minds and there are just too many of them to be silenced. The movement is growing all the time and no one knows who they are, even the police who claim to be hot on their trail, and no matter how many are arrested, there will be more who step up to take their place. The snowball has only just begun to roll down the mountain.