Anonymous takes down Department of Justice, RIAA and Universal Music

Shortly after a federal raid today brought down the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers aligned with the online collective Anonymous have shut down sites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group and the RIAA.
“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.Only hours before the DoJ and Universal sites went down, news broke that Megaupload, a massive file sharing site with a reported 50 million daily users, was taken down by federal agents. Four people linked to Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the globe.Less than an hour after the DoJ and Universal sites came down, the website for the RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, went offline as well. With more than 1,600 members, the RIAA serves as a trade organization in the States for the industry and is the entity that declares gold- and platinum-selling records.Universal Music Group, or UMG, is the largest record company in the United States and under its umbrella are the labels Interscope-Geffen-A&M, the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group and Mercury Records.Brown adds that “more is coming” and Anonymous-aligned hacktivists are pursuing a joint effort with others to “damage campaign raising abilities of remaining Democrats who support SOPA.”Although many members of Congress have just this week changed their stance on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, the raid on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don’t need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a blow to the Web.Brown adds that operatives involved in the project will use an “experimental campaign” and search engine optimization techniques “whereby to forever saddle some of these congressmen with their record on this issue.”

MANILA, Philippines — A local hacking group appears to have taken down access to the website of the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), just days after agency websites in the US suffered a similar attack.In a post on its Facebook page, the Anonymous #OccupyPhilippines group posted a link to the NBI website, which was rendered inaccessible as of posting time.The group’s post was accompanied by the text: “up down up down down down down.” attack was used to take down access to the site.DDoS is a form of cyber attack used by hacking groups to take down particular websites, which involves overwhelming the website’s server by executing external commands from a number of terminals, subsequently crippling the server indefinitely.It is not confirmed, however, if the group was directly responsible for the downtime at NBI’s website. The purported attack came just days after the attack of hacktivist group Anonymous on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) website following the shutdown of the file-sharing site Megaupload on Friday.Aside from the FBI website, the websites of the Department of Justice, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Universal Music were also attacked on Friday.Over the weekend, groups affiliated with the international hacking group appear to have launched a series of attacks on websites of entities supporting anti-piracy measures around the world.On Saturday, the French presidential website was briefly hijacked by the group, along with a couple of Brazilian websites. On Monday night, another group took down the Polish government website.The hackers were moving to protest the passage of critical anti-piracy laws that, they claim, would forever change the dynamics of the Internet, including the recently shelved Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) bills in the US, as well as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.Related stories:
‘Anonymous’ hackers attack Polish state website
‘Anonymous’ hackers attack Brazilian websites
‘Anonymous’ hackers briefly hijack French Elysee website
FBI Website taken down by ‘Anonymous‘