Anonymous Threatens Internet With "Operation Blackout"

[Taunta]

But Anon, I have homework to do!

Seriously? I am extremely skeptical of any of this. Also I don't think they've thought their master plan all the way through.

We're going to protest legislation that breaks the internet, by breaking the internet. How exactly is pissing on everyone's shoes supposed to enamor people to them?

And if this goes go through...well, I needed to get some writing done anyways.

 

[tharglet]

Lol, couple of years ago I used to work for a company where their ISP *did* have a backup DNS server... only it was in the same data center....

Power went down, DNS died. Rang up the ISP to confirm the DNS was dead, asked them about backup, only to find the backup was in the same center ><. Ended up dredging IPs from my cache for half the day. Wasn't anything serious tbh. Nowadays I know some IPs of the public DNSes as well. May or may not help, depending on how some of the public ones behave to the outage.

 

[Ogargd]

Protest taking fascist like control of the internet by taking fascist like control over the internet, good work guys.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Yes Anon, this is how you win friends and supporters. By pissing everyone off, placing yourself quite neatly into the "cyber terrorist" catagory, and convincing most, if not every, major government that its time to break out the big toys to jail/kidnap/assassinate you (depending on who is doing the action).

You want to be told how bad an idea this is before or after you do it?

 

[0p3rati0n]

Anonymous has promised to blow up the entire internet at the end of the month.

Aaaaaaand that's where I stopped reading. Whatever level of ridiculousness goes higher than ludicrous, that's what this is.

 

[Shiftygiant]

This doesn't seem like anonymous. Usually they paint troll faces into the grounds of a football pitch or replace each 'He' on Wikipedia with 'Flamingo'. You know, generally just for the lulz. And what strategic value would locking the internet have anyway? If anything It would cut them off from each other. Anonymous, how 'bout you hack a bankers computer and fill it porn? Just a suggestion instead of preventing me from speaking to my friend in Utah.

 

[godofallu]

They couldn't wait 'til AFTER Game of Thrones Season 2 could they!?

Isn't that a TV show though? Why would you need the internet to watch that?

Oh wait, i'll be watching it online too. Or at least I had better be.

 

[romanator0]

Wait... Didn't these guys threaten to do the same thing sometime last year?

 

[Randomeaninglessword]

Yes, because the one way to get a message across to people who are in favour of harming the internet community, is to harm the internet community.

 

[Gmans uncle]

Anonymus: We're gonna shut down the worlds internet for an entire day 'cause we're bad asses like that!
Me:

 

[Triality]

If this really happens I'll... I'll... resent them silently and not do a thing about it!

 

[zehydra]

I am seriously doubting the authenticity of this threat. Seeing as how ANYONE can claim to be anonymous, it doesn't mean the entire collective is for shutting THEMSELVES down. Why in the hell would you attempt to shut down the collective's ability to communicate with one another? How would they know when Operation Blackout is over if there is no set date?

Not only that, but anonymous usually has a habit of claiming credit for an attack *after they've already done it.*

No they'll be able to operate it with it "shut down"

They're not shutting down the internet. They're attempting to shut down the DNS servers which coordinate most of the DNS lookups. It just means that if they were to go down for some reason. You would have to manually enter in the IP address in the web address bar for any website you wanted to go visit, instead of just typing "webaddress".com

 

[zehydra]

Yes, because the one way to get a message across to people who are in favour of harming the internet community, is to harm the internet community.

There is no such thing as "the internet community"

 

[zehydra]

Anonymous has promised to blow up the entire internet at the end of the month.

Aaaaaaand that's where I stopped reading. Whatever level of ridiculousness goes higher than ludicrous, that's what this is.

If you had read a bit further, this is actually doable.

They're not going to blow up the internet, just attack root DNS servers.

Meaning, to get here, you'd have to type in the escapist's IP address, not just the www.escapistmagazine.com URL

 

[Neaco]

Considering how this is a more serious threat than usual, I would just be worried that they've played their hand too soon.

I have no doubt that many governments have ideas of who participates in Anonymous attacks, and this is a perfect excuse to round them up.

this. America usually doesn't go after those in their borders cause its illegal for them to spy on Americans. everyone else is tabbed. hell, even this post is being scanned by something (im assuming, don't hurt me ITs.)

 

[Korolev]

Bah - they could not even take down Facebook and Amazon. Plus there are, what, over a hundred different groups calling themselves anonymous? Just who are these clowns anyway? I'd be surprised if they amounted to little more than 30 teenagers and twenty-something IT students who are looking for something to do on the weekend.

It's almost impossible for them to pull this off. They've made similar grand statements in the past, which all came to nothing. No doubt they might be able to do some damage - inconvenience a couple of thousand people for a couple of hours, at most.

And if they actually manage to, by a miracle, pull this off, say goodbye to internet freedom forever as Uncle Sam and the EU impose new restrictions and safeguards to make sure it never happens again. These anonymous people might seem mysterious and powerful, sitting in their basements, but if they annoy the state enough, real men with real guns will come and get them. That's not necessarily what I want to happen, but it is what will happen. Anonymous and their likes can ANNOY, but they cannot destroy the State. They depend on the state and they depend on the government just as much as anyone, even if they won't admit it. If they got their wish and really did destroy government and order and impose anarchy, it's the computer hackers who will be first up against the wall when the raiders come to their neighbourhood.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Protest taking fascist like control of the internet by taking fascist like control over the internet, good work guys.

This. Remember when lulzsec shut down the escapist because we said bad things about them? Crusaders of freedom of speech shutting down dissenting opinions. Thats totally in line and makes perfect sense. Anon is, and will continue to be, massive hypocrits. I care about SOPA anon, and i will write letters to my local politicion to protest it. This doesnt prove anything other than that SOPA is neccessary.

 

[zehydra]

Okay kiddies, we can see you.
Put your arms down and go back upstairs and sit in your room.

Seriously... just, why?

All this would do is prove that Anonymous are a bunch of douches and they would lose the little support they still have.

Anonymous doesn't need support... It just does stuff.

 

[ScaryAlmond]

Lets be honest this is really only one little kid who said it and the media uses it because it sells.
Why would anonymous close down the internet when the whole idea is to open it up seriously that's just idiotic.
Later this will be used to vilify them later on and allow for more government monitoring and blockages.
Seriously they close down websites they have no where near the capabilities to shut-down the web.

 

[Jessta]

That falls on a saturday, that's when new pony episodes are posted. This isn't cool anon... Not cool at all
Worse yet
It's the first day of my spring break and I don't have a cell phone, this pretty much means they are ruining my entire Saturday, that's also incredibly uncool
someone mentioned this already but no porn, that's also incredibly uncool.
I can only imagine how much damage this will do on a world wide scale, especially for people who are 'addicted' to the internet. Lives might be lost, that shits deep.
Ok so this doesn't actually make me want to support anonymous...
It's also a bit scary since it doesn't sound like they entirely understand what they are fucking with but rather just have the basic idea of what they are doing...
I'm not so concerned with the idea that they won't be able to pull it off so much as I am that they won't be able to pull it off 'all the way'
I mean what if they shut it down, but then can't turn it on again?