If it’s not declining recorded music sales or disappointing ticket sales attacking the industry, it’s cyber criminals trying to sabotage industry websites. Both the music and film industries were targeted by “pro-piracy” hackers who object to increased efforts to stop illegal filesharing. The cyber attacks have been focused on DDoS, or distributed denial of service attacks, which are designed to flood a website with connection requests, effectively forcing it offline.
Operation Payback, as it is called by those spreading the word on the 4Chan imageboard, has already affected the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. (A later attack on BPI, UK’s music industry association failed.) What are they “paying back”? Those taking part in the attacks say that they are responding to news that the creative industries had OK’d DDoS attacks on websites suspected of hosting pirated material. Aiplex, an Indian software firm, has supposedly been hired by the music and film industries to launch these attacks.
A 4Chan post reads, “Aiplex, the bastard hired gun that DDoS’d [The Pirate Bay] is already down! Now we have our lasers primed, but what do we target now? We target the bastard group that has thus far led this charge against out Web sites, like The Pirate Bay. We target MPAA.org!” And further, “We have the manpower, we have the botnets, it’s time we do to them what they keep doing to us.”
Aiplex confirmed that their site was targeted and was forced offline for about a day and a half.
In addition to the sites mentioned, a “despise” law firm full of anti-piracy attorneys, was targeted. ACS:Law was voted on by 4Chan users as the next target and the site went offline. When trying to navigate to their site, you’ll get an error message. ACS:Law’s Andrew Crossley says that Operation Payback is “typical rubbish from pirates.” To which Payback responded with another DDoS attack.
While DDoS attacks are illegal, those sympathetic to piracy can download software which can target a specific web address and inundate it with connection requests. Sites are now employing stronger protection against these types of attacks – once they’re back online.
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