Hackers Take Down Hollywood Piracy Watchdog Group's Website in Protest
2 min readMPAA and RIAA websites successfully attacked
LOS ANGELES – Many of you, perhaps unsuspecting and unaware, have recently shrugged or scratched your head after failing to find your favorite online movie site. Perhaps you even clicked that old bookmark that would take you to the likes of watch-movies-links.net or your favorite torrent site to watch or download the latest Hollywood blockbuster, only to find the site was offline or “Seized by Federal Officials”. Such has been the case for many of the most popular illegal movie streaming sites in the past several months as federal authorities have stepped in – under pressure by anti-piracy groups such as the MPA, RIAA, and others – and began seizing the domains.
Now, some of the folks behind such websites have begun to retaliate. The latest attacks targeted MPAA.org and the website of AiPlex Software, an India-based software firm which was hired by the MPAA to target sites that engage in piracy.
The attacks, led by hundreds if not thousands of 4Chan users employing an application dubbed ‘Low Orbit Ion Cannon’ (LOIC), shutdown both sites for a good portion of Saturday, but the organizations were soon able to mitigate the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, bringing their site back online.
The MPAA and others have themselves admitted to employing such Denial of Service attacks against websites such as BitTorrent in the past, after they failed to comply with take down requests.
The protests will likely continue, and with such attacks stemming from thousands of unique IP’s there isn’t much anyone can do to stop them.
Participants of the attack coordinated via Twitter, Facebook and other forums in preparation for what they called a retaliatory attack. The following is just one call to action from The Pirate Bay (TPB).
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING GRAPHIC CONTAINS EXPLICIT MATERIAL, CLICK HERE TO VIEW IT.
Well if you ask me, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The RIAA and the MPAA have both employed software firms that have utilized DDOS attacks to take down sites such as 4Chan, BitTorrent, and the Pirate Bay. Don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house.