Should Facebook be Scared of Anonymous?

UPDATE: Anonymous has confirmed on their twitter account that the whole group is not behind #OpFacebook (source). There are some members who are a part of this intiative, however, this does not necessarily mean the whole group is behind this movement.

Hacker Group ‘Anonymous’ allegedly made an announcement through this video  that they will kill Facebook on November 5. There has been a lot of skepticism about the credibility of this announcement as no such notice appeared on the official Anonymous blog or Anonnews. Eugene Kaspersky, the chief executive of Kaspersky lab, also shared a similar stance by commenting that this is most likely a hoax (source). That said, we have a look at five of Anonymous’ previous attacks on firms and governments that goes against the freedom of speech movement.

#1 Anonymous vs. Turkey

The Turkish government announced plans of implementing a new internet filter that would apparently “protect the youth from harmful elements on the web”. In response, Anonymous successfully launched a DDOS attack against several government websites.

#2 Anonymous vs. Syria

In April, the Syrian Government started to crackdown on protestors. In response, Anonymous hacked the website of the Syrian Ministry of Defense and replaced the content with the above image.

#3 Anonymous vs. Spain

The Spanish Police arrested three suspected members of Anonymous, who were thought to be involved in recent cyber attacks on various firms and governments. In response, the website of Spain’s national police force was taken down for over an hour.

#4 Anonymous vs. Sony

Sony launched a lawsuit against hackers, George Hotz and Alexander Egorenkov, who managed to jailbreak the initially invincible Playstation 3. In response, Anonymous launched a DDOS attack on several of Sony’s services such as playstation.com and the online playstation store.

#5 Anonymous vs. Paypal

Last year, Paypal withdrew its services for Wikileaks as they “breached its user policies by supporting criminal activities”. In response, Anonymous launched a denial-of-service attack on the company blog, taking it down for about eight hours.

As you can see, most if not all of Anonymous’ attacks so far consisted of DDOS attack or website changes. Yes, their feats are impressive but Facebook is a whole new level, we are dealing with the largest social network in the world. I am sure there will be bugs and glitches everywhere, since Facebook seems to update new features every now and then, but to kill the service (and not just delay it for a few hours) will probably take something impressive (or maybe not for a professional hacker). Anyhow, it will be interesting to watch out how this saga turns out on November 5th.

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