Several New Zealand governmental websites have been taken offline in the continued retaliation by self styled "hacktivist" group Anonymous as DDOS links are spread among unknowing Twitter users.
Just hours after numerous websites around the world, including Wikipedia and Reddit, blacked out in protest of the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), the FBI announced that it had closed down one of the world's largest file sharing sites Megauploader.com.
The site, which had over 180 million registered users, was accused of copyright violation and its founder Kim Dotcom aka Kim Schmitz arrested. Shortly after, Anonymous launched an attack on several US based sites, including the FBI and Universal Music.
Anonymous has now turned its attention to New Zealand, reportedly taking down police.gov.nz, among other sites.
The attacks sparked a worldwide Twitter trend, "World War Web," after the organization (@YourAnonNews) tweeted several lines of blacked-out text with the words "WORLD WAR WEB. The Internet is here. Expect US" at around 14:30 GMT.
These attacks were allegedly carried out by spreading a link on Twitter that, when clicked on, repeatedly redirected any computer to the target website, thereby overloading the servers with traffic. Known as a DDOS attack, this is a tactic commonly used by Anonymous, though not through Twitter.
Gawker reports that the link is being shared among unknowing Twitter users at a rate of four times a second, often with no explanation other than that it relates to #operationmegaload, an operation mentioned by Anonymous in its January 19 video available at http://goo.gl/VUeWJ.
Resource : Yahoo News
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