Anonymous Declares War on Wallstreet

[Dzerzhinsky's Ghost]

Anonymous Vows to Attack NYSE

Anonymous, a group of self-styled hacker-activists behind attacks on corporate and government websites, vowed to support the Occupy Wall Street protests by erasing the New York Stock Exchange “from the Internet” on Oct. 10.

The group posted a video message on YouTube declaring war on the world’s largest stock exchange in retaliation for the mass arrests of Wall Street protesters, and posted a link to the video on one of several Anonymous Twitter feeds.

The two-minute message didn’t elaborate on the threat or whether it referred only to an attack on the NYSE website, which would have no effect on trading.

Anonymous has launched several so-called directed denial of service attacks on websites over several months, including actions in December against the sites of MasterCard Inc. (MA) and Visa Inc. (V) Members of the group use specialized software to launch the attacks, which can slow or crash the site for a short period of time, according to court documents.

Richard Adamonis, a spokesman for NYSE Euronext (NYX), which operates the exchange, said the company doesn’t comment on rumors or security matters.

NYSE.com includes corporate information, press releases, trading notices, the company’s rules and bylaws, and access to services for companies whose stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The trading systems are run separately through a secure data center in Mahwah, New Jersey.

Homeland Security Memo

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security circulated a memo warning of cyber attacks by Anonymous, as well as the group’s involvement in the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Anonymous had deployed new tools to help members attack websites, the memo said, listing two pieces of software called #RefRef and Apache Killer.

The memo also said that the group was trying to recruit employees of Wall Street companies and warned of possible blackmail attempts against other insiders to gain their cooperation.

“Anonymous has recently used Twitter to attempt to solicit ideologically dissatisfied, sympathetic employees from within institutions in the financial sector,” DHS said in the memo said. “To date these attempts appear unsuccessful,” the department said.

Disputed Threat
The threat been disputed by some members of Anonymous, who said on Twitter that it hadn’t been sanctioned. A similar dispute occurred over an announcement in July that Anonymous would attack Facebook on Nov. 5, 2011.

A posting on Anonnews.org said it was almost impossible to verify the operation because of the nature of Anonymous as an organization “free of hierarchical structure.”

The potential attack on NYSE “may or may not be a false flag operation initiated by authorities in order to discredit Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street,” the post said.

Stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange trade on almost all U.S. exchanges and other systems where investors can buy and sell securities, including electronic communications networks, broker-dealers and dark pools, or private venues that match orders without displaying prices in advance.

Click Here for Link

Anonymous Threatens New York Stock Exchange Attack

Calls for distributed denial-of-service attack as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

A video that purports to be from the Anonymous hacktivist collective has called for a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack to be launched against the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

"On October 10, NYSE shall be erased from the Internet, expect a day that will never, ever, be forgotten," according to a "message to the people" video posted to the AnonMessage YouTube channel on Friday. As with previous Anonymous communications, the video sports stirring music, stark visuals, and narration by a disembodied, synthesized voice. It also proposes using the Low-Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) DDoS tool, which is an open source network stress testing application, as "an option," but recommends that users "anonymize" themselves first. It also says that "we will have other (more powerful) means of taking down NYSE."

The FBI said it's investigating the Anonymous call to online arms. "The FBI is aware of these schemes and threats and is looking into the matter," FBI spokesman Tim Flannelly told FoxNews.com.

But a post on Tuesday to the AnonOps Twitter feed, which has been a reliable source of information about Anonymous operations, called into question how many Anonymous members--if any--were planning to attack the NYSE. "We'll say it clear: We won't hack Wall Street. Please FBI invest the resources in better things!"

Likewise, a message posted to Pastebin under the Anonymous banner also disputed the video's authenticity. "It is a fake planted operation by law enforcement and cyber crime agencies in order to get you to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement," said the post. "You must take all notices and information claiming to be 'Anonymous' with a grain of salt. Consider EVERYTHING."

In addition, no official Anonymous communication would encourage anyone to continue using "depreciated tools that have known flaws such as LOIC," according to the post. "Anonymous would never tell you to use LOIC--not after the arrests and failures of Operation Payback."

Indeed, the bureau, as well as law enforcement agencies abroad, continue to arrest suspects over LulzSec and Anonymous hacktivist attacks, for example relating to the breach of Sony's information security defenses, as well as attacks against the Serious Organized Crime Agency in the United Kingdom, and NATO servers. According to court documents, their investigations appear to be aided by people launching DDoS attacks and sometimes even using anonymizing tools, such as Tor, but still failing to fully disguise their IP address.

If the planned attack against the NYSE website isn't officially sanctioned by Anonymous, it does at least appear to fit with the group's previous modus operandi. Indeed, rather than attempting to knock NYSE trading offline, the video proposes attacking the NYSE website. Ranked by Alexa as being "one of the top 50,000 sites" on the Internet in terms of the amount of traffic it sees, the site isn't exactly high profile. But, as with the Anonymous pro-WikiLeaks attacks against the websites--but not payment processing systems--of such businesses as MasterCard and PayPal, the website takedowns-by-DDoS appear to be designed to publicize a cause, rather than compromise the companies' ability to do business.

Likewise, the DDoS attack planned for October 10 appears designed to support the current Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, which by Wednesday had been running for 19 consecutive days, as well as Occupy USA protests taking place around the country. "The events transpiring within Wall Street have gone awry; it seems that the government and federal agencies enjoy enforcing the law a little too much," according to the video supposedly released by Anonymous. "We witness the government enforcing the laws that punish the 99%, while allowing the 1% to escape justice unharmed for their crimes against the people."

Regardless, the FBI said that launching or intending to launch DDoS attacks is against the law. "It is a crime to show the intent to carry out a hack when you are in possession of software or computer applications to do so and we take it seriously," said Flannelly.

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[erupt]

I just started hummin' "Johnny B. Goode." Maybe because of the "go, go" lyrics.

[RedAnarchist]

Apparently it's a false flag operation, at least according to RT -

The hacker group Anonymous says the reсent announcement that it will attack the New York Stock Exchange is actually a false flag operation to mar the Occupy Wall Street protests.
The initial threat, posted on Monday said that on October 10 the Anonymous would launch a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on NYSE, which would “erase” it “from the internet”.

Over past years, similar attacks have brought down websites of several organizations, which the hacktivists targeted for their actions like prosecuting online pirates or obstructing the whistleblower site WikiLeaks.

The new attack was dubbed Invade Wall Street in parallel to the ongoing country-wide protests.

“We… declare a popular war against the New York Stock Exchange. The 10th of October is a day that will never be forgotten,” a statement posted from the group’s name says.

However, as the FBI assured that it is investigating the supposed future cyber attack, the Anonymous group came up with a denial.

“Operation Invade Wall Street is bullshit! It is a fake planted operation by law enforcement and cyber crime agencies in order to get you to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement,” the new statement said.

The text went on to expose an alleged plan of those behind the operation to make supporters of the Anonymous reveal their identities by using flawed software in the attack on NYSE.

The events resemble the August threat to take down the social network Facebook, which Anonymous first voiced and later retracted.

The fuss around the stock exchange may actually be a clever plot by law enforcers using the masked nature of the hacktivist movement against them, an action by a rival online community with goals different to those voiced by the Anonymous earlier, or simply faction struggle within the group itself. The general public can only guess.

http://rt.com/news/anonymous-wall-street-attack-117/

[RedGrunt]

I would of supported it, not undermined it.

[Geiseric]

This is kinda neat. won't go much farther though, they would be more use actually at the protest.

[¿Que?]

Is this:

The text went on to expose an alleged plan of those behind the operation to make supporters of the Anonymous reveal their identities by using flawed software in the attack on NYSE.

this?

Anonymous had deployed new tools to help members attack websites, the memo said, listing two pieces of software called #RefRef and Apache Killer.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Anonymous is 16 year olds posting gross porn where it shouldn't be posted.