Anonymous Attacks Second Law Firm Involved in Copyright Litigations

A London-based law firm called Davenport Lyons is the new victim of the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) campaign launched by an Internet group known as Anonymous against organizations supporting anti-piracy efforts.

The campaign, dubbed "Operation Payback," began last Saturday with a DDoS attack against mpaa.org, the website of the Motion Picture Association of America, which lasted for over 24 hours.

It continued this week with similar attacks against the websites of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and the Dutch Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland (BREIN).

The attacks are coordinated from an IRC channel, where Anonymous supporters are instructed by the group's leaders on what IP addresses to target in the DDoS programs running on their computers.

On Tuesday the group attacked the website of ACS:Law Solicitors, a UK law firm known for sending threatening letters to Internet users suspected of copyright infringement and asking them for money in order to avoid being taken to court.

This practice was originally started in 2007 by a different London-based law firm called Davenport Lyons, who's website the group began targeting yesterday.

According to Panda Security, which has been monitoring the attacks, some Anonymous members even tried to hack the hosting server in order to deface the company's website.

"Operation Payback" represents the group's retaliation against some film studios paying an Indian company called Aiplex Software to DDoS torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay.

Anonymous claims to fight for Internet neutrality, freedom of information and other noble causes, but the group doesn't hold back from using controversial or even illegal methods to get its message across.

It was born on the infamous /b/ 4chan image board, where most users post under the "anonymous" moniker. Because the majority of its members are still /b/ regulars, the group is sometimes simply referred to as 4chan, although the two are separate entities.