Anonymous Takes Down More Than 50 Toronto Websites, Not 'Occupy Toronto'

After warning Toronto officials not to interfere with the peaceful protests that take place in the Occupy Toronto movement, members of Anonymous attacked the websites of over 50 local businesses, redirecting all of them to the official Occupy Toronto site.

They also took down the Canadian version of the popular Craigslist website and obtained a number of “valuable” emails they plan on using later if things don’t go their way.

“The city of Toronto are fools to think that we would remove the city hall website off the internet. We clearly indicated that we are removing Toronto from the internet. We are offering to keep the peace as of now, but if you decide to declare war in any possible way, then you shall be prepared,” Anonymous said in a video statement.

The main issue, however, is that Anonymous took credit for the attacks only a week later and many believed the individuals running Occupy Toronto to be the masterminds behind the hacks, since all the websites redirected their visitors to the official OccupyTO (occupyto.org) site.

Occupy Toronto representatives quickly came forward to deny their implications in the cybercriminal operations, even offering to help those affected by Anonymous.

“It has come to our attention that some websites in Toronto have started re-directing to the occupyto.org website. Please be advised that this action is NOT condoned by the Occupy Toronto movement, rather some individual has taken it upon themselves to compromise websites in this way,” they said.

They were also the ones to discover that Anonymous relied on a Joomla flaw to make the controversial redirects.

“The solution is to check the source code of the page and search for the word ‘occupy’. Once you have located the code you should have an indication of what article contains the script. In some cases it may be in multiple articles. Just edit and save each infected article and the problem should be solved.”