14 DAY TRIAL // Several hacktivist groups are planning to launch attacks against the government agencies and other organizations from the US. The campaign has been dubbed “OpUSA” and it is scheduled to take place on May 7.
Several websites have already been breached, and some of the participating collectives have released threatening statements.
While the hackers prepare for the operation, the United States’ Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created a confidential note to help the agency’s partners in taking measures against the attacks.
The DHS says that “criminal hackers” from the Middle East and North Africa plan to launch cyberattacks against “US Government agencies, financial institutions, and commercial organizations.”
However, the agency believes that the attacks will not cause too much damage.
“The attacks likely will result in limited disruptions and mostly consist of nuisance-level attacks against publicly accessible webpages and possibly data exploitation. Independent of the success of the attacks, the criminal hackers likely will leverage press coverage and social media to propagate an anti-US message,” the report obtained by Brian Krebs reads.
The document reveals that the hacktivists will likely use commercial tools to exploit known vulnerabilities, instead of developing their own.
“This suggests some of the participants possess only rudimentary hacking skills capable of causing only temporary disruptions of targeted websites. Nevertheless, OpUSA participants likely will exaggerate the scope and impact of their attacks as a way to attract additional press and draw more capable criminal hackers to future hacking efforts,” the report continues.
Many of the hacker groups that have announced their participation in OpUSA are the same ones that launched OpIsrael on April 7. At the time, they claimed to have caused damage worth billions of dollars, but the DHS believes their claims are “certainly exaggerated.”
The DHS says that the statements released in the future by the hackers might provide some insight into whether the groups might team up with “violent extremists” and launch attacks on their behalf.