14 DAY TRIAL // KISS frontman Gene Simmons has angered Anonymous after he threatened to expose and sue the group's members, who DDoSed his websites last week.
The incidents started after Simmons made some very strong comments regarding illegal file sharing during a recent panel about entertainment brands.
"The music industry was asleep at the wheel, and didn't have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we're left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs," he said at the time.
Some members of Anonymous, an infamous group of hacktivists, who are currently engaged in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaign against anti-piracy organizations, decided to attack GeneSimmons.com and SimmonsRecords.com.
This was not a whole group-sanctioned attack, part of its "Operation Payback," but rather the work of a few members calling themselves the "Anti-Bureaucracy Contingent."
On Saturday, after the attack stopped, the KISS bassist announced on GeneSimmons.com that the FBI was alerted and that some of the "adventurous" young people responsible were identified.
"And, as stated in my MIPCOM [the panel] speech, we will sue their pants off. First, they will be punished.
Second, they might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who's been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend. We will soon be printing their names and pictures," the singer threatened.
Simmons ended his post with "We will find you. You cannot hide. Stay tuned," an attempt to mock Anonymous' "We will not stop. We will not forget. We will prevail. We are anonymous," closing line.
As a result, the group has now made genesimmons.com and simmonsrecords.com their official targets and in a statement of their own warned: "We are just getting started, Gene. Enjoy your downtime and welcome to the Internet."
Many security folks would argue that it's not wise to anger Anonymous, a group which has repeatedly demonstrated, that it won't hold back from using illegal means to reach its goals.
Even if so far Operation Payback consisted mostly of DDoS attacks, Anonymous has many sympathizers with a wide variety of skill sets.
It's supporters are easily capable of hacking servers, stealing and exposing information and using other mediums to harass people beyond the Internet.
Last month, Anonymous leaked emails from ACS:Law, a UK-based law firm involved in copyright litigation, after its head solicitor mocked the group's attacks.
The data breach incident might end up costing the company a fine of up to £500,000 from the UK Information Commissioner's Office.
