14 DAY TRIAL // While some anti-ACTA protests take place in the real world, some still believe that distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks are the best way to show their disapproval against the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
As a result, French anti-piracy outfit Hadopi and others are named as targets and hit with massive numbers of packets with the purpose of shutting down their sites.
We went to the IRC channel dedicated to OpDownWithACTA and found 300 users, both hacktivists and simple protesters determined to bring down the sites found on a special list provided by Anonymous, complete with instructions and details.
One of the hackers involved provided a website that contains all the targets of the anti-ACTA protest where those who want to get involved are precisely instructed on how to show their support, not only against ACTA, but also against the Syrian government.
The list includes anti-piracy organizations from the US, France, Sweden, Belgium, Portugal, Germany and Netherlands and for each target the site lists the reasons for which it must be attacked. They’re also told how to use DDOS tools such as SLOWPOST, HPING and HOIC.
At the time of writing, the target is Hadopi, accused of “censuring a lot of media things,” but the website is still up, functioning properly.
Many were encouraged to launch such attacks after seeing the immense success of the operation launched by Anonymous after the file-sharing site Megaupload was closed down by US authorities.
However, after that op, many hacktivists concluded that their protest may be better heard if they deface website and protest live.
Just a few remain that continue launching DDOS attacks, but they seem to be highly determined to push on, even if the direct results fail to show at the moment.