On the heels of launching its successfully crowd-sourced news website, Anonymous went back to what it is best known for Thursday: hacking. The united global hacking outfit, veiled in secrecy, took down the websites of the Spanish parliament and NAMBLA. The take-down of the Spanish parliament site directly correlated with a planned protest outside of the parliament building.
Citizens in Madrid are protesting against high unemployment rates and economic issues within the country. Over 1,000 police officers were active around the city in an attempt to control the mob. The coordinated take-down of the site featured what is known as a (DDoS) hack. This hack floods the website's servers with content until the site is rendered inoperable. By late Thursday night, the site was back online.
In an unrelated attack, Anonymous also took down the website of the pedophilic group NAMBLA. The NAMBLA take-down was in protest of the organization's celebration of what it dubbed "pedophile pride day." In contrast to the Spanish parliament disruption, this hack was pre-empted and forewarned. In a recent video, Anonymous warned the group that it was coming and would shut down the site and any other site promoting child pornography.
Though several sites were also taken down Thursday, NAMBLA was the main target. For the majority of Thursday afternoon the group's homepage was unavailable. By coordinating via the Twitter hashtag "opaliceday" the group was able to take down a number of unmentionable pornographic websites.
As Anonymous continues to evolve from a small group of 4chan users to a global organization, hacks like these come as no surprise. In recent months the group has grown from unorganized hackers into a virile pack of users out for blood. Anonymous was heavily involved in obtaining information leading to the trial of two alleged high school rapists in Steubenville, Ohio.
