The international hacktivist organization is beginning its attack on the Chamber of Commerce today at 8PM EST.As of 11:30AM EST, Anonymous had assembled 384 members into their attacking DDoS force- enough, they say, for the website to crash. More members are still joining. Anonymous' chatter accross their chatrooms have sparked with questions among members about what effect they will have by temporarily taking down uschamber.com. The agreement among administrators and the organic leaders of the operation have agreed that the move is symbolic and intended to raise awareness of the organization's perceived crimes and of the legislation they are pushing, not unlike the Boston Tea Party, in which the partiers are rumored to have replaced the lock they destroyed. As one Anon put it, 'The DDoS attacks don't destroy anything. It's more like a digital sit-in where a store entrance or smth gets blocked.'
Leaders and members of the attack have agreed that, once successful, resources (attackers) will be spread out to secondary targets which have not yet been full determined. One Anonymous "leader" guaranteed examiner.com that the MPAA's website would be a target. This selection likely implies that the RIAA, IFTA, and National Association of Theater Owners will also be targets, as they are also backing the catalystic PROTECT IP bill.
When questioned about legality and the chance of arrest, a member of the attack answered, 'you get a fine for spray painting, and jail for defacement. Priorities off.' Another Anon answered, 'No, not really. I've taken precautions in terms of encryption and using secure connections/hiding my identity.' He/She then added an oft-cited statistic by the group: 'There have been 5 arrests out of 10,000 ppl who participated in Avenge Assange, so the chances are rather low.'
More tech savvy members of the group were 'handing out' VPNs, Virtual Private Networks, which allow attackers to use unsecure internet bandwidth securely. The VPNs mix the data of everyone logged on, meaning that no one on or off the network can see who is using it, what they are doing, or even if they are doing anything at all, creating plausable deniability. Perfect-Privacy.com is an example of a VPN provider that the Anonymous group cited.
One Anonymous member was quick to point out the downfall of HBGary, however: 'As good as some of the technical measures to hide your identity might be: if you're forgetting the social threats, "you dun goofed", so to speak. For example: accessing your private email account from such a secured connection might give ppl who monitor an exit node a "slight hint" on your identity. Or using tor and buying something in an online shop where you have to enter your adress. That'd be really stupid.'
At the end of examiner.com's questioning of Anonymous, they were asked about their confidence level. Specifically, what is their confidence level that the site will go down, and what is their confidence level they that they, personally, will not be arrested. The answer was, 'Over 9000,' an internet meme from the television show, Dragon Ball Z. As one leader said, 'I'm concerned about the IP protect act. Thats about it.'
