Anonymous' MegaUpload Response Was Their Largest Ever

The Internet hath no fury like Anonymous scorned...

Yesterday's retaliatory attack on U.S. government and entertainment lobby groups' websites was the largest ever undertaken by Anonymous, the hacker collective. All told, more than 5,600 people around the world joined in to carry out the distributed denial-of-service attacks against the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, Universal Music, and the U.S. Copyright Office. According to Anonymous, that's the most sites the group has ever targeted in one attack. The DDOS operation was prompted by the arrest of four people in New Zealand who run the popular file-sharing web service, MegaUpload. (The details of the arrests – from sawed-off shotguns to pink Cadillacs – can be found here. Anonymous planned and carried out #OpMegaUpload in response, serving a warning to U.S. institutions that their anti-piracy actions won't go unchecked. We heartily recommend you check out Mother Jones' Josh Harkinson's reporting on the chat rooms where the plan was hatched.