Over the weekend, computer hacking group Anonymous announced plans to specifically target the New York Stock Exchange on October 10 and claims to “erase” the NYSE from the Internet on that day. Titled Operation Invade Wall Street in support for the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City and other cities around the United States, Anonymous likely plans to use Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to target the New York Stock Exchange website. The message was included in a video uploaded to YouTube that’s designed to recruit more hackers to the Operation Invade Wall Street cause.
A DDoS attack is an organized effort to coordinate an assault on the target website in an attempt to drive off any legitimate traffic. A real world example would be throngs of people standing at the front door of a business, but not allowing anyone else to enter. While a one-day DDoS attack would be a nuisance for the officials of the NYSE, it’s unlikely to cause any significant damage. However, officials are wary that Anonymous will attack to disrupt the exchange and attempt to harm trading on October 10. According to the most recent YouTube video, Anonymous plans to attack the NYSE at 3:30 EST next Monday.
The last video released by Anonymous targets the New York City police department in regards to treatment of protesters at the Occupy Wall Street gathering. The hacking collective issued a warning to the NYPD and made comparisons to the police force in Egypt. Anonymous went on to threaten the NYPD if further incidents occurred over the next three days. Shortly after the NYPD made headlines for pepper-spraying a group of women held behind orange netting on the sidewalks of New York City, Anonymous released personal information in regards to the officer using the pepper spray such as phone number, home address and names of relatives.
