Some purported members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous had vowed to step up their campaign against Wall Street interests with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the NYSE.com slated for October 10, 2011.
The attack failed to materialize, though Keynote Systems, a company monitoring the NYSE website, did say that there were two brief outages yesterday afternoon, according to Finextra.
The original DDoS threat was issued in a video posted on YouTube October 2nd, titled "Operation Invade Wall Street - A Message to the Media".
The Anonymous video was designed to enlist a crowd-sourced "hive" to participate in the DDoS attacks, and is complete with information on how and where to download the group's attack tool known as the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, or LOIC.
"On October 10, Nyse shall be erased from the Internet. On October 10, expect a day that will never, ever be forgotten..." the video proclaimed.
Other efforts to disrupt Wall Street operations have been limited to traditional sit-in style protests in front of the Exchange, and a handful of document dumps containing information stolen from leading Wall Street firms.
While the tough sounding rhetoric may work to inspire some followers of Anonymous to join in the attacks, other members of the collective have issued warnings that the planned DDoS attacks will simply result in more arrests by authorities.
"We do not want history to repeat itself, and are sincerely worried", the message posted on Your Anon News warned.
Another message posted on Pastebin on October 4th claimed that the planned attack against the NYSE website was patently false, stating "Operation Invade Wall Street is bullfrak! It is a fake planted operation by law enforcement and cyber crime agencies in order to get you to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement."
Then on the day the attack was planned, yet another video was released claiming that the brouhaha over the NYSE DDoS attack was a manufactured event meant to drive the media into a frenzy.
The video states that Anonymous will strike "once the media and the government get used to the messages we send out as fake," and that "they will let their guard down."
So was the planned attack just a hoax to pique the news media? Or perhaps another internal Anonymous faction striking off on their own and attempting to get other members to follow suit? Or was the operation such a complete failure that the Anonymous ringleaders decided they needed to save face by claiming the attack was just a rouse?
Probably a little of all of the above.
