Anonymous vows to attack NYSE


thelatestThe group of hacker-activists known as Anonymous has vowed to erase the New York Stock Exchange “from the internet” on Oct. 10, in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

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The group of hacker-activists known as Anonymous has vowed to erase the New York Stock Exchange “from the internet” on Oct. 10, in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

The group posted a video message on YouTube declaring war on the world’s largest stock exchange in retaliation for the mass arrests of Wall Street protesters, and posted a link to the video on one of several Anonymous Twitter feeds.

The two-minute message didn’t elaborate on the threat or whether it referred only to an attack on the NYSE website, which would have no effect on trading.

Anonymous has launched several so-called directed denial of service attacks on websites over several months, including actions in December against the sites of MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. Members of the group use specialized software to launch the attacks, which can slow or crash the site for a short period of time, according to court documents.

This is according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Update: Some members of Anonymous debate the legitimacy of this claim. See Is the Anonymous Threat to ‘Erase’ the NYSE Legit? from PCMag.com.