Anonymous is back!! And in a big way. While 2012 has been projected as the year that cyber security becomes the highest priority over traditional military. With an interest and national security that lies in the lingering wake of the Wikileaks incidents, federal contractor breaches, and increasing high-profile compromises throughout the industry, an increasingly contentious game of cat-mouse, queen-pawn is playing out barely three weeks into this new year.

This latest attack as reported by Melissa Tolentino was a direct response to the FBI shutdown of the file-sharing site MegaUpload. 

“they posted a Pastebin link which announces that they taken down 10 sites in response to the Megaupload shutdown including the FBI, Universal Music, RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Hadopi – the French government agency responsible for “protecting creative works on the internet” along with information of some people connected to the sites they’ve taken down.”

And Anonymous was all too ready to boast as they tweeted (shades of LulzSec):

“We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn’t think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us.”

The hacktivists have been building to this response for some time. The targeted takedown of websites might seem innocuous, but it can be serious revenue-impacting business. You can be sure that these are only the edge of such attacks, that compromises will be sure to follow.

What’s next?

These are hacktivists, their goals do not appear to be profit, or to threaten the security of the nation. Where the industry and federal government goes in continued response to these looming threats really depends on the approach. SOPA and PIPA type of approaches are clearly over-reaching and the response, from site blackouts  – to hacktivist attacks will ensue. Copyright issues have long been the fuel of internet activist response, where big labels clash with those that expect a very open internet. It is an ongoing issue being played out over a number of years. What has escalated is that it is now very prominently interacting with one of the most significant issue of the day of cyber security.