The official website for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation is the latest victim in a massive online attack against both the government and entertainment industry.
The Bureau’s official website, FBI.gov, went down Thursday evening after hacktivists participating in campaigns waged by the loose knit collective Anonymous attacked a series of sites in retaliation for a raid earlier in the day against the Megaupload service.Following a federal raid that not only shut down the file sharing service Megaupload but also led to more than 20 warrants being served and at least seven arrests internationally, hacktivists took to the Web to respond. The result was an attack on the sites of several entertainment industry and government sites that crippled many of them. The websites for the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group were among the first to go, with the sites for US Copyright Office, Warner Music, BMI, and RIAA following suit shortly after. At around 7:40 PM ET, FBI.gov finally went down.Ongoing attacks have also been waged against WhiteHouse.gov, the official site for the Executive Branch of the United States.“It was in retaliation for Megaupload,” Barrett Brown confirms to RT. A frequent collaborator with Anonymous, he is mastermind a separate campaign aimed at attacking Congressman that support the SOPA and PIPA legislations. “We can expect a great deal of havoc of the sort we saw today. We’re going to see it in a stepped up fashion,” adds Brown.