The notorious hacktivists, collectively called Anonymous, are at it again; the innumerable members of the group partnered with other hacktivist groups and launched a massive campaign called OpIcarus to take down the “corrupt global banking cartel.”
Their first victim was the website for the Central Bank of Greece, but several banks from huge, influential nations were subsequently taken offline as well, including the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Bank of England and the Bank of France.
Anonymous explained their intentions in a press release:
“The banks have been getting away with murder, fraud, conspiracy, war profiteering, money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels, have put millions of people out on the street without food or shelter and have successfully bought all our governments to help keep us silenced. We represent the voice of the voiceless. We are uniting to make a stand.”
Hitting Western imperialism straight in the heart, some banks suffered for hours before they were able to collect themselves and regain access to their sites to continue with transactions. Many questioned the effectiveness of OpIcarus, senior director Stephanie Weagle at Corero Network Security told Info Security magazine:
“While the impact on the individual targets of the DDoS attack campaign, ‘OpIcarus’ is unclear; obstructing or eliminating the availability of email servers is significant. In an online world any type of service outage is barely tolerated, especially in the banking industry where transactions and communications are often time-sensitive, and account security is of utmost importance.”
Though the hackers were only able to take down the email servers for a few banks, such as the Bank of England, the damage was significant enough for those high up to feel.
Anonymous wanted to direct their hit at the top 1% rather than affecting everyday citizens who conduct their business with the bank, so they clarified what their target was in an interview with The Free Thought Project:
“We would just like to make it very clear that all targets of #OpIcarus have been Rothschild and BIS central owned banks. In fact most of the targets so far, such as Guernsey, Cyprus, Panama, Jordan, British Virgin Isles, etc. are in the top 10 places of tax havens for the elite. No on-line consumer accounts were harmed, no ATM’s were blocked and no personal client data was leaked. This has been a protest against the Central Banks and the 1% — no innocent or poor people were harmed.”
As the siege raged on, several different hacker groups, including Ghost Squad Hackers, tweeted screenshots of the offline websites as proof that they had been successfully hacked and taken down.
Though all of the banks eventually went back online, the blow dealt to the banks is immeasurable and those that are tired of the “global banking cartel” have these hacktivists to thank for their hard work.
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