Cyber activists belonging to the “Anonymous” organization recently launched a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) against the Spanish copyright protection society (SGAE).
The cyber offensive – which was executed under the auspices of the organization’s Operation Payback campaign – resulted in at least 20 service interruptions to the SGAE’s site, as well as four interruptions to mcu.es.
“The SGAE has as slogan ‘believe in culture’, while they restrict new creativity by preventing that creativity is shared. They lobbied this Canon Law, which states that suspected piracy websites can be taken down without a court order,” an Anonymous member explained in an official statement obtained by PandaLabs.
“This is a danger to freedom of speech, since any site can just be taken down with the excuse that intellectual property is hosted. The ‘Ministerio of Cultura’ should get a message that their current course will only lead to more controversy and protest.”
Meanwhile, technical director of PandaLabs Luis Corrons said he believed Anonymous would likely step up the pace of its pinpoint attacks in the future.
“In September, [we] witnessed what could be deemed the first organized mass cyber-protest on the Internet against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), bodies that set out to protect copyright and distribution rights.
“The ‘Anonymous’ group responded to these organizations’ efforts to shut down free file-sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay by launching a stream of globally coordinated cyber attacks.
“[And] the way things are progressing, it will be no surprise to see cyber protests organized country by country targeting different copyright protection associations.”
