Anonymous has announced OpIcarus, a campaign targeting leading financial services companies for their supposed support of global terrorism. Get the latest information on this new campaign.
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Abstract
The hacktivist group Anonymous announced its plan to attack leading financial services companies on Monday, February 8, 2016, starting at 6AM UTC with the goal of taking down their websites and services. To accomplish this, they will equip attackers with dedicated VPN and LOIC tools to launch simultaneous Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and encourage protesters to accompany the operation by protesting in front of the Bank of England and New York Stock Exchange.
Background
Members of the collective Anonymous have announced operation OpIcarus, which was scheduled to begin on Monday, February 8 at 6 am UTC targeting both The Bank of England and The New York Stock Exchange. The campaign will include both offline protests and DoS attacks. This event is intended to bring public attention to what Anonymous calls 'corruption' inside of the financial industry. Anonymous contends that leading banks are supporting and funding global terrorism:
Like Icarus, the powers that be have flown too close to the sun and the time has come to set the wings of their empire ablaze and watch the system their power relies on come to a grinding halt and come crashing down around them. We must strike at the heart of their empire by once again throw a wrench into the machine, but this time we face a much bigger target; the global financial system. This time our target is the New York Stock Exchange and Bank of England." i OpIcarus
Those behind Operation Icarus are planning to launch simultaneous DoS attacks using a Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC). LOIC allows hackers to inundate servers with heavy network traffic loads and has been widely used by Anonymous as a DDoS tool. Anonymous has made available a VPN and LOIC tool for free to whoever wants to take part in the attack. Thousands of protestors using LOIC to attack a single target could multiply the impact on network performance beyond what a "normal" coordinate LOIC attack might achieve. The degradation in network performance could result in customers unable to access financial services or funds.
OpIcarus' Facebook event page lists sixty additional central banks and monetary authorities (all members of the BIS) that might be attacked during the February 8 protests.
Known Targets
- Bank of England – Threadneedle st, London EC2R 8AH– 6am UK
- New York Stock Exchange – 11 Wall St, New York NY 10005 – 1am NYC
Potential targets also include BIS member banksii
- Bank of Algeria
- Central Bank of Argentina
- Reserve Bank of Australia
- Central Bank of the Republic of Austria
- National Bank of Belgium
- Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Central Bank of Brazil
- Bulgarian National Bank
- Bank of Canada
- Central Bank of Chile
- People's Bank of China
- Bank of the Republic (Colombia)
- Croatian National Bank
- Czech National Bank
- Danmarks Nationalbank (Denmark)
- Bank of Estonia
- European Central Bank
- Bank of Finland
- Bank of France
- Deutsche Bundesbank (Germany)
- Bank of Greece
- Hong Kong Monetary Authority
- Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Hungary)
- Reserve Bank of India
- Bank Indonesia
- Bank of Israel
- Bank of Italy
- Bank of Japan
- Bank of Korea
- Bank of Latvia
- Bank of Lithuania
- Central Bank of Luxembourg
- National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia
- Central Bank of Malaysia
- Bank of Mexico
- Netherlands Bank
- Reserve Bank of New Zealand
- Central Bank of Norway
- Central Reserve Bank of Peru
- Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Philippines)
- National Bank of Poland
- Bank of Portugal
- National Bank of Romania
- Central Bank of the Russian Federation
- Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency
- National Bank of Serbia
- Monetary Authority of Singapore
- National Bank of Slovakia
- Bank of Slovenia
- South African Reserve Bank
- Bank of Spain
- Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden)
- Swiss National Bank
- Bank of Thailand
- Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey
- Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates
- Bank of England
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (United States)
How to Prepare
Radware advises both The Bank of England and The New York Stock Exchange, along with BIS members, to put security protections in place for DDoS mitigation and prevention. Parties under attack can contact Radware's Emergence Response Team (ERT) directly for immediate, real time mitigation and DDoS protection from downtime.
Radware's hybrid attack mitigation solution provides a set of patented and integrated technologies designed to detect, mitigate and report todays most advanced threats. Dedicated hardware and cloud solutions protect against attacks in real time and help ensure service availability.
With Radware, companies can protect their infrastructure from multi-vector attacks network and application based DDoS attacks as well as volumetric attacks that may saturate the Internet pipe, defacement, information-loss, and other reputation loss impacts of denial of service. Radware solutions include proven LOIC protection mechanisms. To understand how Radware's 24x7 attack mitigation solutions can better protect your network
contact us.
Sources
Event Information
Event Video
Facebook Page
Promoter
Hashtags in use
- #OpIcarus
- #OccupyLondon
- #OccupyWallStreet
- #DDOS
- #Anonymous
- #Anarchists
Tools