Anonymous Targets Supporters of House Intelligence Cyberbill
Anonymous lobbed at least three distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against supporters of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) Monday. The “hacktivist” group allegedly crashed the websites of USTelecom, TechAmerica, and the NCTA in separate, coordinated attacks.
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Anonymous said it was taking a “direct stance” against the companies and organizations who support the “new threat” of CISPA, in one of several videos posted to YouTube Monday (http://bit.ly/IbaK4e). HR-3523 was introduced last year by House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., to encourage voluntary, anonymous cyberthreat information sharing between the public and private sectors. Privacy groups lambasted the bill at the time because they said it is likely to expand the government’s monitoring of private communications.
The attack underscores the importance of “speedy action” on the bill to “ensure that the Internet remains an open and safe forum for all,” USTelecom CEO Walter McCormick said. “By launching a cyber attack in an effort to coerce, intimidate and stifle speech, members of Anonymous are acting contrary to the very freedoms and Internet norms that they espouse."
TechAmerica CEO Shawn Osborne said Anonymous’s “strong-arm tactics have no place in the critical discussions our country needs to be having about our cybersecurity.” TechAmerica reaffirmed its advocacy for CISPA, which it said would defend against cyberattacks and “keep the Internet free and open.”
NCTA said its website had suffered “some intermittent outages” and couldn’t identify the root cause. The group said it was checking with its Web hosting company and had not yet contacted law enforcement officials to investigate.
The attacks differ from Anonymous’s online protests of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act last year, said lawyer Stewart Baker, a former Homeland Security assistant secretary for policy. “When Anonymous protested SOPA by claiming it was going to shut down the Internet, you could argue it was making a political statement. But when a group of illegal hackers protests cybersecurity legislation, that’s just naked self-interest,” said Baker, who now represents clients of Steptoe & Johnson on national security issues. “They deserve some credit for irony -- what they're doing is like protesting a law setting higher penalties for bank robbery by ... robbing banks.”
Letters of support for the legislation have been signed by 28 companies and industry groups(http://bit.ly/rLfSBa). They are: AT&T; Boeing; Business Software Alliance; Business Roundtable; CSC; CompTel; CTIA; Cyber, Space and Intelligence Association; Edison Electric; EMC; Exelon; Facebook; the Financial Services Roundtable; IBM; Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance; Information Technology Industry Council; Intel; Internet Security Alliance; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; NCTA; National Defense Industrial Association; Oracle; Symantec; TechAmerica; U.S. Chamber of Commerce; USTelecom and Verizon.