'Anonymous' takes down NYSE.com for 1 minute

[Bosonic]

Source: Chicago Tribune

'Anonymous' call for a massive attack on the New York Stock Exchange's website was met Monday -- but very, very briefly.

A group calling itself Anonymous, a name used by disparate groups of online "hactivists," threatened to take down NYSE.com at 3:30 p.m. ET today as an extension of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations that have continued into a fourth week.

The website was slow and then unavailable from about 3:35 p.m. to around 3:37 p.m, after which it returned to normal. Keynote, an Internet monitoring company, confirmed that NYSE.com slowed down during that time. Another tracking site, downforeveryoneorjustme.com, also registered a brief outage.

In a message that went out in early October through a video on YouTube, the group called for a "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attack, which directs a flood of traffic to a website and temporarily crashes it by overwhelming its servers. It doesn't actually involve any hacking or security breaches, and would have no effect on NYSE's stock-trading systems.

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-anonymous-takes-down-nysecom-for-1-minute-20111010,0,1627656.story

[xchrom]

1. A minute today - 2 tomorrow. Nt

[valerief]

2. +1

[TheDebbieDee]

3. A minute today, an HOUR tomorrow....

[dd2003]

43. this is worthless

no trading is done on the website and no one goes to it.

[izquierdista]

4. Will they notice?

I think we need to update Lenin's quote for this new century -- Not only will the capitalist sell you the rope you intend to hang him with, he will use the proceeds to speculate in rope futures while the gallows are being built.

[Gregorian]

5. Anonymous said they weren't going to do this. So I wonder if it's really them.

[TheWraith]

7. That assumes that "Anonymous" is a single organized group.

And that all members of said group are in constant communication and obey the central authority.

[Gregorian]

10. Suddenly I feel like I'm in an episode of The Young Ones.

Heavy, man.

I see what you mean. Nothing wrong with a bit of anarchy.

[They_Live]

8. That's the thing

about being anonymous. It is difficult to tell what they are doing and if they take credit for something, is it really them taking credit? Makes it rather difficult to spot the virtual agent provocateurs.

[nichomachus]

6. It's called "a warning shot across the bow"

[AsahinaKimi]

32. Like!

:thumbsup:

[SoapBox]

9. hehe...

I've got to laugh.

Maybe not the best way to get stuff done but it all reminds me of "V for Vendetta".

[Kennah]

36. I'm reminded of the end of "Fight Club"

[nineteen50]

11. So

What is the value of 2 min. on NYSE.com ?

[jwirr]

16. Not much but the value in knowing you can be shut down is priceless. nt

[Chan790]

33. Almost nothing.

It doesn't even affect the online trading systems.

Comparatively, remember when RATM managed to get the exchange closed at 3pm on a Monday by creating a "disturbance" by having a flash-mob concert right in front of the main doors to the exchange? That cost Wall St. a bit of money, by-comparison. They even put it in a music video for "Sleep Now in the Fire" directed by Michael Moore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w211KOQ5BMI&ob=av3e

The best part is the sheer number of traders in the trader-blue jackets in that crowd. Hypocrites. Also the smug look on Rudy Guiliani's face. And that it takes two cops to arrest Michael Moore. And the idiot voice-over from some RW commentator off TV. Okay, it's just pretty fucking great all around.

(If RATM isn't your style and you just want to see the exchange shuttered, you can skip to around 3:10)

[Imajika]

12. Traders made lots of money today..

Markets up nearly 3%. This kind of thing accomplishes zilch.

Protests good, actually voting is vastly better. Hactivist attacks like this achieve nothing because they don't positively influence the masses.

[TheWraith]

14. "voting is vastly better" < Amen to that.

Besides which, this shit just ends up hurting average people with a pension fund or 401K the worst. The bankers can react and fish their money back out.

[Imajika]

19. The establisment actually has no problem with protests...

It's voting they worry about. Hactivist stunts like this accomplish not a single worthwhile thing, other than to maybe provide some fun for a few folks on /b/.

[TheWraith]

20. Protests are easy to ignore and have exactly zero lasting impact.

And they wear out the people involved, siphoning off energy that could be put into, say, electing people who support Wall Street reform.

[Remember Me]

23. Wall Street Reform? Elections? Are you kidding?

If YOU think any combination of those two things will accomplish what needs to be done in this country, I've got some ocean front property in Arizona you might also like.

Sheesh.

We need a complete up-ending of the system, the ENTIRE system. We need an infusion of real values, heart-centered, heart-felt values that, as the protesters put it, put people over profits. And that's just the beginning.

Think bigger, because I don't want MORE of the same ole shit in a different costume, I want something completely different.

[elias7]

24. maybe these small pieces will turn it all on

"If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously." -jerry garcia


But at some point, we ALL need to throw our hat in the ring, roll up our shirt sleeves and get in there....

What are YOU waiting for! What am I waiting for?

[TheWraith]

25. You have the ocean front property because you bought it already.

Or more specifically, you bought the belief that somehow you can change society without changing the laws. As it is now, you're just tilting at windmills.

[MH1]

40. Well said.

[Remember Me]

42. I didn't say WITHOUT laws, I said the ones you're proposing

are too little too late -- we need massive change before we can have the kinds of laws written that are needed.

A little "wall street reform" will enable them to go on finding other loopholes, buying other politicians, getting more 1%-friendly laws passed in the state legislatures.

That shit has to STOP. THIS MOMENT is our chance to get it stopped. I'm not interested in a little polite wall st reform, I want peaceful revolution.

[loudsue]

26. Absolutely! And well said!

:applause:

[Dutchmaster]

27. You think they give a shit about voting when they own both parties?

lolololololol.


seriously, if 2006, 2008 - now hasn't proven that to you, then nothing ever will.

[Nihil]

44. Sad but true. (n/t)

[tblue37]

29. But TPTB hack our votes with those damned electronic voting machines. nt

[Odin2005]

38. If voting ever changed anything it would be illegal.

The PTB only allow reform when they are shit-pants scared.

[Freddie Stubbs]

39. Investors did too

[firehorse]

13. I'm surprised hacktivists haven't moved money from the 1% to the 99%.

[Lint Head]

15. Is it possible to 'Flash Mob' a site to take it down? As in overload because a lot of

people access it at the same time?

[EFerrari]

18. Anonymous said this was a hoax and that they weren't doing this.

So yeah, maybe the traffic overloaded the site.

[TheWraith]

21. Yes. Servers have a limited capacity to host connections.

A server (or rather a server farm, dozens or hundreds of servers linked together) for a very big website like eBay, or something like the NYSE, might be able to handle hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections. But there's ways around that, including using swarms of PCs hijacked with malicious software (called "bot nets") to attack the site is one popular way. This is hard to defend against, simply because it's a way of overwhelming the server, not just using a trick to shut it down. Imagine a person trying to drink from a firehose at full blast.

[TownDrunk2]

17. My God, it can almost nudge you to be hopeful again :) I LOVE ANONY

[Tom Ripley]

22. Good work!

[tblue37]

28. I wish the Anonymous superhackers would do something about the

obviously hackable electronic voting systems to prove once and for all that they must not be used. If they could bring THAT scam down, they would have accomplished something really worthwhile.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

30. What Wall Street does to this country every day is a form of terrorism

So I'm not at all upset by Anon letting Wall Street know how we feel.

[mwrguy]

31. They didn't take down the NYSE, they took down a public web server

[MH1]

41. Exactly.

These things always give me a little chuckle.

[iamthebandfanman]

34. im sorry but

as someone who has been on the net since 1995, im just not impressed with 'anonymous'

they are just to disorganized and loose of an organization to mean or be anything.
its all show and silly kiddy script tricks.. ( i mean, one of the times 'they' even asked people to download an executable script to join in )
hell, i dont know that much about coding and EVEN I made fun of these people back in the day with people who knew waaaaay more than me (they ran unix and linux, and back then when everyone was running win95/98 , EVERYONE was a potential victim lol .. infact i may have had a lil fun on my win2000 box that they help me secure haha but shhhh ;) )
its too bad all the 'actual' hacking groups from the 90s mostly sold out ( hey i dont blame them, security work pays well... especially for the government and large corporations)..

[Courtesy Flush]

37. Agreed

If they were living up to their potential they'd be more like Wikileaks, digging up and exposing information that can make a difference. These guys just toss some toilet paper in your yard and high five each other.

[GeorgeGist]

35. Could it have been gawkers?