Over the past few months, you have certainly heard your share of “hacking” and other cyber-attack news. Most of the time, cyber-attacks are either done for nuisance or theft. This time, the “Anonymous” group of hackers is demanding that Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman steps down.
Anonymous says that on June 14th (tomorrow), it will start its action called: “operation Empire State rebellion”.” The operation will commence on June 14th…Operation Empire State Rebellion Engaged.” Anonymous says. The group accuses the Federal Reserve of throwing tens of millions of people into poverty and accuses it of “crimes against humanity”.
For now, it’s clear that Ben Bernanke is not going to resign because of these threats. However, it’s not clear what the hackers will do to apply pressure to the Federal Reserve. They could try to steal and diffuse confidential information, or wreak havoc on the Federal Reserve’s computers. However, according to its statements, Anonymous doesn’t sound like it would want to cause huge troubles to the economy.
This comes in a context where the IMF (International Monetary Fund) got hacked as well. Also, 32 alleged members of the Anonymous group have been arrested in Spain under the accusation of being involved in a denial of service attack (taking server down by slamming them with traffic) on Turkish government websites.
We’ll know soon enough, but in the meantime, the first ” A99 Operation Empire State Rebellion” video posted on YouTube on March 12 did have an overwhelming majority of “likes” from users. What do you think?
Update June 14: Anonymous has released a second video and calls for public protests against Ben Bernanke.