'Invade Wall Street': Occupy Wall Street's Evil (And Probably Fake) Twin
Occupy Wall Street is in its 18th day. Things are picking up steam a bit: the protesters have a big rally with the Transport Workers Union planned for tomorrow and they've also teamed up with a fancy PR firm, though they deny that they asked for any professional help with their media relations. But now Anonymous is messing with the game plan, as it's wont to do (not that there's necessarily a real game plan here). "Invade Wall Street" is a planned DDoS attack on the New York Stock Exchange. Sounds pretty typical, except Anonymous is denying that it's involved. Or is it? Here we go again.
Remember when Anonymous wanted to destroy Facebook? But they didn't actually want to destroy Facebook? This might be something like that.
The original call to action swears that ""On October 10th, NYSE shall be erased from the Internet. On October 10th, expect a day that will never, ever, be forgotten."
Thing is, Anonymous says the people behind Invade Wall Street are just imposters:
Citizens of the world We are Anonymous! Recently something very disturbing has come to our attention. You must take all notices and information claiming to be 'Anonymous' with a grain of salt. Consider EVERYTHING. Operation Invade Wall Street is bullshit! It is a fake planted operation by law enforcement and cyber crime agencies in order to get you to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement. It proposes you use depreciated tools that have known flaws such as LOIC. Anonymous would never tell you to use LOIC - Not after the arrests and failures of Operation Payback. Anonymous wouldn't attack NYSE on a HOLIDAY - It is debatable if Anonymous would ever even attack NYSE. Be wary friends! We are Anonymous We are Legion We do not Forgive We do not Forget Expect Us Be wary of imitations!
Or is that Anonymous? Christ. We're guessing that this one will turn out the same way the pretend Facebook attack did, but who knows -- if the NYSE is DDoS'able, some hacker out there could really be planning to DDoS the NYSE, whether or not it's Anonymous. That could catalyze the kind of shake-up OWS is looking for, but it's definitely not in in keeping with their M.O. up to this point.
An Occupy Wall Street rep had no knowledge of the Anonymous-or-not-Anonymous plan when we called this morning.
[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]
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