Kanyi Okeke
Members of an internet group known as Anonymous have threatened to shut down Facebook on November 5.
The Anonymous group is a loosely organised alliance of hackers from around the world.
Locally, they have been attributed to crashing the Australian government website in February 2010 in a protest against Senator Stephen Conroy’s quest to pass internet filtering laws.
In a YouTube video from July, and now disabled, Anonymous related hackers announced their proposed attack on the social networking site for November 5 saying, “Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world.”
They have vowed to, “kill Facebook.”
Anonymous has officially distanced itself from the Facebook threat and deny the claim they are orchestrating the attack, they say hackers associated with the group are pursuing it.
The November 5 date was reportedly chosen because it is also Guy Fawkes Day, the day that marks a man’s attempt to blow up the British House of Parliament in 1605.
Anonymous unofficially uses Guy Fawkes as a anti-heroism as a symbolic mascot, by wearing the Guy Fawkes mask used in Alan Moore’s graphic novel V for Vendetta.
In Moore’s story, the mask is worn by a lone freedom fighter against government iniquity.
A member of Queensland police says he would consider the threat seriously, 7News reports.
Brian Hay from Queensland’s fraud squad says that he believes hackers of this kind don’t make baseless threats.
“I’d imagine they’ve gone in – they’ve defeated the security system, they’ve got access, they’re confident they can do it again and they’re not going to be found out.” says Brian Hay.
Cyber crime expert Dr Adrian McCullagh agrees saying Anonymous should be taken seriously, telling 7News that is they were successful 10 per cent of the global population would be affected.
Facebook currently has over 800 million users worldwide.
Source: YahooNews
