Anonymous wants to crash Facebook Jan. 28
(CBS) - The hacking group Anonymous announced Monday its plans to take down Facebook - again. Another YouTube video was released today with the same distorted voice announcing plans to launch an attack on the social network on Jan. 28.
"An online war has begun between Anonymous, the people and the government of the United States," said the YouTube video's narrator.
Full coverage of Anonymous at Tech Talk
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This time, a call for action is coming from the YouTube account AnonymousVoice777. Technically, #OpGlobalBlackout should have already taken place. The original threat gave Congress 72-hours from Jan. 19 to bring the file-sharing site Megaupload back online. So far, nothing has happened.
Megaupload was taken down after its founder Kim Dotcom and three others were arrested in New Zealandfor online piracy and money laundering.
In that video, Anonymous made threatened to take down Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. In a roundabout way, the hackers also threatened average citizens, while claiming it's not their goal.
"We have access to banking and credit card information to millions of citizens. But, as for the citizens, do not fear, for your accounts will not be compromised," Anonymous claimed in a previous video.
So, why use those accounts as leverage at all? This isn't the first time Anonymous has targeted average citizens to punish law enforcement or management.
Last summer, Anonymous protested against BARTofficials by releasing private information of mybart.org users a.k.a. not BART officials. The private email and home addresses, as well as phone numbers of average citizens were compromised. Why should anyone trust them now?
Anonymous' latest threat to take down Facebook isn't the first. Last year, the hacking group vowed to "kill" Facebook on Guy Fawkes Day - which was Nov. 5. That didn't happened either.
The hackers are calling for people to help them with the Facebook take-down on Saturday, stating that they wouldn't get in trouble for participating. Will the people pull off this attack on, well, themselves? They may not even know they're part of a bigger scheme.
People may have been unknowingly trickedinto attacking websites of the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Motion Pictures Association of America.
