Anonymous Continues Operation Last Resort With a Second Attack

It has been a rather difficult weekend for the folks over at the U.S. Sentencing Commission. After reeling from the most recent attack by Hacktivist group Anonymous on Friday evening, January 25, which left the U.S. Sentencing Commission website completely defaced – ZDNet reported on Sunday, January 27th, that the U.S.S.C. website was once again hacked. This time, the site was transformed into a game of Asteroids. (1)

The modification to the site allowed visitors to literally shoot away the Commission’s website through a creatively modified web-app version of Asteroids. The motive behind both attacks is a revenge hacking that most people familiar with the story of Aaron Swartz would consider completely justified.

The Aaron Swartz story is one of a patriotic programmer who believed intensely in the freedom of information on the Internet. Swartz is a well-known and much loved figure throughout the Internet technology community, having co-founded Reddit, Creative Commons and Demand Progress.

Demand Progress became a powerful lobbying force in Congress, successfully fighting against numerous Internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA).

In July 2011, Swartz was arrested under allegations that he had stolen over 4 million MIT papers from the JSTOR journal in order to provide the content to the public. On September 2012, Swartz pled not guilty to the charges.

After struggling to come up with the money to pay for his legal fees over the course of more than 12 months, on January 9th, the JSTOR journal announced that they were providing the journal archives to the public for free. (2)

Two days later, on January 11th, facing the start of trial for 13 counts of wire fraud, computer intrusion and reckless damage – facing a potential maximum sentence of 31 years in prison and without adequate funds to defend himself, Swartz committed suicide.

more here: http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2013/01/anonymous-continues-operation-last-resort-with-a-second-attack/