BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—As promised, the pro-pirate group Anonymous initiated a denial-of-service attack against Hustler.com today, with intermittent success at first. The attack is part of Operation Payback, undertaken in response to lawsuits served against illegal downloaders of copyrighted content. Hustler recently sued 5,000 such people as part of a “John Doe” campaign.
As reported yesterday, Hustler.com was the secondary target this week after the group called off its planned attack against a French organization in charge of regulating internet access and enforcing copyright law.
The attack today was planned to begin at 8 p.m. GMT, and apparently did so right on time. Hustler.com seemed to be holding its own at first, but then went down, and then back up, in a sustained effort to fight off the DDoS attacks.
Currently, shortly after 3 p.m. PDT, the site is up and appears to have stabilized. A call was just made to NationalNet, Hustler’s hosting company, but the staff was too busy to comment. Hustler was contacted yesterday for comment on the impending attack, but has yet to respond.
In addition to the attack on Hustler.com today, it’s also possible that retaliatory measures were attempted against an Anonymous website that contains information people can use to join in the DDoS attack against Hustler and others. It went down also today, shortly after the attack against Hustler.com commences. It is back up now, too.
Thus the cat-and-mouse game continues between the hit-and-run Anonymous group and content producers and supporting law firms and organizations.
To be continued…
