Feds, Banks Brace as Anonymous Vows Giant Hack Today

Hacker groups plot #OpUSA, say May 7 a 'day to remember'
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted May 7, 2013 7:55 AM CDT
Feds, Banks Brace as Anonymous Vows Giant Hack Today
Hackers have warned of a major cyberattack today.   (Shutterstock)

Hackers have spent weeks warning of a giant attack on US government agencies and banks—and today is the day, they say. "Anonymous will make sure that this May 7th will be a day to remember," said the hacker group in a post, per the Huffington Post. The attacks are retaliation for US "war crimes" in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, the group noted. The government is preparing, but it doesn't seem hugely scared, expecting "limited disruptions" and "nuisance-level attacks against publicly accessible webpages."

The hackers are "mostly Middle East- and North Africa-based," according to government documents shown to BuzzFeed. Among the targets of the attack, dubbed #OpUSA, are websites of the White House, Pentagon, FBI, Bank of America, and Chase Bank, HuffPo notes. Major warnings from Anonymous haven't always had big results, according to experts. But "independent of the success of the attacks, the criminal hackers likely will leverage press coverage and social media to propagate an anti-US message," the government documents say. (More cyberattack stories.)

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