Hackers attacked Scientology with 220 Mbps DDoS
A group of hackers calling itself “Anonymous” has hit the Church of Scientology’s Web site with an online attack. The attack was launched Jan. 19 by Anonymous, which is seeking media attention to help “save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing,” according to a Web page maintained by Anonymous (offline now). The attacks were spurred by the Church’s efforts to remove video of movie star Tom Cruise professing his admiration for the religion, according to an Anonymous video manifesto posted to Youtube. “For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and for our own enjoyment, we shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form,” a creepy computerized voice states in the video. Anonymous followed up this dispatch with a second video blasting the media for failing to completely report the group’s criticisms of the church. This video was taken down Friday by Youtube, citing a “terms of use violation.”
Anonymous has managed to generate a measurable attack against the Scientology.org Web site. Over the past few days, the site was hit with several DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, which flooded it with as much as 220 Mbps of traffic, according to Jose Nazario, a senior security engineer with Arbor Networks, whose company compiles data on Internet attacks. The Anonymous campaign shows some level of organization. “220 Mbps is probably about in the middle of attack sizes,” Nazario said. “It’s not just one or two guys hanging out in the university dorms doing this.” On average, the attacks lasted about 30 minutes and used up 168 Mbps of bandwidth. In the past year, Arbor has seen attacks on other sites hit 40 Gbps, or 200 times the strength of the Anonymous event.
Source: Cnet, Pc world
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