Megaupload takedown spurs retaliation from Anonymous

A takedown of the file-sharing site Megaupload ended in the united states Department of Justice being hit by the hacktivist group Anonymous last night.

The justice department of the FBI announced that seven individuals and two corporations (Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited) have been charged "with running a world organised criminal enterprise allegedly chargeable for massive worldwide online piracy of various kinds of copyrighted works through Megaupload.com and other related sites". They're imagined to have generated greater than $175m and caused greater than half a thousand million dollars in harm to copyright owners.

In an analogous week as lots of websites went dark in protest on the SOPA and PIPA bills, the FBI said that this was one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the united states.

The seven alleged members of what it called "the Mega conspiracy" were named as:

• Finn Batato, 38, a citizen and resident of Germany, who's the manager marketing officer;

• Julius Bencko, 35, a citizen and resident of Slovakia, who's the graphic designer;

• Sven Echternach, 39, a citizen and resident of Germany, who's the top of commercial development;

• Mathias Ortmann, 40, a citizen of Germany and resident of both Germany and Hong Kong, who's the manager technical officer, co-founder and director;

• Andrus Nomm, 32, a citizen of Estonia and resident of both Turkey and Estonia, who's a software programmer and head of the improvement software division;

• and Bram van der Kolk, aka Bramos, 29, a Dutch citizen and resident of both the Netherlands and New Zealand, who oversees programming and the underlying network structure for the Mega conspiracy websites.

The individuals each face a maximum penalty of two decades in prison at the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, five years at the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, two decades at the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and five years on all the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement.

The FBI alleged that Megaupload was structured to deter nearly all of its users from using it for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded, while a rewards programme would supply users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the positioning.

In response, Anonymous has targeted the FBI and US Department of Justice websites. In a press release posted on the Anonops website, it said that "within minutes of the location being shut down, and DoJ releasing its statement, Anonymous sprang into action and commenced taking down a ton of web sites, including websites for the DoJ, america Copyright Office, Universal Music, the RIAA, the MPAA and a group of different sites".

Former FBI special agent and cyber security commentator E.J. Hilbert said on his Twitter feed that the attacks occurred "not even an hour later". He later said that distributed denial-of-service tactics have been used.

Speaking to RT.com, Anonymous operative Barrett Brown warned more attacks can be made in protest at SOPA.

Ross Brewer, vice-president and managing director for international markets at LogRhythm, said: “If it's this simple for hacktivists to take down the internet sites of security-conscious law enforcement agencies just like the FBI, then surely no organisation can afford to be complacent about their cyber security? Anonymous's methods, a sequence of DDoS attacks that overwhelm web servers, could be crude when put next to more sophisticated techniques, but they're certainly effective and supply this hacking collective with the publicity they crave.”

Cyber security expert Paul Mutton said on his Twitter feed that Megaupload accounted for four per cent of all internet traffic.