Where the government fails, leave it to a group of hackers to succeed. The infamous “Anonymous” hacker group decided to target a collection of child pornography sites called Freedom Hosting and succeeded in not only crashing the sites but also releasing the names of almost 1600 users who frequent them. Anonymous even took down one of the world’s largest sites, Lolita City, which is believed to contain over 100gb of content.
At least the cyber vigilantes were cordial enough to issue a warning. Anonymous issued a warning to Freedom Hosting to remove the illegal content from their servers. Either Freedom Hosting didn’t feel threatened or chose to ignore the warning which led to the ensuing attack. The site was down for 5 minutes wherein Anonymous was able to retrieve the information on their users which they released to the public at large.
The attack was carried out by the sub-group Operation Darknet who considers Freedom Hosting “enemy number one”. The group released a statement calling for an end to child pornography content on their sites as well as services to any future child porn sites. “”We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting’s server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography,” they said. Anonymous also issued a statement regarding the names released saying, “If the FBI, Interpol, or other law enforcement agency should happen to come across this list, please use it to investigate and bring justice to the people listed here”.
While Anonymous has been responsible for the hacking of many corporations and police department’s emails, this latest move has generated positive support from the public for targeting a common enemy of the general public. While the actions by the group could affect an operation being undertook by authorities, there is no denying you can’t help but to feel better knowing someone out there is trying to do something about child pornography.
Child pornography is a very dark side of society which seems able to operate in shadow and veiled from the public eye, only seen by those in the know. I know I myself will sleep better tonight knowing that some organizations out there are hacking for the greater good to stop horrors such as this and not trying to get my credit card number.
