Massive Hacker Strike Against US Government and Banks Turned Out to Be a Dud

Yessterday was May 7, the day that Anonymous and various explicitly anti-USA and anti-Israel hacking groups promised to take down the websites of the Pentagon, White House, FBI, Bank of America, Chase bank, and all the other usual symbols of oppression. Except the attacks appeared to be a complete failure. All the sites on the group’s #OpUSA target list seem to still be up and running. If these sites are under fire—via a flood of nonsense traffic known as a Distributed Denial of Service attack—they are absorbing it with no apparent interruption to their service.

Those hacks that have taken place are somewhat underwhelming. The “Tunisian_Hàckers Team” has released what it claims is a database of usernames and passwords for “Blood Bank Of America,” but which is actually a site to help people find blood banks to which to donate. The rest of the compromised sites are a strangely random grab-bag of domains, from a Romanian air-conditioning company (http://aerbineconditionat.ro/) to a Philippine municipal government  (http://sanpedrolaguna.gov.ph/).

Anonymous released a statement stating that the group is involved “in solidarity with the Guantanamo hunger strikers,” and that their goal is to shut down the prison in Cuba where America holds so-called enemy combatants. However, the “official” press release from the N4m3le55 cr3w hackers behind “OpUSA” doesn’t mention Guantanamo Bay at all, and isn’t terribly clear about the goals of this attack. 

Read more at Quartz.