Sunday, November 13, 2011

Hackers threaten to 'remove' Toronto from Internet if it evicts Occupy protesters

The notorious hacker group Anonymous is threatening to have the City of Toronto “removed from the Internet” if they move forward on plans to evict the Occupy Toronto camp.“The brave citizens of Toronto are peaceful and well mannered occupiers, and we will not let the city . . . get involved,” said a computerized voice in a Saturday video by the group.On Thursday, residents and business owners neighbouring the sprawling encampment gathered to voice their displeasure about the clouds of marijuana and campfire smoke emanating from the park — as well as the near-constant sound of drumming.That same day, city manager Joe Pennachetti told reporters that Toronto would take “appropriate steps” to disband the camp.Anonymous’ main weapon is not technically hacking, but rather a tactic known as “distributed denial of service.” The attacks work by commanding millions of computers (usually civilian computers commandeered by a computer virus) to suddenly flood a website with traffic, overloading the server.On Saturday, Occupy Toronto protesters were quickly shooed away by Toronto police after attempting to set up a “branch camp” behind the Ontario legislature. Protesters claimed the original site had become overcrowded.Approximately 300 people are estimated to be living at the downtown site.

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