Is the Anonymous Threat to 'Erase' the NYSE Legit? | Hacker News Reader

Is the Anonymous Threat to 'Erase' the NYSE Legit?

pcmag.com

26 pointsadeelarshad8226 comments

The video threat against the NYSE included a call for Anonymous supporters to utilize the so-called Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) voluntary botnet tool to launch a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack against the NYSE's website on the target date.

Regardless of whether this is a threat from Anonymous or a fake, I really don't think DDOSing the web server(s) of the NYSE would have any affect whatsoever on their actual trading systems. I would assume (or hope) that there is no internal connection between the two.

Last time I checked, NYSE internal trading is on a Savvis backbone while nyse.com is on an Akamai CDN. I highly doubt there's ANY connection between the two.

No. The main anonymous twitter accounts have denied it and they suspect it is a ploy to get people to use LOIC to arrest activists associated with #OccupyWallStreet

Ah, the real, canonical Anonymous then :)

So its an agent provocateur false flag then. Got it.

If they could do it, they would do it. There really is no point in announcing these sorts of things.

Perhaps they can knock down the wibsite www.nyse.com for some time but thats not a very big thing.

I think you would need several very powerful bombs in order to erase the NYSE. Even then, pretty much every firm that trades equities has an internal database with tick-by-tick ask/bid information.

I don't understand all the hate for Wall Street. They are doing as poorly as anyone else. Compare BAC's YTD share price:

http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...

And take a look at it 5 years ago:

http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...

Bank of America isn't exactly part of Wall Street. When I think of Wall Street, I think of the big (and not so big) investment banks.

While their stocks are(currently)down, and most of these banks are laying off employees, I think the hatred stems from the fact that these investment banks profited from the inflation of the housing bubble, and for the most part walked away clean, despite the fact that their actions were borderline criminal.

edit: Bank of America, is technically involved with investment banking, however that is because they acquired Merrill Lynch during the collapse. Before that, i believe that they were strictly retail.

Bank of America owns Merrill Lynch, which is a pretty big investment bank.

Attacking www.nyse.com !== 'erasing' the NYSE

oblig. xkcd https://www.xkcd.com/932/

I can't find the original reference(s), but not that long ago the SEC suspended trading of some company for a short period of time because the site hosting some recently released financial report was DDoSed, leading to potential information asymmetry for investors.

Not exactly a spectacular effect, but at least one way in which actions on the public web can have a (small) influence on trading operations.

I like that you used !==.

It's the JavaScript developer in me peeking out :x

No. They're just a bunch of script kiddies. Ignore them.

I thought it didn't sound like the way Anonymous would act, from the beginning.

It's tough being anonymous and set yourself apart from copycats. Actually the best attack some agency can do against anonymous is keep spamming "anonymous" videos to the point where there is so much noise that their message is tuned out.

The thing is, if there really is no leadership, how does anyone even tell if someone is "really" in Anonymous? Or if some video is "really" from them? Can even members of Anonymous tell? Otherwise it's like github and forking, except of idealistic concerns.

Ahahah! Wait, they really took this prank as serious?

They just want attention. Which you just gave them.

queue the pixies

where is my mind?

Nope

In this terrorism culture, what does this message sound like other than .. terrorism?

Trolling?

In this terrorized culture, everything sounds terrifying.

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