Earlier this week, hacking group Anonymous declared war on Al-Qaeda and IS amid the terrorist attacks in Paris, and it hasn’t taken long for them to claim their first victim.
The operation has been codenamed #OpCharlieHebdo, and the leader-free hacking group are vowing to take down every single extremist propaganda site, one by one.
Their Twitter account for the mission, @OpCharlieHebdo, posted this video.
As of yesterday, the group claimed to have taken down ansar-alhaqq.net. In 2013, French newspapers described it as a French jihadist website.
According to reports, the site was down for over an hour after Anonymous’ actions, but it is now back up and running. It is not known what method Anonymous used, but their usual weapon of choice is a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which is essentially flooding a website with traffic until it crashes.
The group’s press release said:
“It’s obvious that some people don’t want, in a free world, this sacrosanct right to express in any way one’s opinions. Anonymous has always fought for the freedom of speech, and will never let this right besmirched by obscurantism and mysticism. Expect a massive reaction from us, because this freedom is what we’ve been always fighting for.
— Anonymous’ #OpCharlieHebdo statement
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Who’s next? Only time will tell.