Anonymous-Backed Attacks Took Nasdaq Website Offline

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/232600975

By Mathew J. Schwartz
InformationWeek
February 16, 2012

The websites of the Nasdaq and BATS stock exchanges, together with the 
Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), were offline earlier this week 
after a hacktivist group with apparent Anonymous ties targeted them with 
distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. But while customers were 
intermittently unable to use some of the exchanges' websites, all said 
that their trading systems weren't affected.

The attacks had been previewed the day before they were launched. In a 
post to Pastebin, a group calling itself "the 'L0NGwave99' cyber group" 
said Sunday it was going to launch "Operation Digital Tornado" in 
support of the "99% movement" Monday at 9 a.m. New York time. A later 
message promised the same for Tuesday.

"The NASDAQ stock exchange besides a number of U.S. stock markets are 
going to face some problems and may need maintenance," said the 
L0NGwave99 statement, which promised to launch DDoS-driven takedowns 
against www.nasdaq.com, www.batstrading.com (BATS), www.cboe.com (CBOE), 
and www.ms4x.com (the Miami Stock Exchange).

"Will anybody be able to stop the people?s (sic) storm of seeking 
justice against the liar and deceptive Capitalism-Liberalism? Soon we 
will see..." read the group's statement.

[...]


______________________________________________________________________________
Certified Ethical Hacker and CISSP training with Expanding Security gives
the best training and support.
Get a free live class invite weekly.  Best program, best price.
www.ExpandingSecurity.com/PainPill