This article was published on December 10, 2010

Anonymous: “Attacking Amazon would be in bad taste”


Anonymous: “Attacking Amazon would be in bad taste”

Loosely-affiliated online protest “gathering” Anonymous has spoken out about the reason an attack on Amazon’s servers appeared to fail yesterday – they didn’t want to disturb your Christmas shopping.

Anonymous’ Operation: Payback DDoS attacks against companies that have withdrawn services to Wikileaks have so far taken affected Visa, Mastercard and PayPal but there’s been no effect seen on Amazon, despite the company withdrawing hosting for Wikileaks last week.

As we reported yesterday, Amazon was selling a Kindle book containing the leaked documents, an act that smacked of hypocrisy to some observers.

It was reported in some quarters that an attack on Amazon was attempted but quickly abandoned. Now a press release, linked to in a tweet by the @Op_Payback Twitter account, explains Anonymous’ side of the story (emphasis ours):

After the attack was so advertised in the media, we felt that it would affect people such as consumers in a negative way and make them feel threatened by Anonymous. Simply put, attacking a major online retailer when people are buying presents for their loved ones, would be in bad taste.
Now, this could be spin on a failed attack or maybe it was indeed their intention to avoid disruption to Christmas shopping. Either way, for a collection of people so loosely affiliated, they’ve got really good PR.
The full press release is here (PDF link)

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