OpIcarus

Abstract

The hacktivist group Anonymous announced its plan to attack leading financial services companies on Monday, February 8, 2016, starting at 6AM UTC with the goal of taking down their websites and services. To accomplish this, they will equip attackers with dedicated VPN and LOIC tools to launch simultaneous Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and encourage protesters to accompany the operation by protesting in front of the Bank of England and New York Stock Exchange.

Background

Members of the collective Anonymous have announced operation OpIcarus, which was scheduled to begin on Monday, February 8 at 6 am UTC targeting both The Bank of England and The New York Stock Exchange. The campaign will include both offline protests and DoS attacks. This event is intended to bring public attention to what Anonymous calls 'corruption' inside of the financial industry. Anonymous contends that leading banks are supporting and funding global terrorism:

 

 Like Icarus, the powers that be have flown too close to the sun and the time has come to set the wings of their empire ablaze and watch the system their power relies on come to a grinding halt and come crashing down around them. We must strike at the heart of their empire by once again throw a wrench into the machine, but this time we face a much bigger target; the global financial system. This time our target is the New York Stock Exchange and Bank of England." iOpIcarus

 

Those behind Operation Icarus are planning to launch simultaneous DoS attacks using a Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC). LOIC allows hackers to inundate servers with heavy network traffic loads and has been widely used by Anonymous as a DDoS tool. Anonymous has made available a VPN and LOIC tool for free to whoever wants to take part in the attack. Thousands of protestors using LOIC to attack a single target could multiply the impact on network performance beyond what a "normal" coordinate LOIC attack might achieve. The degradation in network performance could result in customers unable to access financial services or funds.

OpIcarus' Facebook event page lists sixty additional central banks and monetary authorities (all members of the BIS) that might be attacked during the February 8 protests.

Known Targets

Potential targets also include BIS member banksii

How to Prepare

Radware advises both The Bank of England and The New York Stock Exchange, along with BIS members, to put security protections in place for DDoS mitigationand prevention. Parties under attack can contact Radware's Emergence Response Team (ERT) directly for immediate, real time mitigation and DDoS protectionfrom downtime.

Radware's hybrid attack mitigation solution provides a set of patented and integrated technologies designed to detect, mitigate and report todays most advanced threats. Dedicated hardware and cloud solutions protect against attacks in real time and help ensure service availability.

With Radware, companies can protect their infrastructure from multi-vector attacks network and application based DDoS attacks as well as volumetric attacks that may saturate the Internet pipe, defacement, information-loss, and other reputation loss impacts of denial of service. Radware solutions include proven LOIC protection mechanisms. To understand how Radware's 24x7 attack mitigation solutions can better protect your network contact us.

 

Sources

Event Information

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