'Anonymous' Cyber Protest Group Currently Attacking Spain's Copyright Society, According to PandaLabs

ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- PandaLabs, Panda Security's anti-malware laboratory, which first broke news last month of organized cyber protests against the Motion Picture Association of America and other copyright-focused organizations, warns that the 'Anonymous' cyber-activist group responsible today launched a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) against the Spanish copyright protection society (SGAE). As of 2:30 p.m. EDT today, PandaLabs has witnessed more than 20 service interruptions to SGAE's site, as well as four interruptions to a second Spanish site, mcu.es.  

An image of the group's call to action is available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/panda_security/5056961900/.

A DDoS attack involves launching numerous requests at a server hosting a Web page so that the hosting service cannot cope with the load, and therefore crashing the server. In the case of the ongoing attacks, part of what the group is calling "Operation Payback," anyone trying to access the targeted websites may not be able to reach the domains.  

In a public statement today to the media, the group said:

"The SGAE has as slogan 'Believe in culture', while they restrict new creativity by preventing that creativity is shared. They lobbied this Canon Law, which states that suspected piracy websites can be taken down without a court order. This is a danger to freedom of speech, since any site can just be taken down with the excuse that intellectual property is hosted. The 'Ministerio of Cultura' should get a message that their current course will only lead to more controversy and protest."  

In September, PandaLabs witnessed what could be deemed the first organized mass cyber-protest on the Internet against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), bodies that set out to protect copyright and distribution rights. The 'Anonymous' group responded to these organizations' efforts to shut down free file-sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay by launching a stream of globally coordinated cyber attacks.

"The way things are progressing, it will be no surprise to see cyber protests organized country by country targeting different copyright protection associations," said Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs.

Real-time updates from PandaLabs on the latest attacks are available at http://pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/4chan-users-organize-ddos-against-mpaa.  

About PandaLabs

Since 1990, its mission has been to detect and eliminate new threats as rapidly as possible to offer our clients maximum security. To do so, PandaLabs has an innovative automated system that analyzes and classifies thousands of new samples a day and returns automatic verdicts (malware or goodware). This system is the basis of Collective Intelligence, Panda Security's new security model which can even detect malware that has evaded other security solutions.

Currently, 99.4 percent of malware detected by PandaLabs is analyzed through this system of Collective Intelligence. This is complemented through the effort of several teams, each specialized in a specific type of malware (viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, phishing, spam, etc), working 24/7 to provide global coverage. This translates into more secure, simpler and more resource-friendly solutions for clients.

More information is available in the PandaLabs blog: http://www.pandalabs.com. Follow Panda on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Panda_Security and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PandaUSA. 

SOURCE Panda Security