After announcing a global call to arms against the “corrupt global banking cartel,” the hacker collective known as Anonymous, in conjunction with numerous other hacktivist groups, have taken over 20 central banks offline, including striking at the heart of the Western imperialist empire; the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Bank of England and the Bank of France.
A press release by Anonymous explained in the intentions behind the operation know as #OpIcarus:
“The banks have been getting away with murder, fraud, conspiracy, war profiteering, money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels, have put millions of people out on the street without food or shelter and have successfully bought all our governments to help keep us silenced. We represent the voice of the voiceless. We are uniting to make a stand. The central banks which were attacked in recent days were attacked to remind people that the biggest threat we face to an open and free society is the banks. The bankers are the problem and #OpIcarus is the solution.”
Operation Icarus was relaunched in conjunction with a video release announcing the beginning of a “30-day campaign against central bank sites across the world.” Since that time, the scope and magnitude of the attacks have increased exponentially, with Anonymous, Ghost Squad Hackers, a number of Sec groups and BannedOffline coordinating attacks — each focusing on separate financial institutions in an effort to maximize the number of targets hit.
Some individuals have expressed reservations about Anonymous attacking the central banking system – thinking that this will in some way impact their individual accounts held in the banks. In an exclusive interview with The Free Thought Project, an Anonymous member explained that this operation is directed solely at the 1%:
“We would just like to make it very clear that all targets of #OpIcarus have been Rothschild and BIS central owned banks. In fact most of the targets so far such as Guernsey, Cyprus, Panama, Jordan, British Virgin Isles, etc are in the top 10 places of tax havens for the elite. No on-line consumer accounts were harmed, no ATM’s were blocked and no personal client data was leaked. This has been a protest against the Central Banks and the 1% — no innocent or poor people were harmed”
The operation began with an initial attack on the Central Bank of Greece and was quickly followed up with a similar DDoS attack on the Central Bank of Cyprus. Last weekend, hackers reportedly targeted the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic, the Dutch Central Bank, the Central Bank of Maldives, and Guernsey Financial Services Commission, according to the official @OpIcarus Twitter account, which has been taken offline — presumably by Twitter. The National Bank of Panama and the Central Bank of Kenya were also reportedly targeted a day later, according to hacking news publication HackRead.
Additionally, reported Ghost Squad Hacker, s1ege also tweeted about taking the Central Bank of Bosnia-Herzegovina offline and provided a screenshot to verify. The Twitter account @BannedOffline also reported the Central Bank of Mexico had succumbed to a DDoS attack by the hacking collective. The online hacktivist groups have continued to conduct a series of high-powered distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which forced the website of Central Bank of Jordan, Central Bank of South Korea, Bank of Compagnie, Monegasque and the Central Bank of Montenegro offline.
On Saturday, hackers conducted a series of 250 Gbps DDoS attacks on the Bank of France, Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, Central Bank of Tunisia, Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago and Philippine National Bank. The recent attack, on Monday morning, took down the Central Bank of Iraq.
In the most high-profile hacks thus far, during OpIcarus, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Bank of England and the Bank of France all fell victim to separate cyber attacks.
In an exclusive interview with The Free Thought Project, an Anonymous representative explained:
OpIcarus in support of Nuit Debout took the bank of France off line throughout the day as we continue to address the corruption of the banking elite. We are acting on behalf of the countless victims and the voiceless as the banking cartels continue their agenda of buying the governments while selling out the people they are supposed to govern. This Op in no way is meant to harm or disrupt the common person and their day-to-day activities. We are you, we may be your neighbors, those you pass in the street and we are the working class. A Filipino hacker within Anonymous was also able to disrupt services in the Philippines as an act of protest against his nation’s corrupt and brutal government. We will not and cannot sit by idly while the banking systems strip man of his dignity.
Anonymous has released a list of institutions the collective plans to target, which is divided into four sections; websites associated with the U.S. Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sites owned by the World Bank, and over 150 sites associated with national banks around the globe.
In two weeks, OpIcarus hackers have hit dozens of financial institutions listed in their online manifesto. Any questions about whether the hacktivists would be able to take out some of the more high-profile institutions seem to have been answered with the recent successful attacks on the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, the Bank of France and the Bank of England — the central banks of the U.K. and France.
The attack on the Bank of England was unique from the previous attacks, as it reportedly took down the internal email server.
While some have questioned the effectiveness of OpIcarus, senior director at Corero Network Security, Stephanie Weagle told Info Security magazine:
“While the impact on the individual targets of the DDoS attack campaign, ‘OpIcarus’ is unclear; obstructing or eliminating the availability of email servers is significant. In an online world any type of service outage is barely tolerated, especially in the banking industry where transactions and communications are often time-sensitive, and account security is of utmost importance.”
Make no mistake that this operation has already been extremely effective — evolving and growing rapidly. In the world of high finance time is money, and every minute that a bank is forced offline it is losing potential revenue, which in turn hurts the bottom line of those that support the imperial war machine. Thus far, all targeted banks have refused to comment on the damage inflicted by the continuous cyber attacks.
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