Another day and another story about Anonymous targeting someone, this time it’s the Ku Klux Klan’s website for harassing a woman on Twitter.
The reason this is not a big social media issue like the NSA spying, CIA drone killings or the racial issues in Ferguson, Missouri, is because it’s a simple defense of a woman who was under constant threats by KKK’s troll on Twitter.
The targeted woman (Conover Kenn Ard, wife of Pete Farndon, the founding member of the rock band the Pretenders) is now a blogger herself and has been involved in many controversies in the past. She has also made some friends in the hacktivist group Anonymous.
When Kennard’s friend from Anonymous found out, he made the decision to respond to the Klan. Her friend who goes by the handle of @sgtbilko420 on Twitter started a massive DDoS attack on KKK’s and its affiliated white pride websites forcing them to stay offline.
An important note about the attacker is that he also targets websites spreading ISIS propaganda.
Here are few tweets from the attacker on KKK attack:
https://twitter.com/sgtbilko420/status/655818482219642880
https://twitter.com/sgtbilko420/status/655927340426506240
https://twitter.com/sgtbilko420/status/655501236968542209
https://twitter.com/sgtbilko420/status/655494426702295040
After the websites got attacked all of them displayed this message “Website is offline” and “Connection timed out”. The targeted website were related to Westboro Baptist Church AND Traditionalist American Knights of the KKK, who threatened lives of hacktivists members after the murder of Michael Brown last year.
Last year, a cyber war broke out when Anonymous took down many of Klan’s websites and even the twitter account. This incident may well be an indication of another cyber war building up, but we will have to wait and see.
The websites are since back up and in service and working fine, but lessons are surely learned by Klan. Moral for us is to stay away from such things because you don’t know whose friend you may be upsetting.
Anonymous has a history of targeting racist websites. In the past, the hacktivists hacked and defaced the official website of Mississippi-based white supremacist organization The Nationalist Movement.