Such attacks have become common in recent times, and enjoy wide public sympathy due to the visible economic inequities and widening economic gulf between the rich and the poor that has put the middle-class with its back up against the wall. The pent up frustrations have to vent, and in the case of intellectuals empowered with computer skills, it is taking the shape of symbolic acts of protest through cyber-attacks on internet services of state-owned and other large organizations.
On Tuesday, as reported by Reuters, “Websites of exchange operators Nasdaq and BATS have been attacked by hackers over the last 24 hours, causing ongoing disruptions for those trying to use the sites.”
Throughout Tuesday afternoon, only the banner at top of the NASDAQ web page was visible, but the rest of the site failed to load for users. The NASDAQ OMX Group spokesman confirmed that the services were under a DDoS attack by hackers, similar in nature suffered by the CIA and Alabama Government websites a few days back.
NASDAQ spokesman Joseph Christinat confirmed that “The website wasn’t hacked, nobody got any information. What they did was try to block access for our users.”
Following the incident, a video posted on the YouTube, allegedly from the hacker group Anonymous claimed that the NYSE website would be “erased from the internet” to express solidarity with “Occupy Wall Street” movement in Lower Manhattan.
A BATS spokesperson also admitted that their company was affected by a DDoS attack, but confirmed, “Our trading systems were not affected and there were no exchange customer disruptions associated with the incident.”
DDoS attacks tantamount to denial of services as a symbolic act of protest without any attempt to mine data or infect systems with viruses or create irreparable damage. Of late DDoS had become one of the prime methods used by internet activists to call social boycott of targeted services.