The hacktivist collective threw their support behind the Occupy Wall Street protests all the way back in early September, but other than a general sense of solidarity (and the presence of those Guy Fawkes masks at the protests), Anonymous hasn’t made much a splashy contribution to date. When I talked to one of the Occupy Wall Street organizers a few days before the protests kicked off, she had no idea what to expect, either, though she was “curious” about it.
But now we know what they’ve got planned: Anonymous released a video promising to “erase” the New York Stock Exchange from the Internet at 3:30 p.m. on October 10 as part of a “new civil rights movement.” The video includes a URL from which interested hackers can download the necessary software and participate.
Various observers have noted that power in the financial world doesn’t really reside near the physical spot of the protests, since many of the big-bank execs are in Midtown these days. But as BetaBeat points out, most of Wall Street’s action takes place online. The key distinction, though, is that Anonymous isn’t going after the NYSE’s internal software, but rather its public website. Still, the target is an interesting symbolic flourish — and an attention-grabbing one, if they actually pull off the hack.
Anonymous Declares War: On October 10 at 3:30 p.m., the New York Stock Exchange Will Be No More [BetaBeat]
