Anonymous Declare 'Total War' On Donald Trump, Threaten To 'Dismantle His Campaign' (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader writes from Business Insider's article: Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous hacktivist collective have vowed to relaunch cyber-operations against US presidential candidate Donald Trump [on April Fools' Day]. They threaten to "dismantle his campaign" by taking his election websites offline in a large-scale and orchestrated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. In December 2015, Anonymous officially "declared war" on Trump after a radical speech in which he said Muslims should be banned from entering the United States. The operation at the time resulted in a number of websites being targeted by hackers, but failed to have lasting impact. A new video statement has been posted to YouTube which claims the "loyalists and veterans" of Anonymous have decided to ramp up cyber-operations against Trump -- dubbed #OpTrump -- on a far larger scale than ever before. "Dear Donald Trump, we have been watching you for a long time and what we see is deeply disturbing. Your inconsistent and hateful campaign has not only shocked the United States of America [but] you have shocked the entire planet with your appalling actions and ideas. You say what your audience wants to hear but in reality you don't stand for anything except for your personal greed and power."
The websites targeted in the attack (so far) include trump.com, donaldjtrump.com, and trumphotelcollection.com. In addition, the hacktivists are also planning to release some of Donald Trump's personal information including a SSN, phone number, and contact information of his agent and legal representative.

Comments

Morons Just Don't Understand

[Anonymous Coward]

EVERYTIME some group has "declared war", insulted, demeaned, became "outraged", etc. about Trump or supporters, his popularity and support grew.

The actions of this immature group of mother's basement dwelling mouth breathers will only cement their reputations as such and make more Trump supporters.

Just from a rational point of view, shutting down political speech is never a good thing, no matter what that speech is. Because if they can do it to one candidate, it can be done to others.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[gweihir]

Just from a rational point of view, shutting down political speech is never a good thing, no matter what that speech is. Because if they can do it to one candidate, it can be done to others.

Indeed. A fascist approach does not become any better because some "good" guys use it or because the goal is "noble".

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[Darinbob]

Except that in the Democratic primary race 8 years ago, Obama actually sounded like a sane candidate. Most candidates dropped out after Iowa. And from then on Obama was the front runner and never the underdog. But people didn't think of him as a frontrunner from some reason. Despite any possible Democratic candidate providing change over Dubya's administration, Obama was the only one pushing that message. Clinton was running on a campaign of "I'm the inevitable winner so you may as well vote for me now".

Most of the candidates other than Obama were longer term insiders than Obama, so that probably helped him out a lot. Probably a lot of people tired of both Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush years. Edwards in third place was the only other candidate to get any delegates, there was not a long drawn out multi-way race like we have this year with Republicans (and I swear, I can't remember a damn thing about Edwards campaign). Obama really was very similar to Rubio; first time senator yet treated like an outsider, young with appeal among younger voters, occasional breaches of established party doctrine, etc (I'd have expected Rubio to do much better if the Republican demographics skewed a bit younger).

As for Trump, he didn't even start as an underdog, everyone assumed he was just there because he was bored and needed something to do with his money. His incessant claims that Obama wasn't a citizen meant most politicians of all stripes thought he was a kook so he was ignored. But he never acted like an underdog, from the very start he campaigned as if he were the best and most popular candidate, he just will never shut up about his poll numbers. He actually acts more like a rabid dog than an under dog, always on the attack. And this is really confusing political pundits because he's doing everything wrong and it seems to be working.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[ultranova]

I blame Political correctness and SJWs for the rise in trump.

How about blaming the Republican voters who are voting for him?

its the rubber band effect. the side of political correctness has pushed too far, now its bouncing back in the opposite direction where people are starting to relate to trump due to what some see as non political correct and what others call hate speech.

If Republican voters find Trump to be the candidate who best embodies their political ideas, that's the fault of said voters and their party, not their opponents.

But it's always good to get a reminder of what conservatives actually mean by "personal responsibility": never their fault.

Re:Morons Just Don't Understand

[DrJimbo]

I blame Political correctness and SJWs for the rise in trump.

The Republicans have also been blamed for resorting to the politics of hate. The best explanation I've seen has two components:

1) The inclination of some people to turn to authoritarianism when times get rough.

2) The concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands is making things rough for the working class. Things aren't really bad yet (like in the great depression) but people's prospects are bleak. They are worse off now than they were 10 years ago without much hope in sight.

If this simple analysis is correct then the problem is not Trump. There are always Trumps around. The problem is that economic times (more accurately, prospects) are bad enough that a sizable fraction of the population is turning to a strongman/bully who promises to protect them even if those promises don't make any rational sense.

This has several implications. First, if there is a successful large-scale terrorist attack in the US then this could easily raise the overall level of fear enough to sweep Trump into the White House. Second, if the powers-that-be stay in power and continue their policies of transferring wealth away from the working class then the levels of economic distress and fear will grow, creating even more support for Trump or the next authoritarian strongman/bully who comes along.

The only real solution is to stop waging economic warfare on the working class. Unfortunately, even if Bernie Sanders gets elected, it is going to be nigh on impossible to quickly change the course of the best government that money could buy.

There's a much easier solution to Trump

[neilo_1701D]

Vote.

Taking down servers, defacing websites... all petty vandalism. Vote on election day; the one day when your voice is heard and counts.

the vote itself

[argStyopa]

As much as I despise DT himself, do they not understand the impact of their self-righteous vigilantism?

If they'd just *quietly* attacked him, slowly DDOS'ing his sites and businesses, it could have been months before the news got out, all the while doing damage to the campaign.

But the "look how awesome we are fighting evil" grandstanding is going to resonate in PRECISELY the opposite way with the bulk of US voters who will - I guarantee you - sympathize with him against a 'shadowy internet mafia'.

The only way they're going to HURT him now is if you're able to hack the voting machines; thankfully Diebold almost certainly installed backdoors for (the Republicans/the Democrats/the Russians/the Illuminati/whatever cabal you prefer to fear) so maybe that's still possible.

Words mean more than actions to Anonymous...

[XxtraLarGe]

Obama orders ten times the number of air strikes as Bush, and nothing, killing thousands of Muslims (many of whom were non-combatants) and nothing . But Trump bloviates about banning Muslims and Anonymous loses their heads...

No, I'm not a Trump supporter. Yes, I support offering refuge to Syrian refugees.

Re:~50%

[arbiter1]

Yet more deserving people get left alone aka Hillary and Obama

Prioritize

[Livius]

There's vigilanteism, and then there's disrupting an election. People attempting to silence political opinions that they disagree with are a far greater threat to civilization than Trump is.

I really don't want to take Trump's side on anything but in this case there is no contest.

Of course, the Trump phenomenon goes away on its own as soon as the Republican Party puts up a candidate worth voting for. The problem is they've never done that before and they don't know where to start.

Forget the Muslims

[cyber-vandal]

Trump's being attacked by the 72 virgins.