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HughPickens.com [hughpickens.com] writes:

CBS reports that hot on the heels of its campaign against ISIS, the shadowy hackers' collective known as Anonymous is going after a new target: Donald Trump [cbsnews.com]. The latest Anonymous operation -- #OpTrump -- was announced in a YouTube video featuring a masked activist claiming to speak for the group. In a computer-generated voice, he takes aim at Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States, claiming "This is what ISIS wants." He goes on to say that "the more the United States appears to be targeting Muslims, not just radical Muslims," the more ISIS will be able to recruit sympathizers. The video concludes with Anonymous' now-familiar threat: "You have been warned, Mr. Donald Trump. [youtube.com] We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. Expect us."

After a video message was posted, the website of Trump Tower in New York City went down for at least an hour. However the campaign didn't appear to have much success [theatlantic.com]. Despite the group’s apparent distributed-denial-of-service attack, which aimed to take down a web server by flooding it with fake traffic, the Trump Tower website was up and running by 11 a.m. and the alleged damage might not have been apparent, to visitors to the page, because a cached version of Trump's site was programmed to hold the fort [cnn.com] in the event of an attack or maintenance issues. Gabriella Coleman, who studies hackers and online activism as the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University, in Montreal, told CBS News it's no surprise that Anonymous would find Trump a juicy target. "He's the biggest bully and the only other bully that's bigger is possibly trolls and Anonymous," says Coleman. "Anonymous isn't necessarily going to take down his campaign, per se, but they could embarrass him."

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