UPDATE: This story has been updated with Anonymous' hack against pop star Rihanna's website.
The Anonymous hacktivist group had an extremely busy weekend, launching crippling cyberattacks against CBS.com, French media conglomerate Vivendi and several Polish government websites, the latest incidents in the group's recent run of high-profile attacks against anti-piracy supporters in the wake of last week's Megaupload bust.
The hackers took responsibility yesterday (Jan. 22) for hijacking CBS.com and redirecting traffic away from CBS' legitimate server using DNS poisoning, a cybercrime tactic involving introducing rigged data into a site's domain name system (DNS). Anonymous diverted traffic from CBS.com for about 20 minutes, according to the @YourAnonNews Twitter feed; during that time, site visitors saw just one file, labeled foundry.html, and all the subsites for television shows came back with "404 Not Found" error messages.
Anonymous also hit UniversalMusic.com, which is currently still down. This attack follows the group's takedowns of the websites belonging to the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), all in protest of the crackdown of file-sharing site Megaupload and the arrest of its eccentric founder, Kim Dotcom.
[Megaupload Mayhem: Vengeful Hackers Wreak Havoc Across Web]
Anonymous' ire spread overseas as well. The hacktivist network launched an attack on the French media conglomerate Vivendi, forcing the site to suspend service this morning (Jan. 23). Posted on the site is a message reading, "Our website is temporarily down. We are doing everything to re-establish the service shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience."
Elysée, the official website of the French government, also fell victim to Anonymous. The English-language French newspaper The Connexion reported that the hackers illegally accessed the site and posted a message reading, "Sarko Sarko the people will have your skin," in reference to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, an outspoken supporter of the legal action taken against Megaupload.
Just as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) drew widespread criticism in the States (and prompted Anonymous to begin its onslaught of cyberattacks against SOPA supporters), Europe's Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has further galvanized Anonymous. Early this morning, the hackers, calling themselves the "Polish Underground," launched attacks on the websites of Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and parliament, to protest Poland's support of the legislation, the news agency AFP reported.
To make sure the Internet community heard Anonymous' message, the group's sympathizers hijacked the official Twitter feeds of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," posting messages urging people to support #AnonOps and to get behind the group's opposition of ACTA.
"Well played, hackers," a tweet on the Twitter feed of "The Daily Show" read. "Next time, our password won't be quite as easy as twitter123. Just don't try twitter321. Please."
Amidst the Web havoc, it seems the Megaupload saga has had a tangible effect on similar file-hosting sites. Filesonic and Uploaded.to have both disabled file-sharing features and restricted access to their cloud services, The Register reported. Other top file-sharing sites, including Rapidshare and MediaFire, however, have made no changes, and insist their businesses are legitimate.
UPDATE: At 10:40 a.m. (PST), Anonymous' Brazilian Twitter feed posted a message reading, "RIHANNA HACKED!" The post included a link to.net Rihannaonline, which has been hijacked and currently displays Anonymous' logo and a strongly worded message from a hacker calling himself "Federal."
Rihanna's good friend Katy Perry is in some online trouble of her own, with a fake sex tape of her and estranged husband Russell Brand making the rounds on Facebook
