Hacktivist group Anonymous has hit the United States Telecom Association and TechAmerica with distributed denial-of-service attacks, apparently for the trade groups' support of a controversial cybersecurity bill in the U.S. Congress.
Anonymous posted a YouTube video showing USTelecom's site downSunday, and the site was down for about 24 hours, according to a USTelecom spokesman. The trade group discovered that the site was down at about 6 a.m. Monday, he said.
TechAmerica's site was still down at 2 p.m. ET Monday after being hit on Sunday, a spokeswoman there said.
Anonymous on Friday released a YouTube video threatening supporters of theCyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a bill focused on encouraging U.S. government agencies and private businesses to trade information about cyberattacks.
The bill would harm the Internet, the video said. "We will unleash the worst pain on those who threaten our existence," the video added.
Supporters of the bill, CISPA for short, are "sworn enemies" of Anonymous, the video said.
Some digital rights groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have raised privacy and civil liberties concerns about CISPA.
The bill would allow private companies to share broad information about cyberthreats with government agencies, with no requirement to strip out personal information, CDT said in a press briefing last week. CISPA, sponsored by Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, would allow U.S. agencies to use the information shared by private companies for other national security and law enforcement purposes, in addition to cybersecurity, CDT said.
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