Anonymous Says Will Shut Down Internet Saturday Over SOPA, Wall St.

Anonymous have declared they are shutting the internet down on March 31 in protest against SOPA, Wall Street, and “irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun.”

­Anonymous is not planning to kill the internet permanently, though. The group only wants to shut it down temporarily by carrying out a massive attack on thirteen root DNS servers.

“It may only last one hour, maybe more, maybe even a few days,” Anonymous said in a statement posted to Pastebin. “No matter what, it will be global. It will be known.”

By cutting off the thirteen DNS servers, Anonymous will effectively make the Internet unusable. Users will not be able to perform a domain name look-up, and will instead be greeted with an error page upon entering a familiar site’s URL. Entering the direct IP address into the address bar will be the only way to reach the desired website.

Anonymous will be using a Reflective DNS Amplification DDoS tool to trigger a rush of DNS queries that will eventually bring all those DNS servers down over some time, if the attack is not stopped.

“The Anonymous hackers can certainly cause local pockets of disruption, but these disruptions are going to be localized to networks where their attack machines are located, or where their ‘reflectors’ are located,” said Robert Graham of Errata Security, cited by bgr.com.

However, if enough people join the attack on the DNS servers – the IP addresses of which Anonymous has deliberately posted to Pastebin – the local pockets of disruption may spread across the whole Internet.