MPAA, Recording Industry Websites Attacked by Piracy Advocates

A group of piracy advocates launched coordinated attacks on Websites belonging to the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and anti-piracy firm AiPlex Software.

The attacks, which occurred during the past few days, temporarily knocked the sites offline. According to TorrentFreak, the effort has been dubbed "Operation Payback" on the 4chan message board and was carried out in retaliation for actions against file-sharing sites.

The DOS (denial-of-service) attacks began Sept. 17, starting with the MPAA site. According to an analysis by Panda Security, the attack brought the entire site down in eight minutes. The site was back up after nearly 22 hours of downtime. The attackers switched targets to the RIAA around noon PST Sept. 19.

“The attack on RIAA servers [was]  concluded after 37 service interruptions and 1 hour and 37 minutes of downtime,” according to Sean-Paul Correll, threat researcher with Panda Security.  “Anonymous has now set their sights on the British Phonographic Industry. The attack is set for 9/20 4 PM GMT.”

The RIAA, MPAA and AiPlex sites are all back online.