Home Hackers Anonymous Hackers Target Japanese Nissan Website with DDoS Attacks in Protest of Whaling

Anonymous Hackers Target Japanese Nissan Website with DDoS Attacks in Protest of Whaling

Posted: January 13, 2016

anonymous hackers ddos attack japan nissan protest whalingHacktivist groups are apparently hell-bent on attacking any entities that they vehemently disagree with on issues that take place around the world. Anonymous, one of the most known hacktivist groups in the past few years, have done their fair share of attacks against those that they oppose of certain actions, policies, and political rhetoric. In their recent animosity towards someone they don't agree with, Anonymous has taken to the internet to attack the Japanese Nissan site as part of their push to have Japanese officials to stop whale hunting.

While an attack on Nissan's Japanese site doesn't seem like it will make any headway in the approach to stop whale hunting in Japan, Anonymous' thought is the business owners of Nissan in Japan would push them to lobby and put pressure on officials to stop the hunting.

In what appeared to be an aggressive DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, Anonymous hackers flooded the Japanese Nissan site with an abundance of traffic to take the site down. However, during the efforts, Nissan jumped the gun and took their site down before the attack was successful in its take-down efforts. Additionally, in the process, Nissan took down their Nissan-global.com site as well to prevent potentially dangerous intrusions.

Anonymous hackers have been on a relentless mission to put an end to whaling in Japan. The recent hashtags on social media, #OpWhales and #OpKillingBay, have been perpetuated throughout the internet by the hacker group. The hashtags have been associated with all Twitter posts made to alert followers of their recent take-downs of sites and companies they oppose in these efforts, such as the ones posted below, which are related to the recent DDoS attacks on Nissan's Japanese site.

The proactive steps made by Nissan officials to take down their site that was under a DDoS attack may have been a knee-jerk reaction on their part. However, by taking the sites down on their own, Nissan may have prevented the DDoS attack from being successful in taking down their server, which may later have certain repercussions that cost Nissan additional resources or money to recover from the attack.

In the past, Anonymous, among other hacktivist groups, have been successful in the take-down of small Japanese company sites in their opposition on Whale Hunting to prompt officials to take action against the hunting activities. The attack on Nissan in Japan, the world's second largest automotive manufacturer, proves that hackers are now taking bold steps to aim DDoS attacks on much larger companies and may have other large companies in their sights for attacks at a later date.

While many other companies have come under attack from Anonymous in their quest to have officials force a stop to whale hunting, the scheme employed by the hackers may not have much an effect on putting a stop to Japan's whale hunting. Despite these actions, Japan uses loopholes that justify its actions that they claim to be "scientific research" when it comes to whale hunting. For that reason, we expect to see several future attacks from Anonymous aimed at other Japanese companies, big and small.

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