Following the notorious white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, hacktivist collective Anonymous launched a series of DDoS attacks against the town’s official website.
The white nationalists and supremacists went to Charlottesville to march in a torchlight procession – meant to evoke memories of similar ultraright nationalist organizations, including the KKK and Hitler Youth. As The Washington Post phrased it, the Unite the Right torchlight parade proved “to be the catalyst for a horrific 24 hours in this usually quiet college town that would come to be seen by the nation and world as a day of racial rage, hate, violence and death”.
Anonymous said that through its act of #OpDomesticTerrorism, it was showing its support for the counter-protestors, many of whom were targeted while protesting the rally, including the deliberate act of aggression by rallygoer James Alex Fields Jr. who roared his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of pedestrians killing Heather Heyer, 32, of Charlottesville and injuring 19 others.
Soon after the deadly event, Anonymous launched a series of DDoS attacks on the Charlottesville official city website, successfully taking it completely offline for most users and slowing it down for others.
HackRead.com conducted a conversation with prominent Anonymous Twitter handle @YourAnonGlobal, and was told that the DDoS attacks were carried out by a counterpart of Anonymous, New World Hackers (NWH).
In describing the motivation behind the DDoS attacks, @YourAnonGlobal stated:
“Our strategy relies on the unity of these direct actions (DDOS), as the ballot box is no defense against fascism and hatred, nor are the political parties in power now. We are seeing that victories we have won through hard struggle could very well be reversed. Our only chance is to build a movement that relies on the power of the people.”
Another NWH member told HackRead.com that they were protesting the police who had “left the people die which forced us to target the Charlottesville website to give them a message”.
Another Twitter user operating under @AnonyInfo told IB Times UK that the Anonymous campaign was targeting white supremacist websites rather than official government sites. The hacktivist claimed that the Anonymous campaign took down the far-right website Altright.com on August 12, 2017 during the rally itself.