A threat purportedly made by Anonymous to 'erase' the New York Stock Exchange from the Internet yesterday in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests failed to materialise, with the hacker collective claiming it had been running a media scare tactic.
Last week a video appeared on YouTube in which a computer-generated voice tells viewers that "on October 10, Nyse shall be erased from the Internet" in an operation dubbed 'Invade Wall Street'.
The film exhorts supporters to use the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) botnet to launch a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack against the Nyse's Web site in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
However, the legitimacy of the message was quickly called into question, with a statement appearing online claiming to be from the 'real' Anonymous, saying: "Operation Invade Wall Street is bullshit! It is a fake planted operation by law enforcement and cyber crime agencies in order to get you to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement."
Yesterday, the day of the planned attack, Nyse said that its Web site saw no disruptions, although monitoring firm Keynote Systems claims there were two brief outages during the afternoon.
Now, in the latest twist, the Youtube account used to post the original message, TheAnonMessage, has added a new video claiming the whole thing was a "high-scale media scare tactic".
The group says that despite warnings that the planned attack on Nyse was fake, it was still widely reported. The video claims that Anonymous will now wait for the media and governments to become complacent that threats are not real and then "strike mercilessly".