Call off the alarms: It turns out that hacktivist group Anonymous is not planning an attack on Facebook on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5. Rather, the plan is an initiative of a few rogue Anonymous members.
Doesn’t that make you feel safer already?
ZDNet’s Friending Facebook blog reports that Anonymous has denied involvement in what is being called Operation Facebook, via a pair of Twitter accounts that the group has used in the past to communicate with the media.
From the @GroupAnon Twitter feed, which has more than 27,000 followers, via Friending Facebook:
- No one can speak for the whole of #Anonymous. There are some anons who support #OpFacebook whilst others do not. | #AnonOps
- @Anonymous_SA Exactly! #OpFacebook is just an Op, it’s not Anonymous…
And from @AnonOps, which tallied nearly 48,000 followers at the time of this post:
- We prefer to face the real power and not to face to the same medias that we use as tools. #OpFacebook #Anonymous
- #OpFacebook is being organised by some Anons. This does not necessarily mean that all of #Anonymous agrees with it.
- Dont be silly. Important things are happening in the world to deal with quirks like #OpFacebook. Lets keep our style & moral #Anonymous
- TO PRESS: MEDIAS OF THE WORLD… STOP LYING! #OpFacebook is just ANOTHER FAKE! WE DONT “KILL” THE MESSENGER. THAT’S NOT OUR STYLE #Anonymous
Finding Facebook also pointed out that Anonymous usually offers only a few days’ notice before its attacks, and that news of Operation Facebook was uncharacteristically slow to spread following the July 16 creation of Twitter account @OP_Facebook and a FacebookOp YouTube channel.
Finding Facebook said Facebook did not reply to its request for comment, but it perhaps indirectly responded to the threat with a post on the Facebook Safety Blog introducing its security team.
Readers, are you concerned about the possibility of an attack on Facebook November 5?
