Jan 18 2012 Reuters reported that file sharing website Megaupload.com was taken offline and charged with copyright infringement by a U.S. grand jury.
In response, the loose knit hacker collective “Anonymous” has organized a protest using a brute force method of flooding a website with so many requests it falls under its own weight, a tactic they call a LOIC (low orbit ion cannon) or DOS attack (denial of service).
The victims of their attack so far: the Department of Justice, the RIAA, MPAA, and Universal Music. As of the publishing of this post, only the MPAA had regained its footing and the other sites remained inaccessible.