The Latest Anonymous Escapade: Westboro Baptist Church Website Goes Down

We all know that Anonymous has become somewhat of a vigilante justice organization. What many don’t realize is that you don’t have to do something related to the World Wide Web to get them to turn their eyes your way. The Westboro Baptist Church learned this the hard way when Anonymous, the renownked hacker group, took down the church’s website this week.

Why a Church?

You’d think that a church would be one institution that would stay off the radar of Anonymous’s interests. That wasn’t the case this week. On Monday Anonymous launched a DDoS attack (something we’ve talked quite a bit about recently) against the Westboro Baptist Church’s website. It wasn’t a website promoting the church. It was a website with an anti-homosexual message (as depicted in the site’s URL, GodHatesFags.com). Monday, that URL was inaccessible as Anonymous deployed its DDoS attack against the site.

It Wasn’t Just the Message of the Site

While the message of the site itself would be enough to enrage some, what got the hacktivist group involved in taking down the church’s website was the fact that the church announced that they would be picketing the funerals of victims of Connecticut’s recent school shooting. Anonymous’s message? Don’t mess with the funerals of little kids. That was the reason the site took down a whopping 19 URLs belonging to the church – and they plan on going further and actually defacing the church’s websites once they gain control of them.

It’s Not About Homosexuality

The church’s message about homosexuality isn’t what set Anonymous off and many of us wonder what this church has to gain by even attempting to picket the funerals of children who were lost in a horrific tragedy that shook a nation. Anonymous didn’t wait to find out the method behind the madness. The church was going to attack a funeral – Anonymous attacked the church the way they know how. They simply took the church’s sites down and are attempting to gain control of them.

While we at Alertra never take a formal stand for or against the hacktivist group, we do have to say that this news struck a cord with some of us. Right or wrong, however you view the hacktivist group, we here at Alertra must say that some of us cheered when we found out that Anonymous had taken action against a group that would disrupt the funerals of those innocent victims from last Friday’s shooting. This is one DDoS attack that we won’t complain about and the website downtime caused by it – well we have to admit that we really don’t feel too bad about it.