A software engineer is calling for protesters to flood the site with traffic during the presidential inauguration
It’s almost time. Ex-reality TV host and businessman Donald Trump will be officially sworn in as the US president on Friday January 20. His campaign was divisive, to say the least, and it seems his tenure as president is looking like having a bumpy start, with protests planned in all states of the US, including on the streets of Washington DC.
However, rather than stand outside, some protestors are choosing to target the President-elect with other, indoor-based, means. Software engineer, Juan Soberanis, is calling on protestors to attempt to take down the White House’s website in a DDoS attack – simply by flooding the website with traffic. Soberanis is calling it “Occupy White House”.
According to the International Business Times, Soberanis wrote on his online protest pledge: “”If you can’t make it to Washington DC on inauguration day to protest Trump’s presidency, you can still fight for the cause by helping to take down whitehouse.gov as a show of solidarity for the lives impacted by Trump’s policy agenda.
“It’s simple. By overloading the site with visitors, we will be able to demonstrate the will of the American people,” he continued.
Soberanis then goes on to tell fellow protestors to overwhelm the website by setting up auto-refresh on the WhiteHouse.gov homepage throughout the day.
The San-Francisco engineer is the creator of Protester.io, a Kickstarter-type site that encourages individuals to get involved in online protests. However, only one protest is currently live on the site, a finished protest set up by Soberanis to incite people to join the ACLU as a protest against Trump. The alleged URL for his Occupy White House protest page on the site appears to be inaccessible at the moment.
Hacking group Anonymous is additionally, and allegedly, planning cyber attacks against Trump’s new administration.
It should be noted, though, that this type of attack is considered criminal activity in the US under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The act dictates that sending a command to a protected computer with the intent to cause damage can be judged a criminal offence, and people affiliated with Anonymous have been charged in the past by the US government for launching DDoS attacks on government entities and trade groups.
Thousands of people are planning to protest Trump’s inauguration on January 20
As well as being a controversial choice for president, Trump’s inauguration is set to be a controversial affair, too. The likes of Cher, Chelsea Handler and Katy Perry have promised to take part in the Women’s March, either in the capital or in the states around, the day after the inauguration, to protest the Republican party’s threats to defund Planned Parenthood.
According to Google, the statewide searches for “inauguration protest” are much higher than “attend inauguration” searches on the site. During the transition from Obama stepping down and Trump stepping up, “Russia” has been one of the top searched-for big issuesin the States on Google, alongside immigration and Obamacare.
Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/donald-trump-inauguration-ddos-attack-planned
