Undeterred by the recent arrests of 35 alleged members in Spain and Turkey, hacker group Anonymous has officially launched a campaign against the Federal Reserve. According to the group, the United States’ central financial institution has “deliberately” driven millions into poverty in order to enrich the nation’s wealthiest, along with a slew of equally-damning populist grievances.
The action against the Federal Reserve began 90 days ago, when Anonymous called on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to step down. Obviously, he did not. So Anonymous initiated this week “Operation Empire State Rebellion,” or #OpESR, a crusade that promises to “restore the rule of law and fight back against the organized criminal class,” according to a video statement released by the group entitled “Ctrl+Alt+Bernanke.”
It is not yet clear what type of action Anonymous will take against the Fed, though it is believed they will resort to their standard tactic of taking down a website with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) “attack,” which is more an act of protest than war, as the flood of traffic does no real damage to the website, besides overloading its servers. In its video statement, Anonymous called on supporters “to occupy a public space until Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke steps down.” What a “public space” means — whether digital or physical — remains unclear.
Despite its popularity with Anonymous, DDoS is likely the least powerful weapon in the group’s arsenal. Anonymous has successfully broken into the systems of a variety of world governments, and has been blamed with the hack on Sony’s PlayStation Network that resulted in a complete shutdown of the service for more than a month, and the theft of personal data of as much as 100 million Sony customers worldwide.
This weekend, reports revealed that hackers infiltrated the systems of the International Monetary Fund, a super-governmental agency that oversees the world’s financial systems, and possibly stole data so sensitive it could cause havoc in governments around the globe if made public. While some suspect that the IMF breach was the work of a “foreign government” (possibly China), others believe that Anonymous may be behind the hack. And if they are, well, Ben Bernanke really will have a problem on his hands.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.