Anonymous warns of Facebook "blackout" on January 28

Anonymous is set to launch a global war against governments and corporations using the Internet. They targeted the United States Department of Justice website, among other sites, last week, in retaliation to the FBI shutting down file sharing site, Megaupload. Now, a YouTube user claiming to be representative of the group posted a video hacktivist group is planning to take down Facebook on the 28th of January. We're having a little deja vu here. Mostly because a previous claim by Anonymous to take down Facebook happened last year. The group planned to take down the social network on the 5th of November, more commonly known as Guy Fawkes day, but never did. Another reason to experience deja vu? They announced the November YouTube takedown via a YouTube video as well.

The video calls to attention that even though the problem of SOPA and PIPA are temporarily over, the Internet rights of the American people are still not guaranteed to be upheld. The video asks viewers to download Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC), the same method they used to take down the DOJ website. It works by flooding the servers of the target site with hundreds of packets of information, inevitably leading to a server crash. The video even provides instructions on how to use LOIC and declares the attack for midnight on the 28th of January. It doesn't specify, which time zone within the United States the attack will take place, though.

Of course, there will be obstacles in their path to take down a website like Facebook, which is well stocked with servers around the world. "While it is true that Facebook has at least 60,000 servers, it is still possible to bring it down," the video says. The video then says that Anonymous needs help of the people. Will Anonymous go through with this battle in their "online war"? The November 5th attack failed because there was a lack of organization within the group for the attack. Will they manage to get themselves organized this time around? We'll have to wait and see.