Ominous Video: Hackers Say They Will ‘Erase’ NYSE From Internet

Ever since Occupy Wall Street protests began mid-September, the hacker collective Anonymous has been posting its support for protestors and threats against those like the New York Police Department, on its YouTube channel. In its most recent post over the weekend, Anonymous threatens to "erase" the New York Stock Exchange from the Internet.

When? October 10. Watch the group's video threat -- a message to the media -- of a day that will "never, ever be forgot:"

As PC Magazine reports the threat, it notes that Anonymous does not explain how it will take down NYSE from the Internet. Comments on the video, however, reveal some theories:

[...] some speculated that Anonymous was planning a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on the public-facing NYSE.com website, similar to DDoS attacks the group has used to take down websites in the past.

Others felt that would only be a minor setback for the NYSE and guessed that Anonymous was planning a larger attack, perhaps even an attempt to actually disable trading on the exchange.

Anonymous confirms its DDoS attack with its "Message to the People":

Forbes writes that invasion of the NYSE system -- not of nyse.com -- using a DDos attack is unlikely:

The exchange’s system is designed to handle massive loads of traffic every second to accommodate trading flows, and it’s doubtful a traffic spike would be successful in knocking it offline. Stopping short of that, it’s unlikely that traders and brokers – using their terminals and trading programs – will even notice any disruption should NYSE.com go down.

Anonymous includes instruction on both of its videos for people to "JOIN THE RAID" against nyse.com on Oct. 10 at 3:30 p.m. by downloading LOIC software and joining IRC, a link that will be go live when ready.

Forbes provides a few quick stats on the nyse.com, which it claims are "underwhelming:"

The website is ranked by Alexa as the 26,155^th most visited site in the world. That puts it directly ahead of macromates.com, a site advertising a text editor for programming code. The 4 sites above it? A Russian gaming site, a men’s clothing company, a Geocities-esque online entertainment site and a Netherlands-based soccer network. Not exactly esteemed company. Quantcast, another web analytics service, estimates the monthly traffic to be somewhere between 250,000 and 350,000 visitors worldwide. Google gets that many hits in about 10 minutes.

Anonymous recently exposed personal details about NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna who was accused by a protestor of brutality. Anonymous is also recently credited for hacking into the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system and releasing information after protesters' phones were blocked.