Anonymous, Scientology, Tom Cruise and LOLCats

Posted on January 26, 2008

A shadowy group of Internet hackers called Anonymous released a video declaring war on Scientology. The video says they will destroy Scientology.

The video says, "Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind--for the laughs--we shall expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form. We acknowledge you as a serious opponent, and we are prepared for a long, long campaign. You will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your methods, hypocrisy, and the artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell."

Anonymous also started a DDOS attack on the Scientology website. Wired's Threat Level notes that at first Anonymous inadvertently took down the website of a school in the Netherlands. The attack was then directed at the correct serves. A story about the Anonymous attack on eNews2.0 says the attacks were powerful enough to force Scientology to move its website to a server hosted by Prolexic Technologies. Prolexic is a company that offers protection from these types of DDoS attacks.

Anonymous has been posting videos to a YouTube site called Chanology Project. The videos include Scientology clips about Tom Cruise and about Scientology's negative views on psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. The YouTube site also contains clips of media coverage of their DDOS attacks. An LolCruise picture was shown in a video from Anonymous about the Scientology site being down. Anonymous is connected to the origin of the LOLCat meme going back to its first mention on 4chan.org in 2005.

Updated 1-28-08