Two internet juggernauts -- the infamous image sharing site 4chan and blogging service Tumblr -- have been embroiled in a nasty online spat recently, with reports that both sites were momentarily taken offline due to hacking activity.
The initial blow seems to come from 4chan, and its beef with Tumblr is in regards to the blogging service's members and content. "Tumblr is the very definition of failure," a 4chan member states on the poster for "Operation Overlord: Phase 1", stating that its members are hipsters, females and "indie kids", who apparently run 4chan's memes into the ground.
4chan, an imageboard used primarily for anime discussion and some brief stints in political activism, is notorious online for its /b/ board which shares videos, images and slogans. It's considered responsible for memes like rickrolling, Lolcats and pedobear, among many others. Apparently overusing said memes is grounds for cyberattack.
The strategy was outlined in a series of images, with three phases of "Operation Overlord". The attack involved unleashing gory images, inappropriate content and viruses on the site, hacking into well-known Tumblr accounts and eventually attempting to flood the blog's servers with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on 14 November, 2010.
But while 4chan's attack seemed somewhat successful, it looks as if Tumblr had plans of its own. The site allegedly performed a reverse raid, asking its users to bring the same denial of service attacks to 4chan. For a few hours on 14 November, both sites were intermittently offline or sluggish from the attacks. A stalemate -- not the outcome 4chan was hoping for.
At the end of the day, this probably isn't the community's strongest hour. The notorious imagboard took down MPAA and RIAA websites in cyberattacks, got a hoax story claiming Steve Jobs suffered a major heart attack on CNN and had a swastika logo on Google's top search terms, but has the /b/ehemoth finally met its match in Tumblr?
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
