Posted 6:31 PM by Gene

This smacks of an ultimately ineffectual tantrum:

Earlier this morning, a "voluntary botnet" of about 1,700 computers involved in the attack against MasterCard, Correll said. The group's member base appears to be growing, with about 2,200 participants present in an Anonymous chat room earlier today, more than double the 1,000 or so involved yesterday, Correll said. In some cases, in addition to the DDoS attacks, the group has resorted to Black Fax-ing, a practice in which a black sheet of paper is repeatedly sent to a fax recipient in order to deplete the machine's toner cartridge.

But this doesn't:

Meanwhile, Anonymous' own Web site, anonops.net, has been hit with massive counter-DDOS attacks and has been down intermittently the past few days, he added. Anonops.net is hosted by a Russian ISP.

We'd like to think this is another of the outwardly brilliant flashes of heatless light that marks our preposterous age except for our dull fear that someday enough of these tantrum throwers can get the mass to screw up the world. We hope not.

And who like me is getting perfectly tired of this stunt, a perfect mix of megalomania and self-righteousness?