Anonymous continues to lash out following the seizure of Megaupload and the jailing of its founder, having momentarily deleted both CBS.com and UniversalMusic.com. Xbox Live has been threatened, but is that credible?


Put it this way, if hackers can obliterate corporate presences of that size (even if they are now back up), as well as whack government, motion picture and music publishing sites with a huge DDoS attack, then yes, they possess the motivation and the means to threaten something like Xbox Live. Whether that is actually a target is another question.


Earlier this weekend, a video went out speaking for Anonymous, claiming that web presences for the United Nations, Capital One, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube would be attacked if Megaupload wasn't restored in a 72-hour span. How any of these are directly affiliated with Megaupload's takedown and the arrest of its officers is beyond me. Others have shouted down the video as an empty threat made by wannabes. Indeed, Anonymous' own Twitter feed asks why it would take down three social networks it uses to spread its messages.

But that's the nature of Anonymous. It has no leader, so there's no way to judge the legitimacy of any who claim to speak for it.

Last year, Anonymous was blamed for PlayStation Network's 23-day outage, said to be provoked by Sony's actions against hackers who jailbroke the console, and the company's removal of the ability to install the Linux operating system. Anonymous denied involvement.

Whether Xbox Live is a target or not, what seems certain is that an unaccountable body will continue to attack and take down sites of those it unilaterally declares obnoxious, as a moral protest against unaccountable bodies taking down sites of those they unilaterally declare obnoxious.