On the anniversary of young hacker and digital activist Aaron Swartz’s death, Anonymous has re-engaged its Operation Last resort to hack MIT’s website, taking over the server for its Cogeneration project.
The website has been defaced for one hour. The page is now titled THE DAY WE FIGHT BACK. (Update Saturday, January 11, 1:02pm PST: MIT’s Cogen websites has been down for nearly an hour.)
The defacement states “REMEMBER THE DAY WE FIGHT BACK REMEMBER” and remains as of this writing, with the SSL-enabled version of the site redirecting to the page on load.
Reddit, Creative Commons and Demand Progress co-founder Aaron Swartz committed suicide in New York City on Friday, Jan. 11, 2013.
MIT previously claimed to have played a neutral role in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz, however information later suggested that MIT likely played an active role in the prosecution.
Last weekend, his father Bob Swartz featured in the widely-read editorial Losing Aaron where much ground was laid to put the blame for the young hacker’s death squarely at the feet of MIT, which as an institution stated it would play a neutral role — yet wilfully helped the prosecution, alongside Swartz’s girlfriend at the time Quinn Norton.
The Operation Last Resort campaign is retaliation for the suicide, which many – including the Swartz family – believe was a result of overzealous prosecution by the Department of Justice and what the family deemed a “bullying” use of outdated computer crime laws.
