On a day it had previously set aside for trolling ISIS, hacktivist collective Anonymous spared some time to launch an attack on the website for Donald Trump’s trademark New York City skyscraper.
There is evidence the group has been targeting the site since at least Wednesday, when it posted a YouTube video warning against Trump’s plan to halt the immigration of Muslims into the U.S.
“This policy is going to have a huge impact,” says a man in a Guy Fawkes mask through a voice scrambler. “This is what ISIS wants. The more Muslims feel sad, the more ISIS feels they can recruit them…You have been warned, Mr. Donald Trump.”
That afternoon on Twitter, a user called @FibsFreitag posted a screengrab of what appeared to be an attempt to take down the Trump Tower site.
It read, “trumptowerny.com nearly down. we need more laz0rs! #DDoS #OpTrump #OpFire.”
By early Friday, the group was claiming success, announcing from a different Twitter account, “Trump Towers NY site taken down as statement against racism and hatred.”
The alleged damage might not have been apparent, though, to visitors to the page, because, as the tweet explained, “(what you see is cloudflare offline backup)” — meaning a cached version of the site likely programmed to hold the fort in the event of an attack or maintenance issues.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
There is no indication at this point as to whether Anonymous plans further actions as part of its #OpTrump exercise, though Twitter is currently loaded with warnings like the one seen here, which shows Trump’s face photoshopped onto the body of Nazi official and declares, “#OpTrump is on.”
