Anonymous targets Trump, Turkey and others

“We are based in the U.S., but we strive to take down ISIS-affiliated websites, also ISIS members,” a member of New World Hacking said on Twitter. “We realize sometimes what we do is not always the right choice, but without cyberhackers … who is there to fight off online terrorists? The reason we really targeted the BBC is because we wanted to see our actual server power.”

The group consists of eight men and four women, one of its members told the BBC Saturday. The British news agency’s websites were offline for several hours on New Year’s Eve, the result of a distributed denial of service attack.

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Yet by Sunday, the group’s ranks may have been reduced as a result of internal disagreements. After one of the group’s members used a distributed denial of service attack against BlackLivesMatter.com and tweeted the phrase “All Lives Matter” from the group’s Twitter account, the same account subsequently apologized and said the perpetrator had been kicked out of the group.

“Our mistakes,” the account said. “We have told the current member to never target this site again. He has been knocked off.”

The group’s attacks against Turkey, Trump and the KKK are a continuation of Anonymous’ usual activity. Anonymous members generally express political disagreement with Trump, and the group has attacked Turkey over claims the country has not been tough enough against the Islamic State.

A website for the Turkish prime minister crashed early Monday, shortly after the group said in a new message on Twitter, “Turkey government sites shall be going down soon!”