Hacking group Anonymous is planning to launch Operation Global Blackout on March 31, which will see the internet brought to its knees.

According to a statement, which the group posted on Pastebinearlier this week, it plans to attack 13 DNS servers that ensure URLs such as google.co.uk are translated into the IP addresses that host these websites.

“To protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, On March 31, anonymous will shut the internet down,” the group said in the statement.

Anonymous believes if it can successfully take those root servers down for long enough, “DNS as we currently use it would cease to function, and the web would become at least temporarily inaccessible for most of its users”.

Nobody will be able to perform a domain name lookup, thus, disabling the HTTP internet, which is, after all, the most widely used function of the web. Anybody entering http://www.google.com or any other URL, will get an error page, thus, they will think the internet is down, which is, close enough,” the group added

“Remember, this is a protest, we are not trying to ‘kill’ the internet, we are only temporarily shutting it down where it hurts the most.”

Anonymous did nort detail how long it intended the blackout to last, instead simply saying “It may only lasts one hour, maybe more, maybe even a few days. No matter what, it will be global. It will be known”.

However, unlike other protests where it has brought down websites belonging to US and UK government authorities, it did not publicise the operation on its Twitter feed.

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