January 18, 2017
A new online campaign that’s making the rounds these days calls for users to “occupy whitehouse.gov on inauguration day” as a form of protest against Donald Trump’s presidency.
Published on Protester.io, the protest is basically a call for an old-school DDoS attack that would render the White House website completely useless due to overloading with too much traffic.
Essentially, Americans who want to protest against Donald Trump are asked to load the White House website on inauguration day and refresh it frequently to take it down.
While this can easily be considered a DDoS attack against the US government, Juan Soberanis, who launched the campaign, says there is nothing illegal with this because what users do is only loading the website and refreshing it, and not turning to hacking tools to take the website down. Hackers launching DDoS attacks at servers use dedicated tools and multiple servers that would simulate traffic and eventually cause overloading.
“A show of solidarity”
Juan Soberanis explains that his campaign is just an online version of a traditional protest, so instead of people marching in Washington, DC, they can now protest against the new President on the Internet.
“Millions more around the country will be joining the cause from home. If you can’t make it to Washington, D.C. on inauguration day to protest Trump’s presidency, you can still fight for the cause by helping to take down WhiteHouse.gov as a show of solidarity for the lives impacted by Trump’s policy agenda. It’s simple, by overloading the site with visitors we will be able to demonstrate the will of the American people,” he says.
“When enough people occupy www.whitehouse.gov the site will go down. Please join us and stand up against this demagogue who is threatening our democracy and our security.”
Soberanis also offers instructions on how to participate in the process and even provides a subscription system for users who want to be notified when it’s the time to load the White House website.