Hailey Johnson
Anonymous is a decentralised international activist and hacktivist collective and movement known for its various cyberattacks against governments, corporations, and other institutions. In May 2016, the group announced a war against the Bank of England, among other central banks, threatening to shut down their websites. The Bank of England's website was inaccessible for a brief period, along with the websites of several other banks. Anonymous-affiliated hackers claimed responsibility for the attacks, stating their motive was to 'start an online revolution' against the power held by elite banking cartels.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Date | May 2016 |
| Hacker Group | Anonymous |
| Members Involved | s1ege, Scrub |
| Type of Attack | DDoS |
| Motive | To start an online revolution against elite banking cartels |
| Targets | Bank of England, Central Bank of Bhutan, Central Bank of Myanmar, Bihar Gramin Bank, Central Bank of Montenegro, Bank of Korea, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Bank of Greece, New York Stock Exchange |
| Outcome | Websites were down for varying durations, from a few minutes to hours |
| Previous Attacks | Greece's Central Bank, Ku Klux Klan, Bank of America, Sony, India's National Informatics Centre, National Police Corps of Spain, Malaysian Government, City of Orlando, Church of Scientology, HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, Koch Brother's Americans for Prosperity |
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What You'll Learn
Anonymous's motive for targeting the Bank of England
Anonymous, a decentralised virtual community, is a group of hacktivists that seeks mass awareness and revolution against entities that it perceives as corrupt. The group is known for its various cyberattacks against governments, corporations, and government agencies.
In May 2016, Anonymous launched a series of cyberattacks on the Bank of England and other international banks. The group's motive for targeting the Bank of England was to "start an online revolution" and retaliate against the "elite banking cartels [that are] putting the world in a perpetual state of chaos." According to one of the hackers, s1ege, all banks are potential targets, but the focus for future attacks would be on NASDAQ, NYSE, and Paypal.
The group's campaign, titled OpIcarus, specifically targeted the internal email server of the Bank of England, which was inaccessible for some time. In a YouTube video, the group also stated that financial institutions like the Bank of England help ensure that the world's most powerful organisations and governments maintain their secrecy and remain in power. They further added that it was time to "set the wings of their empire ablaze and watch the system their power relies on come to a grinding halt and come crashing down around them."
Anonymous has a history of targeting entities that it perceives as corrupt, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Church of Scientology, and various governments and government institutions. The group has also been involved in cyberprotests against police brutality and in support of free speech.
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The impact of the hack
In May 2016, the hacktivist collective Anonymous launched a series of cyberattacks on several international banks, including the Bank of England. Dubbed OpIcarus, the campaign aimed to "start an online revolution" against the "elite banking cartels" that the group believed were responsible for perpetuating global chaos.
Additionally, the attack impacted the Bank's website, which went offline for a brief period. While the duration of the website outage varied, with some banks affected for a few minutes and others for hours, the Bank of England's website was still inaccessible at the time of writing, causing prolonged disruption to its online presence.
The hack also had a broader impact on the banking industry and raised concerns about the vulnerability of financial institutions to cyber threats. Anonymous targeted multiple banks simultaneously, demonstrating the scope and coordination of their capabilities. This included attacks on the Central Bank of Bhutan, the Central Bank of Myanmar, the Bihar Gramin Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and others, causing website outages and potentially impacting their operations.
The group's actions highlighted the need for banks to strengthen their cybersecurity measures and prompted discussions about the potential consequences of such attacks on the stability of the financial system. The incident served as a wake-up call, underscoring the importance of robust cyber defenses in an increasingly digital world.
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Other banks targeted by Anonymous
In May 2016, Anonymous launched a campaign against international banks, titled OpIcarus. The group targeted the Bank of England, as well as several other banks around the world.
On 9 May, an Anonymous-affiliated hacker, s1ege, tweeted about shutting down the National Reserve Bank of Tonga and attacking the Central Bank of Sweden. On the same day, another hacker, Scrub, tweeted about bringing down the website of the Central Bank of Bhutan. The following day, the websites for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and Central Bank of Montenegro also appeared to be briefly down, which s1ege boasted about on Twitter.
Other banks targeted as part of OpIcarus include the Bank of Korea, the Central Bank of Myanmar, the Central Bank of Lao, the Bihar Gramin Bank, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
In addition to these attacks, Anonymous has also previously targeted the Bank of Greece and the Bank of Mexico. In 2017, the group claimed it would be targeting financial organizations around the globe, and brought down the websites of both banks in a distributed denial-of-service attack.
Anonymous first came onto the financial industry's radar in 2010 when, as part of Operation Payback, it targeted companies that criticized or refused to accept payments on behalf of WikiLeaks. These companies included PayPal, MasterCard, and Bank of America.
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Previous Anonymous cyberattacks
Anonymous is a decentralised virtual community and international activist and hacktivist collective and movement. It is known for its various cyberattacks against governments, government institutions, government agencies, corporations, and the Church of Scientology.
Some of Anonymous's previous cyberattacks include:
- In 2008, 4chan users led by early Anonymous hacker Gregg Housh launched a coordinated effort against the Church of Scientology, using tactics like denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on the church's websites, prank phone calls, and faxing the church black pages to waste their printer ink.
- In 2010, Anonymous conducted DDoS attacks against a wide range of Australian government servers in protest of proposed internet filtering legislation that would block some pornography.
- In 2011, Anonymous launched a series of attacks against Sony in retaliation for trying to stop hacks of the PlayStation 3 game console. More than 100 million Sony accounts were compromised, and the Sony services Qriocity and PlayStation Network were taken down for a month apiece by cyberattacks.
- In 2011, Anonymous also targeted BART in San Francisco, resulting in customers' personal information being leaked onto the group's website.
- In 2011, a hacker group identifying as Anonymous claimed it had stolen 15,000 user passwords as part of a cyberwar against North Korea.
- In 2014, Anonymous declared cyber war on the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) after the KKK made death threats following the Ferguson riots. They hacked the KKK's Twitter account, attacked servers hosting KKK sites, and released the personal details of members.
- In 2022, a Twitter account with 7.9 million followers named "Anonymous" declared a "cyber war" against Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, after Russia invaded Ukraine. The group claimed responsibility for various cyberattacks that disabled websites and leaked data from Russian government agencies, state-run news outlets, and corporations.
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Future targets of Anonymous
In 2016, Anonymous launched a series of cyberattacks on banks around the world, including the Bank of England, in an operation called OpIcarus. The group took down the Bank of England's internal email server and its website, along with the websites of several other central banks.
Anonymous is a leaderless collective of hacktivists known for its cyberattacks and digital disruption. The group has targeted a diverse range of organisations and institutions over the years, from powerful governments and corporations to the Ku Klux Klan.
In 2025, the movement had evolved into loosely connected groups and individuals pursuing their own agendas under the Anonymous banner. This has made it harder to predict their targets, but some notable operations that year included:
- Leaking around 10 terabytes of data related to Russian power brokers, state-linked businesses, and Western political figures.
- Participating in #OpIsrael, targeting infrastructure in Israel, the US, and the UK with DDoS floods, phishing attempts, and website defacements.
- Defacing Russian websites with anti-war and anti-Putin imagery in solidarity with Ukraine.
- Creating a website to help Iranians communicate and coordinate during the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, bypassing government censorship.
- Targeting major pro-copyright and anti-piracy organisations, law firms, individuals, and entertainment industry websites in retaliation for DDoS attacks on torrent sites.
- Launching DDoS attacks on 91 Malaysian government websites in response to online censorship.
- Collaborating with LulzSec to hack the websites of government and corporate sources in the US, Tunisia, Anguilla, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Turkey, and Australia, and releasing information from them.
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Frequently asked questions
Yes, in 2016, the hacktivist group Anonymous carried out a cyberattack on the Bank of England as part of its OpIcarus campaign.
Anonymous is a decentralised international activist and hacktivist collective and movement known for its various cyberattacks against governments, government institutions, corporations, and the Church of Scientology.
Anonymous said that its campaign against international banks was to start an online revolution against "elite banking cartels" that were "putting the world in a perpetual state of chaos".
Anonymous has carried out numerous other cyberattacks, including against the Ku Klux Klan, the Church of Scientology, North Korea, Israel, India's National Informatics Centre, the National Police Corps of Spain, and the Bank of America.
