Anonymous whales on Denmark, Iceland with OpKillingBay DDoS

Anti-dolphin-munching mission DDoSed car-maker Nissan

A pair of Akamai researchers are warning that entities using the name and iconography of hacker collective Anonymous will soon expand a six-year distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack campaign against Japan to other whale-and-dolphin-eating nations.

The operation, dubbed KillingBay, is detailed in a report [PDF] and is now hitting countries including Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.

In typical hacktivist style, not all targets are connected to whale and dolphin hunts; Nissan was targeted because it did nothing to stop the killing, security researchers say.

Included in the hit lists are 25 government sites, 17 seafood companies, and nine theme parks.

Anonymous collective members have launched DDoS attacks against the website of Japan's Prime Minister,

"Since the start of 2016, the target list has further expanded … we started to observe attacks against a Japanese automotive web site," the pair write.

"Another automotive company joined the list of victims on 4 February and attacks continued every few days.

"For hacktivists, the publicity they generate for their cause is almost as important as taking down the objective."

The pair say a site need only fall over for a minute for DDoS attackers to grab a screenshot and boast of success.

Akamai found the non-Japanese sites after discovering a list of target .jp domains on a web clipboard site.

They reported cross-over where the activists participated in other Anonymous collective campaigns including OpIcarus and OpSoaringEagle.

Most of the attack traffic in January was a layer 7 GET flood which is best defended using rate controls, Akamai says. ®