A group of cyber activist has claimed that it downed Donald Trump’s website after the later said the United States government should ban muslims from entering the US. The statement has since triggered missed reaction around the globe including a threat YouTube video by Anonymous – a group of online activist allegedly fighting ISIS the cyber way – citing that Trump’s comments would help the Islamic State group recruit terrorists.
The site was unavailable during the early afternoon of Friday, and according to a media report had been down for about an hour earlier in the day. Around 9 a.m. Friday there, the Anonymous Twitter account @YourAnonNews posted tweets saying the group had taken down the site.
Trump Towers NY site taken down as statement against racism and hatred. https://t.co/n5ftLrOs1P (what you see is cloudflare offline backup)
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) December 11, 2015
In a video the group posted on YouTube, the cyber activist warned that “Donald Trump, think twice before you speak anything,”. The YouTube video was heavily modified to avoid voice detection.
Anonymous frequently hacks websites in the name of political causes and says it is engaged in a cyberwar against the Islamic State. It claims to have taken down thousands of Twitter accounts that support the group.
Earlier this week, Trump said the U.S. should bar all Muslims from entering the U.S. as a measure to prevent terror attacks, “until our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going on.” The statements drew widespread condemnation in the U.S. and elsewhere but support from some right-leaning commentators. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found 57 percent of Americans opposed the idea.
This isn’t the first time Anonymous has targeted Trump. In August, the group broke into Trump.com in order to leave a message to Jon Stewart as he was about to leave The Daily Show. As we await the group’s next move, they’ve already announced that Friday will be a day to troll ISIS.
Trump is the leading Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election.