On the same day that Virgin Media became the first UK ISP to block access to The Pirate Bay (May 2, 2012), new hacktivist group TheWikiBoat announced Operation Bay Back. The group announced itself as recently as April 1. “We are #TheWikiBoat,” it said. But it seems more akin to LulzSec than it is to Anonymous. “We are here with no motives and our only objective is 'black hatting' for the sheer lulz. We hack for the lulz just because we can...”
It is not Anonymous. “While we are responsible for everything #TheWikiBoat is, it is important to know that while under this alias, we do not have the same goals and motives as Anonymous. #TheWikiBoat is not tied to Anonymous in anyway and we do not wish to be identified as Anonymous.” It seems strange, then, that one of its first publicized campaigns, OpBayBack, reads on the surface very much like an Anonymous campaign. “The Pirate Bay is simply a search engine for torrents, it's like blocking Google for displaying search results,” says TheWikiBoat. “Therefore TPB has done nothing illegal, and is being wrongly shut down.”
It is an error of fact, of course – which could raise some eyebrows – since The Pirate Bay is not being shut down; it is merely being blocked. “Our aim is simple, send them all a warning message, show them that we will not stand for censorship.” If they are in it for the lulz, then The Pirate Bay might be more a justification for LulzSec-style mayhem than an Anonymous-style principle. Either way, the method is the same: download our application (without saying what it is) and we’ll do the rest.
The bottom line is that OpBayBack is due to start at “at around 18:00(6pm)BST” – today. The targets have not been made clear.