MIT Website hacked on Aaron Swartz's Death Anniversary

If you don't know who Aaron Swartz is, he was one of the most significant advocates of Cyber Freedom. The 26 year old took his life after legal scuffles with the Department of Justice for an alleged case of making accumulated scientific research data public. On January 11, 2013, federal prosecutors, in an aggressive campaign to bring high-profile convictions against hackers, finally broke the spirit of this talented internet activist and technologist. Faced with 35 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines, not to mention a long battle with depression, Swartz committed suicide. And with that, one of the great voices of internet activism fell silent.

Swartz was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2011, accused of hacking the MIT JSTOR database and stealing over four million documents with the intent to distribute them. On Saturday, the home page of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was hacked, reportedly by the Anonymous group. The Campaign "The Day We Fight Back" is being organized by Demand Progress, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Reddit, Mozilla, BoingBoing, and other groups on February 11th, 2014. You can follow it on reddit too http://www.reddit.com/r/thedaywefightback/. The action is being held in honor of Swartz's life, but also in celebration of the successful protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that he helped inspire two years ago.

On the first Anniversary of Aaron Swartz, hackers of the group 'Anonymous' defaced a sub-domain of MIT website [http://cogen.mit.edu/] for about an hour as part of #OPLASTRESORT

The defaced page was titled 'THE DAY WE FIGHT BACK' with a message, “Remember The Day We Fight Back, Remember. We Never Forget, We Never Surrender, Expect Us.” .