The Anonymous Collective is more than a little terrifying. Since 2008, the group of “hacktivists” have been flexing their digital muscles by taking down websites with distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, with each attack being on a bigger scale than the last.

And now General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, thinks that in the next few years Anonymous could have the power to cause limited power outages through cyber attacks. These attacks would likely cause little harm, as there are plenty of fail-safes in place in the event of cyber attacks, but it’s a scary thought regardless.

And then there’s Operation Global Blackout, Anonymous’s plan to shut down the internet on March 31. There were no websites specified, so they apparently intend to just shut down the entire internet. Anonymous have proven that they have power and they’re willing to use it, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

via SlashGear