Twitter handles associated with Anonymous are suggesting that “Operation Blackout,” a rumored attempt to shut down the Internet scheduled for March 31, was never an officially sanctioned plan.

Operation Blackout calls for a highly-focused Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on what it said are the Internet’s 13 root Domain Name System (DNS) servers. It was announced in February as a protest against SOPA, Wall Street and “our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world.”

The release suggested such an attack would temporarily disable the DNS system, which turns a web address such as “www.mashable.com” into an IP address that directs a user’s browser to the proper server. That’s not exactly the same as taking down the entire Internet, but Anonymous said that didn’t matter.

“Anybody entering ‘http://www.google.com’ or ANY other url, will get an error page, thus, they will think the Internet is down, which is, close enough,” reads the release. “Remember, this is a protest, we are not trying to ‘kill’ the Internet, we are only temporarily shutting it down where it hurts the most.”

http://mashable.com/2012/03/30/anonymous-operation-blackout/