Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Summary

Anonymous targeted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that crashed its website, retaliating against the fatal police shooting of an individual wearing the group's mask during a disturbance in British Columbia. The hacktivists further threatened to expose the identity of the involved officer through doxing, a tactic that risks personal harm to the individual and their family by publicly revealing private information. The incident followed Anonymous publicly condemning the shooting as a murder and signaling broader disruptive actions against the police.

Motives

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TTPs

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Description

On July 17, 2015, a police-involved shooting occurred in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, resulting in the death of a man wearing a mask associated with the Anonymous hacktivist group. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) responded to a reported disturbance near the Fixx Urban Grill, where officers encountered the masked individual. According to police accounts, the man refused to comply with officer directives and behaved aggressively, leading to an altercation that culminated in fatal gunfire. The incident occurred near a British Columbia Hydro facility hosting discussions about the contentious Site C Dam Project. Shortly after the shooting, the Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account @YourAnonNews posted "we would like to report a murder," framing the event as an unjustified killing. The Independent Investigations Office of British Columbia (IIOBC) initiated an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death.

The following day, Anonymous claimed responsibility for launching a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that crashed the RCMP's official website, characterizing it as retaliation for their "comrade's" death. Cybersecurity expert Claudiu Popa confirmed that such attacks overwhelm target servers with artificial traffic volumes, causing service disruptions. The group additionally threatened to "dox" the involved officer – a practice involving the malicious publication of personal identifying information to enable harassment or retaliation. Popa noted doxing extends consequences beyond the primary target to their family members, creating significant personal safety risks. While the DDoS attack caused temporary website inaccessibility, the threatened doxing represented a more severe potential escalation with broader privacy and security implications for RCMP personnel. No follow-up disclosures regarding the officer's identity were documented in the immediate aftermath of these threats.

Sources

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