The hacker group Anony­mous recently announced through a YouTube video that it plans to “kill” Face­book on Nov. 5 for sup­pos­edly abusing the pri­vacy of its users. We asked Engin Kirda, the Sy and Laurie Stern­berg Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Endowed Pro­fessor for Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance — with joint appoint­ments in Northeastern’s Col­lege of Com­puter and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence and Depart­ment of Elec­trical and Com­puter Engi­neering — to dis­cuss the poten­tial impli­ca­tions of the hack and the motives behind hacking groups such as Anonymous.