ACTA Cyber Attacks Continue
Following the recent announcement of 22 of 27 EU member states signing up to the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the cyber hacktivist group Anonymous have turned their attention to Greece.
Yesterday morning, the Greek Ministry of Justices website was taken down a replaced with a video and a message instructing the government to “stop ACTA [Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement] in Greece” within a fortnight.
This is the latest in a string of attacks by the group Anonymous targeting different nations government websites who have agreed and signed ACTA.
Anonymous are believed to have committed the attack at around 05:21 yesterday and the defaced website was not taken down for many hours after this.
Anonymous warn the Greek government that failure to comply with their demands will result in them targeting over 300 greek websites, mainly government and media websites. They also claim that they already have the credentials to access the sites that they are targeting.
Anonymous are reported to be continuing growing in support and numbers but true figures on this cannot be accurately obtained due to the secrecy and decentralisation of the group. However it is evident that the group has a lot of power on the Internet based on the ever increasing frequency of attacks.
All servers from private business to government owned seem to have inadequate protection to defend against these attacks. This is despite several security experts suggesting that many of the attacks could be “easily prevented”.
Numerous Anonymous led attacks encourage supporters to download their own custom made tool – LOIC. LOIC stands for Low Orbit Ion Cannon. Many of you will recognise the “Ion Cannon” phrase from the Westwood Studios (and later Electronic Arts) hit warfare game, Command & Conquer. The Ion Cannon in the game series was a weapon deployed from a satellite which focused huge amounts of energy into a small area and shot it to the ground, causing mass destruction at the point of impact.
The LOIC works in a equivalent “cyber” way as it harnesses the power of thousands of computers and directs it all at a single target at the same time – producing a similar cyber destructive event.
Although the criminal acts and cyber terrorism that Anonymous has participated it are without doubt wrong (and in most places illegal), we can see how many of these recent attacks could have been prevented if such unfair and unjust legislation was not rushed through in such an undemocratic manner.
DPS Computing continues to oppose ACTA/SOPA/PIPA, not because the goals are all necessarily bad, but these pieces of legislation are not fit for purpose. We encourage you to contact your local government representatives and urge them to put pressure on the central government to not sign / repeal these pieces of legislation.
A picture of the defaced website of the Greek Ministry of Justice is displayed below:
