After ordering Internet service providers to block several top video-sharing sites, several Indian government websites were hit with denial-of-service attacks by Anonymous.
The Anonymous hackers hit the websites of the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Department of Telecommunications, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress in coordinated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) strikes yesterday (May 17). All the targeted websites are now up and running.
Anonymous was specifically protesting the injunction, obtained by an Indian court on March 29, that forced Indian ISPs to block Vimeo, Dailymotion, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt and other websites. The court ordered the sites to be blocked in response to a lawsuit filed by the Chennai, India-based company Copyright Labs over the illegal sharing of the movie "3," Ars Technica reported.
In a YouTube video posted May 9, Anonymous announced its "OpIndia" campaign and defined its goals. "We have been noticing the actions of Indian government from past many years," the narrator said in the digitized voice typical of all Anonymous dispatches. "We have come to a conclusion that the Indian government has failed. It is time that we all rise and stand against the corrupt government."
The hacking group singled out the Department of Telecommunications for ordering Indian ISPs to block video-sharing sites, and said, "We cannot let this happen … We must fight against censorship."
In an unexpected twist, Anonymous' OpIndia efforts coincide with the work of another hacker whose attacks, although they could be seen as aligned with Anonymous' mission, are, he says, in direct opposition.
On Wednesday (May 16), a hacker by the name of "Nyre" took credit on his Twitter page, @AnonNyre, for launching a DDoS attack against The Pirate Bay. In a Pastebin message, Nyre explained that he is "highly against Anonymous," although he once was a supporter of the group.
He said he took down The Pirate Bay because it "was a press-release website for Anonymous," and threatened that he is "a one-man army. I am not a hacker. I am a security killer." The Pirate Bay was back online yesterday.