Dubai: 'Anonymous' hacked Thursday a number of websites affiliated with the Egyptian government as a strike back for the blockage of social networking sites used to mobilise protests in Egypt.
The Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information technology and Interior Ministry were successfully hacked or slowed down.
Anonymous is a 'Hachtivist' group that target 'oppressive' entities. Previously, they have disrupted several major western websites that they accused of working against online Wikileaks, such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Amazon websites, and earlier they turned its attention eastward when it targeted key websites affiliated by Tunisian government and now Egypt.
Hackers threatened to attack websites affiliated with the Egyptian government through an online Press release that said, "Anonymous challenges all those who are involved in censorship. Anonymous wants you to offer free access to uncensored media in your entire country," adding that "when you ignore this message, not only will we attack your government websites, Anonymous will also make sure the international media sees the reality you impose on your people."
Anonymous’ methods are through launching a DDoS attack, by which it floods a website server with false requests for information, overwhelming the site to the point where it cannot respond to legitimate visitors.
The 'Day of Anger' on Tuesday was initially called for by online protest groups, including the April 6 youth movement. Updates of the protests were carried daily on Facebook pages.
Internet sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google and hotmail have been disrupted several times this week.
Herdict.org, a website where users report access problems, confirmed that many sites registered in Egypt cannot be reached, while Bambuser, a Swedish site for streaming video from mobile phones, said it had been blocked after being used by some protesters this week. Twitter’s service confirmed the blockage. “We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt,” the company tweeted.
On the other hand the Egyptian government denied that social media websites were disrupted.
