Notorious hacker group, Anonymous, has intensified its battle against the Indian government over the web censorship issue and taken down the website of state-run telecom company MTNL. The hacker group is now aiming to target Airtel and Reliance. The attack comes days before its June 9 ‘Occupy’ protests.
According to reports, the group struck the MTNL website through a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. After the attack, MTNL’s corporate website could not be accessed. However, the city-specific websites for Delhi and Mumbai were working. MTNL officials are working to make the website fully operational. Anonymous India, meanwhile, said on its Facebook page, “Anonymous has no Leaders, it is the people who decide…How many of you in favour of taking down Reliance and Airtel ?…Like this post to vote for Reliance. Share this post to vote for Airtel”.
Anonymous India is gearing up for its June 9 Occupy protests across the nation. The self-proclaimed hactivists, are opposing the government move to ban file sharing websites. The hacker group has already targeted various government websites and also of political parties and corporates.
In an open letter to the government, Anonymous India says, “The HC Madras never issued any list of websites to be blocked, the DoT never issued a list of websites to be censored. Why is that ISPs are forced to block file sharing websites? Why is that instead of blocking few links the whole domain was blocked? The blocking of these websites is wrong and unjustified.”
“Torrents are widely used to distribute open source and free software such as Linux distributions, and many other books and publications that are in the public domain. Video hosting sites like Vimeo are used by millions of people every day. You no longer have access to this content even though it is perfectly legal.”
In an another letter to bloggers and journalists, Anonymous India attempts to justify its actions and seeks support and from the media to boost its campaign. The hackers’ group also claims it is fighting for the media.
Hacked MTNL site
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