Irish government hacked in protest of new web law

There have been several instances of websites belonging to the government or officials, being hacked in the past few months. In December, the Congress website was hacked and Sonia Gandhi's profile was defaced. Last year also saw a series of hacks on the Indian government, UN and other organizations. Anonymous had also hacked the government website to protest against corruption. In yet another protest, the Irish government has been hacked over its plans to block websites that violate copyright laws. According to reports, the websites of Ireland finance and justice departments were hacked.

Hack to protest (Image Credit: Getty Images)

According to officials, both these websites were taken offline early in the morning. "The government is aware of the potential threat of this type of cyber attack and ... is coordinating a whole of government response to this threat," the Department of Justice said in a statement.

@AnonOpsSweden, Twitter user who is associated with this anonymous hacker group has taken responsibility for the attack. A number of tweets were posted, which encouraged other hackers to bombard both these websites. This is unlike the DuQu attackers where no one came ahead to take the responsibility. Reportedly, Junior Minister, Sean Sherlock, who is coordinating government plans that will enable blocking the access to illegal websites, told state broadcaster RTE that the attack was an "unjustifiable response" to efforts to comply with European Union laws. Such an attempt made by a music company in 2012 to block illegal file sharing websites didn’t see any success and was not legal under the Irish law. The government says that it is trying to reform the law, so that courts can force providers to block illegal sites.

Some other hack instances include the one when Stratfor had to delay its website launch and also 24 million accounts being attacked in the Zappos hack.

Reuters