A disgruntled hacktivist operating under the banner of Anonymous is claiming to have taken down the sites of both the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Reserve Bank down overnight as retribution for Australia’s ongoing spy operations against Indonesia and its senior officials.
Australia was caught red-handed recently in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, which showed that Australian spy agencies had been spying on Indonesian officials, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. SBY denounced the spying on Twitter of all places, before calling for an apology, one that would sadly never come.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in Parliament Question Time this week that he was sorry for any disrespect the actions of Australian spy agencies had inferred, but attempted to justify the spying by saying that all countries gather information. Less an apology for doing it, and more a “sorry you caught us doing it” thing.
The Indonesian President officially downgraded Australia’s diplomatic role with the country yesterday, saying that it is “turning off the tap by degrees” over the spying.
Hacktivists operating under the banner of Anonymous in a group called the Indonesia Cyber Army have taken it upon themselves to retaliate a little more decisively than that, however. One hacktivist yesterday claimed responsibility for launching a successful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on the websites of both the Australian Federal Police and the Reserve Bank of Australia.
http://t.co/mWzWjBOnvT <= 100% Down by #IndonesiaCyberArmy and #AnonymousIndonesia #OpGovAu #OpAustralia #BorneoCyberTeam
— (@MD_JKT48) November 20, 2013
http://t.co/3trmHY42Ic Down By #IndonesiaCyberArmy | #AnonymousIndonesia | #BorneoCyberTeam | #OpGovAu http://t.co/pVaDZEAAga
— (@MD_JKT48) November 20, 2013
The two institutions have confirmed to the ABC this morning that their sites were in fact down overnight, with the AFP going down at 10pm and the Reserve Bank hitting the deck at 2am.
No private information is stored on a front-facing website, and a DDoS attack isn’t about to spill state secrets all over the floor like someone dropping a bowl of noodles. It’s just going to be a minor annoyance to someone who wanted to log on to either of those websites overnight.
Anonymous members hack and DDoS certain targets under the guise of military-style “operations”. The hashtag #OpAustralia was used last night; the first time since Australian hacktivists using the Anonymous handle managed to scoop a bunch of unencrypted customer data off an AAPT server.
https://twitter.com/MD_JKT48/status/403208848921862145
The individual claiming responsibility for last night’s attacks tweeted that they are “ready for this war”, potentially indicating further action to come. Whether that’s another few DDoS attacks against Australian agency targets or something more serious, we’ll have to wait and see. [ABC]