There’s disquiet in the ranks of global hacktivist movement Anonymous. After a series of attacks on .au websites, Anonymous Australia has posted a Youtube video offering their fellow hackers over at Anonymous Indonesia a “final warning” to stop hacking the Australian public.
The Indonesian group’s attacks are in response to revelations that Australia worked with the US to spy on the country at a United Nations climate change conference in 2007. But Anonymous Australia isn’t happy with the actions of some of the hackers, who took to disrupting websites belonging to random Australian businesses rather than just targeting the government agencies that were the real cause of their discontent. The BBC reported last week that over 170 Australian sites were attacked, including a bouncy castle company and a dry cleaner’s—not exactly the NSA.
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In an earlier video, Anonymous Australia appealed to their Indonesian counterparts with the message, “Innocent businesses should not be attacked. We all bound together in an effort to bring down our tyrant governments to shape our world as a better place.” But after several days the issue wasn’t resolved, which led to the loosely-veiled threat, “What is there to prove? We do not want a cyber war, do you?”
That’s not to say Anonymous Australia don’t support the #OpAustralia protest in general: In the video’s description, they provided links to three government sites and urged Anonymous Indonesia to focus their efforts there instead of on Australian citizens.
And it seems they got the message. The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that hackers linked to Anonymous Indonesia crashed the website of ASIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. I tried to access the site at asis.gov.au earlier (when it was already evening in Australia) and was unable to. For now, other government sites such as ASIO (the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) and ASD (Australian Signals Directorate) seem to be functioning as usual.
As for intra-Anonymous relations, it remains to be seen if Indonesian hackers will continue to hold off from targeting non-governmental sites, or risk the wrath of their Australian colleagues and an all-out cyberwar.
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