By Kevin Coleman — Defense Tech Cyberwarfare correspondent
The hacking group Anonymous took credit for a huge assault on multiple web pages operated by agencies of the Mexican government. A video appeared on YouTube using the name Anonymous publically claimed responsibility for what they termed “Independence Operation” that was designed to “make the government tremble.” In addition, a blog entry that was the linked to the Anonymous Hispano’s Twitter account had the following entry as well. “We are anonymous, we are legion, we don’t forgive, we don’t forget. Wait for us.”
The assault was successful in that the hackers were able to block legitimate users from accessing the agencies’ web sites. The DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack was acknowledged by Mexico’s Interior Ministry in a communiqué released last week. The September 15th early afternoon attacks targeted defense and public security web sites as well as several local government site a few others. In addition, the hackers stated they would also be targeting the home page of President Felipe Calderon. This cyber assault seems to follow the modus operandi of Anonymous’ past actions against several U.S. banks, U.S. Senate, Sony, the CIA web site and others.
One source told me cyber forensics that support attribution coupled with the public claims of responsibility will soon result in more Anonymous member arrests by internal law enforcement. However, the blurry boundaries between cyber activism and cyber extremism and in some cases cyber terrorism have become increasing problematic given the frequency of these type of attacks and the success groups like Anonymous have been able to achieve.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
wow, the tech dudes or ladies are making a hurricane of the net lol
that is a very interesting way of putting it.
No more like a tonado zeroing in on one trailer park surrounded by trailer parks.
taking on Mexican cyber defenses wouldn't be such a hard job to do since they are a 3rd world country.
The Mexican government has bigger problems than DDoS attacks, such as their people getting abducted, tortured & beheaded. Anonymous & lacking any sort of perspective on the real world beyond their naive cyber idealism.
"Anonymous & lacking any sort of perspective on the real world beyond their naive cyber idealism. "
That's a little unfair. They have a different perspective to you, they don''t lack one. You may call them naive, but they might call you cynical, conformist and jaded (or probably just g#y, some of them lack real insulting skills). As for idealism, everyone has idealism to some degree or other, even you.
Anon usually attacks when it has perceived issues with the group it attacks, always for lols as a side bonus (though it used to be primarily for lols, this has evolved as the "Disorganisation" has aged).
What did Mexico do to piss them off, do you know?
“We are anonymous, we are legion, we don’t forgive, we don’t forget. Wait for us.” the "we are legion" part is interesting because it is what the AI collective conciseness(Geth) refers to itself in the video game "Mass Effect 2"
I'm pretty sure its a reference to the biblical story, they've been around longer than Mass Effect (but not the Bible). Also "Wait for us" should be "Expect us.", translation issue maybe.
Luke 8:30
And Jesus asked him, saying, "What is thy name?" And he said, "Legion": because many devils were entered into him.
Naive, arrogant, self-righteous fools who don't even know what they want to accomplish. Mexico is in a full-blown war with drug cartels, corruption is everywhere, citizens are being abducted and killed, and much of this is happening right on the border of the United States. Is hacking some of their government's websites supposed to accomplish something? If anything it hinders those non-corrupt officials who are trying to get their country on the right track!
Even the Mexican government has backups they can restore from, their websites will back to normal while nothing will have changed in regards to the violence going on. This "anonymous" group should try getting jobs instead of making things harder for your average guy with this "hacktivist" nonsense.