Charts from Netcraft show downtime hitting the websites for the Department of Justice and Megaupload (post-takedown).
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to an item posted Wednesday by Internet research firm Netcraft, attacks against the Internet operations of the US Department of Justice – which first began following the takedown of file-sharing site Megaupload last week, and were led by the hacktivist and mischief-making group Anonymous – have resumed, this time in apparently protest of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
Following the apparent demise of the SOPA and PIPA legislation, following mass online protest, the hacker group turned its followers’ attention to ACTA this week, an international treaty that attempts to address many of the same issues as those acts, and according to some, poses many of the same threats.
While there isn’t a definitive statement in the report that the site was taken offline by Anonymous, the effort does coincide with anti-ACTA rallies taking place in Poland Wednesday, and several Anonymous-linked twitter feeds have been reporting on similar attacks against Polish government websites all day.
President Obama signed ACTA back in September of 2011. But legislative attitudes toward copyright protection law have obviously shifted significantly following the blackout protests last week, and other efforts.
According to Netcraft’s charts, after recovering from downtime as recently as last Friday, the DOJ began suffering outages again late Tuesday, and overnight into Wednesday morning.
Whether the attacks have any objective besides causing a nuisance isn’t totally clear, but Anonymous does have a record of taking a kind of retribution-via-DDoS-attack approach to organizations it deems deserving, dating back to its efforts against service providers who cut off WikiLeaks back in 2010.
Netcraft also says the warning page that has replaced the website on the Megaupload.com domain, following the site’s shutdown has been intermittently available, in spite of being a pretty simple static page.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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