A Torrent of Hacks

After the recent Madras High Court injunction that made internet service providers block access to popular torrent websites like The Pirate Bay, and video-sharing websites like Vimeo and DailyMotion, there has been a string of cyber attacks on the parties involved.

After the recent Madras High Court injunction that made internet service providers (ISP) block access to popular torrent websites like The Pirate Bay, and video-sharing websites like Vimeo and DailyMotion, there has been a string of cyber attacks on the parties involved.

The Chennai-based anti-piracy firm Copyright Labs had secured this injunction in late March and it came into force in mid-May. In retaliation, the well-known hacker group Anonymous—which had previously targeted government websites in China for restricting free access to the internet—launched its ‘OpIndia campaign’. Asking people to stand up against ‘internet censorship’, the group announced its campaign in a video on YouTube.

So far, it has launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the websites of the Supreme Court, Department of Telecom, Congress party, BJP and Copyright Labs. On 23 May, it also hacked Reliance’s Big Cinemas website. Reliance is one of the ISPs that has blocked access to file- and video-sharing websites. The Twitter handle @opindia_revenge, has been tweeting the various websites that Anonymous has been taking down.

About The Author

Lhendup G Bhutia

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