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Anonymous Attacks UK Home Office Web Site

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Anonymous may be waging a war against China’s censorship of the Internet, but they are also fighting something a bit closer to home. That is, if you count the UK as being closer to home.

The Anonymous UK Twitter account announced over the weekend that the Home Office was taken offline due to a DDoS attack. They also took down the Web site for UK PM David Cameron. This is all part of an operation called #OpTrialAtHome. It seeks to stop the extradition of UK citizens to the US where they face charges of hacking into US government Web sites and other Internet crimes.

The BBC News story reporting on the attacks claimed the hack was in response to not only extradition, but also the proposed surveillance laws that are to be presented in May during the Queen’s Speech. Anonymous UK refutes this saying this latest hacking attack is squarely opposed to current extradition laws, but the group did announce that they would be starting ops against the surveillance laws soon.

One interesting thing to note is that a UK government spokeswoman told BBC that the Home Office Web site was the “subject of an online protest last night.” This is interesting as it may be the first time a government official has called an DDoS attack a protest, instead of a hacking attack. As Anonymous and most net savvy people would tell you, DDoS isn’t hacking as it so much just overloading a server with too many requests that it forces the site offline. Many online protesters compare DDoS attacks to the sit-in protests that Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. used for non-violent protests.

Just like with China, this particular movement isn’t over. Alongside the extradition protests, Anonymous will carry out ops in protest against the aforementioned surveillance laws. We’ll keep you updated on any developments in this and all other Anonymous stories.

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