In what it said was support for the ongoing curriculum protests, hacker group Anonymous Asia yesterday launched a third wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the Web sites of two political parties and a government ministry.
The Web sites of the New Party, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the KMT Taipei branch office and the Ministry of Economic Affairs were attacked for more than an hour.
According to reports by Storm Media Group, Anonymous launched its first wave of DDoS attacks under the name “Anonymous #Op Taiwan” on Friday last week by locking down the Presidential Office and Ministry of Education Web sites for five hours.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
A notice released by the group said: “We are everywhere and nowhere. Taiwan’s police are not exempt [from our attacks], and all police must take responsibility for this incident. We cannot permit the use of violence or pepper spray on peacefully demonstrating people. When you hurt the Taiwanese people, revenge will be sought. We cannot forget, support us and the corrupt officials will be afraid of us. Taiwan’s government, expect us.”
On Sunday, the group launched a second wave of DDoS attacks against the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of National Defense, the National Academy of Educational Research and CtiTV, a television station generally sympathetic toward the KMT, the report said.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, New Party Chairperson Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) said the DDoS attacks were serious national security concerns.
“Do we not see China as our enemy and try to prevent Beijing hacking our Web sites? What I’m seeing now is like the opening salvoes of a Taiwanese civil war,” Yok said.
Yok called on the public to put pressure on the Presidential Office and National Security Bureau to look into the attacks and find out who was behind them.
“We must know if the motives are against curriculum changes or if there are other ulterior motives,” he said.
Shortly after Yok’s Facebook post the New Party Web site was hacked.
Anonymous Asia said on Facebook: “Yok Mu-ming, are you looking for us? Here we come.”
Anonymous Asia is a loose coalition of hackers and Internet activists. The group describes itself as “an internet gathering” with “a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives” and has been known for high-profile public DDoS attacks on government, religious, and corporate Web sites.
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