'Anonymous' hacker group brings down DAB, Occupy Central websites
Other sites targeted by Anonymous include those of the Hong Kong Police Force and Hong Kong International Airport
Hacking group Anonymous has made good on their promise to begin targeting Hong Kong websites, bringing the homepages of the Occupy Central civil disobedience movement, the Silent Majority for Hong Kong, and the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) offline today.
Access to the sites has either been inaccessible or intermittent this afternoon, and all three targets remain the latest and most high-profile sites hacked by the international “hacktivist” group, which announced their intention to wage cyber warfare against Hong Kong yesterday
DAB chairman Tam Yiu-chung described the hacking as "outrageous" and said that staff were currently working to get their site back online as soon as possible.
A look at various Anonymous-related Twitter accounts and the Facebook page of Anonymous Asia reveals that hackers began rallying a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against the sites earlier this morning, essentially bombarding them with traffic, overloading their servers, and bringing them offline by the afternoon.
Other sites that have been targeted by Anonymous over the last 24 hours but continue to remain online include the official homepages of Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the Hong Kong Police Force, Ocean Park and the Hong Kong International Airport.
Anonymous has also targeted and defaced a variety of webpages registered with a .hk domain name that are run by small organisations, including an Autism Partnership site and a site run by Nantong Jiehao Machine Equipment, a company that appears to be based in mainland China.
Watch: Anonymous declares cyber warfare on Hong Kong (via News2share)
“It has come to our attention that recent tactics used against peaceful protesters here in the United States have found their way to Hong Kong,” the video states.
“To the protesters in Hong Kong, we have heard your plea for help …To the Hong Kong police and any others that are called to the protests …if you continue to abuse, harass or harm protesters, we will continue to deface and take every web-based asset of your government offline. That is not a threat. It is a promise.”
Anonymous was founded in 2003 and has some 20 members in Hong Kong.
