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Website attacks spread throughout Government

Leo Shanahan

by Leo Shanahan

10 Feb 05:58pm

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Filed under: Censorship, Internet, Stephen Conroy, Webfilter

35 comments

Government security sources have told The Punch the attacks on the official Parliament website have also spread to the Attorney-Generals, Communications and the Department of Immigration.

The attack is believed to have been carried out by a loose coalition of hackers known as Anonymous who have previously claimed responsibility for attacks on the Church of Scientology.

A couple of days ago when Communication Minister Stephen Conroy was asked about the possibility of attacks by hacker groups on Government website he basically laughed it off. One wonders whether Mr Conroy is laughing today.

The Director of Parliamentary Services Alan Thompson told The Punch that the Parliament website had been the subject of at least four denial of service attacks throughout the day.

Mr Thompson have also been flooded with spam emails containing “mainly pornographic material.”

The Department of Immigration has also been subject to at least one major attack today that brought down the site at one point, with reported attacks on the Attorney General’s department.

It is also understood that the group is planning another phase of attacks this evening or tomorrow, that will target the Prime Minister’s website www.pm.gov.au.

Government websites in Canberra are apparently still operational under protection from a “secure gateway” in the Parliamentary triangle.

Forums frequented by Anonymous members are hailing the attacks as a great victory in their campaign against the Government’s proposed web filter.

Most commented

35 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • The says:

      05:21pm | 10/02/10

      This is just the beginning.

      Reply

    • Eric says:

      05:21pm | 10/02/10

      Heh. It appears that Mr Conroy is as clueless as he seems. A Communication Minister who can’t even provide elementary security is pretty useless.

      Why can’t we have a competent government? It isn’t much to ask.

      Reply

    • Nanabel Lector says:

      02:05am | 11/02/10

      Because there are men in charge, of course.

    • Trent says:

      10:53am | 11/02/10

      because labour is in charge… of course.

    • Jack from Perth says:

      03:08pm | 11/02/10

      @Nanabel Lector are you forgetting our permanent “acting prime minister,”  Julia Gillard?

    • Zeta says:

      05:22pm | 10/02/10

      inb4 rules 1 & 2.

      Also, you didn’t say the name: “Operation: Titstorm”. Seriously. The Government was attacked by a group who share funny pictures of cats on Saturdays, invented the Boxxy meme, and named their DDoS attack… Titstorm. Says a lot about Governments. Just like they’re losing the war on drugs to people who take drugs, they’ll lose the war for their servers to a group whose sense of humour includes Advice Dog, ‘Son, I am Disappoint’ photoshops, and de-motivational posters. If you tried explaining that to bureaucrats, they’d think they were under attack by Conan O’Brien.

      A lot of anti-censorship advocates are already saying this doesn’t help their cause, but the irony is so delicious:

      The Government wants to filter your access to the Internet, so Anonymous filters your access to the Government. Genius.

      Reply

    • Louis McLennan says:

      06:38pm | 10/02/10

      I can not stop laughing(in a good way) at this comment.

    • Sarah Jane says:

      08:00pm | 10/02/10

      hahahahaa there is no shame in being hacked by 4chan. It has also happened to AT & T in the US, Facebook, Youtube and Time Magazine. And a bunch of others. The government filter will probably filter 4chan due to its amount of pretty out there (ok outright disgusting) content and the number 1 rule of the internet is don’t mess with 4chan.

    • KC says:

      05:38pm | 10/02/10

      Conroy is laughing all the way to the bank. This kind of action guarantees he can have his filter with next to no parliamentary or wider public opposition.

      Reply

    • CK says:

      10:18am | 12/02/10

      Except for the fact that a lot of people seem to be outside of Australia, participating out of their own interests. So even if he gets his filter, would the attacks really stop?

    • Lisa says:

      05:40pm | 10/02/10

      “Mr Thompson have also been flooded with spam emails containing “mainly pornographic material.”

      Wow, he must be working really hard to stop that.

      Reply

    • eye4aneye says:

      12:27pm | 12/02/10

      watch him on channel 10 tonight - you’ll see him in the background of the finance report

    • Zeta says:

      05:43pm | 10/02/10

      Anonymous IRC channel are going berserk with news that Phase 2 is on the way… They’re trying to bring down pm.gov.au from the looks of things.

      I just tried to post the wiki link… when it told me that blacklisted content was found and ‘access was denied’.

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      05:53pm | 10/02/10

      Their IRC channel is open if anyone knows how to find it, they’re not banning outsiders, it’s like they want the media to find it.

      As I’m writing, there are 205 users in the channel, and they reckon they’re firing off 7.5 million hits per second at the PM’s website with no effect. The mood is kind of grim. Looks like they’re banning IPs as quickly as Anonymous is getting new ones.

      They just admited they’re not using botnets, or any malware of that kind. It looks like just a few hundred individuals. I don’t think they’ll bring down the PM’s website tonight unless they get back up.

      With their primary forum’s user base just coming online now as they finish work, it will be interesting to see what they do next.

    • Zeta says:

      06:06pm | 10/02/10

      Looks like their problem is that half of them, those in the IRC channel are trying to DDoS the PM’s website, while the users recruited from 4chan and other image boards are trying to DDoS… The Department of Immigration?

      Some of the banter is pretty hilarious. One poster just tried to tell everyone they were being stupid, and making it harder for legitimate protesters when another replied ‘Let’s not get into a debate about the effectiveness of this.’

      They now look to have brought aph.gov.au down for a second time, but the channel mods are stressing that pm.gov.au is their real target.

      Will have more developments as they come to hand.

    • Gregory says:

      05:56pm | 10/02/10

      Good on Anonymous. Could have been more political based than about pr0n, but good none the less.

      In other news…
      “A poll this week by McNair Ingenuity Research for the state broadcaster found 80 per cent of the 1000 respondents backed the filter plan, which is strongly opposed by free speech groups.” RUBBISH! Did they survey all 1000 members of the same church or what? Polls, including those my news.com.au I believe have overwhelmingly opposed the internet filter. And it’s not about porn or the right of adults to view, its about free speech and not having the government intervene in everything we do. People who know anything about the internet filter knows it wont stop anybody accessing illegal content and will be easily circumvented, slowing down home net speeds and being a HUGE waste of tax payers money.

      Reply

    • Shane From Melbourne says:

      06:41pm | 10/02/10

      Should have contracted out to the Chinese and Russian hackers- they’d do better job…...

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      09:48am | 11/02/10

      That was raised by some of them on IRC, they even had a quote for renting a few botnets and were considering taking up PayPal donations. Cooler heads prevailed, because a botnet attack, which would probably fry the servers those pages are held by, would have brought down retribution from the AFP et al. Operating botnets is now a serious crime under Australian law, where as the very much DYI DDoS attacks they participated in would be nigh on impossible to prosecute.

      So they might not have been successful, but at least they’ll live to fight another day I guess.

    • Fon says:

      08:50pm | 10/02/10

      The inability to maintain internet security is just more proof of this government’s incompetence, the egg on krudd’s face is priceless!

      Reply

    • Dick Dagger says:

      08:56pm | 10/02/10

      While I think that the strategy taken by anonymous is misguided, it is of a concern that the people who are so called trying to protect us can’t even seem to be able to protect themselves. The whole internet filter thing with its secret blacklists and no right of appeal stinks and is anti-democratic. Make no mistake, if even the legislation is brought before parliament, I, my wife and a couple of dozen or so like me will vote against Labor. I’ve been a labor voter all my life and we all live in a very very marginal Labor held seat. Conroy isn’t listening, but sure to hell my local labor MP is!

      Reply

    • Nick says:

      09:19pm | 10/02/10

      I am very anti filter, but as Penbo wrote a few months back, this childish rebellion rubbish doesn’t help. If anything it will help Conroy. These 35 year old virgins who are hacking government departments will wet themselves when the feds raid their parents house and arrest them.

      As we saw in Adelaide, what needs to happen is the media has to take the fight to the government or nothing will happen. I’m not expecting much from the media until after the filter is actually implemented, if it is at all (Rudd tends to be mostly talk and no action).

      Reply

    • Adam says:

      07:21am | 11/02/10

      The media have dropped the ball on ths issue. At the very least these attacks have got the issue back in the media.

    • anonymous_fan says:

      10:04pm | 10/02/10

      Bring on the elections…and let Krudd explain to us why is it that his administration acts without a mandate and thinks it is better equipped to make decisions for us?? I think this PM is a one termer….and that is because he is clearly overreaching (not to say anything about over-promising and under-delivering)...and that is never a good thing to do

      Reply

    • Tarkam says:

      03:17am | 11/02/10

      Conroy laughed off Anonymous.

      The man in charge of the Australian Governments Internet Policies laughed off a group who organised mass protests against Scientology around the world.

      Does he even know what 4chan is?

      Its like having Stevie Wonder in to paint your house.

      Hello Internet Filter, goodbye rest of the world

      Reply

    • Adam says:

      08:10am | 11/02/10

      I’m sick of this group and everyone on the internet acting like they are so powerful and dangerous. It’s just a group of nerds wanting to be tough. The last time I checked, the Church of Scientology was getting on just fine. Apparently attacking the website was not an effective weapons against the organisation itself. What a surprise.

      Reply

    • Burek says:

      09:29am | 11/02/10

      The fact that this article exists and the coverage in all the mainstream media yesterday and today (locally and internationally, including BBC, guardian, wired etc) is a massive win for this group, and a win for those who oppose the internet filter.

      This is a direct action protest the only way this generation knows how - via the internet. While Denial of Service attacks are bad, this has definitely raised awareness and pushed forward the debate. Conroy will be forced to address this latest attack.

    • Lumix says:

      08:48am | 14/02/10

      Anon hacked into a server and obtained all the “Operating Thetan” manuals for every level. Those are private docs, and they are still locatable and downloadable on the internet, and will be forever.

      Most church members have to shell out so many tens of thousands of dollars to ever see that information, and it’s all out in the open now. I’m sure the church is doing just fine, but they’re not happy about the docs thing.

    • Zeta says:

      09:25am | 11/02/10

      Lurked on their IRC channel for a while last night. Things fell apart pretty quickly and their pm.gov.au raid was pretty much a total failure. They got the site to slow down considerably. That was it.

      At one point they split, with half of them wanting to stop the proposed pm.gov.au attack and go after the Australian Christian Lobby website. They did manage to pen another threatening press release, so it wasn’t a total waste of time. Unless you count press releases as total wastes of time.

      It did raise one very interesting question that Abbott & co should pursue today in QT, or maybe estimates.

      The programs they use to DDoS websites, ‘LOIC’ or ‘Low Orbital Ion Cannon’ and Hping basically target a domain name and send tens of thousands of packets of data in that site’s direction per minute. It’s not a very sophisticated attack, but an effective one. With only a few people, LOIC attacks brought down the aph.gov.au domain name in minutes. Throughout last night, participants in the protest were periodically switching between pm.gov.au, aph.gov.au and immi.gov.au (still no clue why they targeted immigration) and every time, downforeveryoneorjustme.com responded that the last two domains were down. They’d stay down for a while and then re-appear once the attacks stopped.

      But the PM’s website was resistant to attack, which begs the question, how much taxpayer money has the Prime Minister spent hardening his vanity page against attacks by teenage hackers? This isn’t critical online infrastructure we’re talking about. The PM’s page contains press releases, speeches and rhetoric available anywhere. I could understand if substantial resources were deployed to even keep aph.gov afloat, because there is information there that is of legitimate use to lawyers, students and members of Parliament and their staff.

      There is nothing on the PM’s page that isn’t availble on his Facebook already, or on a myriad of other sites.

      I checked last night through a few Anonymous online resources and came across an IRC transcript from their ‘Operation: Didgeridie’ where they last targeted pm.gov.au, and with far fewer participants, they brought the pm’s page down during working hours and kept it down. On both occassions, Anonymous was smart enough to not use botnets. So something definetly changed.

      That is a real reflection of the kind of man we’re dealing with. So vain that the thought of kids bringing down his web page has him spending your, and my money on preventing it. A smarter choice would have been to simply pull the website down once the attacks began to protect their data. Instead, Rudd has chosen to appear ‘strong’ in the face of a group of pranksters.

      Reply

    • Scott Glennon says:

      10:28am | 11/02/10

      More important then any opinion, is order. If you have an opinion let it be heard from a spokesperson, hiding from sight will serve you no purpose. Complete disregard for your audience has only worked against you. Your reputation and cause continues to be tarnished by your own actions.
      Speak up Anonymous, soon we won’t care to hear you.

      Reply

    • COF says:

      11:51am | 11/02/10

      Scott Glennon:
      “More important then any opinion, is order.”
      Every fascist in history would have uttered those words, Scott. Think about it. This is a free country - opinion is a hell of a lot more important than order.

      “If you have an opinion let it be heard from a spokesperson, hiding from sight will serve you no purpose. Complete disregard for your audience has only worked against you. Your reputation and cause continues to be tarnished by your own actions.
      Speak up Anonymous, soon we won’t care to hear you.”
      While I’m half in agreement that sabotage (if you could call it that) is a poor avenue for voicing concerns, nothing else seems to get through to Conroy, and I doubt this will even dent him. What does it take to get through to this bloke?
      It is easy to criticise people who are not in a position of power for not being brave - they have everything to lose by doing so. Why not critique the government for trying to restrict people’s rights just so they can get certain lobby groups off their backs? This is hardly a brave or noble act.

      This has nothing to do with protecting children.

      Reply

    • Scott Glennon says:

      01:25pm | 11/02/10

      @COF, Your quite right, a better phrase could have been used. However I maintain that creating kaos for the Austrlaian Government and people will not change the mind of the fascist Conroy.

    • COF says:

      03:32pm | 11/02/10

      “However I maintain that creating kaos for the Austrlaian Government and people will not change the mind of the fascist Conroy.”

      I agree Scott, Conroy won’t change his mind and the chaos does not work. What is frustrating though is that this subject is hardly debated in the media - when you think about it, it is a policy that directly affects every Australian, much like the GST. Why so little exposure? I reckon there is some avoidance on the part of the government on current internet censorship issues - they are avoiding debate (and in the case of South Australia - intentionally trying to shut it down). I am calling shenanigans, and I reckon there are many in the online community and in the media that agree.

    • Bengeck says:

      12:13pm | 11/02/10

      /b/ can get fairly bad, the gore threads are just wrong but then they can have some really kool stuff. like when they found this poor little kid on youtube who only wanted 53 followers to win a bet with the bully at school. /b/ got him up 3k or more before youtube hit him with the banhammer.  or when they tracked down a kid in the usa who killed a cat and posted it on online. that was /b/ on 4chan.

      it’s like anything, there will be good and there will be bad, 
      as verison (sp?) wireless found out of the last few days when they banned access to 4chan, it was a bigg mistake. and they had to restate access.

      Reply

    • some kid says:

      05:56pm | 25/07/10

      the Australian Government is learning a valuable lesson:  mess with with the internet, and it will mess you back 10-fold. 

      these attacks will only get worse as time goes on, and any other government that tries to create an internet filter will get a similar result.

      Reply

    • LC says:

      10:34am | 26/02/11

      This was the last thing we needed to happen, because it makes us look like people trying to protect porn, rather than protecting the last true bastion of free speech left. You know what are loons argueing for the filter going to do next?

      Anti Filter Guy: How many times does Conroy have to be told that his filter will not do what he advertises it to do and will threaten free speech. He should be sacked.
      Pro Filter Guy: Umm, no. Don’t BS us we know you sick pervert’s real motive here is to maintian your acsess to porn <insert link to this or other article on it here>
      Anti Filter: Yeah, because people who most likely aren’t even from here have a real bearing on my argument.
      Pro Filter Guy: SICK PERV STOP PROTECTING PORN.
      etc etc.

      The best thing anonymous could have done for the time being is butt out.

      Reply
 
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