Anonymous Takes Down Greek Government Websites

A number of Greek government Websites have been taken down by hactivist collective Anonymous in solidarity with the Greek protesters who oppose the govenment’s austerity measures.

Among the sites to be attacked were those the of the Greek prime minister, the national police and the Ministry of Finance.

Fuelling the flames

The attacks form part of Anonymous‘ operation “SupportGreece”, which has also seen the Websites of several other ministries, political parties, and a television channel targeted.

Similar to other Anonymous campaigns, these were distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which overload the servers and make the Websites unavailable to users.

Anonymous’ actions were prompted by the Greek government’s vote to pass a controversial plan of cuts in order to secure a second bailout from the EU and prevent the country from becoming bankrupt. This bill included total spending cuts of €2.5 billion (£2.09 billion) and has also resulted in rioting in Athens.

“Anonymous is continuing their attacks against the Greek government, and will not stop until the people get what they want,” said a statement from a video message attributed to Anonymous. “If this does not happen, Greece’s government will fall. This is also a warning to all the other European Union counterparts. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Britain, Poland, and all the others will suffer the same fate as Greece’s.”

These attacks were the latest in a string of such incidents this weekend. On Friday, Anonymous made the CIA Website unavailable for several hours, while several Alabama state Websites were hacked, and the personal details of some 46,000 people stolen, in a protest against Alabama’s House Bill 56 immigration law. In a statement found on pastebay.net, Anonymous blamed the “lazy” police for not securing personal data and the group said they later deleted all acquired information.