Operation Payback Hackers Hit UK Government Site

The UK Intellectual Property Office, a government agency which advises the creative industries on copyright, has been hit by the ongoing Operation Payback denial of service campaign run by file-sharing activists.

The IPO’s site is currently offline, after more than a day of denial of service attacks co-ordinated by Operation Payback, a group which denies charges of vandalism, and claims to be an organised protest against “the reign of extreme pro-copyright” organisations. The weekend has also seen attacks against copyprotected.com, a site run by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Gene Simmons, bass player in 70s rock band Kiss.

Revenge attacks cause turmoil

Previous attacks from Operation Payback have taken down the site of copyright lawyer Gallant McMillan and its client, the Ministry of Sound, who are engaged in legal action to request the IP addresses of alleged file-sharers.

In September, Payback launched a high-profile attack against ACS:Law, a firm already facing criticism for issuing letters which request copyright payments from users believed to have downloaded and shared content illegally, resulting in ACS:Law’s email files being published, and revealing apparent breaches of data protection rules at the firm. BT also appears to have passed customer details to ACS:Law, unencrypted.

The current wave of attacks has increased in sophistication. The copyprotected.com site was hit by a DNS cache poisoning attack, instead of the simple denial of service attacks which the campaign has used previously.

Last week saw a setback for music industry copyright enforcement, as an Irish judge ruled that disconnecting file-sharers may breach EU law.