Today is October 3, which means the controversial Anti-Cybercrime Law is now in full swing. Of course, netizens who are opposed to the act all over the world aren’t going to take it lying down – global collective hacking group Anonymous has started waging cyber-warfare against targets in the Philippines which mainly consist of government websites. Anon has started using DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks on various government websites in an operation dubbed “#OpPhilippines” and took some of them down. One of their targets was Senator Tito Sotto’s webpage, which, as of press time, is loading slowly. Here are their other targets:
- http://www.senate.gov.ph/
- http://congress.gov.ph/
- http://www.gov.ph/
- http://president.gov.ph/
- http://www.bir.gov.ph/
- http://customs.gov.ph/
- http://www.pnp.gov.ph
- http://www.nbi.gov.ph
- http://www.ntc.gov.ph/
- http://www.doh.gov.ph
- http://www.bsp.gov.ph/
- http://www.marina.gov.ph/
- http://www.dilg.gov.ph/
- http://pia.gov.ph/
- http://www.papt.org.ph
- http://www.smokefree.doh.gov.ph/
- http://www.mmda.gov.ph
- http://www.meralco.com.ph/
- http://www.doj.gov.ph/
- http://titosotto.com/
Anon also posted a video on YouTube that details their issues with the controversial law. Here’s an excerpt of their statement:
The Philippine Government has just passed a bill that effectively ends the freedom of expression in the Philippines. The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 is the most notorious act ever witnessed in the cyber-history of the Philippines,and the language of the bill is cunningly designed to make you think it only applies to individuals who are deep in cyber-technology and doesn’t apply to everyone, but some part of the bill basically says it can imprison anyone who commits libel either by written messages, comments, blogs, or posts in sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or any other comment-spaces of other social media in the Internet.”
If you’re curious, the hashtag #NoToCyberCrimeLaw is still the top trending topic in the Philippines in Twitter, 24 hours after it first appeared.
[UPDATE] A pastbin entry has just detailed some of the ways that Anonymous has used to bring their targets down. Seems like they’re using a combination of botnets, HTTP floods and DDoS attacks to bring their targets down.