The sites of the police, the presidency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs taken down

Oct 9, 2012 10:52 GMT  ·  By

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is about to visit Greece and many of the country’s citizens and numerous organizations are prepared to meet her with protests, accusing her for the austerity measures implemented by their government.

Anonymous also joined the protests and released a video statement to reveal support for the people of Greece.

“We are watching events in Greece and we are really overwhelmed. 4,000 suicides, 2 million unemployed, 500,000 homeless, hospitals without the necessary materials, salaries and pensions at risk of hunger and we can go one,” the hacktivists stated.

“And the only thing to you do is indifference. Challenging your people by inviting Merkel, right now it in collaboration with your Greeks arrived on the verge of destitution. You should be ashamed! Threaten your people with security measures only fit keeper status.”

They threatened that this indifference and Angela Merkel’s visit will not be tolerated, and announced the start of Operation Greece.

“While you will get your mind to do the sake of your friends bankers, we will be alongside Greeks protesting for their democratic right to live free and without poverty. The eye of Anonymous now focuses on Greece,” they concluded.

Shortly after the statement was released, hacktivists started launching distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against government websites.

The sites owned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (mga.gr), the presidency (presidency.gr), the Hellenic Police (hellenicpolice.gr), the government (government.gov.gr) and ones owned by politicians were all disrupted at some point, being temporarily inaccessible to visitors.

At the time when this article was published, most of the sites seemed to be running properly, except for government.gov.gr, which was still unreachable.

Here is the video statement released by Anonymous to announce the start of Operation Greece: