14 DAY TRIAL // After urging the United Kingdom government to allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to go to Ecuador – the country which recently granted him asylum – Anonymous has started taking action.
Distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks have been launched against a number of UK government websites, including the ones of the Ministry of Justice (justice.gov.uk), the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP.gov.uk), the Home Office (homeoffice.gov.uk), and the Prime Minister’s Office (number10.gov.uk).
According to tweets posted by the hacktivists on the Anon_Central account, all of them have been temporarily taken down or at least caused to experience performance issues at some point. However, currently, they all appear to be functioning properly.
The hackers promise that these attacks are not the end of it. They urge their supporters to join Operation Free Assange (OpFreeAssange) for the upcoming battles.
In the video statement they posted a short while ago, Anonymous representatives compare the case of Assange to the one of Sean Sullivan, a US citizen who is not extradited to the US because the UK government believes it would violate his human rights.
“We are very disappointed with your stand of preventing Julian Assange from leaving this country safely. We are very amused by your two-faced attitude. One law for one person and another law for someone else,” they said.
“Your vengeful pursuit of a freedom fighting journalist is an indication of your government’s blatant disregard for ethical justice. You are the symptoms of a cancer that has riddled this once great country into the depths of depravity and evil.”
One of the future targets appears to be the official website of The British Monarchy (royal.gov.uk). As on previous occasions, the hacktivists have provided their supporters with versions of the now-infamous Web-LOIC and Web-HOIC tools which can be used to send large amounts of packets towards the targeted sites.