14 DAY TRIAL // The Indian faction of Anonymous has taken credit for attacking the sites of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) – a state-owned telecoms company -, and the country’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN). However, both organizations deny that their systems have been disrupted by attacks.
OpIndia was initiated by hacktivists and activists after they had learned that the Indian government started banning certain websites, including Pastebin, The Pirate Bay, ISOHunt and other file-sharing websites.
Now, the protests continue both online and in the real world. The Times of India reports that protests have taken place in 16 Indian cities, but they don’t seem to be as big as initially believed.
While on social media networks thousands of individuals promised to go out and protest on the streets, in some cities less than 100 people actually showed up.
On the other hand, in the cyberworld things are a bit more interesting. Anonymous hackers claim to have launched attacks on cert-in.org.in, india.gov.in, and the site of MTNL, but the success of these campaigns is questioned by local authorities.
“The claim that CERT-IN website was attacked and brought down by hackers is without any basis and at complete variance with the facts. The fact is that the website has been running continuously & uninterruptedly -- including the whole of today,” a CERT-IN spokesperson told Times of India.
The organization is currently trying to determine the identity of the individuals who have launched the distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against the sites.
According to IBNLive, MTNL has also denied being affected by the attack.
“We have individual websites for Delhi and Mumbai ... and both are operational,” explained the company’s Mumbai General Manager of Broadband Services MK Purohit.
However, the interesting fact is that both websites have been inaccessible to visitors for several hours.