Anonymous Launches DDoS Campaign Against New Zealand Government

Anonymous has declared war against the New Zealand government after a controversial anti-piracy law was passed in the country.

Anonymous posters distributed online recently have called onto users to join distributed denial-of-service attacks against New Zealand Parliament's website.

www.parliament.nz was hit on Saturday and then again on Tuesday. The site remains offline at the time of writing this article.

"Problems are brewing for people of New Zealand. Their government has decided to wiretap citizens indiscriminately and the Copyright Infringing File Sharing Amendment Bill has been passed allowing law enforcement to cut off internet access to those accused of Piracy.

"[...] This law is in breach of certain Ideals we Anons hold true, ideals such as Internet freedom," the group writes in its manifesto.

The attacks are part of "Operation Payback," the group's long-term campaign that uses DDoS as a method of protest against numerous organizations.

The www.nzfact.co.nz website which belongs to the New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft (NZFACT), an organization that strongly supports the new legislation, was also attacked and is currently offline.

The staff overseeing www.parliament.nz claims that no attack has occurred and the site was taken down intentionally. Anonymous disputes this and says that access to the website was cut off while their initial was in progress and that webmasters underestimated the group's ability to act on its original threats.

In related news, Anonymous has launched a separate DDoS campaign dubbed Operation Blitzkrieg aimed at neo-nazi groups. Its coordinators have asked people to reveal websites where their supporters hang out.

For now the collective has hit rocknord.net, thiazi.com, wolfsfront.com and 01mai2011.de as part of this new effort. "You intimidate people that go on the streets protest for their ideals, and attack your political opponents, thus you deny them the right of free speech. [...] This behaviour can no longer be tolerated," the group wrote in an open letter to neo-nazis.