Anonymous Targets Yemen

The Anonymous group of online hacktivists is organizing distributed denial of service attacks against Yemen governmental websites to support protests in the Arab country.

Anonymous took a break from its Operation Payback against companies and organizations ousting WikiLeaks in order to assist the Tunisian protests that eventual overthrown the Ben Ali regime in the country.

Support actions included DDoS attacks against official websites and the distribution of tools that helped Tunisian activists protect themselves from the government's account hijacking attacks.

The group did the same for the Egyptian protesters, at least until Internet connectivity was blocked in the troubled country.

A few days ago when access was restored, Anonymous also resumed its DDoS attack against www.moiegypt.gov.eg, the website of the Egyptian Ministry of Interior.

It now seems that Anonymous members are preparing a campaign to support Yemenis who protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime.

An "Operation Yemen" channel was already created on IRC and Anons are attacking presidentsaleh.gov.ye, the Yemeni presidency website.

In a recent open letter addressed to the UK government after Metropolitan Police arrested five suspected Anonymous members, the hacktivist group explained that, for them, DDoS attacks represent the digital equivalent of factory fence picketing or crossroad blocking.

Nevertheless, denial of service attacks are illegal in most countries and are punishable with years of jail time and large fines. In fact, in the United States, two teenagers have already been sentenced to one year in prison each for participating in DDoS attacks organized by Anonymous.

The FBI has recently served over forty search warrants at the residences of people suspected of taking part in Operation Payback, which involved attacks against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and other companies.