Anonymous is displeased with the electromagnetic waves emitted by the radio station

Mar 13, 2012 09:32 GMT  ·  By

Websites managed by the Vatican have been once again targeted by Anonymous Italy. Unlike the first incident when the site was temporarily taken down with a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, this time the hacktivists actually breached the systems, also disrupting the Radio Vatican site.

In their statement, the hackers admitted that last time they relied on the “hype” created by the DDOS attack to implement a backdoor on the Vatican’s site (Vatican.va) to allow them later access.

While the first attack was launched at the site as a form of protest against Church officials and the belief system they advertise, this time the problem is somewhat more physical.

Anonymous claims to have hacked the site of the Vatican Radio (radiovaticana.org) not just because of the content they air, but also because of some reports that reveal the dangerous effects of the equipment used to transmit the radio signals.

“Unfortunately it is now an established fact that you use repeaters with power transmission largely outside the bounds of the law, and it is also sad to note the correlation between exposure to electromagnetic waves of high intensity and the onset of serious diseases such as leukemia cancer and many other terrible diseases,” reads a translation of the hackers’ statement.

The hacktivists say that a lot of people who reside in the vicinity of the radio repeaters have filed lawsuits because they are concerned for their health.

According to Anonymous, the goal of these attacks is to make the Vatican change the location of the transmission equipment.

“Anonymous cannot tolerate these crimes and continuous impunity, and we remind you that you are ‘guests’ on Italian soil,” they explain.

They threaten that the attacks against the radio station will continue until some measures are taken. In the meantime, vatican.va will be targeted “for the lulz.”

An interesting aspect of their statement reveals that one of the reasons for the attacks has something to do with the report released by Imperva in which last year's operation against the Vatican’s cyber infrastructure is called “a failure.”