14 DAY TRIAL // Hacktivists still active in the once mighty Anonymous hacker collective have restarted DDoS attacks on Japanese institutions as part of their ancient OpKillingBay campaign.
According to Japanese local media, the attacks started on September 3, just after the whale and dolphin hunting season opened in Japan.
#OpKillingBay not going away
OpKillingBay is an Anonymous hacktivism campaign that began in the early 2010s, after the release of The Cove documentary that exposed the gruesome and bloody dolphin hunts that took place in some cities around Japan.
Ever since then, Anonymous hackers have been a nuisance for Japanese authorities, bombarding websites with DDoS attacks, and defacing government portals.
In most of these attacks, hackers targeted Japanese government websites, and sometimes the government portals of other nations, such as Denmark and Iceland, who also engage in whale hunting.
Earlier this year, Akamai reported seeing massive DDoS attacks coming from the Anonymous collective, with attacks also starting to target the private sector, not just government agencies. The high-profile target of those series of attacks was Japanese automaker Nissan.
The group's thinking was that they could annoy companies enough that they would start to lobby the Japanese government to drop its annual whale and dolphin hunting traditions.
Group hits government agencies and private companies in new attacks
After the new hunting season started, attacks have also returned, just as ferocious as before, albeit without the media coverage they used to get in previous years, as the campaign's novelty started to wear off.
Nevertheless, the hacker collective wasn't deterred and is doing what it does best, and that's annoying Japanese officials, along with private companies.
Local newspaper Nikkei cites data gathered by SoftBank Technology, a security firm that tracks Anonymous attacks, saying that one single Anonymous member on his own had launched 51 DDoS attacks during one day, 23 more than the attacks he claimed during a two-month span from last year.
The security firm highlights DDoS attacks against Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA), a logistics company Nankai Express, a food-processing company, and restaurants.
Additionally, Softpedia has identified further attacks against NEXI (Nippon Export and Investment Insurance), the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, and many others.
Despite the lack of media attention for Anonymous campaigns in recent months, and especially OpKillingBay, the group is strong on its position to force Japan to stop whale and dolphin killing, even if it's through illegal means.