14 DAY TRIAL // The Albuquerque Police Department has become the subject of online and real-world protests after officers shot and killed a couple of people over the past weeks. Anonymous hackers disrupted the police department’s website for hours on Sunday.
Albuquerque police representatives admitted that their website was taken down on Sunday due to a cyberattack, but they told The Associated Press that the source of the attack could not be traced.
This isn’t surprising considering that distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks usually originate from a large number of computers, many of which are compromised devices controlled with the aid of malware.
Last week, Anonymous hacktivists published a statement threatening the City of Albuquerque and the APD. They urged their supporters to occupy the police department’s headquarters and launch cyberattacks on the organization’s websites.
The hackers even provided links to DDOS tools for those who wanted to join the online protests.
In addition to the APD Recruitment website (apdonline.com), hacktivists also temporarily disrupted the official website of the City of Albuquerque.
After Anonymous published a video message threatening to attack APD’s website, city officials claimed they were enhancing security measures. It’s uncertain what measures they’ve taken, but they clearly haven’t worked.
On the other hand, the city has shut down its Facebook and Twitter accounts.
“We aren’t sure if Albuquerque PD understands what a ddos attack is,” the initiators of the operation noted on Twitter. “Come on let’s be serious here, they deactivated their FB and Twitter.”
In addition to the online protests, hundreds of people rallied on the streets of Albuquerque for over 10 hours. The AP cites the mayor of Albuquerque who claims the protests weren’t quite peaceful. In fact, he used the word “mayhem” do describe the demonstrations.
On the other hand, Anonymous members deny that the protests turned violent.
“As usual, the main stream media is claiming #OpAlbuquerque turned into a violent protest,” they wrote. “OpAlbuquerque was a peaceful event. Do not believe the blatant lies from the main stream media.”
Everything started on March 16 when police shot and killed a homeless man camped outside a public housing complex. Officers claimed they were threatened by the man, but a video leaked online shows that he was getting ready to walk away when he was shot.
A few days later, another man was shot. Officers say he opened fire, but his family insists that he was only holding a phone in his hand. Both incidents are being investigated.