UPDATE:The website for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was taken down briefly by Anonymous as part of their ‘OpAustralia’ campaign, initiated in response to the controversial data-retention policies that the Australian Government is proposing.
The Twitter account posted this today at around 8:15am Melbourne time:
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/Op_Australia/status/232963384671367168″]
By 8:50am, the site was restored.
As part of its OpAustralia campaign, Anonymous was able to successfully take down and deface websites from the Queensland Government, and hacked the servers of AAPT and stole “historic” customer data via a ColdFusion vulnerability. Both of these attacks were on servers hosted by Melbourne IT – and both Melbourne IT and AAPT are being investigated over the data breach.
The Australian Government’s data retention scheme would see ISPs and websites forced to hold your entire web history for two years. It has attracted criticism from the Greens, with Scott Ludlam a staunch critics of such proposals – telling Computerworld Australia that the Australian Government “say they’re looking to strike a balance between people’s privacy and the ability of spy agencies to surviel people, but they haven’t even attempted to strike that balance.”
“It’s curious that they would try and pay it lip service while actually totally violating the principles of privacy.”
The Australian Federal Police, however, maintains that these new measures would make it easier to investigate cyber crime. AFP Assistant Commissioner, talking at a cyber-security event in Sydney, said, “Without data retention laws I can guarantee you that the AFP won’t be able to investigate groups such as Anonymous over data breaches because we won’t be able to enforce the law.”
Advocacy group GetUp! has recently created a video against the data retention proposals – you can watch the video below.