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Anonymous Attacks Ukrainian Government After Demonoid Takedown

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OpDemonoid Targets Ukrainian Government

After suffering a major outage last week due to a DDoS, Demonoid, a popular BitTorrent tracker, was taken offline by Ukrainian authorities, allegedly so that the government could earn some brownie points with the United States. In response, Anonymous has launched OpDemonoid, an operation that is targeting sites in the Ukraine.

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According to sources speaking to Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, and as reported by TorrentFreak, “the raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the very first trip of Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky‘s trip to the United States. On the agenda: copyright infringement.”

OpDemonoid Anonymous“Ukraine had promised the United States that it would improve its attitude and efforts towards enforcing copyright and no doubt its Western partner will be very pleased indeed that Demonoid’s head has been presented on a platter.”

This is what led to Anonymous taking a stance. So far, DDoS attacks against the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine (nrada.gov.ua), the Ukrainian Agency for Copyright and Related Rights (uacrr.kiev.ua), and the Ukrainian Anti-Piracy Association (apo.kiev.ua), have been the opening salvo.

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However, the operation’s planning notes also call for Web defacement too. Should the Ukrainian president’s page (president.gov.ua) be defaced, a prepared replacement page outlines other goals for OpDemonoid.

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First, the main objective is to restore Demonoid services by “any means necessary” and facilitate a series of mirrors online. After that, there is retaliation, which is currently ongoing.

“Sergei Burlakov of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has confirmed that a criminal case in Mexico against the owners of Demonoid has been initiated and the tracker is charged with intellectual property rights violations. A future without public trackers is a bleak one my friends. For most of us Demonoid and other public trackers have been about much more than music or movies. They are an incredibly powerful educational tool, facilitating much more than just open piracy. Corporations and governments fear them. Anonymous will not tolerate a world without them,” the text from Anonymous states.

In a previous statement to the public, Anonymous reminded the Ukrainian government that they had faced their wrath before, asking: “Haven’t you, Ukraine, learned anything from the Anonymous Collective? You were attacked once, and yet feel the need to keep censoring us, your people, and every day hard working citizens?”

For this reason alone, the statement concludes, “Ukrainian government, You should have expected us.”

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Related: Anonymous Launches “Largest Attack Ever on Government and Music Industry Sites”

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