While Chicago police officers battled and bloodied anti-NATO protestors on Sunday, the police department’s website and that of NATO’s fell under attack. Based on the public comments, two separate groups were responsible for the attacks.
In a video that was quickly made private once the media picked up on it, AntiS3curityOPS blasted the Chicago Police Department for their actions against protestors during Sunday’s events.
“We are actively engaged in actions against the Chicago Police Department, and encourage anyone to take up the cause and use the AntiS3curityOPS Anonymous banner. For those able, chicagopolice.org should be fired upon as much as possible. We are in your harbor Chicago, and you will not forget us,” the video said.
When questioned by the press about the attacks online, police officials appeared clueless and had no solid information. Garry McCarthy, the Superintendent for the Chicago Police, told reporters during a briefing held in a city park that “there have been some cyber attacks,” but stipulated that he didn’t have much information.
The AP reported on Sunday that the police were investigating the DDoS attacks on their domain and that of cityofchicago.org.
In a related event, NATO’s website, nato.int, was also brought down via a DDoS on Sunday. The attack was announced, and somewhat claimed, by AnonAteam on Twitter.
“You actions have caused interference in the Human Rights of those protesting at the NATO Conference and are therefore in breach of Articles 9, 10 and 11. The ATeam protect people against such oppression and we will not sit by and watch you oppress peaceful protesters exercising their right to have access to media so they can provide footage to the world of what is really happening. Given the failure of main stream media to properly report on such stories this is even more imperative. If you censor us, we through necessity will censor you,” the Anonymous supporters said on their blog.
NATO’s domain was offline for about an hour, and continued to have connection issues throughout the day on Sunday. The website returned to normal once protests in Chicago seemed to taper off, but again appeared unavailable Monday morning.
In other DDoS news, Anonymous (they were busy this weekend) has continued attacks on websites in India for their moves to block video and filesharing services. Over the weekend the websites used by India’s CERT and President were taken offline for a brief period. In addition, ABC Krishi Equipments’ website was defaced by the loosely associative group as a warning to the government.
The DDoS attacks in India were ongoing at the time this article was written.