Australian government websites taken offline by Anonymous

July 24, 2012 by legitgov

Australian government websites taken offline by Anonymous 24 Jul 2012 Members of hacktivist group Anonymous have claimed credit for taking down 10 Queensland government websites earlier this week in response to proposed changes to data retention laws currently under discussion by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS). The PJCIS inquiry is considering reform proposals for telecommunications interception, telecommunications sector security and Australian intelligence community legislation. One of the proposals includes "tailored data retention periods for up to two years for parts of a data set", with every internet users' entire Web history logged and stored for up to two years. According to a blog posting entitled Par:AnoIA Queensland, members of the group used an authentication bypass to loot some "booty" from Queensland government servers which, according to Anonymous, showed how the Australian government was monitoring citizens' activity online.