Anonymous Takes Out UK Intellectual Property Office Website

[p2p rules]

Yesterday, another high profile attack was launched, the first that aimed to take down a website belonging to a government body. The people involved in Operation Payback had selected the UK’s Intellectual Property Office as their victim and announced that the DDoS would start at 5PM GMT. And so it happened.

At the time of writing, 18 hours into the DDoS, ipo.gov.uk is still unresponsive.

The Intellectual Property Office is “Perpetuating the system that is allowing the exploitative usage of copyright and intellectual property” according to the Anonymous DDoSers, who opened up a new can of targets with this attack.

As a Government body the UK Intellectual Property Office has been heavily involved in copyright issues and prospective laws. Earlier this year the Office spoke out against criminalizing illicit file-sharing as proposed in the ACTA treaty.

Instead of creating new laws to combat online piracy, it said the focus should be on providing “a framework to better enforce existing laws.”

Targeting government offices is certainly a step up for Anonymous. Time will tell what they dream up next but this one will probably turn a few heads.

Torrentfreak