By Kevin Coleman -- Defense Tech Cyberwarfare correspondent
The hacking group Anonymous took credit for a huge assault on multiple web pages operated by agencies of the Mexican government. A video appeared on YouTube using the name Anonymous publically claimed responsibility for what they termed "Independence Operation" that was designed to "make the government tremble." In addition, a blog entry that was the linked to the Anonymous Hispano’s Twitter account had the following entry as well. "We are anonymous, we are legion, we don't forgive, we don't forget. Wait for us."
The assault was successful in that the hackers were able to block legitimate users from accessing the agencies’ web sites. The DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack was acknowledged by Mexico’s Interior Ministry in a communiqué released last week. The September 15th early afternoon attacks targeted defense and public security web sites as well as several local government site a few others. In addition, the hackers stated they would also be targeting the home page of President Felipe Calderon. This cyber assault seems to follow the modus operandi of Anonymous’ past actions against several U.S. banks, U.S. Senate, Sony, the CIA web site and others.
One source told me cyber forensics that support attribution coupled with the public claims of responsibility will soon result in more Anonymous member arrests by internal law enforcement. However, the blurry boundaries between cyber activism and cyber extremism and in some cases cyber terrorism have become increasing problematic given the frequency of these type of attacks and the success groups like Anonymous have been able to achieve.
