Hackers target MTNL, call protests in 6 cities

CHENNAI: The virtual gheraoing of official websites went up a notch on Wednesday, with online hackers Anonymous claiming to have taken down the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited ( MTNL) website through a distributed denial of service attack.

The group started attacking official and corporate websites to protest "internet censorship" which snowballed after a Madras high court 'John Doe' order on copyright violation of Tamil movie '3' and Telugu movie 'Dammu'.

In addition to the net siege, Anonymous has planned peaceful street demonstrations in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, Kochi and other cities on June 9. The demands include removal of blocks on websites and for amendment of certain provisions in the IT Act 2008.

Hacked for blocking file-sharing websites

After government websites and corporate domains, online "hacktivist" group Anonymous on Wednesday targeted the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) website for blocking file-sharing websites.

The mtnl.net.in attack was announced on Anonymous's blog: "We are against internet censorship. Instead of blocking few URLs, the ISP blocked the whole domain of various file-sharing websites. The (Madras) HC, DoT didn't issue any list of websites to be blocked, still ISP supported internet censorship."

This is the latest in a series of such attacks in the over the past month by the group, which has targeted the websites of the Internet Service Providers Association of India, the Trinamool Congress and Reliance Communications.

To prevent copyright violation of Tamil movie '3' and Telugu movie 'Dammu', the producers procured pre-emptive orders from the high court. Although the orders did not specify the websites, on May 17, internet service providers (ISPs) such as Airtel and Reliance Communications blocked a number of video-sharing and file-sharing sites, including Vimeo, DailyMotion.com, Isohunt.com, thepiratebay.org, torrentz.eu, kat.ph and pastebin.com.

Though the bans were partially lifted after protests, websites like Pastebin and torrent sites are still inaccessible.