Hackers claiming to be part of the hacktivist collective Anonymous have responded to Edward Snowden’s latest revelations about the US National Security Authority allegedly using Australian embassies to spy in Asia by defacing the Web sites of some small Australian businesses.
A group calling itself Anonymous Indonesia claim to have replaced the front pages of more 200 Aussie Web sites with the message “Stop spying on Indonesia!”
Few sites have been named, but some that have are brisbanetimberwindows.com.au, perthclairvoyant.com.au and petprotector.net.au – none of which are likely to have been of much interest to the NSA or Australian spook agencies.
Indeed you would think that perthclairvoyant.com.au might have foreseen the hack attack coming and set up defences to prevent it.
Last week documents reportedly obtained from former NSA contractor Snowden and passed to Der Spiegel magazine in Germany said a program called Stateroom used the diplomatic facilities of Washington’s closest partners, including Australia, to spy on other nations, in some cases including housing US surveillance equipment.
This raised few eyebrows in Australia, where existence of the “Five Eyes” program under which the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand share intelligence, has been public knowledge for many years.
Australia’s specific mission under Five Eyes is said to be to monitor and pass on intelligence on South and East Asia – presumably including Indonesia.
