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Hot on the heels of similarly politically-motivated attacks against websites belonging to the governments of Tunisia and Zimbabwe, hackers are bombarding official websites in Egypt with a DDoS attack.
The hackers’ current target is believed to be the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, although at the time of writing it was still accessible.
A press release shared via Facebook by the loosely-knit “Anonymous” group uses stark language to make their demands of the Egyptian government:
"Anonymous wants you to offer free access to uncensored media in your entire country. When you ignore this message, not only will we attack your government websites, Anonymous will also make sure that the international media sees the horrid reality you impose upon your people."
The internet attacks are against a backdrop of anti-government protests in Egypt, with police using tear gas and rubber bullets to break up demonstrations.
“Anonymous” has used the internet to rally volunteers to participate in the attacks – dubbed “Operation Egypt” – seemingly in response to the country’s attempts to crack down on public protests and block access to websites such as Twitter.
Yesterday Twitter confirmed that their site was being blocked by the Egyption authorities and commented that they believed that “the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect with their people”.
http://twitter.com/#!/twitterglobalpr/status/30063209247408128
Of course, blocking Twitter and other internet resources can be an effective way of making communications between protestors much more difficult – but it does often raise the ire of politically-minded internet users in other countries.
Of course, use of tools like Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) may make it easy to use your PC for a denial-of-service attack, but can also do a poor job at hiding your participation rom the authorities.
Anyone considering signing-up to join in the DDoS attacks would be wise to remember that they could be breaking the law.
http://mcit.gov.eg/ is down
I can get to it, but maybe it's struggling a little..
Facebook is down also in Egypt , please help , they are going to block the Proxy-bypass site as well
I can get into it now from Florida, USA.
Why would the governments in western countries give enough of a shit to arrest people for DDOSing middle eastern websites 😛
AGAIN Facebook.com and Twitter.com are banned from Egypt.
They aren't able to control the ppl in the streets so they are blocking any means of communication between them …
They are even killing GSM Signal in the zones where protestors gather.
They even block sites like hidemyass.com :s
The only way for us to avoid this is to use applications like: UltraSurf 10.06
However, not many ppl know this tip.
The ppl in the streets are asking the residents at their homes to unsecure WiFi routers to enable wireless users to contact their relatives …
God, the security forces are even hunting Medical Teams preventing them from helping any injured persons ….
Would Tor be of help to the Egyptian people? I know it can hide the content that you view but not sure if it can make blocked sites accessible. I think so, though. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The fact is that the blockage of internet sites is becoming more and more of a big deal. While a lot of people may see this and sarcastically think, "Oh no, Twitter is down. No tweets about the mummies," it's much more serious than that. The government is learning that social networking sites are doing exactly what they are supposed to do quite well, network. In this age of information, things are coming to light that the powers that be would rather not be available to their constituents. The people are rallying, they're communicating, and the government is staging a war on the spread of information AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE. Notice that you are seeing more and more of these kinds of events in countries that still have limited freedoms. Notice that you are seeing this in America, where the upper echelons are used to being the only ones in the know and aren't happy to see widespread, and very well informed, opposition. Notice that we will not let this stand.
what did you expect?
http://www.ndp.org.eg/
so called "National Democratic Party" (Governing Party) website is down.
Everything is up and running ~ Stable … At least for now.
However, the demonstrations will continue till the removal of Mubarak's regime even if they cut the ADSL service and/or GSM coverage again.
By the way, the main ISP's routers were physicaly reset and reconfigured 😉