Hacktivists Have Their Eye on Yemen and Egypt

The website of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has become inaccessible as Yemenis stage anti-government protests.

Attacks on the websites of Egypt’s ruling party and ministry of information are coming this week.

Last month, hacktivists from the online group Anonymous shut down some Tunisian websites, including the government’s official site.Now they have focused on Middle East politics, which has alarmed security experts, who warn people against jumping on the bandwagon.

“If you participate in these attacks, you are knowingly engaging in a cyber crime,” said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant for security firm Sophos.

“If you aren’t prepared to go and throw rocks, then maybe you should think again about clogging up websites with traffic,” he added.

“Anonymous claims that it wants to uphold web freedoms around the world but as such attacks increase, it could have knock-on effect of governments seeking to make it harder to remain anonymous online”, says Cluley.

“If there was no ability for anonymity, we would all be the losers,” he added.

Source: BBC