Hacktivists miss one,hit two and promise govt a lot more

We are going easy on the government at the moment, said Trooper,a key figure on Anonymouss #OpIndia channel. But if they refuse to listen to us,well hit major sites after June 9. After the demonstrations on Saturday evening,it will be open season on all sites,except those run by the media and institutions providing education,welfare and essential services. Another key figure,Juzzy,hints that the current spate of denial-of-service attacks will be followed by page defacements and leaks volumes of confidential email will be dumped on the internet.

But theres stage fright over Saturdays protests. Demonstrations have been organised at high-visibility locations in 16 cities,like the Gateway of India,India Gate and Kolkatas South City Mall. Nevertheless,some organisers are nervous about the turnout.

Incidentally,Saturdays attack on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs may have failed for lack of numbers,and downed servers were up the next day. Anonymous has built its success on a strategy of arming and marshalling the undrilled masses. It promotes idiot-proof software like Slowloris and the High Orbit Ion Cannon for launching distributed denial-of-service attacks. Then it advertises targets and the teeming millions just aim and shoot. No hacking skills necessary.

However,about 30-50 people must act in unison to freeze a high-traffic server and Anonymous India may be falling short. For the Occupy programme on June 9,the list of cities with protests scheduled is growing fast to second-tier cities like Kochi,Kozhikode,Nagpur,Chandigarh and Mysore. Growth is being driven by citizens who are volunteering to organise. Anonymous is supporting them with publicity material,its trademark Guy Fawkes masks,guidelines for peaceful protest and even sample forms for seeking police permission,all downloadable.

It is impossible to estimate turnout in advance because Anonymous is an unstructured organisation. Participants are encouraged to strike out on their own and the core organisers have no idea how far word may have travelled. However,this Occupy protest is on a strong wicket because in India,Anonymous is keeping it simple,avoiding complex issues like piracy and the global commons. It wants the government to roll back moves against free speech and privacy that began in 2008,when the IT (Amendment) Act reduced checks on communications surveillance.

The Intermediary Guidelines Rules (2011) continued the process,empowering government and corporates to force ISPs to remove content indiscriminately. Action against social media followed and the Opposition has taken up the issue in Parliament. But the immediate trigger is a court order restricting illegal access to the films 3 and Dhammu. ISPs and government acted on it with excessive enthusiasm to block about 400 sites and social media pages.

Thats like a red rag to a hacker. Anonymous hacktivists talk of targeting the National Informatics Centre,which hosts key government websites,the Computer Emergency Response Team and Airtel. Amidst all that,the Anonymous channel bot crows triumphantly: TANGO DOWN Õ http://www.mit.gov.in. Thats the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. There goes Kapil Sibals neighbourhood. Only for a while,perhaps,but every kill reinforces the image of Anonymous and can conjure up a better turnout on Saturday.