Hacker collective, Anonymous India on Saturday hacked and brought down IIPM websites, IIPM.in and IIPM.edu. The hacking comes as a reaction to the DOT order which asked Internet service providers (ISPs) to block over 73 urls which had articles that were critical of IIPM and its director Arindam Chaudhuri.
The attack on www.iipm.in also affected www.iipm.edu as this website internally links to www.iipm.in. The websites were offline for nearly nine hours due to the attack, according to this Times of India report.
The directive to block the urls was issued after an order by a Gwalior district court. The list also includes a July 2012 notice by issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) which states that “IIPM is not a university within the meaning of section 2(f) of the UGC Act, 1956″. When we tried accessing this Url it was indeed blocked, however since it is a PDF, we were able to see the actual document by using the quick view option on Google search.
The blocking of the UGC page has also sparked off jokes on Twitter that a government page has been blocked for the first time. And of course, many sites whose articles were blocked have changed urls for the offending pieces, so the ban hasn’t been 100 percent effective.
Screengrab of IIPM website.
Twitter users jumped in with comments on the IIPM websites being brought down. Here are some tweets:
#TangoDown iipm.in #IIPMScam. Reason: Got court order to block URLs criticizing them including the UGC (Govt. Body) notice
— AnonOpsIndia (@opindia_revenge) February 16, 2013
Our Internet gatekeepers are not very good at this censorship thing. Blocked blogspot URLs are accessible by adding the www. prefix. #IIPM
— Soumyadip Choudhury (@soumyadip) February 17, 2013
#TangoDown 16
IIPM sites || Talk about putting all you
#TangoDown 16
IIPM sites || Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket(cont) tl.gd/l2b531
— AnonOpsIndia (@opindia_revenge) February 16, 2013
Sweet Smell of Success- How Arindam Chaudhuri made a fortune off the aspirations of India’s middle classes pastebin.com/UBtEqF1L — AnonOpsIndia (@opindia_revenge) February 16, 2013
. @opindia_revenge :On a lighter side #IIPM has done one thing which none of us could do .. they got a govt url blocked ..:) #UGC #GOI
— sumit kumar (@kumar_sumit) February 16, 2013
