Anonymous pulled down Twitter in India to avenge OpIndia_Revenge block

Update: According to the latest information, we’ve been informed that Twitter wasn’t hacked, however, Anonymous in their statement said “We just compromised the net filter of reliance. –»”. Reliance’s net filter was compromised, resulting in users landing on the page displayed in the article below. This is contrary to the earlier reports that stated that Twitter was hacked in retaliation to the Indian government blocking their Twitter handle - OpIndia_Revenge.

There have been a spate of attacks by hacking group Anonymous on scores of Indian websites through this month. While the security of some BJP websites were compromised yesterday, those belonging to the Supreme Court of India, All India Congress Committee and Reliance met the same fate through this month. Reports about popular microblogging website Twitter in India being disrupted, too surfaced this week. Reports claim that Twitter in India was attacked when the hacker group claimed that they did so in retaliation to the Indian government allegedly blocking their Twitter handle - OpIndia_Revenge. Reports about the hack came in on Saturday, which is when the group made it public. Users trying to access the site, during that time were instead redirected to a message by Anonymous, one of which read - “Told you not to mess with free speech and lesser with Anonymous. Government of India, you know what you did wrong. you caused out twitter account to be blocked now we will show you what anonymous is capable of doing (sic).”

Twitter disrupted in India

One of the messages also carried a warning that was directed to the Indian government, asking them to “restore” their allegedly blocked Twitter handle. The group, further through their messages also mentioned that there were plans to make more “hits” against the government. It added, “People We for 1 entire week attacked government websites, run by your money and no one in your government cared, then we decided to hit the Rich guys in the entertainment and IPL and Reliance and your government sprang into action.”

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Early this month, file-sharing websites, like ThePirateBay and Vimeo were brought to their knees when all major ISPs across the nation went on a ‘torrent sites blocking spree’, in a bid to curb online piracy. A John Doe order, dated 29th of March, 2012  filed with the Madras High court by a Chennai-based firm, Copyright Labs had reportedly triggered off the entire incident and the issue at the heart of it was the release of two movies, Dhammu (Telugu) and 3 (Tamil). This move towards web censorship by the owners of the content did not go down too well with the popular hacktivist group, Anonymous and in their response to the block of the torrent sites, the group hacked the official websites of the Supreme Court and that of the All India Congress Committee, and Reliance, soon after.

Web censorship has been a topic of debate in recent times. The gravity of the issue came to light only recently when incidents of hacking in retaliation to web censorship became a frequent occurrence. With the government on one side taking an increasingly active stance in tightening the reins on the way we access content on the web, groups like Anonymous are on the other hand citing free speech. Stay tuned to this space for information on this topic.

To know all about the Anonymous exploits in India, click here.