Cyber activists associated with the Anonymous collective temporarily downed President Vladimir Putin’s web site on Wednesday.
The activists said they were protesting the controversial renewal of Putin’s presidential term for yet another six years, which has sparked a wave of demonstrations in Moscow’s city streets.
The Kremlin’s Internet security division responded to the above-mentioned pwnage by telling Reuters: “All the relevant departments are taking the necessary measures to counteract (such) attacks.
“This is routine work. There is always some external influence. Today we are witnessing a splash of activity (by the attackers) … (But) they failed to achieve their goal.”
In other Anonymous related news, the Pirate Bay has gone on record as criticizing Anonymous for taking down the Virgin Media website over its blocking of the Pirate Bay file sharing site, as per a recent order from the U.K. High Court .
“We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free Internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us,” The Pirate Bay wrote on its Facebook page.
But @AnonAteam defended its decision to target Virgin Media.
“The attacks are not simply about facilitating access to the Pirate Bay website but to stop the type of order used to block your website being used as a precedent for further censorship on the Internet,” AnonAteam wrote on Tumblr.
“The entire reason for the protest is to protect freedom of expression from being blocked without any form of judicial process. ISPs are the gateways to democracy in this technology age, to censor access to websites with such an abuse of the legal process, outside parliament our a Humans Right court is unlaw and an abuse of power.”
