14 DAY TRIAL // Following last week’s police raid in Stockholm that ended up in seizing servers facilitating file sharing activity through The Pirate Bay website, individuals claiming to be part of the Anonymous hacker collective have initiated a call to attack the websites of Swedish authorities.
The operation was dubbed #OpPirateBay and a first message was published on Pastebin on Monday, announcing that the Anonymous group would not stand idle as law enforcement, pressured by movie groups, took down websites that support the idea of free information.
“Movie groups and other companies have been pressuring the police force for years to take down the site [The Pirate Bay], to no avail. But it now seems that the police have chosen to go against our rights and strip citizens of the most basic human right. This can not, and will not go unnoticed. We must take action against this intrusion of our rights. The time to act is now!” reads the text on Pastebin.
Anonymous group calls for retaliation against Swedish authorities
Today, a stronger message was delivered, instigating “Anons around the world” to join a mass attack against all sites belonging to the Swedish authorities and infect them with viruses.
The reason for this type of action is, just like stated in the message on Pastebin, the raid on The Pirate Bay. This is seen as unacceptable by the group, as Anonymous does not tolerate censorship.
Various hacker groups have already taken similar initiatives by leaking email addresses accompanied by plain text passwords belonging to employees of different governments, the Swedish one in particular.
Email account credentials from various governments have been leaked
Hagash Team is one of the groups that used Pastebin to post the data allegedly obtained through phishing attacks.
They created a small list that included account details for individuals working for the governments of Sweden, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, India, and Israel.
The motivation, as they told us over Twitter, was to respond to the raid on The Pirate Bay, as they considered that, by seizing the equipment, the authorities took something they believed in. In reply, they decided to even things out and take something belonging to the government.
It appears that a similar motivation was behind the leaks posted by another group, Anonymous Globo, which disclosed credentials belonging to employees of the governments of Dubai and France.
However, this type of action is not going to balance the situation, because law enforcement will continue to do their job, regardless of the threats received. Also, we received no confirmation from the Swedish authorities that the passwords were valid.