Anonymous hacks Colombian presidential site

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos on Wednesday tweeted that his Facebook page had been hit by the hacker group Anonymous, which took a swipe at the country’s independence celebrations.

“I regret the interference with the Facebook account that is in my name, and the messages that have been published there,” Santos said in the microblogging service.

On Santos’ personal page, Anonymous left short phrases that are one of its calling cards, and a link to a video entitled “False Independence,” as Colombia marks the 201st year of its independence from Spain.

The video says that the celebrations should not be held. It argued that the country needed to demand its full rights on all fronts, criticizing violence and unemployment rates in the South American nation of about 45 million.

The content has since been taken down.

Anonymous rose to infamy last year with cyber attacks in support of controversial whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.
The group was linked to attacks on Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, which blocked donations to WikiLeaks after it published thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Early this year, Anonymous took credit for breaking into the website of HBGary Federal, stealing tens of thousands of email messages and temporarily routing traffic to a page with a vitriolic message.

The attack on Santos’ site comes in a week which featured the arrest of 14 of the hacktivist group’s members and the launch of anonplus, the group’s social network.

The social network will undoubtedly blur even further the boundaries between the hacktivist core of the group and more casual members of the public who merely feel sympathetic to their cause.

The fact that the group has maintained a level of high-level attacks of a series of arrests similar to those which occurred this week suggests that, no matter what measures authorities use in trying to stop them, Anonymous aren’t going anywhere any time soon.–AFP with staff reporting.