Hackers drop website relating to whaling in Japan

A group of hackers, known as Anonymous have thus far attacked and dropped more than 96 websites in Japan, beginning in September, as part an initiative against whaling has been revealed by police.

 

NHK a national broadcaster of Japan said that websites belonging to government offices, focus groups involved with dolphin and whale hunting expeditions, aquaria, news websites, as well as a personal website of the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe where attacked. The group hacked and made these websites inaccessible by “faking” huge amounts of traffic to these sites. The process is known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) which occurs when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. Anonymous have claimed responsibility at least 97 of these cyber-attacks. 

 

The anonymous group as well animal rights activists from around the world have been protesting the whaling practices that occur in Japan for a while now. Japan has banned the practise of commercial whaling; however, whaling for scientific research is still permitted. In 2014 the International High Court of Justice failed to prove how necessary it actually was to kill hundreds of whales in Antarctica annually hence the practise was ruled to immediately be stopped. 

 

Whaling in Japan was stopped for a little while; however the process was resumed after a short yearlong suspension. 

 

Japanese police say that the Anonymous group of activists are likely to take their attacks a step further in the run up to next year’s G7 conference which will be held in Mie Prefecture.