Hackers attack Government Office's website

Prague, Jan 26 (CTK) - The website of the Czech Government Office was afflicted by temporary blackouts for about three hours earlier this evening, government spokesman Jan Osuch told CTK, adding that an expedient overburdening was to blame.

According to unofficial information appearing on the Internet, hackers' attack was behind the trouble.

Late this afternoon Osuch confirmed that the Czech Government Office registered its website's blackouts.

"They have been caused by an expedient overburdening of the server. That is why we ask people for patience with opening the website," Osuch said.

In the evening he said the website was out of operation from 17:00 to 20:00.

"After 20:00 its operation was fully resumed," he told CTK.

The government's website was overburdened by a huge number of attempts to open it, which "presented" themselves as being made from abroad.

The website usually registers 2,000 users in an hour, while it was 15 million attempted entries from 17:00 to 20:00 todaý, Osuch said.

Earlier yesterday, hackers similarly attacked the website of the Association of copyright protection (OSA), which remained out of operation for several hours.

The organiser of the attack, who claims adherence to the Anonymous movement, wrote to Technet.sz server that he wanted to express his disagreement with the collection of fees for blank media and with Prague's signing of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) agreement in Tokyo earlier yesterday.

The OSA is supposed to collect payments for the public use of music and distribute them to its authors.

"ACTA is trying to restrict the freedom of speech and the Internet's neutrality. For long years, the OSA has been terrorizing the Czech Republic by imposing copyright fees on every sold medium," the Technet.cz server cited from the hackers' letter.

OSA head Roman Strejcek confirmed that an e-attack was waged on the OSA's website before 17:00 yesterday.

"Everybody longs for his/her several minutes of glory. Some achieve it by creating things, others by destroying things. The more are we proud of siding with those who create," Strejcek told CTK.

Police spokeswoman Pavla Kopecka said the police are trying to find from where the attack may have been waged.

She said similar attacks rest in a large number of users opening the same website simultaneously. As a result, the server is unable to proceed the amount of information and fails.

"The attacks we checked in the past were not waged from the Czech Republic, but the possibility of some attack being waged from this country cannot be ruled out," Kopecka said.

The Czech Republic is among the 22 states that signed the ACTA agreement anchoring intellectual property protection rules and vowing to combat the spread of illegal copies and fakes of art, clothes etc.

The agreement's critics view it as an instrument to impose censorship on the Internet and restrict global exchange of information.

Mainly the world pirate parties, including the Czech one, have struggled against the ACTA.

Anonymous is a free community of hackers and Internet activists operating worldwide. It has no firm structure, leadership or programme. It is mainly known for its hacker attacks, including on state offices' websites.

Other activity typical of Anonymous are various jokes and hoaxes placed on the Internet. The group's members often present themselves wearing the mask of Guy Fawkes, protagonist of a 17th century Catholic rebellion in London, shaped after his portrait in the V for Vendetta comic book series.