Anonymous launches attack on Mexico's Defense Department

Announcing its support of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, the hacking collective hits the government's defense Web site with a DDoS shutdown.

Dara Kerr Former senior reporter

Dara Kerr was a senior reporter for CNET covering the on-demand economy and tech culture. She grew up in Colorado, went to school in New York City and can never remember how to pronounce gif.

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Dara Kerr

Jan. 17, 2013 7:38 p.m. PT

2 min read

Anonymous has set its sights on Mexico's Department of Defense.

The group's Mexican legion has claimed responsibility for waging a distributed-denial-of-service attack on the government site, rendering it inoperable for several hours yesterday, according to the Associated Press.

During the attack, the group posted a statement on the media section of the government's Web site. The statement claimed that a "bad government" was running the country.

"Our struggle is for life, and our bad government offers death as the future," the statement read, according to Spanish language tech news site Web Adictos. "Our struggle is for peace, and our evil government announces war and destruction."

The central complaint of "Anonymous Mexico" is the army's mistreatment of indigenous and poor people living in the state of Chiapas. The group says it has aligned itself with the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which declared war on the Mexican government nearly 20 years ago. According to Infosecurity Magazine, the group also posted a video on the Department of Defense Web site that showed police using force on demonstrators during anti-government protests in December.

Mexico's Department of Defense announced yesterday that it was "temporarily out of service," according to the Associated Press. It also said that none of the information from its internal computer networks was affected.

Anonymous has become increasingly more political in what Web sites it selects for its DDoS targets. Over the last year, it has claimed responsibility for launching attacks on the U.K.'s Justice Department in an effort to defend WikiLeaks. It has also led DDoS campaigns against Syrian government Web sites for the government's alleged shutdown of the Internet; and it has conducted a "cyberwar" against the Israeli government in protest of the government's involvement in Gaza.

Earlier this month, the group warned that it had no plans of slowing down. "Expect us 2013," it announced. "We are still here."