Anonymous targets Iceland in protest against whaling, brings down Government websites

Anonymous Takes Down Five Icelandic Government Websites to Protest Whale Hunting

Online activist group, Anonymous on Friday took down five websites belonging to the Icelandic government and two other websites to protest against whale hunting in the North Atlantic

The Anonymous had announced two campaigns called #OpWhales and #OpKillingBay to bring world attention to the illegal whaling being carried out around the world. Iceland has been carrying out commercial whaling despite of ongoing global moratorium against killing whales established by the International Whaling Commission in 1986. That is the reason Anonymous has targeted Icelanding government websites.

According to local Icelandic website Grapevine.is, activists belonging to Anonymous took down 5 Icelanding government websites through a Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) attack, however, the sites are online as of now.

The five targeted government websites belonged to the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Interior, Iceland’s Prime Minister, and the government’s main portal.

More importantly, Anonymous also took down a website belonging to HB Grandi, an Icelandic whale fishing company, along with the website of the Japanese Whaling Association.

Anonymous had warned the Icelandic government about the impending attacks through a video on YouTube published on Wednesday.

The signature Anonymous man in Guy Fawkes mask says,”Iceland’s escalating whale hunts are clear and willful abuses of the IWC’s [International Whaling Commission] moratorium, as well as the ban on international commercial trade in whale product.”  “Brothers and sisters of anonymous. We ask that you stand alongside us in targeting Iceland,” continues the group asking for public support for their cause.

Earlier in 2015, the group had also brought down websites Japan’s two of the busiest airports and and Taiji municipality website in September. Taiji became famous thanks to “The Cove” documentary, being the place where dolphins were herded into a small bay and gruesomely slaughtered in mass by Japanese fishermen.

You can follow the #OpWhales and #OpKillingBay by following the Twitter account and a website(Warning: animal cruelty images on this link) for their most recent #OpWhales campaign. They also uploaded to GhostBin a list of websites they plan to target in the future.