The hacker network Anonymous is threatening the Chinese government with a campaign called “Operation Hong Kong.”
“Here’s your heads up, prepare for us, try to stop it, the only success you will have will be taking all your sites offline,” an Anonymous statement posted online said, Reuters reported Friday. “China, you cannot stop us. You should have expected us before abusing your power against the citizens of Hong Kong,” the hackers added.
Anonymous plans to release tens of thousands of government documents and to launch a Distributed Denial of Service attack over the weekend.
The activists’ plan comes in the wake of student-led protests for democratic reforms in Hong Kong. The students’ efforts, which included heated altercations with police, died down this week, but activists say that future gatherings will happen.
“This is definitely not the end — we’ve never set a time frame for how long this should go on. It’s normal for people to go home, to come and go,” Alex Chow, one of the student leaders, told The Associated Press on Monday.
The Chinese government says that it is ready for any attempt by Anonymous to illegally access its documents or tamper with its websites.
“We have taken necessary steps to protect the safe operation of the Defense Ministry website,” China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement to Reuters.
Hackers with Anonymous said online that they will be targeting China’s Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Justice and Hong Kong police, Reuters reported.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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