First published: 08th October 2014
Five people who allegedly attacked government websites, including the Hong Kong Police Force website and the online government telephone directory, using online tools were arrested on 7th October. The attacks have been linked with the "Anonymous" group's threats to attack government websites in "support" of the Occupy Central movement.
The suspects include a 13 year-old, an 18 year-old student and a 39 year-old car repairer. The student and car-repairer have been charged with "Access to computer with criminal or dishonest intent". The student allegedly attacked the Police website 11,552 time in less than an hour on 4th October. According to Mingpao News, the Office of the Government Chief Information officer noticed the attacks on the Police website early on 4th October and traced the IP address.
The car repairer suspect claimed that his computer was not switched on at the time of the attacks, and suggested that it might be the the action of a trojan.
Following the arrests, HKCERT released a statement urging the public not to participate in cyber attacks, pointing out that participants that download automated tools or applications that require no technical know-how to launch attacks are not aware that the attack tools and applications normally use their IP addresses for the attacks and consume their network and computing resources.
Yui Kee's Chief Consultant, Allan Dyer, commented, "the difficulty with this type of case is ensuring there is a strong evidential link between the attacks and the IP address, the IP address and the suspect computer, and the actions of the computer and the intention of the user."
Updated: 24th October 2014
On 22 October, Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Gregory So reported to the Legislative Council about the recent DoS attacks on Government websites, saying that they have not caused a significant impact on e-Government services and Government network systems and websites have not been compromised or defaced. The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer blocked the DoS and got the websites to run normally again.
