Indonesian hackers crash Australian intelligence agency website

PanARMENIAN.Net - Indonesian hackers have crashed the website of Australian intelligence agency ASIS, according to hackers and cyber experts, dramatically stepping up the revenge attacks in response to the spying affair, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

On Monday, Nov 11 afternoon the website of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service was still not working.

Heru Sutadi, executive director of Indonesian technology think tank the Indonesia ICT Institute, confirmed that hackers from the country had launched a successful "distributed denial of service" attack, which crashed the website.

Sutadi said the hackers, linked to the global cyber-activist network Anonymous, had first attacked the ASIS site on Friday evening.

Several Indonesian hacker groups were also boasting of the cyber-attack on online forums.

A group called the Indonesian Security Down Team is believed to have been behind the ASIS attack. The ISD Team and other groups including the Indonesian Cyber Army and the Java Cyber Army have vowed to continue such attacks.

They say they are also targeting other high-profile Australian government sites including those of the national security agency ASIO and Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Those sites were working normally on Monday afternoon.

The groups say they are retaliating against Australia's electronic spying operations from its Jakarta embassy, a program revealed by Fairfax Media recently. They say they will continue the hacking unless the Australian government apologizes and promises to stop the electronic surveillance program.

An Australian Federal Police spokesperson said the ASIS incident had not been referred to them.

ASIS is the agency responsible for gathering foreign intelligence and carrying out counter-intelligence. It is approximately equivalent to the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States.

The ASIS website includes information on the agency's role, contact details and recruiting information.