A hacker group that calls itself Anonymous has claimed responsibility for hacking into email accounts belonging to the Swedish government because of the seizure of The Pirate Bay servers by Swedish police. It is the second time in a week that a Swedish entity has been hacked because of The Pirate Bay seizure.
As the news site RT.com reported, the Swedish Internet company Telia had their systems attacked on December 12. Their online services were affected and user connections were disturbed as well. A researcher from Kaspersky Lab, which is an internet security company, said the attack on Telia was a DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service attack, and it was probably a response to the shut down of The Pirate Bay by Swedish police. The company was also subjected to cyber attacks on both December 9 and 10 as well.
BREAKING: Emails from Swedish government were hacked in retaliation for the seizure of servers of The Pirate Bay http://t.co/UaYiyQq5W9
— Anonymous (@AnonymousGlobo) December 14, 2014
The Pirate Bay was one of only several torrent sites that were temporarily shut down on December 9 after the Swedish police raided and seized servers, computers and other equipment belonging to the entertainment sharing sites. However, The Pirate Bay was only down for a few hours as they changed their domain to.cr for Costa Rica.
This isn’t the first time that Anonymous has claimed responsibility for cyber attacks on Swedish government sites. As CBS News reported in October, 2012, Anonymous hacked two websites associated with the Swedish government. They used a DDoD attack against one site, and left links to profane messages on the other site. This cyber attack was also in retaliation for a raid on the webhosting company, PRQ, by the Swedish police.
As the Inquisitr reported, other governments and companies have attempted to shut down The Pirate Bay earlier this month. The French government shut down the file sharing site within its borders, and Google blocked Android apps that linked to The Pirate Bay site. In the past, several other countries have tried to legally shut down the site, but every attempt has failed.
Along with claiming responsibility for the cyber attack on the Swedish government, Anonymous also claimed attacks on government email accounts in Israel, Brazil, Argentina, India and Mexico. As a parting shot, the group left a message after the Swedish attack that said “Warning: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!! Bye :*”
[Image via BGR.com]